Sy Hersh continues to report on the looming confrontration with Iran. But there is something more important in his piece that I want to focus on. It is what I might call vindication for Steven D and for me. Steven and I haven’t always seen things exactly the same way. Steven has been much more certain than I have that Cheney will take on Iran. Our differences have not been over intent, but over plausibility. It has been my impression that Cheney has been stymied by a variety of factors. The Revolt of the Generals signalled to me that Cheney’s plan had been rejected by the Washington Establishment. But Cheney is a powerful man and he is in the business of creating his own realities.
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
People have latched onto the first part of this statement at the expense of the latter half. When Cheney acts, he creates a new reality, and while we are trying to figure out the implications of that new reality, he acts again. The reality-based community is the group of people that are concerned with things like diplomacy and peacekeeping. Cheney’s crew can change the whole equation overnight. And that is what they did in goading Israel into attacking Hizbollah.
A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House “has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah.” He added, “It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it.”
Why did Cheney want Hizbollah attacked now?
Cheney’s office supported the Israeli plan, as did Elliott Abrams, a deputy national-security adviser, according to several former and current officials. (A spokesman for the N.S.C. denied that Abrams had done so.) They believed that Israel should move quickly in its air war against Hezbollah. A former intelligence officer said, “We told Israel, ‘Look, if you guys have to go, we’re behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later—the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.’ ”
Cheney’s point, the former senior intelligence official said, was “What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it’s really successful? It’d be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.”
“The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.”
So, why is this a vindication? It’s a vindication because both Steven and I predicted that we would see an escalation this summer and that it would be used to both pressure Iran and to question the Democrats’ strength on security. We both interpreted the initial Israeli response to the kidnapping as part of a pre-planned campaign that had a green-light at the highest reaches of our government. We both dismissed any suggestion that Israel was merely responding out of necessity to a Hizbollah attack. Here is how I put it on July 22nd:
The neo-cons do not want to leave office with the status quo, as the Democrats cannot be relied upon to countenence the actions we are seeing Israel take now.
The right-wing reacts with pavlovian certainty to the catch words: Arab, muslim, kidnap, hostage, rocket barrage, self-defense. The Syrian Phase is justified by a relatively minor incident, involving a controversial cross-border raid and kidnapping. This is the new Maine, the new Tonkin Gulf incident. Even if it happened as reported, it is nothing but a pretext for a pre-planned summer conflagration. The immediate end-goal appears to be the rekindling of civil war in Lebanon because “[w]hen Sunni terrorists [and Druze and Christians] target Shi’ites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt”.
Here is how Steven put it on July 26th:
The only real question I have is whether it was Cheney and Rumsfeld’s strategy all along to encourage Israel to go on the offensive in Lebanon, both to undermine Rice’s position and to reinstate their own policy for a broader war in the region, or whether it is merely a “fortunate coincidence” (fortunate only for them, not for the rest of us) of which they have been more than happy to advantage so that they can push their own agenda for the Middle East? Reports that Israel has been planning this attack for over a year with the Pentagon’s knowledge and approval incline me to the former view. And the sudden employment of the phrase “World War III” by Gingrich and others strikes me as a premeditated and calculated use of rhetoric in order to ratchet up the fear level among the American public.
A while ago I predicted we were in for a wild ride this Summer in terms of a coordinated campaign by conservative supporters of President Bush to generate support for war with Iran, in part to bolster the Republican party’s prospects for the mid term elections this Fall. Yet even I didn’t anticipate the Bush administration letting Israel slip off it’s leash to attack both the Palestinians in Gaza and Hizbollah in Lebanon. Mea culpa.
I should have anticipated such murderous manipulation from the most immoral and deceitful administration in our history. If killing a few more Arabs (and Israelis) is what it takes to assure continued majorities in the House and Senate for Republicans, the Bush team is more than happy to oblige. The fact that this approach has already failed miserably in Iraq is of little consequence. Retaining their power, and implementing the folly of an expanded war in the Middle East is all that matters to them.
Sy Hersh uses more calm language, but his message is largely the same.
The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.
The Bush administration is in the game of creating win-win situations. If Iraq flourished as a pro-western Democracy, they stood to take the credit for it and reap the benefits of close relations with another oil-rich Arab country. If the country fell into chaos, they would benefit from an open ended conflict with billions in revenues and a broken Iraq would be powerless to threaten Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or Israel. Likewise with the war between Hizbollah and Israel. If Israel’s air campaign worked it would eliminate a threat that could become troublesome when it comes times to bomb Iran. If it failed, it would divide Democrats over the issue of unquestioning support for Israel, and it would offer an opportunity to put U.S. forces mere miles from Damascus as part of a peacekeeping force.
This is how Cheney creates new realities. A month ago the idea of having a huge peacekeeping force in Lebanon was unthinkable. Today, it is the official policy of the UN Security Council.
There is going to be a lot more blood spilled in the Middle East before Cheney leaves office. Hopefully, he will be leaving next year.
