Posted on 03/11/2003 1:14:12 PM PST by quidnunc
The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: “Can you assure American viewers … that we’re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?”
Suddenly, the Israeli connection is on the table, and the War Party is not amused. Finding themselves in an unanticipated firefight, our neoconservative friends are doing what comes naturally, seeking student deferments from political combat by claiming the status of a persecuted minority group. People who claim to be writing the foreign policy of the world superpower, one would think, would be a little more manly in the schoolyard of politics. Not so.
Former Wall Street Journal editor Max Boot kicked off the campaign. When these “Buchananites toss around ‘neoconservative’—and cite names like Wolfowitz and Cohen—it sometimes sounds as if what they really mean is ‘Jewish conservative.’” Yet Boot readily concedes that a passionate attachment to Israel is a “key tenet of neoconservatism.” He also claims that the National Security Strategy of President Bush “sounds as if it could have come straight out from the pages of Commentary magazine, the neocon bible.” (For the uninitiated, Commentary, the bible in which Boot seeks divine guidance, is the monthly of the American Jewish Committee.)
David Brooks of the Weekly Standard wails that attacks based on the Israel tie have put him through personal hell: “Now I get a steady stream of anti-Semitic screeds in my e-mail, my voicemail and in my mailbox. … Anti-Semitism is alive and thriving. It’s just that its epicenter is no longer on the Buchananite Right, but on the peace-movement left.”
Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan endures his own purgatory abroad: “In London … one finds Britain’s finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the ‘neoconservative’ (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy.”
Lawrence Kaplan of the New Republic charges that our little magazine “has been transformed into a forum for those who contend that President Bush has become a client of … Ariel Sharon and the ‘neoconservative war party.’”
Referencing Charles Lindbergh, he accuses Paul Schroeder, Chris Matthews, Robert Novak, Georgie Anne Geyer, Jason Vest of the Nation, and Gary Hart of implying that “members of the Bush team have been doing Israel’s bidding and, by extension, exhibiting ‘dual loyalties.’” Kaplan thunders:
The real problem with such claims is not just that they are untrue. The problem is that they are toxic. Invoking the specter of dual loyalty to mute criticism and debate amounts to more than the everyday pollution of public discourse. It is the nullification of public discourse, for how can one refute accusations grounded in ethnicity? The charges are, ipso facto, impossible to disprove. And so they are meant to be.
What is going on here? Slate’s Mickey Kaus nails it in the headline of his retort: “Lawrence Kaplan Plays the Anti-Semitic Card.”
What Kaplan, Brooks, Boot, and Kagan are doing is what the Rev. Jesse Jackson does when caught with some mammoth contribution from a Fortune 500 company he has lately accused of discriminating. He plays the race card. So, too, the neoconservatives are trying to fend off critics by assassinating their character and impugning their motives.
Indeed, it is the charge of “anti-Semitism” itself that is toxic. For this venerable slander is designed to nullify public discourse by smearing and intimidating foes and censoring and blacklisting them and any who would publish them. Neocons say we attack them because they are Jewish. We do not. We attack them because their warmongering threatens our country, even as it finds a reliable echo in Ariel Sharon.
And this time the boys have cried “wolf” once too often. It is not working. As Kaus notes, Kaplan’s own New Republic carries Harvard professor Stanley Hoffman. In writing of the four power centers in this capital that are clamoring for war, Hoffman himself describes the fourth thus:
And, finally, there is a loose collection of friends of Israel, who believe in the identity of interests between the Jewish state and the United States. … These analysts look on foreign policy through the lens of one dominant concern: Is it good or bad for Israel? Since that nation’s founding in 1948, these thinkers have never been in very good odor at the State Department, but now they are well ensconced in the Pentagon, around such strategists as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.
In a Feb. 9 front-page article in the Washington Post, Robert Kaiser quotes a senior U.S. official as saying, “The Likudniks are really in charge now.” Kaiser names Perle, Wolfowitz, and Feith as members of a pro-Israel network inside the administration and adds David Wurmser of the Defense Department and Elliott Abrams of the National Security Council. (Abrams is the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz, editor emeritus of Commentary, whose magazine has for decades branded critics of Israel as anti-Semites.)
Noting that Sharon repeatedly claims a “special closeness” to the Bushites, Kaiser writes, “For the first time a U.S. administration and a Likud government are pursuing nearly identical policies.” And a valid question is: how did this come to be, and while it is surely in Sharon’s interest, is it in America’s interest?
This is a time for truth. For America is about to make a momentous decision: whether to launch a series of wars in the Middle East that could ignite the Clash of Civilizations against which Harvard professor Samuel Huntington has warned, a war we believe would be a tragedy and a disaster for this Republic. To avert this war, to answer the neocon smears, we ask that our readers review their agenda as stated in their words. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. As Al Smith used to say, “Nothing un-American can live in the sunlight.”
We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people’s right to a homeland of their own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity.
Not in our lifetimes has America been so isolated from old friends. Far worse, President Bush is being lured into a trap baited for him by these neocons that could cost him his office and cause America to forfeit years of peace won for us by the sacrifices of two generations in the Cold War.
They charge us with anti-Semitism—i.e., a hatred of Jews for their faith, heritage, or ancestry. False. The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a “passionate attachment” to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what’s good for Israel is good for America. …
<P(The entire article is available at bookstores.)
Warning: Extremely vomitous material.
Enough with is Arab street crap.
Where is this street?
Is this the same street where goat carcasses hang upside down...?
Where women in Colman tents haggle over the price of rotton fruit...?
Is this the street where stinking,lazy men with bad facial hair, take puffs off a bong that looks like an octopus?
Or perhaps this is the street where half-naked, half starved children run around fighting the stray dogs for scraps of food.
Is it the street where Mothers let their children throw rocks at tanks and let them strap C-4 to their bellies?
Maybe its the street where they burn American flags while wearing nike and Levis...?
The Street where they kill their daughters if they hold a boy's hand in public?
The street where fathers kidnap their American children and make them live in chains?
THE SOONER THIS STREET IS CLEANSED OF ITS FILTH THE BETTER OFF THE WORLD WILL BE!
Rant off.
I support Israel, because I believe them to be right.. But there's no rational discussion surrounding them. It's a third rail, you just can't go there. It's simply not allowed.
If you want to reduce intelligent, educated people to stammering & cursing all you have to do is mention the Jews.. Doesn't matter if your position is Pro or Con, someone is going to instantly lose their mind, clamp their hands over their ears and start yelling "Racist!"
The fact is a local Democrat Congresscritter named James Moran let the cat out of the bag the other day.
For years and years this reprobate drunk and wifebeater had been taking money from Islamofascist terrorist front organizations yet pretending to be just another classic Democrat Liberal.
He may have even said that G.W. wants to attack Iraq "for the oil" one time or the other, but his latest statement was that we wouldn't be involved in this Iraq business if it weren't for the Jews dragging us there.
Obviously all that "oil" talk was just a Democrat codeword for "Jew".
Now we get Buchanan noting that some, if not all Israelis might benefit from a war that vanquishes Saddam Hussein and he's against it! In thinking back over the years of local/semi-local politics and gossip it occurs to me that I've never seen Buchanan even laugh about Jim Moran's clown show, yet he was critical of Representative Traficant, Mayor Barry and others of that nature.
Do these guys know each other? Does Buchanan kneel next to Moran to take Communion on Sunday?
Someone might know, but it's not beyond belief that these two disciples of Father Coughlin might be in league with each other.
from my cold dead hands...
We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords.
Hence the present leaders of the nation are forced to seek the support of those alone who have benefited and continue to benefit from changing the form of the state, and who for that very reason became the driving force behind the revolution - the Jews.
You'll put your eye out with those..
It is the main source of income for him and his sister Bay, and it makes them a handsome living.
An important reason behind Pat's presidential run was to get the mailing lists of the Reform Party.
I would be curious to know if they're also getting money from Islamist sources.
Phat Puke-cannon Alert!
I happen to be a staunch Zionist. I also feel an attachment to England and most European countries. However, unless the Messiah comes in my lifetime, my loyalty is to America.
I can't speak for others, but most Zionists are attached to Israel, but loyal to America. American interests come first.
put it in a negative light, Israel did make noises about after Iraq, Iran is next the US should attack...
So, the Islamist regime supporting Hamas, Hizbullah, and openly keeping members of Al-Qaeda, should be ignored because Israel doesn't like it?
This reminds me of the anti-Semetic isolationists who said that we should not gop to war with Hitler because Jews hate him.
so the paleoconservative like Buchanan is not entirely wrong with his assessement...
Paleocons are split on the war. Buchanan is a populist isolationist.
as long as there is no peace between Israel and Palestinians - there wont be any peace in the region...
As long as Israel exists, there will not be peace between Israel and the Arabs. As long as theer are Islamists and corrupt authoritarian regimes, there will not be peace.
There never has and never will be total peace in the region.
Personally, I do think the like of Wolfowitz and Perle are not necessarily pursuing this war simply based on the security of the American people...
No war is ever pursued just for security.
Are you saying that Wolfowitz and Perle are Israel-Firsters based on their religion?
What of Wolfowitz and Cheney?
Paul Gottfried, Ralph de Toledeno, and Don Feder are Jewish paleocons. (Depending on how you define paleocon, so am I)
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