[Peace-discuss] (no subject)

[David Green]

In a recent Guest Commentary in the N-G, I briefly
explored the ideological relationship between the
Jewish right and the War Party. The article below from
The Nation, forwarded and prefaced by Jewish Voice for
Peace, elaborates on this theme. As I said in my
article, there really is no "Jewish conspiracy," but a
frightening confluence of interests between the most
extreme and currently powerful elements in Jewish
political/institutional life and the most ardent
followers of President Rumsfeld.

David Green

[Often the question is raised asking why it is that
the US is so 
thoroughly
supportive of Israel. Of course, we all recognize that
AIPAC is a very
efficient and powerful lobby, and that it has strong
allies, backing it 
with
far more money and votes than could ever be assembled
by the Jewish
community, such as the Christian right and defense
contracting 
industry. Yet
that explanation, while it might work for Congress, is
generally
unsatisfying when we look at how the State Department,
which is far 
less
vulnerable to lobbying (though, to be sure, also far
from immune to it)
behaves. In this article, the intricate networks
between the defense
industry, the American far right, the most extreme
elements of the 
American
Zionist movement, the military-industrial complex and
the Bush
Administration are examined.

The piece here goes a long way toward making clear the
links between 
support
for Israel's most expansionist and aggressive policies
and the aims of 
the
most conservative/reactionary elements in American
society. By 
primarily
examining the role of two far-right advocacy groups,
the Jewish 
Institute
for National Security Affairs and the Center for
Security Policy, the
author, Jason Vest, untangles a web of alliances
between long-time
heavy-hitters in Republican administrations, major
defense contractors 
and
zealous supporters of Israel's most militaristic
policies. It also
demonstrates how support for those Israeli policies is
tied in with 
American
aims for the region, new missile defense systems,
opposition to any 
sort of
arms control and the aim of bringing every
oil-producing or 
strategically
vital country in the Middle East firmly under
America's control.

This article is crucial reading for anyone who wishes
to begin to grasp 
why
America pursues the Mideast policies it does, which
often seem to fly 
in the
face of American interest, even at their most base. It
demonstrates 
that it
is not the case that Israel "controls" America, as is
sometimes 
alleged, but
rather that the most aggressive and militaristic
forces in both 
societies
(which, sadly, are now in control of both countries
quite firmly) have
common interests and work together quite well. The
only way to oppose 
this
array of forces will be for those of us who wish to
see a change in the
policies of both country to band together, across our
own differences.
Conservative and right-wing forces have often shown
themselves to be 
very
good at doing just that. In this one regard, we would
do well to 
emulate
them. - MP]

http://www.thenation.com/docPrint.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest

FEATURE STORY | September 2, 2002
The Men From JINSA and CSP
by JASON A. VEST
Almost thirty years ago, a prominent group of
neoconservative hawks 
found an
effective vehicle for advocating their views via the
Committee on the
Present Danger, a group that fervently believed the
United States was a 
hair
away from being militarily surpassed by the Soviet
Union, and whose 
raison
d'être was strident advocacy of bigger military
budgets, near-fanatical
opposition to any form of arms control and zealous
championing of a 
Likudnik
Israel. Considered a marginal group in its nascent
days during the 
Carter
Administration, with the election of Ronald Reagan in
1980 CPD went 
from the
margins to the center of power.
Just as the right-wing defense intellectuals made CPD
a cornerstone of 
a
shadow defense establishment during the Carter
Administration, so, too, 
did
the right during the Clinton years, in part through
two organizations: 
the
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA)
and the Center 
for
Security Policy (CSP). And just as was the case two
decades ago, dozens 
of
their members have ascended to powerful government
posts, where their
advocacy in support of the same agenda continues,
abetted by the
out-of-government adjuncts from which they came.
Industrious and 
persistent,
they've managed to weave a number of issues--support
for national 
missile
defense, opposition to arms control treaties,
championing of wasteful
weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American
unilateralism in
general--into a hard line, with support for the
Israeli right at its 
core.
On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident
than in its 
relentless
campaign for war--not just with Iraq, but "total war,"
as Michael 
Ledeen,
one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put
it last year. 
For
this crew, "regime change" by any means necessary in
Iraq, Iran, Syria,
Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an
urgent imperative. 
Anyone
who dissents--be it Colin Powell's State Department,
the CIA or career
military officers--is committing heresy against
articles of faith that
effectively hold there is no difference between US and
Israeli national
security interests, and that the only way to assure
continued safety 
and
prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in
the Middle East--a
hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe
of feints, 
force,
clientism and covert action.
For example, the Pentagon's Defense Policy
Board--chaired by JINSA/CSP
adviser and former Reagan Administration Defense
Department official 
Richard
Perle, and stacked with advisers from both
groups--recently made news 
by
listening to a briefing that cast Saudi Arabia as an
enemy to be 
brought to
heel through a number of potential mechanisms, many of
which mirror 
JINSA's
recommendations, and which reflect the JINSA/CSP
crowd's preoccupation 
with
Egypt. (The final slide of the Defense Policy Board
presentation 
proposed
that "Grand Strategy for the Middle East" should
concentrate on "Iraq 
as the
tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot
[and] Egypt as the
prize.") Ledeen has been leading the charge for regime
change in Iran, 
while
old comrades like Andrew Marshall and Harold Rhode in
the Pentagon's 
Office
of Net Assessment actively tinker with ways to
re-engineer both the 
Iranian
and Saudi governments. JINSA is also cheering the US
military on as it 
tries
to secure basing rights in the strategic Red Sea
country of Eritrea, 
happily
failing to mention that the once-promising secular
regime of President
Isaiais Afewerki continues to slide into the kind of
repressive
authoritarianism practiced by the "axis of evil" and
its adjuncts.
Indeed, there are some in military and intelligence
circles who have 
taken
to using "axis of evil" in reference to JINSA and CSP,
along with 
venerable
repositories of hawkish thinking like the American
Enterprise Institute 
and
the Hudson Institute, as well as defense contractors,
conservative
foundations and public relations entities underwritten
by far-right 
American
Zionists (all of which help to underwrite JINSA and
CSP). It's a milieu
where ideology and money seamlessly blend: "Whenever
you see someone
identified in print or on TV as being with the Center
for Security 
Policy or
JINSA championing a position on the grounds of
ideology or 
principle--which
they are unquestionably doing with conviction--you
are, nonetheless, 
not
informed that they're also providing a sort of cover
for other 
ideologues
who just happen to stand to profit from hewing to the
Likudnik and Pax
Americana lines," says a veteran intelligence officer.
He notes that 
while
the United States has begun a phaseout of civilian aid
to Israel that 
will
end by 2007, government policy is to increase military
aid by half the
amount of civilian aid that's cut each year--which is
not only a boon 
to
both the US and Israeli weapons industries but is also
crucial to 
realizing
the far right's vision for missile defense and the
Middle East.
Founded in 1976 by neoconservatives concerned that the
United States 
might
not be able to provide Israel with adequate military
supplies in the 
event
of another Arab-Israeli war, over the past twenty-five
years JINSA has 
gone
from a loose-knit proto-group to a $1.4-million-a-year
operation with a
formidable array of Washington power players on its
rolls. Until the
beginning of the current Bush Administration, JINSA's
board of advisers
included such heavy hitters as Dick Cheney, John
Bolton (now Under 
Secretary
of State for Arms Control) and Douglas Feith, the
third-highest-ranking
executive in the Pentagon. Both Perle and former
Director of Central
Intelligence James Woolsey, two of the loudest voices
in the 
attack-Iraq
chorus, are still on the board, as are such Reagan-era
relics as Jeane
Kirkpatrick, Eugene Rostow and Ledeen--Oliver North's
Iran/ contra 
liaison
with the Israelis.
According to its website, JINSA exists to "educate the
American public 
about
the importance of an effective US defense capability
so that our vital
interests as Americans can be safeguarded" and to
"inform the American
defense and foreign affairs community about the
important role Israel 
can
and does play in bolstering democratic interests in
the Mediterranean 
and
the Middle East." In practice, this translates into
its members 
producing a
steady stream of op-eds and reports that have been
good indicators of 
what
the Pentagon's civilian leadership is thinking.
JINSA relishes denouncing virtually any type of
contact between the US
government and Syria and finding new ways to demonize
the Palestinians. 
To
give but one example (and one that kills two birds
with one stone):
According to JINSA, not only is Yasir Arafat in
control of all violence 
in
the occupied territories, but he orchestrates the
violence solely "to
protect Saddam.... Saddam is at the moment Arafat's
only real financial
supporter.... [Arafat] has no incentive to stop the
violence against 
Israel
and allow the West to turn its attention to his mentor
and paymaster." 
And
if there's a way to advance other aspects of the
far-right agenda by
intertwining them with Israeli interests, JINSA
doesn't hesitate there,
either. A recent report contends that the Arctic
National Wildlife 
Refuge
must be tapped because "the Arab oil-producing states"
are countries 
"with
interests inimical to ours," but Israel "stand[s] with
us when we need
[Israel]," and a US policy of tapping oil under ANWR
will "limit [the
Arabs'] ability to do damage to either of us."
The bulk of JINSA's modest annual budget is spent on
taking a bevy of
retired US generals and admirals to Israel, where
JINSA facilitates 
meetings
between Israeli officials and the still-influential US
flag officers, 
who,
upon their return to the States, happily write op-eds
and sign letters 
and
advertisements championing the Likudnik line. (Sowing
seeds for the 
future,
JINSA also takes US service academy cadets to Israel
each summer and
sponsors a lecture series at the Army, Navy and Air
Force academies.) 
In one
such statement, issued soon after the outbreak of the
latest intifada,
twenty-six JINSAns of retired flag rank, including
many from the 
advisory
board, struck a moralizing tone, characterizing
Palestinian violence as 
a
"perversion of military ethics" and holding that
"America's role as
facilitator in this process should never yield to
America's 
responsibility
as a friend to Israel," as "friends don't leave
friends on the 
battlefield."
However high-minded this might sound, the postservice
associations of 
the
letter's signatories--which are almost always left off
the 
organization's
website and communiqués--ought to require that the
phrase be amended to 
say
"friends don't leave friends on the battlefield,
especially when 
there's
business to be done and bucks to be made." Almost
every retired officer 
who
sits on JINSA's board of advisers or has participated
in its Israel 
trips or
signed a JINSA letter works or has worked with
military contractors who 
do
business with the Pentagon and Israel. While some keep
a low profile as
self-employed "consultants" and avoid mention of their
clients, others 
are
less shy about their associations, including with the
private mercenary 
firm
Military Professional Resources International, weapons
broker and 
military
consultancy Cypress International and SY Technology,
whose main clients
include the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, which
oversees several
ongoing joint projects with Israel.
The behemoths of military contracting are also well
represented in 
JINSA's
ranks. For example, JINSA advisory board members Adm.
Leon Edney, Adm. 
David
Jeremiah and Lieut. Gen. Charles May, all retired,
have served Northrop
Grumman or its subsidiaries as either consultants or
board members. 
Northrop
Grumman has built ships for the Israeli Navy and sold
F-16 avionics and 
E-2C
Hawkeye planes to the Israeli Air Force (as well as
the Longbow radar 
system
to the Israeli army for use in its attack
helicopters). It also works 
with
Tamam, a subsidiary of Israeli Aircraft Industries, to
produce an 
unmanned
aerial vehicle. Lockheed Martin has sold more than $2
billion worth of 
F-16s
to Israel since 1999, as well as flight simulators,
multiple-launch 
rocket
systems and Seahawk heavyweight torpedoes. At one time
or another, 
General
May, retired Lieut. Gen. Paul Cerjanand retired Adm.
Carlisle Trost 
have
labored in LockMart's vineyards. Trost has also sat on
the board of 
General
Dynamics, whose Gulfstream subsidiary has a $206
million contract to 
supply
planes to Israel to be used for "special electronics
missions."
By far the most profitably diversified of the JINSAns
is retired Adm. 
David
Jeremiah. President and partner of Technology
Strategies & Alliances
Corporation (described as a "strategic advisory firm
and investment 
banking
firm engaged primarily in the aerospace, defense,
telecommunications 
and
electronics industries"), Jeremiah also sits on the
boards of Northrop
Grumman's Litton subsidiary and of defense giant
Alliant Techsystems,
which--in partnership with Israel's TAAS--does a brisk
business in 
rubber
bullets. And he has a seat on the Pentagon's Defense
Policy Board, 
chaired
by Perle.
About the only major defense contractor without a
presence on JINSA's
advisory board is Boeing, which has had a relationship
with Israeli 
Aircraft
Industries for thirty years. (Boeing also sells F-15s
to Israel and, in
partnership with Lockheed Martin, Apache attack
helicopters, a 
ubiquitous
weapon in the occupied territories.) But take a look
at JINSA's kindred
spirit in things pro-Likud and pro-Star Wars, the
Center for Security
Policy, and there on its national security advisory
council are Stanley
Ebner, a former Boeing executive; Andrew Ellis, vice
president for
government relations; and Carl Smith, a former staff
director of the 
Senate
Armed Services Committee who, as a lawyer in private
practice, has 
counted
Boeing among his clients. "JINSA and CSP," says a
veteran Pentagon 
analyst,
"may as well be one and the same."
Not a hard sell: There's always been considerable
overlap beween the 
JINSA
and CSP rosters--JINSA advisers Jeane Kirkpatrick,
Richard Perle and 
Phyllis
Kaminsky also serve on CSP's advisory council; current
JINSA advisory 
board
chairman David Steinmann sits on CSP's board of
directors; and before
returning to the Pentagon Douglas Feith served as the
board's chair. At 
this
writing, twenty-two CSP advisers--including additional
Reagan-era 
remnants
like Elliott Abrams, Ken deGraffenreid, Paula
Dobriansky, Sven Kraemer,
Robert Joseph, Robert Andrews and J.D. Crouch--have
reoccupied key 
positions
in the national security establishment, as have other
true believers of 
more
recent vintage.
While CSP boasts an impressive advisory list of
hawkish luminaries, its 
star
is Gaffney, its founder, president and CEO. A protégé
of Perle going 
back to
their days as staffers for the late Senator Henry
"Scoop" Jackson (a k 
a the
Senator from Boeing, and the Senate's most zealous
champion of Israel 
in his
day), Gaffney later joined Perle at the Pentagon, only
to be shown the 
door
by Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci in 1987, not long
after Perle left.
Gaffney then reconstituted the latest incarnation of
the Committee on 
the
Present Danger. Beyond compiling an A-list of
influential conservative
hawks, Gaffney has been prolific over the past fifteen
years, churning 
out a
constant stream of reports (as well as regular columns
for the 
Washington
Times) making the case that the gravest threats to US
national security 
are
China, Iraq, still-undeveloped ballistic missiles
launched by rogue 
states,
and the passage of or adherence to virtually any form
of arms control
treaty.
Gaffney and CSP's prescriptions for national security
have been fairly 
simpl
e: Gut all arms control treaties, push ahead with
weapons systems 
virtually
everyone agrees should be killed (such as the V-22
Osprey), give no 
quarter
to the Palestinians and, most important, go full steam
ahead on just 
about
every national missile defense program. (CSP was
heavily represented on 
the
late-1990s Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile
Threat to the 
United
States, which was instrumental in keeping the program
alive during the
Clinton years.)
Looking at the center's affiliates, it's not hard to
see why: Not only 
are
makers of the Osprey (Boeing) well represented on the
CSP's board of
advisers but so too is Lockheed Martin (by vice
president for space and
strategic missiles Charles Kupperman and director of
defense systems 
Douglas
Graham). Former TRW executive Amoretta Hoeber is also
a CSP adviser, as 
is
former Congressman and Raytheon lobbyist Robert
Livingston. Ball 
Aerospace &
Technologies--a major manufacturer of NASA and
Pentagon satellites--is
represented by former Navy Secretary John Lehman,
while missile-defense
computer systems maker Hewlett-Packard is represented
by George 
Keyworth,
who is on its board of directors. And the
Congressional Missile Defense
Caucus and Osprey (or "tilt rotor") caucus are
represented by 
Representative
Curt Weldon and Senator Jon Kyl.
CSP was instrumental in developing the arguments
against the 
Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty. Largely ignored or derided at the
time, a 1995 CSP memo
co-written by Douglas Feith holding that the United
States should 
withdraw
from the ABM treaty has essentially become policy, as
have other CSP 
reports
opposing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the
Chemical Weapons 
Convention
and the International Criminal Court. But perhaps the
most insightful 
window
on the JINSA/CSP policy worldview comes in the form of
a paper Perle 
and
Feith collaborated on in 1996 with six others under
the auspices of the
Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political
Studies. Essentially an
advice letter to ascendant Israeli politician Benjamin
Netanyahu, "A 
Clean
Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" makes
for insightful 
reading
as a kind of US-Israeli neoconservative manifesto.
The paper's first prescription was for an Israeli
rightward economic 
shift,
with tax cuts and a selloff of public lands and
enterprises--moves that
would also engender support from a "broad bipartisan
spectrum of key
pro-Israeli Congressional leaders." But beyond
economics, the paper
essentially reads like a blueprint for a mini-cold war
in the Middle 
East,
advocating the use of proxy armies for regime changes,
destabilization 
and
containment. Indeed, it even goes so far as to
articulate a way to 
advance
right-wing Zionism by melding it with missile-defense
advocacy. "Mr.
Netanyahu can highlight his desire to cooperate more
closely with the 
United
States on anti-missile defense in order to remove the
threat of 
blackmail
which even a weak and distant army can pose to either
state," it reads. 
"Not
only would such cooperation on missile defense counter
a tangible 
physical
threat to Israel's survival, but it would broaden
Israel's base of 
support
among many in the United States Congress who may know
little about 
Israel,
but care very much about missile defense"--something
that has the added
benefit of being "helpful in the effort to move the US
embassy in 
Israel to
Jerusalem."
Recent months in Washington have shown just how
influential the notions
propagated by JINSA and CSP are--and how disturbingly
zealous their
advocates are. In early March Feith vainly attempted
to get the CIA to 
keep
former intelligence officers Milt Bearden and Frank
Anderson from 
accepting
an invitation to an Afghanistan-related meeting with
Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld at the Pentagon--not because of what the two
might say about
Afghanistan, according to sources familiar with the
incident, but 
likely out
of fear that Anderson, a veteran Arabist and former
chief of the CIA's 
Near
East division, would proffer his views on Iraq
(opposed to invading) 
and
Israel-Palestine (a fan of neither Arafat nor Sharon).
In late June, 
after
United Press International reported on a US Muslim
civil liberties 
group's
lambasting of Gaffney for his attacks on the American
Muslim Council,
Gaffney, according to a fellow traveler, "went
berserk," launching a 
stream
of invective about the UPI scribe who reported the
item.
It's incidents like this, say knowledgeable observers
and participants, 
that
highlight an interesting dynamic among right-wing
hawks at the moment.
Though the general agenda put forth by JINSA and CSP
continues to be
reflected in councils of war, even some of the hawks
(including 
Rumsfeld
deputy Paul Wolfowitz) are growing increasingly leery
of Israel's
settlements policy and Gaffney's relentless support
for it. Indeed, his
personal stock in Bush Administration circles is low.
"Gaffney has worn 
out
his welcome by being an overbearing gadfly rather than
a serious 
contributor
to policy," says a senior Pentagon political official.
Since earlier 
this
year, White House political adviser Karl Rove has been
casting about 
for
someone to start a new, more mainstream defense group
that would 
counter the
influence of CSP. According to those who have
communicated with Rove on 
the
matter, his quiet efforts are in response to
complaints from many
conservative activists who feel let down by Gaffney,
or feel he's too 
hard
on President Bush. "A lot of us have taken [Gaffney]
at face value over 
the
years," one influential conservative says. "Yet we now
know he's pushed 
for
some of the most flawed missile defense and
conventional systems. He
considered Cuba a 'classic asymmetric threat' but not
Al Qaeda. And 
since
9/11, he's been less concerned with the threat to
America than to 
Israel."
Gaffney's operation has always been a small one, about
$1 million
annually--funded largely by a series of grants from
the conservative 
Olin,
Bradley and various Scaife foundations, as well as
some defense 
contractor
money--but he's recently been able to underwrite a TV
and print ad 
campaign
holding that the Palestinians should be Enemy Number
One in the War on
Terror, still obsessed with the destruction of Israel.
It's here that 
one
sees the influence not of defense contractor money but
of far-right 
Zionist
dollars, including some from Irving Moskowitz, the
California bingo 
magnate.
A donor to both CSP and JINSA (as well as a JINSA
director), Moskowitz 
not
only sends millions of dollars a year to far-right
Israeli settler 
groups
like Ateret Cohanim but he has also funded the
construction of 
settlements,
having bought land for development in key Arab areas
around Jerusalem.
Moskowitz ponied up the money that enabled the 1996
reopening of a 
tunnel
under the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, which resulted
in seventy 
deaths due
to rioting.
Also financing Gaffney's efforts is New York
investment banker Lawrence
Kadish. A valued and valuable patron of both the
Republican National
Committee and George W. Bush, Kadish helps underwrite
CSP as well as
Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, an offshoot of
conservative 
activist
William Bennett's Empower America, on which he and
Gaffney serve as 
"senior
advisers" in the service of identifying "external" and
"internal" 
post-9/11
threats to America. (The "internal" threats, as
articulated by AVOT, 
include
former President Jimmy Carter, Harper's editor Lewis
Lapham and
Representative Maxine Waters.) Another of Gaffney's
backers is Poju
Zabludowicz, heir to a formidable diversified
international empire that
includes arms manufacturer Soltam--which once employed
Perle--and 
benefactor
of the recently established Britain Israel
Communication and Research
Centre, a London-based group that appears to equate
reportage or 
commentary
uncomplimentary to Zionism with anti-Semitism.
While a small but growing number of conservatives are
voicing concerns 
about
various aspects of foreign and defense policy--ranging
from fear of
overreach to lack of Congressional debate--the hawks
seem to be ruling 
the
roost. Beginning in October, hard-line American
Enterprise Institute 
scholar
Michael Rubin (to Rubin, outgoing UN human rights
chief Mary Robinson 
is an
abettor of terrorism) arrives at the Pentagon to take
over the Defense
Department's Iran-Iraq account, adding another voice
to the Pentagon 
section
of Ledeen's "total war" chorus. Colin Powell's State
Department 
continues to
take a beating from outside and inside--including
Bolton and his 
special
assistant David Wurmser. (An AEI scholar and far-right
Zionist who's 
married
to Meyrav Wurmser of the Middle East Media Research
Institute--recently 
the
subject of a critical investigation by London Guardian
Middle East 
editor
Brian Whitaker--Wurmser played a key role in crafting
the "Arafat must 
go"
policy that many career specialists see as a
problematic sop to Ariel
Sharon.)
As for Rumsfeld, based on comments made at a Pentagon
"town hall" 
meeting on
August 6, there seems to be little doubt as to whose
comments are 
resonating
most with him--and not just on missile defense and
overseas adventures:
After fielding a question about Israeli-Palestinian
issues, he 
repeatedly
referred to the "so-called occupied territories" and
casually 
characterized
the Israeli policy of building Jewish-only enclaves on
Palestinian land 
as
"mak[ing] some settlement in various parts of the
so-called occupied 
area,"
with which Israel can do whatever it wants, as it has
"won" all its 
wars
with various Arab entities--essentially an echo of
JINSA's stated 
position
that "there is no Israeli occupation." Ominously,
Rumsfeld's riff gave 
a
ranking Administration official something of a chill:
"I realized at 
that
point," he said, "that on settlements--where there are
cleavages on the
right--Wolfowitz may be to the left of Rumsfeld."


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