AntiWar
July 17, 2006
We're Being Set Up for Wider War in the
Middle East
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury
The old adage,
"fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" does not apply to
Americans, who have shown that they can be endlessly fooled.
Neoconservatives deceived Americans into an illegal attack and debilitating
war in Iraq. American neoconservatives are closely allied with Israel's Likud
Party. In the past, some neo-cons lost their security clearances because of
"mishandling" of classified information.
According to Insight magazine, "the Pentagon has banned security clearance
to Americans with relatives in Israel. Government sources and attorneys said the
Pentagon has sought and succeeded in removing security clearance from dozens of
Americans, mostly Jews, who either lived, worked, or have relatives in Israel".
http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Israel.htm
Ten years ago these architects of American foreign and military policy
spelled out how they would use deception to achieve "important Israeli strategic
objectives" in the Middle East. First, they would focus "on removing Saddam from
power in Iraq". This would open the door for Israel to provoke attacks from
Hezbollah. The attacks would let Israel gain American sympathy and permit Israel
to seize the strategic initiative by "engaging Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran as the
principal agents of aggression in Lebanon".
Today, this neoconservative/Jewish plan is unfolding before our eyes.
Israel has used the capture of two of its soldiers in Lebanon as an excuse for
an all-out air and naval bombardment against Lebanese civilian targets.
However, a number of commentators have pointed out that such a massive
attack requires weeks if not months of preparation that could not be done
overnight in response to the capture of the soldiers.
Regardless, in the first two days of the Israeli military attack on
Lebanon more than a hundred civilians, including Canadians, have been killed by
Israeli bombs (gifts from U.S. taxpayers). The Beirut International Airport has
been repeatedly bombed, as have residential neighborhoods, roads, bridges,
ports, and power stations.
Soldiers are a legitimate military target. Civilians, civilian
neighborhoods, tourists, and international airports are not. Under the Nuremberg
standard used to sentence Nazi war criminals to death, the Israeli government is
clearly guilty of war crimes.
Meanwhile, the Israelis are committing identical war crimes in Gaza.
Again Israel's excuse is the capture of an Israeli soldier. However, the
distinguished Israeli professor Ran HaCohen said
(http://antiwar.com/hacohen/?articleid=9312) that the Israeli army "had been demanding a massive attack on
Gaza long before the Israeli soldier was kidnapped".
By blocking UN Security Council (UNSC) action against Israel for its
massacre of civilians in Gaza, the Bush regime has made itself complicit in
these monstrous war crimes. Just as Germans who supported Hitler were deemed to
be complicit in his war crimes, Americans who support Bush are complicit in
Bush's war crimes.
Hezbollah is not the Lebanese government. It does not rule Lebanon.
Hezbollah is the militia organization founded in 1982 in response to Israel's
invasion of Lebanon. Hezbollah defeated the Israeli army and drove out the
Israeli invaders six years ago.
According to the BBC, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that the
two Israeli soldiers "were captured to pressure Israel to release the thousands
of Palestinian prisoners in its jails", especially the women and children.
The BBC also notes that although Hezbollah operates "from Lebanese
territory and the militant group has two ministers in the Lebanese government,
the central government is almost powerless to influence the militant group".
(Note that the BBC applies the loaded word "militant" to Hezbollah but not to
Israel). Hezbollah, reports the BBC, "is also very popular in Lebanon and highly
respected for its political activities, social services, and its military record
against Israel".
The prime minister of Lebanon, who was installed with President Bush's
approval when Syria, under Bush's pressure, recently withdrew its troops from
Lebanon, has twice appealed to Bush to pressure Israel to stop its criminal
attacks. Our great moral, democratic, Christian leader has twice rebuffed the
appeal from the legal representative of the Lebanese people.
Instead, Bush is willingly going along with the 1996 neocon script. Bush is
laying the blame on Syria and Iran, exactly as the neocon script calls for him
to do.
When Bush demands that Syria "stop Hezbollah attacks", he forgets that
he was the one who forced Syria out of Lebanon (to enable Israel to attack
Lebanon). If Americans were attentive, they would be ashamed to witness "their"
president acting as an Israeli propagandist.
Fox "News", CNN, and the rest of the Bush propaganda ministry are
echoing the lie that innocent Israel is under attack from the "terrorist states"
of Syria and Iran through their surrogate, Hezbollah. Americans, who are sick of
the Iraq occupation and want the troops home, are being fooled again and set up
for wider war in the Middle East.
Evangelical "Christians" are part of the propaganda show. Three
thousand of them, under the lead of the Reverend John C. Hagee, are heading to
Washington for a "Washington/Israel summit" to demand, needlessly, that the
neocon Bush regime show "stronger support for Israel".
It is difficult to see how Bush could show any stronger support without
using the U.S. military to assist Israel in its attacks, which is, of course,
what the "Christian" Rev. Hagee intends when he declares: "There's a new Hitler
in the Middle East [he doesn't mean Bush or Olmert]. The only way he will be
stopped will be by a preemptive military strike in Iran".
Present at Rev. Hagee's "Washington/Israel Summit" will be Israel's
former Minister of Defense, Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon, Israeli Ambassador
Daniel Ayalon, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, Republican
Senators Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, and
Gary Bauer.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful lobby
in Washington, expressed its thanks to Rev. Hagee for demonstrating "the depth
and breadth of American support" for Israel. Recently, AIPAC has been under
investigation as a suspected nest for Israeli spies.
David Brog, former chief of staff for Jewish Republican Senator Arlen
Specter, has gone to work for Rev. Hagee. Brog, who is Jewish, says he works for
Hagee's evangelical enterprise because "we're bringing into a pro-Israel camp
millions of Christians who love Israel and giving them a political voice.
Israel's enemies are our enemies, and this group instinctively understands
that".
David Brog goes on to say that Hagee's evangelicals understand that they
are not supposed to talk about Jesus, only about saving Israel: "Christians who
work with Jews in supporting Israel realize how sensitive we are in talking
about Jesus. They realize it will interfere with what they are trying to
do".
Gentle reader, is this an admission that evangelicals have set aside
Jesus for war? Do these bloody-minded evangelicals really believe they will be
wafted to Heaven for helping Israel involve the U.S. in more war? Have
evangelicals forgotten that "an eye for an eye" is Old Testament? "Turn the
other cheek" is New Testament.
On July 14, Israel Reuters reported that alone among Christians, the
"Vatican condemns Israel for attacks on Lebanon".
Whose delusion is the greatest – the evangelical "rapture" delusion,
the neocon delusion about American power, or the Zionist delusion? The three
together mean disaster for America, Israel, and the world.
One of the great evangelical/Zionist/neocon MYTHS is that "tiny
Israel" armed with 200 nuclear weapons is threatened by Muslim Middle Eastern
countries.
In actual fact, Egypt and Pakistan, which have the bulk of the Middle
Eastern Muslim population, are ruled by American puppets. Jordan, Saudi Arabia,
and the oil emirates are totally dependent on U.S. protection and, thereby, are
also under the American thumb.
Iran is Persian, not Arab, and has no common borders with Israel. Hezbollah
was created when Israel tried to seize Lebanon in 1982. Hamas is a Palestinian
response to the atrocities Palestinians have suffered for a half century at
Israel's hands.
Israel's land-stealing policy is the source of Middle Eastern
instability. America is hated because American money and weapons are what enable
Israel to steal Palestine from Palestinians.
As numerous Middle East experts have pointed out, what is decried as
"Arab terrorism against Israel" is, in fact, the only tactic Muslims have for
calling the world's attention to the plight of the Palestinians, about which
Americans are generally ignorant.
It is absurd for Bush to condemn Syria for not behaving as an American
puppet and for not fighting Israel's battles by taking on Hezbollah. Syria and
Iran (and Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion) are the only Middle Eastern countries
independent of American control. It is far beyond the boundaries of reason and
morality to expect these two remaining independent countries to give up their
independence in order to enable Israel to steal Palestine and southern
Lebanon.
It is the refusal of Iran and Syria (and Saddam's Iraq) to stand with
Israel against Palestine that has made them targets for American attack.
Neocons have total control of U.S. foreign policy in the Bush regime, and
they have morphed our strategic interests into Israel's.