Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September-October 2002, pages 12-14

Two Views

Why the Push to Attack Iraq?

Israel’s Last Tango in Washington: Will the U.S. Attack Iraq?

By Andrew I. Killgore

“Looming above all other causes of alienation from America…was…the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American unilateralism.”

—Clyde Prestowitz, The Washington Post, July 7, 2002.

“Israel should have exploited the suppression of the [Tiananmen Square] demonstrations in China, when the world’s attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.” —Deputy Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in 1989, as quoted by Alexander Cockburn in The Nation, Jan. 8-15, 1990.

“If the Jewish people would make an effort…we would not have any problem bringing another million Jews here.”

—Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, AFP item in Saudi Gazette, April 28, 2001.

“Every American thought…that Israel cannot remain in the territories.”

– Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal after meeting with President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Bush domestic adviser Andrew Card, The Washington Post, July 19, 2002.

In 1948-1949 Israel expelled 750,000 to 800,000 Palestinians from their homes. In 1967 Israeli troops forced out another 300,000. Since 1967, up to 400,000 Israelis have been planted in the occupied Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip. Binyamin Netanyahu, quoted above, made explicit Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” policy: empty Palestine of Palestinians.

Brute Israeli military force has now put all of Palestine under Israel’s physical control. However, the current situation is deeply troubling to the country’s fanatical Likudist leaders. Every brutality and indignity that Israel can heap on the Palestinians has not budged them from their land or from their drive to increase their numbers.

Israel’s uniquely opaque immigration/emigration statistics conceal from the world and from Israel’s own people that the Palestinian population in the old British Mandate of Palestine (Israel proper, the West Bank and Gaza) now exceeds that of the resident Jewish population (more than one million Israelis are believed to live in America).

A dramatic new initiative to rescue the situation for Israel has been to provoke an American war on Iraq.

The cost of Israel’s brutalization policy is proving to be prohibitively high in manpower and in money. Israel seeks to conceal the truth, but the Israel-leaning Washington Post recently reported the reality as seen at Tel Aviv’s foreign embassies. In scenes reminiscent of the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire, long lines of Israelis seeking visas were gathered at the American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand embassies. The reporter in Tel Aviv was surprised to see lines at the Czech and Polish embassies, as well. A German Embassy spokeswoman said there were 75,000 nationals of Germany already living in Israel, and that the number of Israelis applying at the embassy to ascertain/assure their German nationality status was so great that daily restrictions of those wanting to apply had had to be imposed.

As the above quotes by Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon demonstrate, Israel’s Likudist government fears that it is losing the Jewish/Palestinian demographic race. The country’s many think tanks have not yet worked out a formula for brutalization: what “x” number of Israelis is required to brutally repress “y” number of Palestinians? Nevertheless, it is clear that Israel cannot sustain the present balance.

After the al-Aqsa intifada broke out in September 2000, Prime Minister Sharon announced that he would crush the uprising within 100 days. Since the beginning of the intifada the Palestinians have inflicted on Israel one death for every three deaths that they suffered. Sharon can see no indication that the Palestinians will ever give up. He cannot but admit to himself that his policy of brutality has failed.

Sharon’s nightmare and that of America’s slavishly loyal Israel-first cabal is that the American people will see through the lame “they-hate-us-because-we’re-rich” lie, that they will “connect the dots” and see the link between a despised U.S. Middle East policy and the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

A dramatic new initiative to rescue the situation for Israel has been to provoke an American war on Iraq. The desperate attempt by Israel and its fellow travelers to con the U.S. into attacking Iraq is the only possible explanation for the unprecedented avalanche of hate-the-Arabs-and-Muslims-and-especially-Saddam Hussain ads, and for the frenzied op-ed meisters’ drive to perpetrate myths that American wealth causes Arab-Muslim animus toward the U.S.

The stars, however, are stubbornly refusing to line up for Israel. (See executive editor Richard Curtiss’s article on American opinion polls, p. 11.)

Sharon and his brazenly anti-American Zionists in this country realize that time may be running out for them. They see that world public opinion is alienated from the U.S. because of Israel. Clyde Prestowitz, quoted above (and reprinted in its entirety in this issue’s “Other Voices”), found this out during six weeks visiting 14 Asian, European and Latin American capitals.

If Prestowitz’s findings were not distressing enough for Sharon and his U.S. cohorts, the statement by Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal (quoted above) that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, National Security Advisor Rice and domestic adviser Andrew Card agree that Israel cannot remain in the [Palestinian] territories must have been shocking in the extreme. Sharon and his American cabalists could not but note that the White House had not issued a denial, or even a clarification.

The fact that the Oval Office meeting to which Prince Saud referred had also been attended by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher strengthened the credibility of Prince Saud’s statements.

The only way out was to con Washington into a war against Iraq, in the chaos of which Israel would try to expel two million Palestinians from the West Bank. A battle of titans for control of U.S. Middle East policy is now joined. The Israel-first cabal centered in the Pentagon—described as “civilians” by The Washington Post—includes notorious Israel-firsters Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Pentagon number three Douglas Feith, and non-government employee Defense Policy Board director Richard Perle (a.k.a. the Black Prince).

In spite of their views on Israeli settlements as described by Saud al-Faisal, Cheney and Rice generally are known as “attack-Iraqers” around Washington. Furiously beating the drums of war are noisomely pro-Israel New York Times and Washington Post op-ed meisters—called “windbags of war” by the Los Angeles Times—and the usual suspects throughout the American media.

Leading the anti-war forces in the United States are the military brass at the Pentagon and the indispensable secretary of state. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) is a welcome new addition, and Senators Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Joseph Biden (D-DE) are raising skeptical questions on the talk shows.

Although few of them carry any brief for Saddam Hussain, the Arab and Muslim worlds are adamantly opposed to a U.S. war of aggression against Iraq. The European Union and NATO are opposed. Only Britain’s Tony Blair seems to be going along—but the British media are unrelenting in attacking him for his stand.

The early August hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Senator Biden, on a war-on-Iraq scenario, asked some searching questions, to which there were no answers—or, at best, lame answers. How many American troops will be required, how much will it cost, how long would it take and what would the repercussions be in the Middle East? Only the miserable Richard Butler, Australian former chief arms inspector in Iraq, was really gung ho for war.

So U.S. Middle East policy has reached a crunch stage. If Israel cannot force the U.S. into attacking Iraq, it will have lost its war against the Palestinians. The brazen Israel lobby will have to go back underground and look for new ways to subvert America. Finally, it is up to President George W. Bush and the American people.

And the people are wise.

Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

War Party Takes on Iraq in Order to Stall Israel-Palestine Peace Talks

By Richard H. Curtiss

The Biden-Lugar Senate hearings held Aug. 1 and 2 turned out to be a landmark in public debate in the United States. The event was comparable to the hearings in 1990 prior to assembling the coalition forces that began the war to oust Iraq from Kuwait.

Once again, members of the United States Congress had a full and fair debate, which will probably end in an up-or-down vote from which no member of Congress would dare escape. This August, during the annual congressional recess, senators and representatives will have had an opportunity to listen to their constituents before calling for a vote.

Following the 1990 Senate debate, it was clear that the die was cast to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Iraqi President Saddam Hussain’s last-ditch maneuver that year to stall or delay the battle came too late. This time, however, Saddam already seems to have called for the United Nations Security Council’s newly appointed weapons inspectors to re-enter Iraq after an absence of four years. He also has invited members of Congress to inspect suspected weapons sites of their own choice. To date, however, that invitation has not been accepted.

The world will be relieved if Saddam Hussain accepts the inspectors’ return. There is little time left to delay, however, or, once again, it will be too late to avoid a war.

The fact is that, because he does not want to deal with the Israel lobby, President George W. Bush is looking for a war. He tried to inveigle Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon into peace negotiations. Sharon totally ignored Bush’s gesture and has taken increasingly belligerent actions to forestall real peace negotiations of any kind.

Instead of making it clear that there would be no more money from U.S. taxpayers for Sharon’s war against the Palestinians until peace negotiations were under way, Bush simply ignored the subject. Although there still is a very outside chance that Bush will stick to his guns, more and more it seems that the Israel lobby will have its way and Sharon’s war will continue for at least another year. If that is indeed the case, Bush may feel he needs to start another war quickly, in order to cover up his failure of nerve.

Thus the Pentagon hawks’ war party, looking for red meat in the form of Iraq, is well under way. The people who have touted the war thus far are a small but powerful minority. They are Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel to the Pentagon; and Douglas Feith, Department of Defense Undersecretary of Policy. Vice President Richard Cheney also is a member of the war party, and possibly Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, as well.

Because he does not want to deal with the Israel lobby, President George W. Bush is looking for a war.

On the other side are a large number of Pentagon career officials still on active duty. Along with them are many State Department members and, of course, Secretary of State Colin Powell. Intriguingly, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice seems unwilling to speak up on the matter—which seems to have become her trademark. She appears to be a Bush loyalist who merely provides the intellectual input to make Bush’s own somewhat incoherent thoughts more polished.

A heavyweight in favor of dealing with the war on terrorism and calming the battle between the Israelis and Palestinians before moving on to other problems such as Saddam Hussain is retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft, chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Although Wolfowitz and Perle get the publicity, thanks to the well-honed Israel lobby, Scowcroft has much more intellectual weight and experience than the Wolfowitz-Perle cabal.

Should the Iraqi president stop bargaining, the debate could end just as suddenly as it began. Even if Hussain decides to tough it out as he did in 1990, however, the war party still will have to prove its case.

Other than Israel, there are no obvious U.S. allies with whom the war party can take cover. As it stands, it seems unlikely that any of the 22 Arab League members will join in the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Wolfowitz-Perle-Feith crusade—meaning there will be no Middle East bases from which to launch a U.S. attack. Although the crusaders seem to imply that there will be some defectors from the Arab League countries, the answer almost certainly will be a big fat zero.

Turkey might be induced to support the U.S. war party. That would create many problems within the country itself, however, given the unstable situation with the Kurds and Turkey’s serious internal political and economic crises. It is unlikely, moreover, that Ankara would do anything to imperil its European Union ambitions. This writer believes that Turkey eventually will opt out of any such coalition. The United States would then be all alone—except, of course, for Israel.

There are other formidable objections to be overcome by the war party. Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf allies paid 80 percent of the Gulf war expenses. The United States and other Western countries had to come up with only 20 percent. This time, however, the U.S. would have to provide virtually all the bankrolling.

In the Senate debate, there were many intangibles to the cost of sustaining a war against Iraq, so that estimates are very hard to gauge. The “nation-building” phase of post-attack Iraq might be relatively limited if the U.S. got some serious support in the three territories that constitute Iraq—the Kurds in the north, the Sunni in central Iraq and the Shi’i in the south. On the other hand, it might turn out that these areas will fall into violent quarrels taking many years to pacify. One of the problems is that, to date, Iraqi opposition groups have not jelled into a viable force. Nor is it clear when that might happen.

There is still much work to be done. One thing is certain, however: if Washington tries to speed up all this preparatory work just to find an excuse to avoid dealing with the Israel lobby, there will be nothing but confusion.

It is possible that, if Saddam Hussain hangs tough, the inevitable momentum of war will take its course. In this writer’s opinion, however, that seems unlikely at the moment, given all the reasons to postpone rather than rush into a hastily conceived war with no serious preparations, fall-back strategies or alliances. If sanity prevails, the Saddam Hussain problem probably will have to wait for another time, given the lack of U.S. allies.

For Ariel Sharon, the Afghanistan war was a windfall, because it delayed making peace with Palestine. Now the attempt to speed up a confrontation with Iraq once again provides an excuse for deferring the Palestine problem.

No doubt George W. Bush will have to look again for another war in lieu of dealing with the Israel lobby, which Bush so desperately wants to avoid. But the Israel lobby will not go away. The only thing that will bring a halt to the endless succession of one disaster after another is to stop the money flow that Sharon needs to keep his war going.

Richard Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.