Whose War? (Israel’s “amen corner” has plans for America to fight many wars in the Middle East.)

The American Conservative ^ | March 24, 2003 | Patrick J. Buchanan

[quidnunc]

A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest.

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.) 

[JohnGalt]

That is the same charge Stalin's supporters came up with, how ironic. If you were against communist, "you were objectively a fascist.'

Political correctness is a disease far worse than I could have imagined.

[quidnunc]

Pat Buchanan and his ilk are troglodytes; disgusting throwbacks from the 1930s.

One of Pat's father's personal heroes was Spain's fascist dictator Francisco Franco whom the eldar Buchanan considered to be a great defender of Roman Catholicism.

Evidently much of this hero worship rubbed of on Pat.

[Plummz]

http://drudgereport.com/flash1.htm

Buchanan Charges Neocons With 'Warmongering'
Tue Mar 11 2003 11:53:48 ET

In this week's AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE, editor Pat Buchanan issues a controversial, 5000-word indictment of the 'War Party' of Bennett, Kristol, Podhoretz and Richard Perle.

MORE

The magazine will hit newsstands and bookstores tomorrow. With quotes and citations, Buchanan alleges:


'War Party' ideas and plans for an attack on Iraq had been 'in preparation far in advance of 9/11, and when President Bush was looking for a new front,' the neocons 'put their precooked meal in front of him. And Bush dug into it.'


Richard Perle wrote a paper urging Israeli PM Netanyahu to dump the Oslo Peace Accords and target Iraq -- five years before 9/11.


Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith urged Israel to ditch the Oslo and take back the West Bank though 'the price in blood would be high,' three years before the Camp David talks.


Pentagon official David Wurmser urged the U.S. to act in concert with Israel to 'strike fatally...the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Tehran and Gaza' -- nine months before 9/11.


Bennett, Kristol, Podhoretz 'seized on the horrific atrocity [of September 11] to steer America¹s rage into all-out war to destroy their despised enemies, the Arab and Islamic Œrogue states that have resisted U.S. hegemony and loathe Israel.'


The neocon vision is 'to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel....[They] seek American empire and the Sharonites seem hegemony over the Middle East. The two agendas coincide precisely.'


Buchanan charges Max Boot of the WSJ and Lawrence Kaplan of New Republic with 'playing the anti-Semitic card....to fend off critics by assassinating their character and impugning their motives.'

Developing....

[SJackson]

Unfortunately, this will be publicized, which makes it relevant.

Not only publicized, but characterized as a typical right wing, conservative notion. It will help neutralize Moran's comment in the presses eyes..

[Jimmyclyde]

It's like Pat doesn't remember when Israel last fought an arab nation mano e mano...

A little historical recap..

1948....Israel gains independence by kicking the crap out of eygpt, jordan, syria and iraq.

1956...eygpt closes the Suez canal to all Israeli shipping, Israel in turn kicks the crap out of eygpt.

1967...jordan, eygpt, syria and the rest of the arab "forces" try to drive Israel into the sea.Israel finds out and kicks the crap out of all of them.(any one notice a pattern here?) Israel also reclaims lost territory from jordan. Jerusalem is our city.... bit@ch!!

1973...Nice sneak attack on Yom Kippur, fag arabs.But guess what happened? Israel kicks a@s again.

Pat and the rest of the jew haters need to understand something...

Israel is here to stay.

Pat better hope and pray that Israel dosen't go crazy and take over all the middle east.

Not to beat a dead horse but Pat is a dumba@s.

[Mr. Mojo]

Your post is right on, Contessa. Pat's a bitter, angry, loser whose only intellectual friends nowadays are on the far left and the anti-Semitic right. As far as him being a fruitcake is concerned.....well, who knows? But if someday it were revealed that his "orientation" was the same as his brownshirt buddy Ernst Rohm, I wouldn't be at all surprised. And remember, J. Raimondo loves ole Pat.

[Cable225]

Hey Pat! Cynthia McKinney's father conveyed your message with far fewer words -

IT'S THE JEWS! J-E-W-S!

Man, this guy keeps making it harder and harder to find anything about him to admire.

[Poohbah]

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

"It's the Joooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooossssss..."

[Poohbah]

Buchanan is full of himself and full of used food.

The above sentence brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department. :o)

[MEG33]

It's not polical correctness,it's not Israel first,it's simply the right of Israel to Exist. Communism is alive and well in America organizing peace marches and in the South dealing in dope and dictators .

[hchutch]

This article would have sounded better in the original German.

[eddiespaghetti]

I wonder if Pat learned anything from WW II.

I don't think he has. In an excerpt from his "A Republic, not an Empire" (published in journals at the time of its release) he wrote that WWII could have been avoided if not for the silly pledge of Britain and France to come to Poland's aid if she were attacked by Germany.

To put it like that suggests willful ignorance of, among other things, Germany's plans for Russia (excuse me, the USSR), which he had already adumbrated in his Mein Kampf (1923-24). Buchanan seems to have a soft spot for Hitler. IMO, his view of history is quite selective, not to say quite skewed.

es

[Jimmyclyde]

Ummm....

Thats egypt

They suck so bad I can't even spell them right.

[jacquej]

I agree with you. I think Pat Buchanan suffers from the notion that our first President's views on getting involved in foreign affairs should be followed, but forgets how big the oceans were back then.

I wish they were still that big, and if so, I would probably agree with him, as I hate war, hate the way our boys have to fight and die, when we do nothing wrong.

But, alas, the oceans now are just little ditches, and therefore we have to be like the minutemen, and hop over these at the drop of an email in order to defend everything Geo. Washingtom fought for, and that is, our freedom from tyranny.

I really do not think Pat Buchanan is an anti-semite. I have no idea what is behind his views, but assume it is wishful thinking that we can remain uninvolved in the world.

The problem is that the world has changed so dramatically since WW2. These changes are going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to go thru without WW3.

We are in the early stages of that now, and while I do not read the Bible literally, I certainly can find a metaphor or two in Revelation that describes in the understanding of St. John what a difficult time we must endure.

So, sorry, Pat, there is no turning back.

[Poohbah]

KA-POW!

[Optimist]

IF the US is "fighting Israel's wars" it is only to keep Israel out of the Mid-East fray. And why would the US do that? ..... because it is in our interest!!!

With regard to attacking Iraq on Israel's behalf, if it was up to Israel, we would be attacking Iran, who Israel has felt is a much greater danger (ie. terrorist organization support, and a nuclear program about to go on-line).

The US attacked Iraq the first time because of a threat to the supply of oil, which demonstrates the significance of a Mid-East presence. The problems we currently have with basing in Turkey and Saudi Arabia should raise questions as to the reliability of these "allies" as opposed to our strongest friend in the region - Israel.

Keeping Israel at bay is in our interests - not theirs - since Israel would gladly take up the fight. ....We just might not like the way they do it

....When it comes to her security, Israel doesn't play games the way the West does ... you might say

"Homey don't play that."

[hchutch]

You forgot 1982:
Syira goes up against Israel. Bekaa Valley Turkey Shoot results. Final score: Israeli Air Force 80+ kills, Syria 0.

[quidnunc]

Jacquej wrote: I really do not think Pat Buchanan is an anti-semite.

And what emperical evidence can you cite in support of your belief?

[Jimmyclyde]

True...

The bottom line is the arabs suck at fighting wars.

With that in mind, why would Israel need the US to fight her battles for her?

Makes no sense.

[KickRightRudder]

I'll answer that one. It is often said bigotry is based on stupidity and ignorance. If that's the case, how do you square that Buchanan's high education and intellegence. He got an Ivy league education back in the 1950's when you had to work your butt off to get high marks.

His traditional Cathlic upbringing (Pre-Vatican II) taught him that Jews were a nemesis of Catholics for the last 2000 years. That is the lens with which he views things, and nothing can be done to change that. I think he has a good heart but if you take a stand, you have to expect some heat. We'll see how this plays out over the coming years. Pray for the safety of America's servicemen.