Our Enemies, the Saudis

They’re invading Yemen to empower Al Qaeda

April 20, 2015

Let’s get this straight: Saudi Arabia is Al Qaeda. If there was any doubt about that, the Kingdom’s invasion of Yemen makes it plain as day.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

“A brazen territorial grab by Al Qaeda militants in Yemen – together with a $1-million bank heist, a prison break and capture of a military base – has given the terrorist group fundraising and recruitment tools that suggest it is following the brutal path blazed by Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.

“Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which was long forced into the shadows by US drone strikes and commando raids, has taken advantage of the growing chaos in Yemen’s multi-sided war to carve out a potential haven that counter-terrorism experts say could help it launch terrorist attacks.”

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The Times piece confirms that the Saudis, who have never lifted a finger to strike at Al Qaeda, are now enabling their mutant offspring to seize and hold territory:

“With the Saudis focused on the Houthis, AQAP fighters launched a jailbreak near Mukalla that freed about 300 prisoners, including several dozen of their comrades, officials and residents said. … After seizing a regional airport and a coastal oil terminal this week, Al Qaeda militants consolidated their gains Friday in Mukalla, an Arabian Sea port. Fighters stormed a weapons depot and seized armored vehicles and rockets after apparently forging a truce with local tribes and forcing government troops to flee.”

Continue reading “Our Enemies, the Saudis”

How the GOP became Israel’s Personal Bitch

How the GOP Became the Israel Party

Bill Kristol and John McCain have replaced Robert Novak and Pat Buchanan in Republican foreign policy influence.

By SCOTT MCCONNELL • April 8, 2015

When the unexpectedly detailed P5+1 framework agreement with Iran was announced last Thursday, Illinois Republican Mark Kirk made a bizarre comment. “We all know” said the senator, that this is going to end with “a mushroom cloud somewhere near Tehran”—a result of Israel having to go to war to “clean up the mess” made by American and European negotiators. A few days earlier John McCain had expressed the wish that Israel “go rogue” and attack Iran in order to upend the Iran negotiations.

It would have been one thing if such comments had come from backbench congressmen. But McCain is a former GOP presidential nominee, one of his party’s most prominent foreign policy spokesmen. Kirk is the co-sponsor of what was, until recently, the major Senate legislation intended to scuttle the Iran negotiations—a leader in GOP “pro-Israel” circles. Yet neither remark sparked a repudiation, or even any reaction at all. They were what one expects from the GOP these days, recklessness about war and peace fused with a passion for Israel. It was if all the diffuse sentiments which once fueled American nationalism and militarism were concentrated into a tight stream and displaced onto Israel, turning the country into the fantasy surrogate of American hawks. The conservative belief in American exceptionalism is like Zionism, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol boasted. Kirk and McCain may know that Americans have little enthusiasm for another Mideast war; the U.S. Army understands perfectly well that no occupation of Iran could be sustained, and America would have zero international support if it tried. But no matter, they have Israel.

Continue reading “How the GOP became Israel’s Personal Bitch”

Iran Fighting ISIS – Is it Really a Problem?

Guest Post by Ron Paul

As Iran continues to take an active role in helping Iraq fight ISIS, many US neocons are upset that the US military is not over there on the ground doing the fighting. They want Americans believe that only another US invasion of Iraq – and of Syria as well – can defeat ISIS. But what is wrong with the countries of the region getting together and deciding to cooperate on a common problem?

While the entry of Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias into ISIS-occupied areas may not be ideal – there is bound to be revenge killings and sectarian fighting – it is far more likely that the ISIS problem will be solved by the countries in the region than by US bombs and ground troops. Our bombs will continue to make the problem worse because it was our bombs that helped create the problem in the first place. What the neocons who lied us into the Iraq war don’t like to admit is that there was no ISIS problem and no al-Qaeda problem in Iraq and Syria before we invaded Iraq.

ISIS is an idea, not a country or an army, which is why the US declaring war on ISIS makes no sense. It is clear that if we really want to defeat ISIS, the last thing we should be doing is bombing and sending troops back to Iraq and into Syria. Our bombs and involvement in the region only serve to recruit more fighters into ISIS. To make matters worse, many of these radicalized fighters come from Europe and even the US. What happens when they go home?

Continue reading “Iran Fighting ISIS – Is it Really a Problem?”

Dump Israel and NATO says Michael Scheuer

Damn Iraq, start caring for America First

By MIKE | Published: JUNE 18, 2014

“But we in this country have a right to think of the welfare of America first…. The time has come when those of us who believe in an independent American destiny must band together and organize for strength. We have been led toward war by a minority of our people. This minority has power. It has influence. It has a loud voice. But it does not represent the American people.” Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, 23 April 1941

The fine strategic analyst Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (ret’d) wrote in one of his early books that because the end of the Cold War had made the world safer for conventional war, insurgency, and terrorism, Americans would have to look after their own security and learn to watch others die with equanimity. Because we have not done the former, we can now only do the later. Our failure to secure North America — read, control our borders — ensures that the Islamists will bring their war here. President Bush’s argument that we needed to fight them overseas so we would not have to fight them at home was always meant to be a distraction, a plausible-for-the-gullible argument that allowed him to fight two wars he wanted to fight but never intended to win. President Obama used the same style of rhetoric, but like Bush never intended to win either war; indeed, he fairly panted in his frantic search to find a way to surrender to the Islamists.

At bottom, neither of these oh-so-sensitive, humane, 21st-Century men could state the clear and cruel truth — after all what would the media and their European friends say? — that the way to win a war is to kill the enemy and its supporters in whatever numbers are necessary to move them to acknowledge that the game is not worth the candle. Killing on this scale is a lousy option, but as long as our Islamist-motivating foreign policies remain the same — especially having forces on the Arab Peninsula and playing the always compliant, cowering lap-dog to the Saudi Arabia and Israel — we have no choice but killing until the Islamists quit (unlikely) or are eradicated (doable).

For now, however, the beginning of wisdom is to look at what is going on in Iraq and Syria and see it clearly. In both places all of those folks that multiple U.S. administrations have identified as enemies of America are killing each other. In Syria, the Assad regime, Iran, and Lebanese Hizballah are killing Sunni mujhaedin from all over the world, as well as their local allies and supporters. In turn, the Sunni Islamists in Syria are killing Assad’s troops, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Hizballah fighters. This is a perfect circumstance for the United States, all our enemies are killing each other and it is not costing us a cent or a life.

Over in Iraq, we see much the same marvelous phenomena occurring. Multinational Sunni mujahedin and Saddam’s former military personnel are fighting and killing Maliki’s dictatorial regime, its Shia military forces, and their Iranian military supporters. And, as in Syria, Maliki and his gang are killing our Sunni Islamist enemies. In Iraq there also is the potential for a delightful bonus coming to fruition. If the United States stays out of the affair, the renewed war in Iraq may trigger a widespread Shia-vs-Sunni civil war in which our Muslim enemies — as they are defined by our bipartisan political elite — may begin to kill each other for a prolonged period and at unprecedented levels, and, again, at no cost to us in lives or dollars.

So let us take both a deep breath and Lt. Col. Peters advice and sit back and watch what is going on in Syria and Iraq with equanimity and absolutely from the sidelines. Cheer for neither side, answer no one’s call for help — especially not one from the near-frantic Neocons who now know they sank their beloved Israel with the 2003 invasion of Iraq — and pray that Obama does not cooperate with Iran to restore Maliki’s Shia tyranny and thereby earn the eternal enmity of all of the Sunni world.

But even if this recipe is followed America is far from out of the woods. We have two options:

–1.) A Sunni-Shia religious war would be a useful thing for U.S. national security interests — though the higher energy prices it brings will hurt more than necessary because Obama halted our move to self-sufficiency — but only because it would buy us some time to prepare for more war against the Sunni mujahedin. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are willing to stop intervening in the Muslim world in a demented effort to export that least exportable and so most useless of commodities — democracy. As a result, the time we garner from a sectarian war in the Muslim world must be used to rearm our broken military and to reinstate conscription so that we can field a million or more military men and women in a particular region — my guess is West Africa is next on tap — and, like the Huns of yore, desolate that region and inhabitants in a manner Kaiser Wilhelm II would have heartily endorsed, or,

–2.) We can find an adult man or woman capable of being a leader who can deal constitutionally with reality. He or she must recognize and explain to Americans that Obama and his party — with Republican assistance — have wrecked this country economically and militarily; have all but destroyed its social cohesion; have deliberately stoked racial animosities; and have remade the federal regime nearly into a tyranny. This means we have a lot of work to do at home if the republic is to be resuscitated, and this reality makes mandatory a foreign policy of non-intervention, a quick contracting of our international commitments; and — especially — a drastic curtailing of the ability of foreign nations to dictate our international behavior. Four actions would constitute a first step in the right direction:

–a.) Give 12-months’ notice to the Europeans that the United States is leaving NATO and then begin withdrawing our military forces from Western Europe. Seventy years of protecting Europeans who hate us, actively work against our interests, and who have gutted their national-defense capabilities because they prefer that the United States protect them is enough self-flagellation for all Americans.

–b.) Build the XL Pipeline, issue as many drilling permits on federal lands as possible, and introduce additional tax incentives to accelerate the attainment of energy self-sufficiency. This would soon allow us to tell the Saudis and their fellow Gulf tyrants to do the only thing they might be capable of doing well — to go and pound sand.

–c.) Immediately end all diplomatic, military, and economic relationships with Israel and Palestine. Ties to both undermine U.S. national security, motivate our Islamist enemies, and cost America lives and money; indeed, the disappearance of one or both would go unnoticed in terms of genuine U.S. national interests and would save us some money to boot. An essential corollary to this action is to constitutionally break the back of the disloyal Israel-First U.S. citizens and their organizations which have corrupted our political and media systems. One way to do this is to determine how many of them carry Israeli passports. With that data in hand, we should give them a choice to surrender the citizenship denoted by one or the other passport, and then permanently bar from any position of governmental or public trust those who choose U.S. citizenship but had knowingly obtained the other passport by pledging allegiance to Israel. (NB: This process, of course, should be followed for all U.S. citizens who have made the effort to obtain a foreign passport, be it a passport from Ireland, Armenia, Mexico, Lebanon, or anywhere else.)

–d.) When steps a, b, and c are complete, Washington should declare America’s intention to end foreign intervention and war-making unless clear and irrefutable U.S. national interests are at stake, and also state that the United States henceforth will be neutral in all wars that do not impact those interests. At the same time, warn the world that if we are attacked or if military action is needed to protect genuine U.S. interests we will wage war quickly, without pity, and via the application of unrelenting and overwhelming lethal force. The U.S. Marines motto should become that of the nation: “No better friend, no worse enemy.”

A political leader cognizant of reality; capable of explaining it to Americans; and willing to execute the above actions through our constitutional system might just have a shot at pulling the shreds and tatters of our shattered republic back into whole cloth, as well as to avoid the catastrophic situation toward which both parties are now leading us; namely, an endless, worldwide war with Islam in which we would first complete our bankruptcy and then be defeated. But time is short because, as George F. Kennan once warned his countrymen, “[p]rovidence has a way of punishing those who persist long and willingly in ignoring great realities.”

Today in Iraq, Kenya, Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, and across North Africa “long and willingly ignored great realities” are not just knocking at America’s door. Rather, the Islamists are preparing to tear it down and will continue to do so as long as Washington keeps intervening in matters that are none of its business, irrelevant to U.S. security, and of interest only to lobbies and organizations whose first loyalty is not to America. It is time for the United States to cut loose from outdated and unneeded international commitments; cynical, exploitive, and resource-draining allies; and disloyal citizens. It also is time to secure North America and to begin a national debate on whether we want to survive as a free and prosperous nation or prefer to die as fools by playing the avenging angel for countries and causes that do not merit the expenditure or an American life or dollar.

As Colonel Lindbergh said in 1941, Americans “have a right to think of the welfare of America first.”

WHO SAYS IRAN DIDN’T SCORE POINTS AGAINST NIGERIA?

Oh noes, disaster! Iran is starting to look like a normal country. Neocons are in full panic mode.

Iran wins points from Brazil to State Dep’t (even as Bill Kristol calls for another Iraq war)

Philip Weiss on June 16, 2014 33

Today in Brazil, Iran scored a point by drawing Nigeria in the World Cup, and the Iranian president is proud.

Rouhani’s happy about something else too: Over the weekend many American voices have been saying we must engage Iran to deal with the crisis in Iraq. Secretary of State John Kerry says it is necessary. Just as important, the usually-reliable hawk Lindsey Graham has come out for doing so.

And the hard-core neoconservative faction is flipping out over the idea. Today Bill Kristol has actually called for American boots on the ground in Iraq so that we don’t have to deal with Iran. Israel’s interests are obviously at the core of this conversation.

A sampling.

Secretary Kerry told Katie Couric of Yahoo News that the U.S. might even do a military coordination with Iran, before the Pentagon walked that part back.

QUESTION: You – will you reach out to Iran, and how can that country be helpful? Or is that like entering into a hornet’s nest, because that will inflame the Sunnis?

SECRETARY KERRY: We’re open – look, we’re open to discussions if there’s something constructive that can be contributed by Iran if Iran is prepared to do something that is going to respect the integrity and sovereignty of Iraq and the ability of the government to reform –

QUESTION: Can you see cooperating with Iran militarily?

SECRETARY KERRY: I – at this moment, I think we need to go step by step and see what, in fact, might be a reality, but I wouldn’t rule out anything that would be constructive to providing real stability,

The State Department echoed Kerry:

does cooperation mean coordination and consultation, or is it possible that there could be some cooperation?

MS. PSAKI: It means both… if there was a constructive – something constructive that could be contributed by Iran, if Iran is prepared to do something that is going to respect the integrity and sovereignty of Iraq and the ability of the government to reform, that that would be what we would discuss.

And Sen. Lindsey Graham has defected from the neoconservative bloc on this:

“The Iranians can provide some assets to make sure Baghdad doesn’t fall,” Graham said on CNN’sState of the Union. “We need to coordinate with the Iranians and the Turks need to get in the game and get the Sunni Arabs back into the game, form a new government without [Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki.]”

John McCain doesn’t agree.

As for the chattering classes, tonight Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman agreed that the U.S. should work with Iran to attempt to stabilize Iraq. Earlier today Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations said the same thing on All Things Considered:

GELB: I can imagine that the Iranian leadership – these guys are pragmatic. So I think people are sufficiently desperate at this point – that if the Iranians are willing to play the kind of role they talk about, we would work with them.

[Robert] SIEGEL: How would the U.S. be able to work together with Iran in Iraq while supporting, I gather, the end of the Assad regime in Syria, where that regime is backed by the same Iranians?

GELB: This is all interconnected. And the real enemy, as far as I’m concerned, in Syria are the jihadis as well.

Last Friday Katrina Vanden Heuvel of the Nation slam-dunked David Brooks on NPR and also mentioned Iran as a force for good:

Any lasting solution has to be regional in nature and must address the political interest of all the major factions and it must involve Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey. Perhaps the most promising development is that Saudi Arabia is now willing to tone down sectarian war and possibly even cooperate with Iran on Syria and Iraq.

Brooks seemed to be missing his talking points. He sought to blame Obama for pulling out of Iraq, and George W. Bush for pulling into Iraq, a move Brooks cheerled in the event.

Other neocons are now flipping out. Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post says this is the time for the U.S. to exercise power. She’s frankly Israelcentric:

It seems the president will do anything to avoid using U.S. power in the region, even if it means accelerating Iran’s influence in Iraq. Imagine the reaction of our allies in Egypt, Sunni Gulf states and Israel when we let on that we are going to be assisting Iran’s hegemonic vision and thereby bolstering the state sponsor of groups including Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. In lieu of strengthening U.S. influence in the Middle East, Obama seems ready to bolster Iran’s. And if he is bent on this course, surely he’ll not challenge Iran and its puppet in Syria. Why, that might “upset” Iran and either wreck a nuclear deal or force Obama to handle Iraq on his own.

Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies e-mailed, “To enlist Tehran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism, in a fight against ISIS, a non-state terrorist organization, makes as much sense as stocking a river with crocodiles to deal with a piranha problem.”

Now here are Bill Kristol and Frederick Kagan at the Weekly Standard: They want US boots on the ground, and say now is not the time to “relitigate” the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. It would be “disastrous” to strengthen Iran. Instead, we must “act boldly and decisively to help stop the advance of the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—without empowering Iran.” More from these armchair warriors:

This would require a willingness to send American forces back to Iraq. It would mean not merely conducting U.S. air strikes, but also accompanying those strikes with special operators, and perhaps regular U.S. military units, on the ground. This is the only chance we have…

Throwing our weight behind Iran in the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq, as some are suggesting, would make things even worse. Conducting U.S. airstrikes without deploying American special operators or other ground forces would in effect make the U.S. Iran’s air force. Such an approach would be extremely shortsighted. The al Qaeda threat in Iraq is great, and the U.S. must take action against it. But backing the Iranians means backing the Shi’a militias that have been the principal drivers of sectarian warfare, to say nothing of turning our backs on the moderates on both sides who are suffering the most. Allowing Iran to in effect extend its border several hundred kilometers to the west with actual troop deployments would be a strategic disaster. In addition, the U.S. would be perceived as becoming the ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran against all of the forces of the Arab and Sunni world, conceding Syria to the Iranian-backed Bashir al-Assad, and accepting the emergence of an Iranian hegemony soon to be backed by nuclear weapons. And at the end of the day, Iran is not going to be able to take over the Sunni areas of Iraq—so we would end up both strengthening Iran and not defeating ISIS.

America’s Middle East Delusions

The rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria underscores the failure of America’s political class to devise an effective and sustainable strategy for the country after 9/11.

Flynt Leverett

Hillary Mann Leverett

June 15, 2014

The explosive ascendance of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) underscores the thoroughgoing failure of America’s political class to devise an effective and sustainable strategy for the United States after 9/11. The failure cuts across Democratic and Republican administrations, with the most self-damaging aspects of each administration’s policies roundly endorsed by the opposing party in Congress.

Both sides deny responsibility for unfolding catastrophe in Iraq: Republicans criticize Obama’s marginal modulations of Bush’s approach to the Middle East while Democrats blame Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. (Republicans also criticize Maliki, but not so much that it might exculpate Obama.) Foreign policy elites also ignore a more urgent and ongoing flaw in America’s post-9/11 Middle East policy that is directly linked to Iraq’s current crisis—Washington’s recurrent partnership with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states to arm, fund, and train Sunni militias.

America’s turn to jihadi proxies did not start with Bush’s strategic malpractice in Iraq. It was born on July 3, 1979, when President Carter signed the first directive to arm jihadists in Afghanistan, before Soviet forces invaded the country. For U.S. policymakers, collaborating with Riyadh to launch transnational jihad in Afghanistan seemed a clever way to undermine the Soviet Union—by goading it into a draining occupation of Afghanistan, which Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, hoped to make Moscow’s Vietnam. Ultimately, Red Army garrisoning of Afghanistan contributed only marginally (if at all) to the Soviet Union’s dissolution. But U.S. support for the mujahideen and cooperation with Riyadh contributed critically to al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, and 9/11—which opened the door for Republican neoconservatives and Democratic fellow travelers to unite behind attacking Iraq.

America’s invasion-cum-occupation of Iraq was not just badly implemented, as many of its non-Republican champions self-servingly lament; it was an irredeemably bad idea from the start. Certainly, U.S. action destroyed the Iraqi state. But, just as fatefully, the political displacement of Iraqi Sunnis by decisively larger Shi’a and Kurdish communities attracted powerful patrons—e.g., Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states—determined to help Iraqi Sunnis, including segments of Saddam’s disbanded army, fight to regain a disproportionate share of political power. Such were the roots of the insurgency that erupted within months of the U.S. invasion in 2003—stoked by an externally-facilitated influx of non-Iraqi Sunni fighters (including a substantial number from neighboring Syria), many coalescing into the Jordanian Abu Musab az-Zarqawi’s nascent Al-Qa’ida in Iraq.

Increasingly desperate to coopt a critical mass of these fighters, Bush disregarded 9/11’s lessons and chose to gamble on arming and training 80,000 Iraqi Sunni “tribesmen” as part of General David Petraeus’ 2007-2008 “surge.” Bush turned to Sunni proxies in the vain hope of eliciting Sunni acquiescence to a post-Saddam order inevitably dominated by Shi’a Islamist and Kurdish parties representing the overwhelming bulk of Iraqis. Washington also wanted to check what it considered the unacceptable growth of Iranian influence in Iraq (Tehran had supported Iraq’s leading Shi’a Islamist and Kurdish parties in exile for twenty years) and regionally. The surge temporarily paid off enough Sunni fighters to let American commanders and politicians claim that violence was coming down. But it also gave Iraqi Sunnis greater material and organizational wherewithal with which—once U.S. forces were gone—to attack what were bound to be non-Sunni-dominated central governments.

Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, who led U.S. forces in northern Iraq during the surge, says he “never anticipated” that Sunnis his troops trained would join with—and give U.S.-provided weapons to—radical jihadis. But at least some of Hertling’s troops recognized, in the words of a former Marine, that they were paying and training “hired thugs.” While they may have seemed a “lesser evil at the time,” many were ostensible “ex”-jihadis and others who have since proven eager to make common cause with extremists.

U.S.-armed Sunnis needed a catalyst for resurgence, however. In the first two years of Obama’s presidency, they grudgingly co-existed with central governments grounded in coalitions of Shi’a Islamist and Kurdish parties. The Islamic State of Iraq—formed in 2006 from Zarqawi’s Al-Qai’da in Iraq—seemed on the wane. Then, in spring 2011, Obama decided to support largely Sunni militias and forces willing to collaborate with them in trying to overthrow incumbent leaders in Libya and Syria. This was motivated partly by dysfunctional aspects of Washington’s strategic co-dependency with Riyadh, and partly by a longstanding delusion that America could orchestrate a de factoaxis of Saudi Arabia and other “moderate” Sunni states with Israel to check Iran’s rise and bolster a pro-U.S. regional order under threat from the Arab Awakening. But, by reigniting the flames of Sunni militancy, the decision proved profoundly inimical to American interests.

Like Sunni militias in post-Saddam Iraq, Saudi-backed cadres fighting Muammar al-Qadhafi and Bashar al-Assad were attracting growing numbers of radicalized foreign fighters—including, in Syria, thousands of veterans of the Iraqi insurgency. U.S. and Gulf Arab support for anti-Qadhafi and anti-Assad insurgencies gave a huge boost to participating forces, enhancing their access to arms (including caches of U.S.-provided weapons), equipment, and money. Moreover, U.S. endorsement of these crusades effectively protected their jihadi participants; Washington was unlikely to attack militants fighting leaders whose overthrow Obama himself had enjoined. Obama’s ill-considered interventions in Libya and Syria generated predictable blowback—e.g., a dead U.S. ambassador and three other murdered official Americans in Libya—and produced new cadres of battle-hardened militants with easy access to U.S. arms, provided either directly or indirectly through American “allies.” This, in turn, fueled a precipitous deterioration in Iraqi security.

ISIS’s current offensive across Iraq’s Sunni heartland is an apotheosis of the trifecta that Bush’s ill-begotten Iraqi campaign and Obama’s catastrophic decisions to overthrow Qadhafi and make Assad’s removal the goal of America’s Syria policy have collectively wrought. It integrates local and foreign jihadi extremists so bloody-minded that Ayman az-Zawahiri (Osama bin Laden’s successor) has disowned them with U.S.-trained Sunni “tribal” forces and leadership cadres from Saddam’s military (including General Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri, the King of Clubs in the now-iconic deck of cards distributed to U.S. occupation troops).

This transnational complex represents a major upgrading of the worldwide jihadi terrorist threat. Even more significantly, ISIS is territorially expansionist and genocidal, with a political program—including proclamation of an Islamic state “cleansed” of Shi’a and obliterating existing boundaries in the heart of the Middle East—beyond anything al-Qa’ida ever articulated.

Looking forward, American policymakers should start observing the Hippocratic injunction, “first, do no harm.” Calls for Washington to engineer Maliki’s replacement by some allegedly preferable alternative are wrong-headed: Maliki’s list clearly won this year’s parliamentary elections, and there is no alternative figure around whom a (mythical) new “consensus” could form. (Question for those charging that Maliki should have been more “inclusive”: how can any Iraqi prime minister be “inclusive” toward an insurgency with literally thousands of externally supported foreign fighters?) America will further damage its position by returning to the business of trying to micromanage Iraqi politics. Likewise, Washington should avoid again playing into al-Qa’ida’s “grand strategy”: to draw “crusaders” (the West) and “infidels” (Shi’a) into battle against Sunni holy warriors, thereby rallying support for them across the Sunni world.

It is also imperative that U.S. policymakers rethink—and rebalance—their Middle East diplomatic strategy, in at least three critical respects. First, Washington needs to acknowledge the mistaken premises of its Syria policy—that Assad has lost the support of most Syrians and can be overthrown by externally-supported oppositionists—and recognize that ending the anti-Assad insurgency is essential to cutting off ISIS’s base in northeastern Syria.

Second, Washington needs to accept Tehran as an essential player in containing and rolling back ISIS’s multifaceted challenge and—as we have been advocating inside and outside government for over a decade—embed that acceptance in a broader realignment of U.S.-Iranian relations. It is crucial, though, that America engage Iran over ISIS politically—not, as some suggest, by U.S. warplanes covering Iranian foot soldiers in Iraq. (Most responsible officials and politicians in Tehran appear too smart to fall for such a “trap,” which would also play into al-Qa’ida’s grand strategy.)

Third, Washington must finally confront Saudi Arabia over its longstanding support for jihadi militants as a policy tool. Riyadh’s resort to this tool has proven serially damaging for U.S. interests; time has come for U.S. leaders to make clear to Saudi counterparts that their tolerance for it is at an end.

Flynt Leverett is professor of international affairs and law at Penn State. Hillary Mann Leverett is senior professorial lecturer at American University’s School of International Service. Their book, Going to Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran, is now in paperback.

DICK CHENEY, PROPHET

Only the omission of the Israel factor and the regional goals of the neocons in paving the way for greater Israel detracts from an otherwise excellent analysis.

The Unraveling of Iraq is Playing Out Just as Dick Cheney Predicted

He launched a war that he knew would be futile and catastrophic.

By Dan Sanchez

June 16, 2014

“Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.” — Emperor Palpatine, The Return of the Jedi

Jon Stewart made great comedic hay during the Bush Administration out of the enormity of Dick Cheney’s “Sith Lord” malevolence. Events in Iraq in the past week have made especially palpable Cheney’s Palpatine-like quality.

As Iraq unravels, you may suspect that Cheney might now be, along with his fellow Iraq War architects, wringing his hands over how President Obama ruined what still could have been a splendid little nation-building project. Yet, as radio host Scott Horton indicated recently, he is more likely looking on at the debacle, along with those who opposed both him and the war all along, as the arrival of the inevitable.

In the first Bush Administration, Cheney was Secretary of Defense, and helped plan the first invasion of Iraq during the Persian Gulf War. In that war, he agreed with the decision not go all the way and overthrow the dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. This was extremely frustrating for the neocons, who were baying for Baghdad blood even then.

In a 1994 interview, Cheney was taken to task over this “missed opportunity” by the neocon American Enterprise Institute. Cheney defended the decision using the following predictions:

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

Let’s look at the events of this past week, and see how clear Cheney’s crystal ball was.

Cheney predicted Syrians taking over western Iraq. Western Iraq, including oil-rich Mosul (the second-largest city in the country), has indeed been taken over by a force entering from Syria: namely, ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), an Al Qaeda splinter group (and beneficiary of American military aid to the rebel forces in the Syrian civil war). True, it’s not the Syrian state, and only partially consists of Syrian people. But he got the geography right, and the demographics partially right.

Check.

Cheney predicted the Iranians taking eastern Iraq. The U.S. war that overthrew Saddam’s Sunni Muslim regime put the government and the capital in the east, Baghdad, into the hands of a Shi’ite regime allied with Shi’ite Iran, who backed the election of the current prime minister. And now Iran has actually deployed troops to combat ISIS into Iraq from the east. With the U.S. ground presence already mostly gone, and now rapidly evacuating, and Iraqi government soldiers stripping off their uniforms and abandoning their U.S.-supplied weapons to ISIS at the first sight of them, the Iranian troops are becoming the only serious ground force in the east.

Check.

Finally, Cheney predicted the Kurds spinning loose and being a threat in the north. The Kurds have indeed become autonomous, and recently seized the northern city of Kirkuk for themselves, after it was abandoned by Iraqi government forces fleeing the oncoming ISIS forces.

Check. That’s 3 for 3.

If Cheney knew a decade before the war, that overthrowing Saddam would never make Iraq an intact, independent “beacon of democracy” in the Middle East, why did he push for it so hard in 2003 anyway? It is interesting that, at the time of the interview, he wasn’t yet CEO of the oil field company and military contractor Halliburton; that tenure would start the following year, in 1995. But Juan Cole argued in 2004 that that’s not quite it.

What was in it for Cheney? I don’t think it was a matter of money. At least I hope it wasn’t. Cheney sold half his Halliburton stock options in 2000 for $5 million, and it is hard to imagine a man taking his country to war to increase the other half in value by a few million.

I suspect it is political. Not all corporations make money on war. Some actually lose money. But Halliburton, Bechtel and a few other components of the military industrial complex do benefit from war. Strengthening that sector of the American economy strengthens the political Right. Turning the republic into a praetorian state would permanently yield profits for the military industrial complex in such a way as to create a permanent Republican dominance of all the branches of the U.S. government.

In any case, what is clear is that the old “stupid or evil” question regarding our overlords in Washington is easy to answer in the case of Richard Bruce Cheney. What is particularly evil, is that he also had a keen sense of the high cost in American lives (not to mention Iraqi lives) that overthrowing Saddam would entail and the quagmire that would result from occupying Iraq.

It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq. The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families — it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.

And now, thanks to his change of “judgment,” 4,800 Americans and up to 500,000 Iraqis are dead, American resources valued at $2 trillion are squandered, Al Qaeda (which had absolutely no presence in Iraq prior to the invasion) effectively has an oil-rich state of its own bestriding Iraq and Syria, the successors of Al Qaeda in Iraq are romping all over the Middle East from Syria to Libya (often with U.S. support), Iraq is being rent asunder in a tug of literal war between neck-severing Sunni jihadists and Shi’ite death squads and torturers. And now the Washington elite are moving toward resuming air strikes, which will probably kill more innocent men, women, and children than the jihadists and the death squads combined.

Like Cassandra in legendary Troy, Dick Cheney knew exactly what futility, disaster, and carnage would come from a war. And yet, like Agamemnon, he launched it anyway.

ITS MOURNING IN CANTERICA

Eric Cantor is a neocon fascist of the worst order. Nothing but a pig lounging in the corruption and filth that is Washington DC., a Ron-Paul hater and a lover of oligarchy, “too big to fail” and crony capitalism. Naturally the Zionists love him. Know your Enemy.

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‘Numb, speechless, sad’, Israel supporters grieve Cantor’s loss

Phil Weiss with Annie Robbins on June 11, 2014 41

House Majority leader Eric Cantor’s stunning defeat in the Republican primary in a Richmond, Virginia, district last night is big news, and it has a Middle East angle. Cantor is a leading defender of Israel’s rightwing government in the Congress; he once said he would side with Israeli prime minister Netanyahu against Obama. Cantor is also one of the most prominent Jews in American politics, the leading Jew in the Republican Party, highest-ranking Jew ever in the Congress.

The New York Times news analysis puts the religious angle in the tenth paragraph, though an analyst describes it as the “elephant in the room.”

David Wasserman, a House political analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said another, more local factor has to be acknowledged: Mr. Cantor, who dreamed of becoming the first Jewish speaker of the House, was culturally out of step with a redrawn district that was more rural, more gun-oriented and more conservative.

“Part of this plays into his religion,” Mr. Wasserman said. “You can’t ignore the elephant in the room.”

Wasserman is a bit of a crank on the anti-Semitism angle:

“There will be lots of 2nd guessing tmw on Cantor loss #VA07,” [Wasserman] tweeted. “Surely will focus on debt ceiling/leadership role, but his religion a role too?”

Cantor famously once sided with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu over Obama, when the two administrations were disagreeing. After a meeting with the P.M.,Cantor’s office said:

Eric stressed that the new Republican majority will serve as a check on the Administration and what has been, up until this point, one party rule in Washington. He made clear that the Republican majority understands the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of each nation is reliant upon the other.

Politico highlights the Jewish angle:

The dream of a Jewish Republican speaker of the House is no more.

Matt Brooks, the president of the Republican Jewish Coalition, went so far as to call Cantor’s defeat “one of those incredible, evil twists of fate that just changed the potential course of history.”

“Cantor serves up a schadenfreude Sundae,” Adam Horowitz says, and here’s more Matt Brooks to the JTA:

“We’re all processing it,” said Matt Brooks, the president of the Republican Jewish Coalition. “He was an invaluable leader, he was so integral to the promotion of, to congressional support of the pro-Israel agenda. It is a colossal defeat not just for Republicans, but for the entire Jewish community.”…

Brooks seems to have a point. Even Hillary supporter Steve Rabinowitz mourns Cantor’s defeat to the JTA:

“Wearing my mainstream Jewish skullcap its clear the community needs people like Eric Cantor,” he said. “This is a loss for the Jewish community. I have my disagreements with him, but he’s been there for the community.”

Oh, and the camp counselor is no more. Politico‘s Alexander Burns states:

Now, with Cantor’s defeat, there’s no longer a point man to help organize trips to Israel for junior GOP lawmakers.

Cantor’s conqueror gave a religious spin to primary night. MSNBC:

In victory, [Tom] Brat quoted scripture: “I went to my family and this little note is hanging on my door every day and I read this every day. It’s Luke 18:27. Jesus replied, ‘What is impossible with man is possible with God.’”

More Matt Brooks schadenfreude:

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is wearing black too, and says the people of Virginia made a mistake:

MJ Rosenberg says the defeat will change history, it’s a bad day for AIPAC and for Israel firsters who want a confrontation with Iran:

Most significant of all, AIPAC lost its #1 enforcer in the majority party.

Among Democrats (who are essentially powerless in the House), AIPAC has no problem, beginning with Minority Leader Steny Hoyer, Cantor’s counterpart. And dozens of Jewish Democrats.

But among House Republicans, there is only Cantor to effectively fight against negotiating with Iran, against opposing Israeli settlement expansion and, in general, carrying Binyamin Netanyahu’s portfolio in one hand and Sheldon Adelson’s checkbook in the other.

I’m not saying that there aren’t hundreds of Republicans (especially the Bible thumpers) who will aspire to carry Netanyahu’s agenda, but none have his unique attributes: Jewish, Majority Leader, Next Speaker! Not even close.

Cantor was the ball game. And he is irreplaceable.

Especially on Iran. When Matt Brooks, the Republican Jewish activist, says that Cantor’s defeat was an “evil twist of fate” that will change history, it is Iran he was talking about

“Oy vey,” says Politico. While JTA says Jewish Republicans are in mourning and “bereft“.

Update: The New Republic’s Jason Zengerle says it’s about money. That’s why Cantor was such a prominent Republican, because he tapped in to the new pools of dough. Hardheaded reporting:

Over the course of his 14 years in Washington, Cantor never ignored that [Jewish] elephant—and often tried to exploit it. This was most evident when it came to fundraising, which was the foundation of the Cantor political operation.

Back in 2002, Cantor was given a place on the House Republican leadership team as a mere freshman largely because, as a former GOP congressman once explained to me, the fact that Cantor is Jewish gave him “access to donors we didn’t typically have access to.” Cantor not only helped the GOP fundraising machine make inroads into the big-money (and typically Democratic) Jewish precincts in Los Angeles, Miami, and New York; he also helped GOP congressmen tap their local Jewish communities for money. Nearly every House Republican I’ve ever spoken to about Cantor’s fundraising prowess has a story about the Virginia congressman parachuting into their districts and paying a visit to the local Friends of Israel or Jewish Federation on their behalves. “If you want to have him come and speak to the Jewish community in Charleston, he’s willing to do that,” West Virginia Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito once told me.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KINGMAKER

Chris Christie, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Jeb Bush came to grovel at the feet of this rich monster, whose only interest is that whomever gets his money must put Israel first and War with Iran at the top of the agenda. What does that say about their character? Kasich thanked Adelson for asking him to come. Said Kasich:

“Hey, listen, Sheldon, thanks for inviting me,” according to multiple reports. “I don’t travel to these things much, but this was one that I thought was really, really important. God bless you for what you do.”

Eric Alterman wrote:

If a Jew-hater somewhere, inspired perhaps by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, sought to invent an individual who symbolizes almost all the anti-Semitic clichés that have dogged the Jewish people throughout history, he could hardly come up with a character more perfect than Sheldon Adelson.

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Adelson would install Netanyahu in the White House if he had his druthers — Avnery

Philip Weiss on April 6, 2014

Once again we count on Israeli journalists to shine a light on American politics.

First, here’s a headline and subhead from Ha’aretz: “Jewish money corrupted the Jewish state: Diaspora Jewish philanthropists, showering money on Israeli politicians, helped ripen the field for corruption; Olmert’s conviction is just a case in point.”

A portion of Anshel Pfeffer’s report:

“early on in his career he [Olmert] came into close contact with too much Jewish money. I apologize to our more faint-hearted readers who may find that combination troublingly reminiscent, but the sad fact that Jewish money has corrupted a generation of leaders of the Jewish state is inescapable.”

Uri Avnery’s latest column is also about Diaspora Jewish money, in the person of Sheldon Adelson, corrupting both the U.S. and Israeli political process.

Flanked by Israeli bodyguards, Adelson grilled the American hopefuls. And what was he demanding from the future president of the United States? First of all and above everything else, blind and unconditional obedience to the government of another state:

Israel.

Wait, I didn’t know that about the bodyguards. Alex Kane and Annie Robbins filled me in. Politico:

He showed up 20 minutes late to a Friday morning RJC board meeting, zipping up to the entrance on his scooter flanked by two Hebrew-speaking bodyguards.

And three black bodyguard applicants sued in 2011 saying that the team is all Israeli:

[Adelson’s] “Executive Protection Team,” which for the past 14 years “has been comprised exclusively of former Israeli citizens who are white males.”

Back to Avnery:

Everything Adelson does is done openly, proudly, shamelessly. I wonder how ordinary Americans react to this spectacle of one billionaire – especially a Jewish one – choosing their next president for them.

We are told that anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe and across the globe. In the crazy mental world of the anti-Semites, Jews control the cosmos. And here we have a Jew, straight out of the pages of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, trying to appoint the ruler of the mightiest country on the planet.

Adelson has failed in the past.

Eric Alterman also used the Protocols of the Elders of Zion analogy for Adelson, back in 2012. This is very funny, from Avnery:

But I have no doubt that his right-wing Zionist passions come first. If he succeeds in installing his favorite in the White House, the US will become totally subservient to the extreme right-wing in Israel. He might as well put Netanyahu in the Oval Office.

Now reflect that NPR just did a long story about Adelson’s financial influence, without mentioning the word Israel once.

WELL NOW, HERE’S A BIG SURPRISE

Journalist Gareth Porter talks about his new book, “Iran, A Manufactured Crisis.” This book will probably not make the New York Times list of bestsellers, but in this 30 minute talk about it, he not only proves that the hysteria over Iran’s nuclear weapons program and the resultant decade of sanctions against it’s innocent civilians is not only entirely based on lies, but he identifies who is behind nearly all of those lies. Drumroll please…Israel.

OUR MASTER, ISRAEL, HAS SPOKEN. THEIR WAR MUST BECOME YOURS

The American people don’t want war. The Iranians don’t want war. Nobody wants war, except the Israelis, and the treasonous American Israel-firsters, Fundy Christian nutballs and evil NeoCon scum. At this very moment they are bribing their way to a veto-proof majority over their sanctions bill. Every GOP senator is on board except two (Rand Paul is dithering but for now he is one of them). The Democrats are for the most part holding back (for now) but even from them there is silence rather than support for their President. Obama stands virtually alone.

From an Iranian standpoint, if this bill passes, the interim agreement is dead. The Americans will have proven to be an untrustworthy negotiating partner. What nobody is telling you, for obvious reasons, is that there is no need for another stick aimed at the Persians. The world will know everything they are doing for the next six months. If they were to make the smallest move towards initiating a weapons program, all deals would be off, they are would be an international pariah; the neocons would be held prescient in the eyes of the world. It is the other hand that Netanyahu (and the Saudis) are terrified about…that the Iranians would keep their end of the bargain leading to a permanent agreement, the lifting of sanctions and the beginning of the normalization of Iranian relations members of the US empire. Peace. Then Netanyahu, Kristol and the rest would be expose as the evil, lying bastards they are and attention would suddenly focus on the injustices inflicted upon the Palestianians by these criminals.

This can not stand, therefore we must have war. It won’t be our war, but rather Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s. Will China and Russia sit on the sidelines as we initiate an unneccessary, illegal and immoral war on a peaceful country with which they conduct billions of dollars in business?

Of course the effect on a fragile, hydrocarbon fueled economy will be disastrous regardless. There is an option. We can agree that Israel and Saudi Arabia are simply too evil and dangerous to allow to exist and wipe them from the face of the earth. That would be a war worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.

A Blank Check For War on Iran

Tuesday – January 14, 2014 at 12:05 am

By Patrick J. Buchanan

As we approach the centennial of World War I, we will read much of the blunders that produced that tragedy of Western civilization.

Among them will be the “blank check” Kaiser Wilhelm II gave to Vienna after the assassination by a Serb terrorist of the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand.

If you decide to punish the Serbs, said the Kaiser, we are with you.

After dithering for weeks, Austria shelled Belgrade. Within a week, Germany and Austria were at war with Russia, France and Great Britain.

Today the Senate is about to vote Israel a virtual blank check — for war on Iran. Reads Senate bill S.1881:

If Israel is “compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” the United States “should stand with Israel and provide … diplomatic, military and economic support to the Government of Israel in the defense of its territory, people and existence.”

Inserted in that call for U.S. military action to support an Israeli strike on Iran, S.1881 says that, in doing so, we should follow our laws and constitutional procedures.

Nevertheless, this bill virtually hands over the decision on war to Bibi Netanyahu who is on record saying: “This is 1938. Iran is Germany.”

Is this the man we want deciding whether America fights her fifth war in a generation in the Mideast? Do we really want to outsource the decision on war in the Persian Gulf, the gas station of the world, to a Likud regime whose leaders routinely compare Iran to Nazi Germany?

The bill repeatedly asserts that Iran has a “nuclear weapons program.”

Yet in both 2007 and 2011, U.S. intelligence declared “with high confidence” that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.

Where is the Senate’s evidence for its claim? Why has Director of National Intelligence James Clapper not been called to testify as to whether Tehran has made the decision to go for a bomb?

Why are the American people being kept in the dark?

Are we being as misled, deceived and lied to about Iran’s “weapons of mass destruction,” as we were about Iraq’s?

The bill says that in a final deal Iran must give up all enrichment of uranium. However, we have already been put on notice by President Hassan Rouhani that this is an ultimatum Iran cannot accept.

Even the reformers of Iran’s Green Revolution of 2009 back their country’s right to a peaceful nuclear program including enrichment.

Senate bill S.1881 imposes new sanctions if Iran fails to live up to the interim agreement or fails to come to a final agreement in six months.

Yet the Senate knows that Iran has warned that if new sanctions are voted during negotiations, they will walk away from the table.

Why is the Senate risking, or even inviting, a blowup in these talks?

When the interim agreement was reached, it was denounced by neocons as “worse than Munich.” Now the War Party piously contends this Senate bill is simply an “insurance policy” to ensure that the terms of the deal are met and a final deal reached.

It is nothing of the sort. This bill is a project of AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, designed to sabotage and scuttle the Geneva talks by telling Tehran: Either capitulate and dismantle all your enrichment facilities, or face more severe sanctions which will put us on the road to war.

What terrifies AIPAC and Bibi is not an American war on Iran, but an American rapprochement with Iran.

Who are the leaders of the push for S.1881? Sens. Mark Kirk and Robert Menendez, the biggest recipients of AIPAC campaign cash.

Last weekend, the Obama National Security Council finally belled the cat with a blunt statement by spokesperson Bernadette Meehan:

“If certain members of Congress want the United States to take military action [against Iran], they should be up front with the American public and say so.”

Exactly. For whether or not all these senators understand what they are doing, this is where their bill points — to a scuttling of the Geneva talks and a return to the sanctions road, at the end of which lies a U.S. war with Iran.

A majority of Democratic senators have thus far bravely bucked AIPAC and declined to co-sponsor S.1881. However, all but two Republican senators have signed on.

If, after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the GOP has once again caught the war fever, the party should be quarantined from the White House for another four years.

Press Secretary Jay Carney says that if S.1881 passes, Obama will veto it. The president should tell Congress that not only will he veto it, but that if Israel decides on its own to attack Iran, Israel will be on its own in the subsequent war.

Obama should order U.S. intelligence to tell us the truth.

Is Iran truly hell-bent on acquiring a nuclear bomb? Does Iran have a nuclear bomb program? If so, when did Tehran make that decision?

Or are we being lied into war again?