When I was a child I used to play a lot of World War Two board games. I got a kick out of playing a General and deploying my troops here and there, trying to change the outcome of history. I finally learned, for example, how to get the Germans to win the Battle of Stalingrad (no simple task). But these dreams of conquest are not appropriate for an adult and I don’t play at General anymore.
Not so for other adults. In 1996 Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser created a paper for the new Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. They called it A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. It’s amusing/tragic to look back at their delusions. Some of the key players are no longer with us. King Hussein and Hafez al-Assad have died, replaced by their sons. Saddam Hussein was hanged. Some of the terminology might confuse you. You can learn about the Hashemites here.
Take a look at this master plan and compare it to what actually happened.
Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria’s regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq. This has triggered a Jordanian-Syrian rivalry to which Asad has responded by stepping up efforts to destabilize the Hashemite Kingdom, including using infiltrations. Syria recently signaled that it and Iran might prefer a weak, but barely surviving Saddam, if only to undermine and humiliate Jordan in its efforts to remove Saddam.
But Syria enters this conflict with potential weaknesses: Damascus is too preoccupied with dealing with the threatened new regional equation to permit distractions of the Lebanese flank. And Damascus fears that the ‘natural axis’ with Israel on one side, central Iraq and Turkey on the other, and Jordan, in the center would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula. For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria’s territorial integrity.
Since Iraq’s future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly, it would be understandable that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites in their efforts to redefine Iraq, including such measures as: visiting Jordan as the first official state visit, even before a visit to the United States, of the new Netanyahu government; supporting King Hussein by providing him with some tangible security measures to protect his regime against Syrian subversion; encouraging — through influence in the U.S. business community — investment in Jordan to structurally shift Jordan’s economy away from dependence on Iraq; and diverting Syria’s attention by using Lebanese opposition elements to destabilize Syrian control of Lebanon.
Most important, it is understandable that Israel has an interest supporting diplomatically, militarily and operationally Turkey’s and Jordan’s actions against Syria, such as securing tribal alliances with Arab tribes that cross into Syrian territory and are hostile to the Syrian ruling elite.
King Hussein may have ideas for Israel in bringing its Lebanon problem under control. The predominantly Shia population of southern Lebanon has been tied for centuries to the Shia leadership in Najf, Iraq rather than Iran. Were the Hashemites to control Iraq, they could use their influence over Najf to help Israel wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hizballah, Iran, and Syria. Shia retain strong ties to the Hashemites: the Shia venerate foremost the Prophet’s family, the direct descendants of which — and in whose veins the blood of the Prophet flows — is King Hussein.
Here’s an anecdote from The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Arts of Deception by David Corn.
Because of September 11, Bush became the most powerful president in decades. As he moved to expand the war on terrorism to include military action in Iraq, his aides and outside-the-government champions occasionally suggested that Bush’s decisions were informed by intelligence that could not be shared with the public. In essence, the argument was, trust us. In fact, in the middle of the public debate before the war in Iraq, late one night on a Washington street corner, Richard Perle, a hawkish adviser to the Pentagon, made the case for war to me in two words: “Trust me.”
Why would we trust these people about anything. They are wrong about everything and they treat people like nothing more than pieces on a gameboard.
.
Connecting the dots of 9/11 – OBL – Hizbollah – Syria – Hamas & Palestinians – Iraq – Iran. George Bush listening to his Likud advisors like former PM Netanyahu and PM Ariel Sharon. Equate all opposition and resistance groups as terrorists.
These regimes are the ones that harbor the terrorist groups: Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, Hizballah and others in Syrian-controlled Lebanon, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the recently mobilized Fatah and Tanzim factions in the Palestinian territories, and sundry other terror organizations based in such capitals as Damascus, Baghdad and Khartoum.
These terrorist states and terror organizations together form a terror network, whose constituent parts support each other operationally as well as politically.
For example, the Palestinian groups cooperate closely with Hezbollah, which in turn links them to Syria, Iran and Bin Laden.
These offshoots of terror have affiliates in other states that have not yet uprooted their presence, such as Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Now, how did this come about? The growth of this terror network is the result of several developments in the last two decades: Chief among them is the Khomeini Revolution and the establishment of a clerical Islamic state in Iran.
This created a sovereign spiritual base for fomenting a strident Islamic militancy worldwide – a militancy that was often backed by terror.
Equally important was the victory in the Afghan war of the international mujaheedin brotherhood.
This international band of zealots, whose ranks include Osama Bin Laden, saw their victory over the Soviet Union as providential proof of the innate supremacy of faithful Moslems over the weak infidel powers.
They believed that even the superior weapons of a superpower could not withstand their superior will.
To this should also be added Saddam Hussein’s escape from destruction at the end of the Gulf War, his dismissal of UN monitors, and his growing confidence that he can soon develop unconventional weapons to match those of the West.
Finally, the creation of Yasser Arafat’s terror enclave gave a safe haven to militant Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Down the line, a far worse catastrophe may be in the offing: terrorist regimes like Iran and Iraq wielding atomic weapons. No longer will individuals or buildings be the ones threatened by terror; entire cities may be destroyed, entire states may be held hostage. The world is on the verge of an abyss, and most political leaders have not properly gauged its depth.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."What do you expect. This is the gang that can’t shoot straight. We the people are desperately in need of a clean break.
“The Bushities are wrong about everything” Yes, even the granting of clemency to Scooter. Let’s see how quickly the pardon comes. Bush’ll need to clean up this legal mess with a full pardon.
Go read Judge Reggie Walton’s footnote issued yesterday.
H/T to Laura Rozen here and Firedoglake here
See Chris Hedges’ A Declaration of Independence from Israel.
Thanks for the link alyosha, good article.
When I read the Clean Break document, it puts me in mind of that comment some Bush flunky made about how we (the U.S.) don’t have to pay attention to reality anymore, we make our own reality. As if wanting something to happen, and having lots of armaments to back you up, is enough to make it real. Except it doesn’t – when we confuse our wishful thinking with reality, we just get more and more detached from what is really happening in the Middle East until we are up to our necks in Shit Creek, with no idea how we got there and no idea how to get out.
And speaking of Netanyahu, I think the same mentality has dominated in Israel since he was in charge there – where overwhelming military power, and carte blanche from the U.S., has led to this sense of being able to do whatever they like and damn the consequences – even as the strategic situation around them has been turning really horrible for Israel over the last couple of years.
I think that we both tend to be dazzled by our military power, and what it can do for us. With the collapse of the USSR and the creation of the US/Arab coalition that fought the first Gulf War, we really did have the power to shape a new Middle East. But the power we had was a really specific one – that is, we had the power to stabilize the region by bringing about a genuine Arab-Israeli peace settlement. But we thought instead that being the only world superpower, or in Israel’s case the only regional superpower, meant we had the power to do whatever we liked. So we relied on military muscle and found that conventional forces that look overwhelming as a deterrent don’t look nearly as good when you actually use them against non-conventional enemies who obviously haven’t read the Clean Break document and aren’t inclined to play their assigned role in it.
It’s like that comment Boutros Boutros-Ghali once made to Uri Avnery: “You Israelis have the best experts on Arab affairs in the world. They have read all the books, all the articles. They know everything -and understand nothing, because they have never lived one single day in an Arab country.” Switch “Israelis” to “Americans” and that’s our own cable news pundits with their self-contained fictitious Middle East that is perfectly logical in their think-tank world, but unfortunately doesn’t otherwise exist.
Clean Break was always the operational outline for Israel and US Israelis.
For what other ME countries had to gain from the US being played into ME conflict by the Israelis and US neos see Cato’s 1992 paper entitled “The Green Peril”. Read it and you will see how suckered we have been, not just by Israel but by a lot of others. Like Clean Break you can follow the bread crumb trails to where we are right now and all the money we have spread about in the ME to our ..er…”allies” in the terrier wur.
The deal is simple, Israel cannot exist without the US as superpower of the ME or by either becoming their own superpower in the ME in order to survive economically. Their military is only to try to leverage that economic superiority in the ME. The hype that they think (for forty years now)that they are about to be destroyed any minute is just that, hype for the hysterics and sheeple among the Jews.
Israel is almost entirely dependent on the US for economic favor, not only aid and military contracts but on US strongarming other countries in the region for favorable trade deals for Israel. Although the Saudis still have in place their boycott of Israeli goods…which is a sign of the “limits” to actual US power with some Arab governments…even friendly ones. And now US power in the ME is even less, so I expect some desperate moves by Isr before this adm exits.
Cheney; oil and paranoia, Bush; clueless, AIPAC, Abrams, Feith, the rest of the Isr cabal; in it for “their” idea of Jews and Israel and of finally belonging to a powerful class and not being the world’s lowely victimized whimps any longer…yea, hear the mouse that roars.
This whole thing, the war, all of it, was brought to you by sicko individuals, a corrupt congress and totally corrupt system of lobbies and government agencies infiltrated with ideologues making policy for the US.
You want your country back?…Burn Washington to the Ground and Start Over….or maybe you think electing more of the same special interest financed repub-dem beltway elites and a dem congress with an isralei fetish is going to change something in our ME or foreign policy problems? I think not.
Viva la Revoultion!…I hope I am still young enough to take part in the second one when it comes around.