@@ Be scared of Jew 'Podhoretz', not Osama @@
Arash
September 8, 2004
A Shabby and Sinister Case for War
By Paul Craig Roberts
Anyone following the Larry Franklin Pentagon spy story is keenly aware of
the solidarity binding neoconservatives, AIPAC, Israel's rightwing Likud
Party, the US invasion of Iraq, and the war drums neocons are beating
against Iran.
By this time, only the willfully ignorant could be unaware that top neocon
policymakers in the George W. Bush administration wrote a policy paper for
rightwing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 that called for
"removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli strategic
objective in its own right." The September 11 terror attacks gave the
neocons the opportunity to put their removal strategy in motion.
Among the willfully ignorant is neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz.
He has just published a 30,000-word delusional screed in the September issue
of Commentary, "WW IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to
Win." (In the neocon lexicon, WW III was the Cold War.)
Podhoretz begins by alleging that "the malignant force of radical Islamism"
has as its objective "to conquer our land" and to destroy "everything good
for which America stands."
If Muslims intend to conquer America, then they are every bit as delusional
as Podhoretz, who intends for America to conquer the Middle East.
But, of course, Muslims have no such objective. The objective of Muslim
terrorists is to drive America out of Muslim homelands, not to conquer ours.
Podhoretz's intention to conquer the Middle East, however, is real. He has
declared it before, as has Douglas Feith, currently Undersecretary of
Defense in the Bush administration, who wrote in his "Strategy for Israel"
in 1997 that the US and Israel should conquer Iraq, Syria, and Iran and that
Israel should reoccupy "the areas under Palestinian Authority control."
Podhoretz wants you to believe that "the road we have taken since 9/11 is
the only safe course for us to follow." Safe? This bloody and inhuman road
leads on to American invasions of Iran, Syria, Lebanon and, if Podhoretz has
his way, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Demurely, Podhoretz has kept Pakistan off
his list, perhaps because Pakistan, like Israel, has nuclear weapons.
Podhoretz is worried that mounting US casualties in Iraq and growing public
doubt about the wisdom of the failed Iraq invasion will derail the scheme to
conquer the Muslim Middle East and to deracinate Islam. Podhoretz gives his
assurances that "the obstacles to a benevolent transformation of the Middle
East - whether military, political, or religious - are not insuperable." He
writes that "there can be no question that we possess the power and the
means." The only question is whether we have "the stomach to do what will be
required."
To make sure that we have the stomach, Podhoretz blames the 9/11 terrorist
attack on American cowardice. He argues that four US presidents (Carter,
Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton) spent 24 years convincing Muslims that America
is a wimp.
Podhoretz lays out his history of White House wimpery. First, Carter wimped
out on Iran. Then Reagan let Islamic terrorists blow us out of Lebanon. Bush
I followed in Reagan's wimp footsteps and refused to finish the job in Iraq.
Clinton continued the wimp tradition for two more terms.
Podhoretz states Clinton would not even meet with his own CIA director,
neocon James Woolsey, because Clinton was too much of a wimp to want to hear
from Woolsey that Muslims had declared WW IV on the US.
Podhoretz concludes that the "sheer audacity" of 9/11 "was unquestionably a
product of his [bin Laden's] contempt for American power." American wimpery
caused 9/11, because "bin Laden wrote off the Americans as cowards."
We will suffer more devastating attacks, Podhoretz says, unless we find the
stomach to fight WW IV.
Podhoretz overlooks the fact that al-Qaeda is a nongovernmental
organization, not a state with a standing army. Podhoretz doesn't examine
the morality of devastating five or six Muslim countries in retribution for
the actions of a few terrorists. He evades the issue of whether attacking
hundreds of millions of Muslims in an effort to chase down a small number of
terrorists is likely to increase the ranks of terrorists.
Podhoretz writes that any American restraint is foolish because it signals
weakness. America was saved from weakness by President George W. Bush (Bush
II), who like Harry Truman unexpectedly turned up with a vision. Bush II's
vision is - you guessed it - the same as that of the Likud Party and the
neocons who mold Bush's mind and write Bush's speeches.
The "vision" is to knock off Iraq, Iran and Syria, the countries that could
get in the way of Israel expelling the Palestinians to Jordan and grabbing
Lebanon as well. This is what World War IV is all about.
Unlike Undersecretary Feith, David Wurmser (VP Cheney's staff) and Richard
Perle (Defense Review Board), Podhoretz doesn't describe the overthrow of
countries which might be obstacles to Israeli ambition as "an important
Israeli strategic objective." Podhoretz dresses up his policy of naked
aggression as America's duty to bring truth, light, democracy and American
virtue to the Middle East.
Trouble is, there are distinguished thinkers who cannot be smeared as
anti-semites for disagreeing with Podhoretz, such as Professor Samuel
Huntington and Brent Scowcroft who was National Security Adviser to Bush I.
Podhoretz deals with Scowcroft by accusing him of giving aid and comfort to
anti-semites by mentioning "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," asserting
that only anti-semites think that Israel's treatment of Palestinians has
anything to do with 9/11. Podhoretz assures us that bin Laden himself
couldn't
care less about the Palestinians and attacked America simply because wimpy
US presidents convinced him that we are cowards.
Really, I am not making this up.
Next Podhoretz goes after "realists." Realists are almost as bad as
anti-semites. But, then, so is anyone who doesn't buy the neocon's ideology
of imposing America's virtue on the world - especially the Muslim part - by
force of arms.
Did you know that the American leftwing is also anti-semitic? Podhoretz is
outraged that Susan Sontag actually said that 9/11 was an attack "undertaken
as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions." Podhoretz
tries to tar Micky Kaus for agreeing with Pat Buchanan that mistreatment of
the Palestinians is part of the problem. He is aghast that Michael Kinsley
agrees with Buchanan that it is an affront to the Constitution to fight
undeclared wars.
The weakness of Podhoretz's case for turning the Middle East into an
American-Israeli colony, causes him to resort to the anti-semite smear.
However, the publication last year of The Politics of Anti-Semitism
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1902593774/lewrockwell/), a
powerful collection of essays, many written by Jews, has taken the sting
from the charge by showing that it is a tactic used to prevent debate.
Many "anti-semites" are Israel's friends who are concerned that Israel's
colonization of Palestine will unify Muslims in war against Israel.
Perhaps sensing that "anti-semite" is a worn out ploy, Podhoretz invents
another name - "blame-America-firsters" - for anyone who questions Bush's
policy of "bringing democracy to the Middle East."
We should be scared more by Podhoretz than by terrorists.
In Podhoretz's "vision," America is totally good. Muslims are totally evil,
because they use terrorism to resist the high-minded intentions of America's
virtuous aggression.
Podhoretz's vision has no room for diplomacy, compromise, and agreements.
These are the tools of wimps and will cause "a relapse into appeasement and
diplomatic evasion." There is only room for war.
To pursue the insane agenda of conquering and occupying the Middle East not
only requires the stomach for inhumane acts, but also demands millions of
Americans taking up arms. Here come the draft and a generation of
casualties.
Podhoretz does not understand the difference between defeating standing
armies and successfully occupying hostile populations that conduct fourth
generation warfare against us.
Instead, he sees an America armed with a "new patriotic mood," which is "a
sign of greater intellectual sanity and moral health." Only skeptics can
prevent our triumph in the Middle East by undermining our confidence like
they did in Vietnam. Thus, winning WW IV requires silencing those who
disagree with Podhoretz's case for war.
Podhoretz required 30,000 words, but he has made it crystal clear that the
case for American aggression in the Middle East is shabby and sinister.
* Dr. Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy
and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate
editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the
U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.