Who knows if Obama will eventually order an attack on Iran? Since Obama has become the presumptive nominee for the Democrat party, he has moderated his positions on several issues, and perhaps Iran will be one of them. We can only hope that we are not in for another Dukakis moment: Obama running around in a tank.
Today on Salon.Com, Glenn Greenwald published this article about Iran, right wing Republican politics, dual loyalty, and the Jewish vote (reprinted by way of Common Dreams): The Right’s Game-Playing With `Dual Loyalty” and `Anti-Semitism’ Accusations.
It contains interesting material about the games right wing Neocons like Joe Lieberman and Abe Foxman (of the ADL) play for political advantage or what they believe is in the best interest of Israel. One day after his presumptive nomination was sealed, Obama bent over backwards to assuage AIPAC of any concern that he is not a true blue supporter of Israel. He repeatedly mentioned the “threat” of Iran and intentionally avoided words like, “Palestinian” or “military occupation,” concepts that are totally alien to right wing Likud bent Neocons.
As our political establishment takes new and disturbing steps towards a more confrontational approach with Iran, the effort to stomp out any discussion of the role Israel plays in that policy has once again intensified. Last week, Joe Klein — basically out of the blue — observed that while many advocates of an attack on Iraq (which once included Klein) were motivated by “neocolonial” fantasies or ensuring access to Iraq’s oil, many other war proponents were motivated by their allegiance to Israel:
The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives — people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary — plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.
Since then, Klein has escalated the provocative rhetoric, writing several days ago:
You want evidence of divided loyalties? How about the “benign domino theory” that so many Jewish neoconservatives talked to me about — off the record, of course — in the runup to the Iraq war, the idea that Israel’s security could be won by taking out Saddam, which would set off a cascade of disaster for Israel’s enemies in the region? As my grandmother would say, feh! Do you actually deny that the casus belli that dare not speak its name wasn’t, as I wrote in February 2003, a desire to make the world safe for Israel? Why the rush now to bomb Iran, a country that poses some threat to Israel but none — for the moment — to the United States . . . unless we go ahead, attack it, and the mullahs unleash Hezbollah terrorists against us? Do you really believe the mullahs would stage a nuclear attack on Israel, destroying the third most holy site in Islam and killing untold numbers of Muslims? I am not ruling out the use of force against Iran — it may come to that — but you folks seem to embrace it gleefully.
Then, after Joe Lieberman appeared on Face the Nation last weekend to (as usual) agitate for war with Iran, Klein not-so-cryptically asked: “Again, I wonder why Lieberman is so fixated on Iran.”
LINK above to the full article.
The rest of the article is even more interesting as Klein faces off against the right wing Neocons in support of Obama. What is troubling about Klein’s position is his contention that “it may (eventually) come to that,” that being an attack on Iran. How else will it be possible for Israel to remain the only nuclear power in the Middle East, while continuing its military occupation, ethnic cleansing, and colonization of remaining Palestinian land.
The central question then is: will Obama moderate his position on Iran to become a vehicle to achieve Neocon ends? And what does this statement mean: “I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon (AIPAC speech).”