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.
