In the march of folly to Iran, there’s a growing consensus that Israel needs to get out of Bush’s back seat if it wants to survive. I’ve just read Ray McGovern’s very thought provoking essay:
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are unwittingly playing Dr. Jack Kevorkian in helping the state of Israel commit suicide. For this is the inevitable consequence of the planned air and missile attack on Iran. The pockmarked, littered landscape in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan and the endless applicant queues at al-Qaeda and other terrorist recruiting stations testify eloquently to the unintended consequences of myopic policymakers in Washington and Tel Aviv.
Mesmerized. Sadly, this is the best word to describe those of us awake to the inexorable march of folly to war with Iran and the growing danger to Israel’s security, especially over the medium and long term. An American and/or Israeli attack on Iran will let slip the dogs of war. Those dogs never went to obedience school. They will not be denied their chance to bite, and Israel’s arsenal of nuclear weapons will be powerless to muzzle.
In my view, not since 1948 has the very existence of Israel hung so much in the balance. Can Bush/Cheney and the Israeli leaders not see it? Pity that no one seems to have read our first president’s warning on the noxious effects of entangling alliances. The supreme irony is that in their fervor to help, as well as use, Israel, Bush and Cheney seem blissfully unaware that they are leading it down a garden path and off a cliff.
“Provoke and Pre-empt”
It is apparent, that’s where we’re headed.
“Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring.”
For more on the Iran fixation, please read within these pages an exceptional diary:
BUT the terminal patient will be the State of Israel and, in the larger context, everyone on planet earth.
Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, is not alone in this view. Gabriel Kolko, a leading historian of modern warfare observes in his article,
Regional War or Peace?
Israel, Iran and the Bush Administration
“Israel’s power after 1947 was based on its military supremacy over its weaker neighbors. It is in the process of losing it-if it has not already. Lesser problems, mainly demographic, will only be aggravated if tension persists.
It simply cannot survive allied with the United States, because the Americans will either leave the region or embark on a war that risks Israel’s very existence.
It is time for it to become “normal” and make peace with its neighbors, and that will require it to make major concessions.
It can do that if it embarks upon an independent foreign policy, and it can start immediately to do so with Syria.”[.]
Now, we’ve all read how Bush and Cheney gave their backs to an overture from Iran in 2003. This is their modus on any agreement that is likely to restore or keep the peace.
I’m saying this is an act of high treason with the only remedy being the immediate removal of Cheney and the Impeachment of George W. Bush.
Here is revealed the Bush administration’s role in scuttling a peace accord with Syria. Say what?
From Gabriel Kolko:
“It is this context that secret Israeli talks with Syria have enormous significance. They began in January 2004 in Turkey with the approval of Sharon, moving on to Switzerland, where the Swiss Foreign Office played the role of intermediary. By August 2005 they had reached a very advanced form and covered territorial, water, border and political questions. Details remained to be ironed out but they were a quantum leap in solving one of the region’s crucial problems.[.]
Ha’aretz’ Akiva Eldar then published a series of extremely detailed accounts, including the draft accord, confirming that Syria ‘offered a far reaching and equitable peace treaty that would provide for Israel’s security and is comprehensive-and divorce Syria from Iran and even create a crucial distance between it and Hezbollah and Hamas.
The Bush Administration’s role in scuttling any peace accord was decisive. C. David Welch, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, sat in at the final meeting, two former senior CIA officials were present in all of these meetings and sent regular reports to Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. The press has been full of details on how the American role was decisive, because it has war, not peace, at the top of its agenda.
Most of the Israeli Establishment favors it. On January 28 important Israelis met publicly in Jaffa and called the Israeli response “an irresponsible gamble with the State of Israel” since it made Cheney arbiter of Israeli national interests.[.]
Mr. Cheney please tell us. Will it be Peace or War?
There are voices in Israel – voices for peace – coming in from the wilderness with scant reporting in Western media.
Selected links:
Rattling the Cage: Against a preemptive Holocaust – by Larry Derfner
“The risk of living with a nuclear Iran is much, much, much smaller than that in nuking Iran first.”
Almost imperceptibly, the debate in Israel over what to do about Iran’s nuclear development has gone over the edge. The unthinkable is now not only thinkable, it’s speakable, it’s writeable, it’s doable. In the last few weeks or so, it has become acceptable, legitimate, to argue for an Israeli nuclear first strike to knock out Iran’s nuclear facilities.”
And
“Former Shin Bet Chief Yaakov Peri calls for dialogue with Syria”
“Listen to the voices from Damascus and start a dialogue with Syria,” participants in the Forum of the Peace Initiative with Syria told the government Sunday.
“We all know that in recent month Syrian sources, including President Bashar Assad, have been indicating their readiness to begin negotiations with Israel without preconditions,” Peri said.
Academics, intellectuals, former Shin Bet head and former army chief establish group calling on government to respond to Syria’s peace overtures
“The government, due to internal pressure, or preoccupation with other issues, or American pressure, has not answered this call. I think that ignoring the signal is detrimental for the government,” he added.
Again, from Kolko’s article: “Israel, Iran and the Bush Administration”
“Serious Israeli strategists overwhelmingly believe, to cite Reuven Pedatzur in Ha’aretz last November, that “mutual assured deterrence, can be forged, with high degree of success, between Israel and Iran.” Israeli strategic thinking is highly realistic.
Early this February a study released at a conference by the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University predicted that Iran would behave rationally with nuclear weapons and “that the elimination of Israel is not considered to be an essential national interest” for it….Pedatzur warned the conference, and the use of tactical nuclear weapons against them sheer folly. “Our best option is open nuclear deterrence.” [..]
Israeli experts have come to the realization that American policy in the Middle East is not merely an immense failure but also a decisive inhibition to Israel reorienting its foreign policy to confront the realities of the region that the Jews have chosen to live in. It has ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein from Iraq and created an overwhelming Iranian presence.
In Palestine its campaign for democracy has brought Hamas to power. Troop escalation in Iraq is deemed futile. “It’s a total misreading of reality,” one Israeli expert is quoted when discussing America’s role in the region. Israeli interests were no longer being served. American policies have failed and Israel has given a carte blanche to a strategy that leaves it more isolated than ever.”
[.]
Peace or War? Surely the signs are everywhere. We are not setting the table for peace.
Russia has become increasing nervous demanding that Syria and Iran be included in the peace process.
Russia expects the United States to explain its growing military presence in the Middle East when the countries next meet to discuss the region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian news agencies on Saturday.
“I have seen no change in Washington’s fairly aggressive rhetoric,” Lavrov said. “It continues, just like its actions to increase the military presence in the region. It will be one of the questions which we want to clarify in Washington. What’s it all about?”
See our very own Oui’s diary,
Putin has lashed out that the “U.S.wants to dominate world.”
and from a Reuters report, here’s one of the money quotes:
“Putin accused the United States of making the world a more dangerous place by pursuing policies aimed at making it “one single master”…It has nothing in common with democracy because that is the opinion of the majority taking into account the minority opinion,” he told the gathering of top security and defense officials.”
“People are always teaching us democracy but the people who teach us democracy don’t want to learn it themselves.”
[..]
Sadly, picking up on Putin’s words, war with Iran is on target and the Fatah-Hamas peace accord for Palestine is dashed as we read, in Ha’aretz,
Oh, at their peril it would appear.
Call me cynical. I say follow the money – from the Iranian oil and gas fields – all the way to Haliburton’s bank account. War profiteering trumps peace dividends. The proof is in the new budget for the Pentagon.
So, to keep the patient in ICU and on life support, how much U.S. money should Israel ask for?
I say, Enough already.
{Idredit Notes: emphasis in quotes from articles are mine}