Mr. President, Talk Sense to Netanyahu by Veterans for Peace

[Capt. Justice]

Mr. President, Talk Sense to Netanyahu
by Veterans for Peace, February 23, 2012
. .
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veterans for Peace
. .
SUBJECT: You Need to Talk Sense to Netanyahu
. .
We members of Veterans for Peace have served in every war since World
War II. We know war. And we know when it smells like war. It smells that
way now, with drums beating loudly for attacking Iran.
. .
Information offered by the media to 'prove' Iran a threat bears an
eerie resemblance to the 'evidence' ginned up to 'justify' war on
Iraq - evidence later described by the chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, after a five-year committee investigation, as
"unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent."
. .
The good news this time around is that sane policy toward Israel and
Iran can find support in a principled U.S. intelligence community, which
has rebuffed attempts to force it to serve up doctored "evidence" to
justify war. U.S. intelligence continues to adhere to the unanimous,
'high-confidence' judgment, set forth in the National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) of November 2007 that Iran stopped working on a nuclear
weapon in 2003.
. .
(It may be of more than incidental interest to you that both President
George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have openly admitted that
the 2007 NIE put the kibosh on U.S.-Israeli plans to strike Iran in
2008.) . .
. . We hope
you have been adequately briefed on the findings of the November 2011
report on Iran by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Those findings are consistent with the key judgments of the U.S.
intelligence community expressed four years earlier. The IAEA report
contained no evidence that Iran has yet decided to build nuclear
weapons, despite widespread media hype to the contrary.
. .
Needed: Presidential Action .
. We
believe that you have the power to nip the current warmongering in the
bud by taking essentially two key steps:
1. Announce publicly that you will not allow the United States to be
drawn into war if Israel attacks Iran or provokes hostilities in some
other way.
. .
In threatening and planning such attacks, Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters are assuming you would have no
option other than to commit U.S. forces in support of Israel. To assume
automatic support from the world's sole remaining superpower is a heady
thing and an invitation to adventurism.
. . We are
aware that you have dispatched emissary after emissary to ask the
Israelis please not to start a war. We mean no offense to those
messengers, but there is very little reason to believe that they are
taken seriously.
. .
We are convinced that only a strong public demurral from you personally
would have much chance of disabusing Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders
of the notion that they can expect full American support, no matter how
hostilities with Iran begin.
. .
The Risks of Silence .
. .
A public statement now could preempt a catastrophic war. Conversely, the
Israeli leaders are likely to interpret unwillingness on your part to
speak out clearly as a sign that you will find it politically impossible
to deny Israel military support once it is engaged in hostilities with
Iran.
. .
What we find surprising (and the Israelis presumably find reassuring) is
the nonchalance with which Official Washington and the media discuss the
possible outbreak of war. From officials and pundits alike, the notion
has gained currency that an attack on Iran is an acceptable option, and
that the only remaining questions are if and when the Israelis will
choose to attack.
. .
Little heed is paid to the fact that, absent an immediate threat to
Israel, such an attack would be a war of aggression as defined and
condemned at the Nuremberg Tribunal.
. . Joint
Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey's anemic remark on Sunday that an
Israeli attack on Iran would be 'not prudent' is precisely the kind
of understatement to give Netanyahu the impression that he essentially
has carte blanche to start hostilities with Iran, anticipating a mere
tap on the knuckles -if that - from Washington.
. . 2.
Announce to the people of the United States and the world that Iran
presents no immediate threat to Israel, much less the U.S.
. .
That Iran is no threat to America is clear. Your secretary of state has
acknowledged this publicly. For example, speaking in Qatar on Feb. 14,
2010, Secretary Clinton said that, were Iran to pursue a nuclear weapon,
this would "not directly threaten the United States" but would pose a
threat to our "partners here in this region."
Secretary Clinton has made it clear that the partner she has uppermost
in mind is Israel. She and the Israeli leaders have used the media to
hype this "threat," even though it is widely recognized that it would
be suicidal for Iran to use such a weapon against Israel - armed as it
is with hundreds of nuclear weapons.
. .
The media have drummed into us that a nuclear weapon in Iran's hands
would pose an "existential" threat to Israel, a claim that is
difficult to challenge - that is, until one gives it careful thought.
Now is the time to challenge it. Indeed, the whole notion is such a
stretch that even some very senior Israeli officials have begun to
challenge it in public, as we shall point out later in this memorandum.
. Chirac
Spoof on the "Threat" .
. .
Former French President Jacques Chirac is perhaps the best-known Western
statesman to ridicule the notion that Israel, with at least 200 to 300
nuclear weapons in its arsenal, would consider Iran's possession of a
nuclear bomb or two an existential threat.
. .
In a recorded interview with The New York Times, The International
Herald Tribune, and Le Nouvel Observateur, on Jan. 29, 2007, Chirac put
it this way: -"Where will it drop it, this bomb? --On Israel? It would
not have gone 200 meters into the atmosphere before Tehran would be
razed." Chirac concluded that Iran's possession of a nuclear bomb
would not be 'very dangerous.'
. .
Oddly, Chirac's logic has found more receptivity among some of
Netanyahu's top officials than with your own strongly pro-Israel
advisers, which now include CIA chief David Petraeus. You may be unaware
that Petraeus repeatedly raised the "existential-threat-to-Israel"
shibboleth in his recent testimony to Congress.
. .
Petraeus: An "Existentialist" ? .
. .
At the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Jan. 31, Petraeus said
he had talked just days before with his Israeli counterpart, Mossad
chief Tamir Pardo, who was visiting Washington. Is it conceivable that
Petraeus's staff had not briefed him on Pardo's dismissive remarks on
the supposed "œexistential threat" just weeks before?
. .
According to Israeli press reports, on Dec. 27, 2011, Pardo complained
to an audience of about 100 Israeli ambassadors: "The term˜existential
threat" is used too freely. " If one said a nuclear bomb in Iranian
hands was an "existential threat," that would mean we would have to
close up shop and go home. That's not the situation."
. .
One of the ambassadors in the audience told the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz that Pardo's remarks "clearly implied that he doesn't think a
nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel." This did not stop
Petraeus from repeatedly hyping the "existential threat" in his
congressional testimony on Jan. 31.
. .
As if in response to Petraeus, on Feb. 8, Pardo's immediate predecessor
as head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, stated publicly that he does not think
Israel faces an "existential threat" from Iran.
. .
You may wish to make a point of asking Petraeus why he professes to be
more concerned about an "existential threat' to Israel than Mossad
and CIA analysts themselves " seem to be.
. .
Logically, at least, the Pardo/Dagan approach would certainly seem to
have the upper hand, if there continues to be no hard evidence that Iran
is trying to create a nuclear weapon. It bears repeating; essentially
nothing has changed since the intelligence community's finding of
November 2007: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran
halted its nuclear weapons program."
. .
Defense Ministers Provide Context
. . Even
authoritative statements by top U.S. and Israeli officials have failed
to prevent media hype charging that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his counterpart, Israeli Defense
Minister Ehud Barak, have publicly stated (on Jan. 8 and Jan. 18
respectively) that Iran is not doing so.
. .
On Face the Nation, Panetta asked himself: "Are they [the Iranians]
trying to develop a nuclear weapon?" and immediately answered his own
question: "No" Ehud Barak followed suit 10 days later. He added that
only if Iran expelled the U.N. inspectors would there be 'definite proof
that time is running out' and that 'harsher sanctions or other action
against Iran' might then be in order.
. .
It is no secret that the Israeli cabinet is divided on whether to attack
Iran, with Netanyahu leading the hawks in pushing for early action. How
the Israeli leaders interpret similar differences and mixed signals in
Washington will be crucial factors in whether Israel decides to move
toward war with Iran. Unfortunately, Netanyahu and other hawkish leaders
probably feel supported by your remarks before the Super Bowl game on
Feb. 5.
We found what you said on Israel and Iran highly disturbing. You told
over a hundred million TV viewers: "My number one priority continues to
be the security of the United States, but also the security of Israel."
. . .
The two are not necessarily the same and, in our view, need to be
separated by more than a comma. Publicly equating the security of the
U.S. with that of Israel as your "number-one priority" can lead to
all kinds of mischief, including war.
. .
For a variety of reasons, mostly Israeli reluctance, there is no mutual
defense treaty between the United States and Israel. With no treaty to
trigger the supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution there is no legal
obligation for our country to defend Israel. And, as we hope you will
agree, there is no moral obligation either, if Israel is the side
initiating/provoking hostilities.
. .
We respectfully suggest you make all this clear to Netanyahu when he
visits you on March 5. Better still, to be on the safe side, tell him
publicly = now.
. .
Oaths .
. .
In proudly serving in our country's armed forces, we took an oath to
support and defend the Constitution of the United States from all
enemies, foreign and domestic. We still take that oath with the utmost
seriousness, the more so since it bears no expiration date.
. .
We did not swear to bear arms if ordered, without due process, to defend
Israel or any other country. Nor did the brave men and women now serving
on active duty.
In all candor, we see it as your duty to protect our successor comrades
in arms from the consequences of what President George Washington called
the kind of 'passionate attachment' to another country that brings
all manner of evil in its wake.
. .
and Founders
. .
The first president of the United States was born 280 years ago today.
Thus, it seems all the more appropriate that we end this memorandum with
a highly relevant paragraph from Washington’s Farewell Address.
But before setting that down as a sharp reminder of what is at stake
here, we want to urge you again to issue two statements like the ones we
suggest above, which are so much in the spirit of our first president's
very prescient warning.
. .
In present circumstances, we believe this would be the best way for you
to honor the wise insight of George Washington, and to be true to your
own oath to defend the Constitution. As veterans of the armed forces, we
claim a special right to urge you strongly to make it 100 percent clear
that the number one priority of your presidency is the security of the
United States, and thus prevent another totally unnecessary war.
. .
From Washington's Farewell Address (1796):
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces
a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the
illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common
interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other,
betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the
latter without adequate inducement or justification.
. .
It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied
to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the
concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been
retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to
retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.
And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote
themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the
interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with
popularity….
. .
http://original.antiwar.com/veteransforpeace/2012/02/22/need-to-talk-sense-to-netanyahu/
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Originally published by ConsortiumNews.com