Obama’s Brave New World
July 18, 2008
Ray McGovern on The Real News: Is Obama realistic about pulling troops out of Iraq and will he face up to ‘big oil’?
Pepe Escobar on Obama’s speech on Iraq and Afghanistan
Obama, McCain Allergic to New Iraq Reality
You say you expected more rhetoric than reality from Senators Obama and McCain yesterday in their speeches on Iraq and Afghanistan? Well, that’s certainly what you got.
What I find nonetheless amazing is how they, and the pundits, have taken such little notice of the dramatic change in the political landscape occasioned by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s bombshell on July 7 — his insistence on a “timetable” for withdrawal of US troops before any accord is reached on their staying past the turn of the year.
Responding to a question at his press conference yesterday, President George W. Bush showed that he was vaguely aware that the timetable is, as Robert Dreyfuss says (in Truthout, July 7), a “big deal.” Bush even alluded haltingly to the possibility of extending the UN mandate still further.
But it is far from clear that Maliki, who is under great domestic pressure, would be able to sell that to the various factions upon which he depends for support, much less to those which he must keep at bay. As Dreyfuss points out, Maliki and his Shiite allies are also under considerable pressure from Iran, which remains the chief ally of the ruling alliance of Shiites. Most important, Maliki is by no means in control of what happens next.
Israel
Here’s where it gets sticky. No one who knows about third rails in US politics would expect the candidates or the fawning corporate media (FCM) to address how those now running Israel are likely to be looking at the implications of a large US troop withdrawal from Iraq next year.
I am remembering how I was pilloried on June 16, 2005, immediately after Congressman John Conyers’ rump-Judiciary Committee hearing in the bowels of the Capitol, for a candid answer to a question from one of his colleagues; i. e., if the invasion of Iraq was not about WMD, and not about non-existent ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, then why did we attack?
In answer, I used the acronym OIL. O for oil; I for Israel; and L for Logistics, meaning the military bases deemed by neoconservatives as necessary to protect both. Neither the House members present nor the media people seemed to have any problem with oil and military bases as factors-in itself an interesting commentary.
However, the suggestion that one main motive was an attempt to make that part of the Middle East safer for Israel (yes, folks, the neocons really thought that attacking Iraq would do that) — well, that was anathema.
As it is anathema today to suggest that this is still one of the main reasons, besides oil, that Elliott Abrams, other neocons — not to mention Vice President Dick Cheney and his team — insist we must stay, Maliki and his associates be damned. (See the cartoon in the Washington Times today showing Maliki and words telling him “We are NOT leaving.”)
Here in Washington we can sit back and quibble over the implications of such remarks by Maliki and other Iraqi leaders. The Israelis have to take such statements seriously. No agreement on US forces staying into 2009 without a timetable for withdrawal? For Tel Aviv, this is getting very serious.
My guess is the Israeli leaders are apoplectic. The fiasco in Iraq clearly has made the region much more dangerous for Israel. There are actually real “terrorists” and “extremists” now in Iraq, and the prospect of US troops leaving has got to be a cause of acute concern in Tel Aviv.
Keeping the US Entangled: Iran
This dramatic change — or even just the specter of it — greatly increases Israel’s incentive to ensure the kind of US involvement in the area that would have to endure for several years. The Israelis need to create “facts on the ground” — something to guarantee that Washington will stand by what U.S. candidates, including Sen. Obama, call “our ally.” (Never mind that there is no mutual US-Israel defense treaty.) Israel is all too painfully aware that it has only six more months of Bush and Cheney.
The legislation drafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) being so zealously promoted in Congress calls for the equivalent of a blockade of Iran. That would be one way to entangle; there are many others.
The point is that the growing danger that the Israelis perceive will probably prompt them to find a way to get the US involved in hostilities with Iran. Cheney and Bush have pretty much given them that license, with the president regularly pledging to defend “our ally” if Israel is attacked.
All Israel has to do is to arrange to be attacked. Not a problem.
There are endless possibilities among which Israel can choose to catalyze such a confrontation — with or without a wink and a nod from Cheney and Abrams. The so-called “amber light” said to have been given to the Israelis is, I believe, already seen as quite sufficient; they are not likely to feel a need to wait until it turns green.
So far, the resistance of U.S. senior military has been the only real obstacle to the madness of hostilities with Iran. (And one need only read Scott Ritter’s article on Truthdig this week to get a sense for why they would be chary.)
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, has been described as warning the Israelis that a “Third Front” in the Middle East would be a disaster. I think, rather, he was trying to warn anyone who might listen in Washington, including until now tone-deaf lawmakers.
Even if the pundits are correct in suggesting that Mullen is joined by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in trying to resist the neocons and Cheney, Mullen’s tone at his press conference two weeks ago suggested he is fighting a rear guard action-against the “crazies” in the White House, as well as those in Tel Aviv. And when is the last time the crazies lost a political battle with such implications for Israel?
Mullen had just returned from Tel Aviv. He appreciates better than most the fecklessness of endless speculation over whether Israel or the U.S. might strike Iran first. Even if the Israeli leaders have no explicit assurances from the White House, they almost certainly calculate that, once a casus belli is established, their friends in Washington — and the troops they command — are likely to be committed to the fray big time.
Seatbelts Please…
Viewed from Tel Aviv it appears an increasingly threatening situation, with more urgent need to “embed” (so to speak) the United States even more deeply in the region — in a confrontation involving both countries with Iran.
A perfect storm is brewing:
– Petraeus ex Machina, with a record of doing Vice President Dick Cheney’s bidding, takes command of CENTCOM in September;
– Sen. McCain’s numbers are likely to be in the toilet at that point (because of the economy as much as anything else);
– McCain will be seen by the White House as the only candidate with something to gain by a wider war (just as by another “terrorist incident”);
– The Bush/Cheney months will be down to three;
– And Maliki will not be able to cave in to Washington on the timeline requirement he has publicly set.
In sum, Israel is likely to be preparing a September/October surprise designed to keep the US bogged down in Iraq and in the wider region by provoking hostilities with Iran. And don’t be surprised if it starts as early as August. Israel’s leaders may well plead for understanding on the part of those U.S. officials not tipped off in advance, claiming that they could not distinguish amber from green with their night-vision goggles on.
Would they hesitate? Please tell me who…just who is likely to turn on the siren, pull them over, and even think of giving them a summons-once the patrol car computer confirms their privileged licenses?
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. A former Army intelligence officer and CIA analyst, he is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
A shorter version of this article appeared first on Consortiumnews.com.
Pepe Escobar states that Obama is “more sensible”. Is doubling military spending not more insane than Buh or McCain?
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Pepe Escobar accepts as given that the US “needs to fix the fierce independence of the border regions”. So much for the sovereignty of Pakistan.
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McGovern claims that Cheney stated: “You have to cntrol the oil in Iraq”. Can anybody verify this claim??? or i Ray makingup history to fit his notion of “war for oil”?
He goes on to claim: “I don’t think the oil companies are in the driver’s seat anymore”, inferring that it is beyond question that they once were.
Atheo, I think McGovern is not really on board with the war for oil idea. He was responding to the leading question of the interviewer.
I agree with you re Obama: I think most on the left are resigned to anybody-but-a-republican scenario, so they try to allay their disappointments by seeing the glass as 1% full.
[...] Idrees at http://fanonite.org/2008/07/18/obamas-new-worl/ points out this could raise alarm bells in Israel. With a hardened population in Iraq largely in [...]
The idea that the Cheney cabal has control of oil as a key US foreign policy goal is hardly a revelation.
People forget that the wily old buzzard was caught red-handed with a map dating from long before the US invasion.The map was forcibly divulged against the express wishes of the White House by US Commerce officials investigating Cheney’s Energy Task Force Project.
The old oil vampire’s map featured Iraqi oilfields,pipelines,refineries and terminals.Two charts were inc.in those released by the investigators that detailed Iraqi oil and gas projects as well as a file called “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts”.These suitors were named as China,Russia and those French “surrender monkeys” all of whom went on to oppose US plans for the invasion of Iraq at the UN Security Council.
The contracts with these suitors needless to say were nullified immediately in the wake of the US take-over.
Nick Turse at truthout has the details of the close ties between Hunt Oil and the Pentagon’s war and occupation plans.These ties will certainly not be curtailed on Obama’s watch.
On Obama’s backers the new Webster Tarpley book is a must-read.It will shatter any illusions soft leftists might have about his commitment to all that “Change We Can Believe In” horsecrap!
Cheney cabal has control of oil as a key US foreign policy goal
And what was preventing such control? Saddam Hussein?
Not yet, as of the late 90s. But US economic power was already on the wane, hence the whole PNAC doctrine. As indirect/economic imperialism looked set to falter, the case for direct/military imperialism began to seem – at least to some elements of the ruling class – more urgent.
That’s not to say the Israel lobby doesn’t have influence, that it isn’t close to the heart of this tendency. But that’s not the whole story; you could just as easily have asked “And what was preventing Israel’s hegemony in the Middle East? Saddam Hussein?“
No one has claimed Israel lobby is the only factor. Israel lobby is successful precisely because it exploits existing tendencies.
Saddam preventing US access to Iraqi oil?
Er,yes that does seem to have been the case.
From an Anglo-US perspective the Middle East does have an appalling tendency to throw up leaders who are reluctant to allow their country’s oil to fall under foreign control.
Clearly Cheney’s avowed intention was that the US use the huge military arsenal at its disposal to seize state-controlled Iraqi oil and put it under corporate US control.
Nothing original there nor was there much innovative thinking behind the Bremer Chicago school shock-therapy to which Iraq was subjected in the invasion’s aftermath.
The events instigated by the Cheney cabal fall into what most analysts see as a rather familiar pattern.
There is nothing unique about what happened to Iraq.US elites determined that they had a far better chance of looting Iraq’s oil if they installed a client regime in Baghdad.In Kurdistan Hunt Oil has been allowed to sign illegal contracts anyway.
Working out that the US may have made a huge strategic error in seeking to effect these plans in the region is not rocket science either!
It won’t be the first nor will it be the last time that powerful and greedy elites make huge strategic blunders of this sort.
If Maliki proves just as recalcitrant as Saddam and cannot deliver the oil laws required by the US someone else will be found that,for the time being, will.
Amen.
Nonsense Freeborn. Oil exporters are utterly dependent on selling oil and they don’t contol global markets. There never was any Iraqi disruption of pouuction until the invasion. By contrast, yes, Saddam Hussein was a barrier to Eretz Israel.
[...] 19, 2008 Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern discusses his recent article on the probable Israeli/U.S. attack on Iran, Israel’s need for new war in Iran to keep the U.S. [...]
There seems to be a basic misconception re-the oil-supply chain in your analysis.
Producers and exporters are dependent on the means afforded them by corporate oil.Distribution via supertankers,control of sea-lanes and choke-points are advantages few of them enjoy in their own right.
You are welcome to your rather obscure,not to say anti-semitic conspiracy theories,re-the Israeli Lobby controlling US foreign policy,but most of us know a cop-out when we see one.
With or without Israel’s encouragement the US behemoth will continue to bestride the globe clumsily grabbing energy resources while it has free rein to do so.
Blaming their Banana Republic allies is a pretty pathetic means of absolving the cruel and greedy US elites who have made such a ham-fisted grab at controlling Eurasian energy resources.These elites have blundered blithely on without any need whatever for assistance from their even more disaster-prone Israeli allies.
It is sad that critics of US foreign policy and of imperialism generally should be wasting time arguing about the exact US order of priorities is when it attacks weaker nations.
Whether it’s the US will to control world energy resources and in particular access to them by competitors,or AIPAC subversion of US policy-making is far less important than our collective determination to form analyses that resist the threat to peace posed by the US and its NATO allies.
Pretending that demonstrable control of world oil is not a key facet of the US will to full spectrum dominance serves no useful purpose whatever.
That is unless we on the left want to prove just how poorly equipped we are to confront the current imperialist agenda that veils itself under the cover of “humanitarian intervention”,the “war on terror” and false-flag terrorism.
You are welcome to your rather obscure,not to say anti-semitic conspiracy theories,re-the Israeli Lobby controlling US foreign policy,but most of us know a cop-out when we see one.
Is that the whimper of an argument lost? I didn’t realize we had Abe Foxman in the house. And talk of ‘conpiracy theories’ is kind of rich coming from someone who believes the Shah of Iran was a great modernizer undercut by agent of global capital, the Ayatullah Khomeini.
This is what has turned the Euro-American Left into a joke — it won’t allow reality to stand in the way of received wisdom. The whole debate is superfluous from point 1.
Saddam preventing US access to Iraqi oil?
Er,yes that does seem to have been the case.
Not if you had been paying any attention to facts. Through at least two different conduits in 2002 Saddam made the offer to hand over control of Iraqi oil to the US. And more importantly, there are no oil men in the Bush 43 administration. There were plenty in Bush 41. And guess what they made of the idea of this war?
Blaming their Banana Republic allies is a pretty pathetic means of absolving the cruel and greedy US elites who have made such a ham-fisted grab at controlling Eurasian energy resources.These elites have blundered blithely on without any need whatever for assistance from their even more disaster-prone Israeli allies.
There’s dogma talking again. Who is the US elite? Is it something separate from the lobby? Do they have unified interests? If so, what explains the likes of Brzezinski, Baker and Scowcroft opposing the war? Who is pushing for war against Iran? Is that about oil? If so, why is Big Oil not keen? Why is Big Business not keen? Why is Fortune 500 opposed to the idea? Is it because they are not sufficiently elite?
Whether it’s the US will to control world energy resources and in particular access to them by competitors,or AIPAC subversion of US policy-making is far less important than our collective determination to form analyses that resist the threat to peace posed by the US and its NATO allies.
If the previous was dogma, then this is bullshit. So we must overlook the agents of this or that policy, and instead speak in vague generalities? We should address abstract concepts? End of Vietnam had brought detente, whence the revival of militarism anyway?
Pretending that demonstrable control of world oil is not a key facet of the US will to full spectrum dominance serves no useful purpose whatever.
I like the way you sneak in ‘demonstrable’. US controlled oil without having to ‘demonstrate’ it. This condition appears more a figment of the euro-US left’s imagination than of dick cheney’s.
That is unless we on the left want to prove just how poorly equipped we are to confront the current imperialist agenda…
But you are, and it requires no proof. Is it not ironic that the next war has actually been prevented by the CIA and the military brass, rather than the vacuous sloganeering of the left which is still prospecting for an oil motive to explain the next crisis.
Who the hell is Abe Foxman?
Don’t tell me he’s the guy before whom all in the White House quail prior to the launching of their next wholly disinterested attack on a predesignated Israeli target!
And we were already aware of the fact that you have swallowed wholesale the official US history of the so-called “peoples revolution in Iran”.
I know some might consider it a little late,even a little posthumous even,but maybe official US historians could enlist your assistance in the small matter of giving the said revolution some designated colour?
You know like the orange..or was it saffron ones they encouraged in the former Soviet republics!
Let’s see….yea,black was a favourite colour at the time.And I’m told that the mullahs who control the administration still like that particular colour.
So Saddam offered the US control of Iraqi oil did he? Well without any WMDs to defend his precious mineral resource the option of a quiet life in Saudi or was it Israel perhaps (I mean they need oil too don’t they)must have held some appeal for him.
Had Saddam’s offer been accepted by the US it would certainly have precluded the need for any “shock and awe attack”on Baghdad.Now,correct me if I’m wrong but-they weren’t going to pass up that opportunity were they!
There’s also the small matter of the said Saddam having worked for the CIA to consider.Or was that another one of those horrid “conspiracy theories” we on the left shouldn’t talk about anymore?
Saddam being given the option of going to an Israeli..sorry, Greek tabloid and spilling the beans did not evidently appeal to his former US handlers.
Still Noriega was never given that option either.In fact,as I remember it Bush snr. bombed 2000 Panamanian civilians to death rather than allow that option to fall into Noriega’s hands didn’t he?
Now that’s what I call pissing on the fireworks!
Saddam in anonymous and comfortable exile courtesy of the US is not quite what makes a good propaganda film,is it?
Anyway the question as to whether Saddam was ready to sell up his country has a pretty obvious answer doesn’t it? A former US client ready to vacate the premises when his sponsors call time is not too difficult for any of us to get our heads around,is it?
On oil specifically,the idea that the corporations foresaw the interruption to supplies that would result from a preemptive attack on Iraq is a nice bit of PR that has an obvious appeal to frustrated finance capitalists who would like to make hay while under the sunshine afforded by the benefit of
hindsight.
It cuts very little ice,however with anyone on the left who still has any understanding of the concept of corporate greed!
Who is the US elite? It must be a bit embarrassing for you to have to ask but it is surely acknowledged by anyone who pretends to know about US geopolitical strategy that it is the group that above all others who have used their pre-eminence and the huge military advantages at their disposal to make vast profits at the expense of smaller nations.
You’re right in thinking that “Zbig” Brzezinski is a key player.It is he who after all instigated the US Arc of Crisis strategy in Afghanistan and across Eurasia of which we speak.But it’s pretty convenient now that he is masterminding Obama’s drive for the Presidency for him to distance himself from the disaster that has transpired in Iraq.
As in the case of your swallowing the official US version of what happened in Iran in 1979 you seem to have gulped down the elites’ protestations of innocence over Iraq in equal measure.
Baker,Scowcroft and Zbig might have had misgivings at the time.After all,they had like Cheney abjured from pressing on into Iraq in 1991.
Had US forces subdued Afghanistan and Iraq Zbig,Big Oil and big business would not now be lambasting a failed strategy.Nor would they be currently sponsoring the next big thing-Obamamania!
Maybe they’re probably right in thinking there are a few people on the left who’ll fall for that one too!
It seems that all we on the left have got to look forward to now that we can’t put anyone on the streets anymore is the CIA and the military brass to stop the next war!
Well love a duck! Fanon,Marx and Sartre were all decidedly more inspirational than this!
Who the hell is Abe Foxman?
Abe Foxman is the fellow above who thinks he can compensate for a lost argument by hurling charges of antisemitism at people.
And we were already aware of the fact that you have swallowed wholesale the official US history of the so-called “peoples revolution in Iran”.
Indeed I have. Gullible me.
I know some might consider it a little late,even a little posthumous even,but maybe official US historians could enlist your assistance in the small matter of giving the said revolution some designated colour?
You know like the orange..or was it saffron ones they encouraged in the former Soviet republics!
Let’s see….yea,black was a favourite colour at the time.And I’m told that the mullahs who control the administration still like that particular colour.
You are right, they do. As have all Shia mullahs for the past 14 centuries. That American conspiracy sure dates a long way back.
So Saddam offered the US control of Iraqi oil did he? Well without any WMDs to defend his precious mineral resource the option of a quiet life in Saudi or was it Israel perhaps (I mean they need oil too don’t they)must have held some appeal for him.
Had Saddam’s offer been accepted by the US it would certainly have precluded the need for any “shock and awe attack”on Baghdad.Now,correct me if I’m wrong but-they weren’t going to pass up that opportunity were they!
I am glad you agree that the war had nothing to do with oil.
There’s also the small matter of the said Saddam having worked for the CIA to consider.Or was that another one of those horrid “conspiracy theories” we on the left shouldn’t talk about anymore?
Saddam being given the option of going to an Israeli..sorry, Greek tabloid and spilling the beans did not evidently appeal to his former US handlers.
So let me get this right. Saddam was a CIA agent. Yet he was somehow a barrier to US control of oil. But since he was willing to part with that oil, he was barrier to shock and awe. And in the end the war was all about the fear of Greek tabloids giving US a bad name, by revealing such unknown details as him having receiving weaponry, germs, gas, and sattelite imagery in the past? Now that would have been a true revelation, wouldn’t it?
Saddam in anonymous and comfortable exile courtesy of the US is not quite what makes a good propaganda film,is it?
No. Abu Ghraib and Fallujah do.
On oil specifically,the idea that the corporations foresaw the interruption to supplies that would result from a preemptive attack on Iraq is a nice bit of PR that has an obvious appeal to frustrated finance capitalists who would like to make hay while under the sunshine afforded by the benefit of
hindsight.
It cuts very little ice,however with anyone on the left who still has any understanding of the concept of corporate greed!
Yeah, the left seems to have a very good understanding of everything except facts. I have gone through everything from Klein to Klare, and I have yet to come across any evidence of the oil industry lobbying for war. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary. But that is besides the point. It must take a real effort of will to ignore the mountains of evidence showing neocons executing plans dating back to at least 1996 (and in the case of Wolfowitz ’79) while in office.
Who is the US elite? It must be a bit embarrassing for you to have to ask but it is surely acknowledged by anyone who pretends to know about US geopolitical strategy that it is the group that above all others who have used their pre-eminence and the huge military advantages at their disposal to make vast profits at the expense of smaller nations.
I didn’t ask WHAT the elites are. I asked WHO?
You’re right in thinking that “Zbig” Brzezinski is a key player.It is he who after all instigated the US Arc of Crisis strategy in Afghanistan and across Eurasia of which we speak.But it’s pretty convenient now that he is masterminding Obama’s drive for the Presidency for him to distance himself from the disaster that has transpired in Iraq.
He opposed the policy vocally in 2002. Obama was not even in the senate at the time. And he isn’t even the advisor any more. Obama has distanced himself under Israel lobby pressure.
Baker,Scowcroft and Zbig might have had misgivings at the time.After all,they had like Cheney abjured from pressing on into Iraq in 1991.
But unlike Cheney they opposed the war. It is a minor difference of 1.2m Iraqi lives.
Had US forces subdued Afghanistan and Iraq Zbig,Big Oil and big business would not now be lambasting a failed strategy.Nor would they be currently sponsoring the next big thing-Obamamania!
No one said they opposed it because they are nice guys. They opposed it precisely because it wouldn’t work. Their motives are irrelevant. Not so the consequences.
Maybe they’re probably right in thinking there are a few people on the left who’ll fall for that one too!
So the left can go and hold a candle-light vigil? Or march down Pennsylvania avenue?
I like your optimism though for thinking that someone would give the left enough of a thought to want to pander to it.
It seems that all we on the left have got to look forward to now that we can’t put anyone on the streets anymore is the CIA and the military brass to stop the next war!
Twich a year weekend marches and cute slogans never stopped wars. From Vietnam to Lebanon, it is the resistance that did, as it will in Iraq. The CIA and military brass are helpful because they are far more realistic about their prospects than politicians.
The theory propounded currently re-the primacy of the Israeli Lobby,vis a vis all other geo-srategic motivating factors in US foreign policy,rests rather too heavily on the denials and disavowals of Big Oil elites to say the least doesn’t it?
Forty years on from Woodstock and evidently the liberal left has saddled itself with yet another elite-driven conspiracy theory!
Surprise,surprise this theory actually absolves the main players of culpability for the carnage and chaos which their imperialistic hubris has created across the region on to which they chose to project their avaricious imperialistic designs.
The world in which finance capital and oil meet is a rather nasty and brutish one.It certainly ill behoves analysts who recognise the necessity for resistance to elite geo-strategic ambitions to take their disavowals at all seriously.Critics of US foreign policy over the decades have not prospered when they have been ready to buy into the type of accessible academic elitism on offer.
Big US oil interests would certainly not like to be reminded that during the US military involvement in SE Asia they proferred the prospect of finding oil in SE Asia ad infinitum long after the likelihood,at least so far as US prospectors were concerned,had proved somewhat remote.
Looking for those responsible for failed policies in the oil boardroom is a bit like trying to find anyone who voted for Margaret Thatcher after 1979!
Big oil follows armies,drills first and asks questions later.
Meirsheimer and Walt are less radically subversive than they would have those who give credence to their ideas believe.Those who subscribe to the theory that the Israeli Lobby should be ascribed such a pre-eminent role in US imperialist aggression need to ask themselves just one question:
Do I feel lucky?
Wall St.bankers and elite US industrialists never told anyone that they had invested heavily in the Soviet Union in the inter-war period.Rather they led the credulous masses to believe that such investment would be anathema to US corporate interests and all right-thinking patriots.
Nor did they tell us that US weaponry was still being supplied to the Soviets and turned on US soldiers via the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam decades later.
Ultimately “feeling lucky” about taking what US elites tell us about their “honourable” intentions never was wholly advisable.
So typical of the establishment left. Speak in vague generalities in order to avoid inconvenient facts that might undermine dogma. Analysing vague concepts instead of tangible power also relieves one from the responsibility of confronting it.
I notice that you sidestepped all the points raised in my earlier post?
The vague generalities that form the basis of the abjectly ahistorical theory that Israeli Lobby infiltration of US elites was the preeminent reason for the Anglo-US attack on Iraq have evidently not precluded them from being swallowed wholesale by some analysts.
Elite-driven conspiracy theories such as this one which conveniently for the powerful elite groups they supposedly indict actually absolve them and fail abjectly to bring them to account have a long pedigree.
Such officially sanctioned explanations for US foreign policy seem over the years to have gathered an unstoppable momentum but in reality they do not bear much scrutiny.
From the casus belli for US intervention in WW2 in 1941,on the Korean peninsula eight years later and on to the Vietnam debacle through 1973-official historians have proved remarkably susceptible to elite protestations of innocence and noble intention.
The Israeli Lobby cop-out is yet another in a long line of elite attempts to camouflage the naked aggression,avarice and cynicism that has been the real bedrock of the motivation behind its interventions abroad.
Typically for the elites who sponsor the official histories in the case of the Meirsheimer theory they also can absolve themselves by claiming they were merely dupes of their cunning Israeli allies and that their critics are anti-semites to boot!
US elites began their foreign adventures in the Far East and China during the nineteenth century when they became addicted to the profits afforded them by the Golden Triangle drug trade.Bizarrely by the middle of the twentieth century their addiction led them to back Chiang Kai Shek to such an extent that they were prepared to use the threat of nuclear anihilation against China over Taiwan.
The narco-traffic was seductive enough to elicit US intervention in SE Asia during the next decade.The various client-juntas the US sponsored in S Vietnam were all thoroughly dependent on the traffic.
The various noble causes the US has been allowed to ascribe to itself as the motivation for their interventions in all the aforementioned cases are like the Israeli Lobby cop-out theory merely officially sponsored disinformation that helps disguise the thoroughly avaricious and cynical motives that really drove them.
To date the Maliki regime in Iraq like its US client forebears elsewhere is a peculiarly US creation that remains inconveniently for the Lobby theory peculiarly intransigent to long-term US and Israeli strategic goals.
“To date the Maliki regime in Iraq like its US client forebears elsewhere is a peculiarly US creation that remains inconveniently for the Lobby theory peculiarly intransigent to long-term US and Israeli strategic goals.”
If this is the case why are the Military under the control of Maliki doing joint Military operations with the occupying US Army.
And do you regard the Regimes of Egypt;Jordan and Saudi Arabia as INTRANSIGENT to long-term US and Israeli strategic goals.
If the history of occupations provides any insights at all it would suggest that joint US/Iraqi military patrols do not signify any long-term commitment to US goals on the part of those who are coerced into taking part in them.
US troops use the sunni militias in the same instrumental fashion but priority missions will always be assigned to the occupier’s special forces whose loyalties are less in question.
History also suggests that where the occupying forces restrict their participation and allow their charges some degree of autonomy in the execution of missions things very quickly unravel.
The “Vietnamisation” of the US war effort in SE Asia failed to deliver any of the political stabilisation or military effectiveness the US envisaged for it.
With such a history of failure behind them no-one would suggest that Iraqi forces will be any more reliable especially in the event that the US chooses to widen the war with an attack on Iran.
Good , Good your doing well……
and the second question……..