Middle East Policy Review of The Transparent Cabal about the JewishNeocons who Pushed US into the Iraq Quagmire for Israel

Stephen J. Sniegoski's book, "The Transparent Cabal," received a
favorable review in the current issue of "Middle East Policy"-- Spring
2009, Vol. 16 Issue 1, pp. 146-149. "Middle East Policy" is the
journal of the Middle East Policy Council, which until recently had
been headed by Chas Freeman (Ambassador Freeman was appointed by
Admiral Dennis Blair to head the National Intelligence Council until
pressure from the pro-Israel lobby resulted in his withdrawal as more
about such is included after the following):

Before Freeman, its president was George McGovern. The reviewer was
Thomas R. Mattair, who is the head of the book review section and an
expert on Middle East Policy. Dr. Mattair is the author of author of
"Global Security Watch - Iran: A Reference Handbook" (Praeger Security
International, 2008)

http://www.mepc.org/journal/journal.asp

http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol16/1toc.asp


Overall, Dr. Mattair's review is very favorable. For example, he
writes:
"Sniegoski also does an excellent job of documenting the important
role
neoconservatives played during the George W. Bush administration."

While he does not think that Sniegoski sufficiently proved his
argument that a goal was to fragment Israel's enemies, he acknowledges
that the proofwould be difficult to obtain. And he does write that
"The author effectively shows the similarity of Israeli Likudnik and
neoconservative thinking during the past two decades." This is a very
significant point.
And I would think that fragmentation of Israel's enemies represents a
large part of the Likudnik geopolitical strategy.


Dr. Mattair concludes favorably: "Aside from whether Sniegoski proves
his thesis about fragmentation, however, this is a very good book that
will make readers think about the price the United States has paid for
accepting and acting on the neoconservative agenda."


This favorable review should have a strong impact on other journals
and
potential reviewers who are not in the Israel Lobby camp His book
should not be considered an anti-Semitic "hate" book or a book that is
too dangerous to touch. Other reviewers should feel safe to review the
book.

And, or course, Mattair points out that the "The Transparent Cabal" is
a
very serious work of scholarship, which makes a considerable
contribution to understanding the neocons' role in shaping US foreign
policy. It certainly deserves to be reviewed, not ignored. (Other
favorable comments about thebook can be found at:

http://home.comcast.net/~transparentcabal/blurbs.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Middle East Policy Review of The Transparent Cabal

The following review appears in the latest issue of Middle East Policy
which is the publication associated with the Middle East Policy
Council (MEPC) which Ambassador Chas Freeman was the president of
until recently (Ambassador Freeman was appointed by Admiral Blair to
head the National Intelligence Council until pressure from the pro-
Israel lobby resulted in his withdrawal as more about such is included
below as well):

Middle East Policy; Spring 2009, Vol. 16 Issue 1, p146-162, 17p

http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol16/1toc.asp

REVIEWS

The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle
East, and the National Interest of Israel, by Stephen J. Sniegoski.
Light in the Darkness Publications,2008. 440 pages, including notes
and index. $24.95, hardcover.

Thomas R. Mattair, author of global Security Watch Iran: A Reference
Handbook (Praeger Security International, 2008)

In this well-written, well-organized book, Stephen J. Sniegoski makes
some compelling arguments about neoconservatives: (1) they were the
driving force behind the Bush administrations war in Iraq, (2) their
motivation was based on their belief that American interests in the
Middle East are virtually identical with the Israeli Likud partys
beliefs about Israeli interests in the region, and (3) these mutual
interests lie in destabilizing Israels adversaries and reconfi guring
the environment rather than in the traditional American policy of
stabilizing the Middle East. Others have plowed this same ground, but
Sniegoski has marshaled a prodigious amount of evidence and added some
new elements. He notes that these arguments have often elicited
charges of anti-Semitism, particularly from neoconservatives
themselves.

He points out, however, that they sometimes acknowledge being a
largely Jewish group, and he dismisses the charge of anti-Semitism by
noting that many Jewish Americans have made his basic arguments.

The author provides a good defi nition of neoconservatives: primarily
Jewish individuals who began as liberals and leftists but migrated to
the right in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They began to see
McGovern and Carter Democrats and the Nixon and Ford Republicans as
insufficiently devoted to anti-communism, military strength,
interventionism and Israel and gravitated first to Senator Henry
Jackson (D-WA) and then to the Reagan Republicans. Again, Sniegoski is
careful to cite Jewish authors who have offered the same definition.
Moreover, he identifies the leading neoconservatives along with their
intellectual inspirations, family and institutional connections,
financial patrons, media outlets, Christian Right supporters, ad hoc
groups, liberal and conservative pro-Zionist Jewish allies, and ties
to Israel.

Sniegoski argues that, while the neoconservatives were the driving
force for the war with Iraq in 2003, the basic idea of offensive war
to weaken Israels neighbors, induce regime change and reconfi gure the
region has been an element of Zionist thinking since Vladimir
Jabotinsky in the 1920s. It was part of Ben-Gurions thinking in the
1950s and has been ascendant among Likud leaders since their electoral
victory in 1977. His claim that by reconfiguration Likudniks have
meant destabilizing and fragmenting the region into a mosaic of weak
ethnic and sectarian entities draws heavily perhaps too heavily on a
1982 article by Oded Yinon, who argued that the ongoing Iran-Iraq War
would result in an ethno-sectarian division of Iraq, and also on a
1982 article in which Yoram Peri warned against this. After the
unhappy consequences of Israels invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Sniegoski
argues, Likud drew an important lesson: Such a war must not alienate
Israeli public opinion and must be supported by the United States.
Therefore, U.S. support for a stable Middle East, an uninterrupted
flow of oil, and Arab-Israeli compromises for peace had to be
changed.

The author effectively shows the similarity of Israeli Likudnik and
neoconservative thinking during the past two decades. The Reagan
administration supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War as a bulwark
against the revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran. This concerned
Israel, which viewed Iraq as a major adversary and thought even post-
revolutionary Iran could be a potential ally. Israel and
neoconservatives, particularly Michael Ledeen, promoted U.S. arms
sales to Iran in 1985-86 as part of an ultimately unsuccessful effort
at rapprochement. Sniegoski also recounts Israeli Likudnik and
neoconservative concern when George H.W. Bushs administration
continued to support Iraq for two years after the end of this war in
1988. This administrations effort to tie U.S. housing-loan guarantees
for Soviet Jewish immigrants in Israel to a halt to Israeli settlement
building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem was also a sore point. In
fact, Israeli Labor party leaders and a wide range of Jewish Americans
also shared these views. Sniegoski then asserts that Israel and the
neoconservatives sought not only the overthrow of Saddam Husseins
regime but also the destabilization and ethno-sectarian fragmentation
of Iraq as their favored outcome of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. He
provides no evidence to support this, however. He does show that, when
Israeli leaders again including Labor leaders saw that Iraq was
contained and shifted their concerns to an Iranian threat,
neoconservatives like Ledeen, who had argued for rapprochement with
Tehran, quickly shifted to emphasizing an Iranian threat.

Sniegoski also does an excellent job of documenting the important role
neoconservatives played during the George W. Bush administration. They
insisted that Iraq was a greater terrorist threat than al-Qaeda and
were developing military plans for overthrowing Saddam Husseins regime
in the earliest months of 2001. He also stresses the role they played
after 9/11 in arguing that Iraq should be an initial target and later
that Iraq, Iran and Syria should become targets soon after the first
stage of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was complete. They
also argued that Israeli military actions against Arafats Palestinian
Authority should not be criticized. Other questionable actions of the
neocons are recounted:

producing erroneous intelligence to support the war against Iraq

opposing cooperation with Iran and Syria after 9/11, including the
grand bargain

claiming that the United States faced a monolithic Middle Eastern
terrorist threat, not because of U.S. policies but because of the very
existence and values of the United States, and that the terrorist
threat to Israel was part of this threat and should be jointly
confronted

advocating democracy promotion to combat tyranny (not all
neoconservatives agreed with this)

wanting to widen Israels summer 2006 war with Hezbollah into Israeli
and/or U.S. military action against Syria and Iran

opposing the December 2006 Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group
recommendations to include Iran and Syria in regional efforts to
stabilize Iraq

opposing the gradual withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq

proposing and supporting Bushs surge of additional forces to Iraq in
2007

criticizing the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate
conclusion that Iran had suspended a nuclear-weapons program in 2003

calling continually for war against Iran and Syria.


Sniegoski also shows that, with a few possible exceptions, the
positions and actions of the neoconservatives were in synch with
Israel under Likud leader Ariel Sharon and Kadima leader Ehud Olmert.
Israel may have initially thought that war against Iraq would be a
mistake, in that Iraq was necessary to balance Iran, and that Iran
should be the U.S. target after Afghanistan. However, Israel did
support war against Iraq before Iran and Syria when it learned that
this was the commitment of the Bush administration. It also advocated
most of the rest of the neoconservative program for expanding the
global war on terror
through military action to bring about regime change in Iran and
Syria.

One of the most interesting elements of this story, which has been
told before, is that a small group of neoconservatives and Israelis,
including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and Meyrav
Wurmser, recommended to Benjamin Netanyahus Likud government in 1996
that Israel engage in preemptive military action to overthrow Saddam
Husseins regime as a first step in creating a more favorable regional
environment for Israel, and that they explained how Israel could
obtain U.S. support. This small group recommended the establishment of
a Hashemite monarchy in Iraq, aligned with Hashemite Jordan. They also
advised Netanyahu to weaken, contain and roll back Syria, particularly
to break its influence in Lebanon. According to Sniegoski, Wurmser
explained in subsequent writings that he envisioned a Hashemite Iraq
with a weak central government and maximum autonomy for tribal, ethnic
and sectarian communities. Wurmser also clarified that he sought
regime change in Syria for the same purpose. This tends to support the
authors argument that fragmentation of neighboring states has been an
Israeli and neoconservative objective. This goes beyond what one fi
nds in Mearsheimer and Walts The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.
Sniegoski also mentions some Israeli and American support for ethnic
opposition forces in Iran and provides evidence of individual
neoconservatives who proposed detaching Saudi Arabias oil rich Eastern
province. It is also clear that Netanyahu and others oppose returning
the Golan to Syria, which means that Syria is already fragmented.
However, much more evidence about a wider range of leading Israelis
and neoconservatives, particularly inside the Bush II administration,
would have been needed to make the case.

It might be difficult to provide suffi cient evidence that
neoconservatives or Israeli Likudniks seek fragmented, powerless
states surrounding Israel as a desired outcome except for the fact
that they are carrying out such a plan in the West Bank, which
Likudniks and neoconservatives want to divide into non-contiguous
enclaves. On the other hand, deductive reasoning would suggest that
military action to overthrow an authoritarian government ruling over
diverse ethnic and sectarian communities might very well lead to
fragmentation. It would have helped, however, if Sniegoski had
examined the positions of these individuals in 2002-03 on what Iraq
might look like after Saddam. Did they foresee a weak central
government and provinces with very extensive autonomy? It would also
have helped if the author had examined their positions on Iran after
regime change. Did they expect successful movements of ethnic
separatism or autonomy? Which ones were seeking a fragmentation of
Lebanon as a result of the summer 2006 war?



Sniegoski argues that neoconservative claims about threats from Iraq
and the possibilities for a flowering of democracy in the region have
been deliberate deceptions to mobilize public support. It is likely
that some individuals found democracy promotion to be a convenient
idea; others may have merely been engaging in wishful thinking or
underestimating the challenges. The neocons clearly did not accept the
result of the Palestinian election in 2006. The recent election in
Iraq seems promising, but the situation remains fragile.

Aside from whether Sniegoski proves his thesis about fragmentation,
however, this is a very good book that will make readers think about
the price the United States has paid for accepting and acting on the
neoconservative agenda.

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IDr. Stephen Sniegoski appeared on the 'American Dream' broadcast for
Press TV (out of the D.C. bureau) about his 'The Transparent Cabal'
book as such is linked near the top of the following URL:

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=99445

Review of 'The Transparent Cabal' which appears at www.amazon.co.uk
and at www.amazon.com

The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle
East,and the National Interest of Israel:

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=105468


Freeman: Israel's policies destructive to US



http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=90376


Chas Freeman slams 'destructive' Israeli policies

http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?i...onid=351020202

Press TV (the Iranian channel) just did a 30 minute interview with
Ambassador Freeman (but the 'American' media won't!) in New York
(click on the 'Media Player' link at the following URL to watch such
if interested further):

Exclusive Interview with Chas Freeman:

http://www.presstv.com/programs/player/?id=90443

Freeman: US run by Israel lobby

http://www.presstv.com/Detail.aspx?i...tionid=3510203

Chas Freeman forced by Israel Lobbies to withdraw from NIC:

http://tinyurl.com/blabl8

Additional at http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.COM

Z