A New and Revealing Study of the Influence of the Neocons

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Weekend Edition
September 20 / 21, 2008
A New and Revealing Study of the Influence of the Neocons

http://www.counterpunch.org/christison09202008.html

The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies
By BILL and KATHLEEN CHRISTISONStephen J. Sniegoski, The Transparent
Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the
National Interest of Israel, Enigma Editions, Norfolk, Virginia, 2008
Not a few honest political analysts have long recognized the tight
relationship between the Israel-U.S. partnership and the disastrous
Bush administration adventures throughout the Middle East, including
its backing for Israel’s systematic oppression of the Palestinians.
Stephen Sniegoski has had the persistence to ferret out mountains of
impossible-to-challenge evidence that this Israel-U.S. connection is
the driving force behind virtually all Middle East decisionmaking over
the last eight years, as well as the political courage to write a book
about it.
Sniegoski’s new book demonstrates clearly how U.S. and Israeli
policies and actions with respect to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria,
Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the other Gulf states, and even most
recently Georgia are all tied together in a bundle of interrelated
linkages, each of which affects all the others. The right wing of
Israeli politics, the neoconservatives in the U.S. who strongly
support Israel, and the aging Israel lobby in the United States all
have worked together, and are still doing so, to bring about more
wars, regime changes, and instability, specifically the fragmentation
of any Middle Eastern states that might ever conceivably threaten
Israel.
In addition, one purpose of such wars and other changes is explicitly
to intensify the discouragement of Palestinians as the latter’s
potential allies are knocked off one by one, making it easier for
Israel, over time, to finish off the Palestinians. That’s the theory.
Those who believe it is vital to improve the human rights situation
and the political outlook for the Palestinians must not only work to
reverse present Israeli policies, but it is probably more important
that we in the United States work even harder to reverse U.S.
policies.
This is a long but quite splendid book. After a foreword by ex-
Congressman Paul Findley and an introduction by Professor of
Humanities Paul Gottfried, Ph.D., the text itself has 382 pages
covering the entire history of the neoconservatives from the 1960s to
2008. The author has clearly spent untold hours reading all the
writings he could find by not only the top few neocons but also
numerous others who are far less well known but still important
figures in the movement.
The neocons, by the way, are by and large not conspiratorial. They
prefer to write voluminously and act openly with respect to their
philosophies and actions. The word “transparent” in the title of the
book emphasizes this very point. On the other hand, the neocons are
also very skilled propagandists and are more than willing to spin
“facts” in many situations in ways that often do not leave readers
with an honest, unvarnished version of “truth.”
Sniegoski states his own main argument as follows:
“This book has maintained that the origins of the American war on Iraq
revolve around the United States’ adoption of a war agenda whose basic
format was conceived in Israel to advance Israeli interests and was
ardently pushed by the influential pro-Israeli American
neoconservatives, both inside and outside the Bush administration.
Voluminous evidence, much of it derived from a lengthy neoconservative
paper trail, has been marshaled to substantiate these
contentions.” [Page 351]
The author then points out that
“… what was an unnecessary, deleterious war from the standpoint of
[“realists” in] the United States, did advance many Israeli interests,
as those interests were envisioned by the Israeli right. America came
to identify more closely with the position of Israel toward the
Palestinians as it began to equate resistance to Israeli occupation
with ‘terrorism.’ … Israel took advantage of the new American ‘anti-
terrorist’ position. The ‘security wall’ built by the Sharon
government on Palestinian land isolated the Palestinians and made
their existence on the West Bank less viable than ever. For the first
time, an American president put the United States on record as
supporting Israel’s eventual annexation of parts of the West Bank.
Obviously, Israel benefited for the very reason that the United States
had become the belligerent enemy of Israel’s enemies. As such, America
seriously weakened Israel’s foes at no cost to Israel. The war and
occupation basically eliminated Iraq as a potential power. Instead of
having a unified democratic government, as the Bush administration had
predicted, Iraq was fragmenting into warring sectarian groups, in line
with the original Likudnik goal.” [Pages 356-357]
And yet one more quote is in order he
“Since one is dealing with a topic of utmost sensitivity, it should be
reiterated that the reference to Israel and the neoconservatives
doesn’t imply that all or even most American Jews supported the war on
Iraq and the overall neocon war agenda. … A Gallup poll conducted in
February 2007 found that 77 percent of [American] Jews believed that
the war on Iraq had been a mistake, while only 21 percent held
otherwise. This contrasted with the overall American population in
which the war was viewed as a mistake by a 52 percent to 46 percent
margin. … [Nevertheless,] evidence for the neoconservative and Israeli
connection to the United States war is overwhelming and publicly
available. There was no dark, hidden ‘conspiracy,’ a term of derision
often used by detractors of the idea of a neocon connection to the
war. … It should be hoped that … Americans should not fear to honestly
discuss the background and motivation for the war in Iraq and the
overall United States policy in the Middle East. Only by understanding
the truth can the United States possibly take the proper corrective
action in the Middle East; without such an understanding, catastrophe
looms.” [Pages 371-372]
The reader will note that the above excerpts all come from near the
end of Sniegoski’s book. Before reaching this point in the book, you
will be treated to informative and well-written chapters on the
origins of the neoconservative movement, the Israeli origins of the
United States’ Middle East war agenda, and neocon planning against
Iran, as well as chapters entitled “World War IV” (a very important
chapter), and “Democracy for the Middle East.” A particularly
important chapter on “Oil and Other Arguments for the War” argues that
oil was not as important a reason for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq
as was Israel.
This book is a veritable bible on the neocons -- and a frightening
one. Anyone who thought that neocon thinking and policymaking had
become passé with the political eclipse of the likes of Paul
Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith will be disquieted to find
that these individuals were only the tip of the iceberg and that on
all issues having to do with Israel neocon thinking lives on in
policymaking councils and is about to be passed on to the next
administration, whether it be Democratic or Republican.Bill Christison
was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence
officer and as director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political
Analysis. Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst. She
is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of
Dispossession. They can be reached at .

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