[Peace-discuss] Neocons & Israel - different with the Democrats?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Bill Christison joined the CIA in 1950 and worked on the analysis side of
the Agency for over 28 years. In the 1970s he served as a National
Intelligence Officer (principal adviser of the Director of Central
Intelligence) for Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa. Before his
retirement in 1979, he was Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and
Political Analysis, a 250-person unit. He can be reached at:
<christison at counterpunch.org>.]

March 5, 2004
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
How They Might Influence the Election
By BILL CHRISTISON

You've all surely heard widely varying stories about how much power, or
how little power, the so-called neoconservatives -- or neocons -- have
inside the Bush administration. I've been asked to explain, briefly, some
of the mysteries about these neocons and what role, if any, they might
play in this year's election.

To start with, let's spend a minute or two on definitions -- who's a
neocon and who is not? Specifically, President George W. Bush and his very
highest-level foreign policy advisers are not neocons. Bush himself, as
well as Vice-President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, are all just
plain conservatives and always have been, with nothing "neo" about them.
(Secretary of State Colin Powell is not a neocon either, but in the eyes
of many Washington insiders he is also not really a part of this inner
sanctum that dominates the actual making of U.S. foreign policy these
days.)

The real neocons are those who started out as liberals or at least
Democrats and who later proudly became Republicans. They are all one or
more rungs below Bush's top foreign policy advisers in the hierarchies of
our nation's capital. Others, generally younger officials, are happy to
call themselves neocons, even though technically they cannot claim to be
neo-anythings, because they never were liberals and never switched
parties. In their careers to date, they've always been conservatives. But
they too claim the neocon label.

A few of the neocons (Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith,
"Scooter" Libby, John Bolton, and Elliott Abrams) wield real power in
Washington. Most, however, do not. In general, the neocons and their
supporters who are not in top jobs are advocates, spokesmen, think tank
idea-men, writer-flacks, and rationalizers of policies that would never be
implemented unless they were converted into official policy by Bush
himself and his top advisers, and by those who have paid the most money
for his elevation to the presidency, the leaders of the corporate and
military power structure that dominates the country's politics. This
structure, of course, is far greater than just a small group of leaders.
It includes thousands of defense and high-tech workers, contractors,
government employees, military personnel, members of Congress, investment
firms, many lawyers and judges, and lobbyists, foreign and domestic, who
see their future livelihood as dependent on the continuation of this
system.

Within this entire conglomerate, the neocons definitely wield real power
and influence, even though none of them at present occupies a
cabinet-level position. But one thing and only one thing makes them
important -- the fact that with minor exceptions, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld,
and Rice have enthusiastically accepted all the early phases of the policy
agenda that has, since the early 1990s, been the very trademark of the
neocons. This agenda includes a general, or global, aspect and another
aspect that gives greater emphasis to the Middle East than to any other
area. The global agenda includes constantly expanding U.S. military
expenditures, a unilateral U.S. drive for global domination, and increased
control over the world's fossil fuel supplies. The Middle East agenda
includes the strengthening of Israeli/U.S. partnership and hegemony
throughout the region and, in furtherance thereof, advocacy of war, first
against Iraq and then if necessary against Syria, Iran, and possibly other
Middle Eastern states.

In effect, Bush has made at least the early stages of these policies his
own. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice support them. Early on, Colin Powell may
have had qualms about these policies, but, good soldier that he is, his
loyalty to the Bush family quickly overcame his qualms.

The neocons are lying low at the moment, for a couple of reasons. Since
the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, they have gone through an early phase of
riding high and wanting to capitalize on their success, and then a
"downer" phase -- still continuing -- of nagging constant casualties and
instability in Iraq. This is one reason for downplaying their own role in
policymaking. Another is their ties to Israel. Some of the most important
neocons support and encourage practically every policy of Ariel Sharon's
right-wing Likud government, although they choose not to advertise these
close ties. Too much talk by the neocons poses some danger for Bush in
this election year. His political handlers surely want to avoid the
embarrassment that might result if it became more widely accepted that one
of the real U.S. motives in invading Iraq was to strengthen Israel's
military position and political dominance throughout the Middle East. It
has been important ever since Bush took office in January 2001 for the
administration to downplay any connection between Israel and the war
against Iraq. Obfuscating the "Israeli motive" of the war was almost
certainly one of the reasons the administration so transparently
exaggerated first Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and,
more recently, Washington's desire for democracy in Iraq.

So supporters of Bush have launched a two-pronged counterattack, arguing
first that the influence of the neocons over U.S. foreign policy is a myth
and, second, that if you are dumb enough to believe the myth, it is almost
a sure thing that you are also an anti-Semite. A great example of this
approach was written by David Brooks, one of the New York Times' more
conservative columnists, who also appears frequently on PBS's News Hour
with Jim Lehrer. In his January 6, 2004 Times column, Brooks wrote:

"Theories about the tightly knit neocon cabal came in waves. One day you
read that neocons were pushing plans to finish off Iraq and move into
Syria. Web sites appeared detailing neocon conspiracies . . . The
full-mooners fixated on a think tank called the Project for the New
American Century [or PNAC] . . . To hear these people describe it, PNAC is
sort of a Yiddish Trilateral Commission, the nexus of the sprawling neocon
tentacles . . . In truth, the people labeled neocons (con is short for
'conservative' and neo is short for 'Jewish') travel in widely different
circles and don't actually have much contact with one another . . . There
have been hundreds of references, for example, to Richard Perle's
insidious power over administration policy, but I've been told by senior
administration officials that he has had no significant meetings with Bush
or Cheney since they assumed office . . . It's true that both Bush and the
people labeled neocons agree that Saddam Hussein represented a unique
threat to world peace. But . . . all evidence suggests that Bush formed
his conclusions independently . . . Still, there are apparently millions
of people who cling to the notion that the world is controlled by
well-organized and malevolent forces. And for a subset of these people,
Jews are a handy explanation for everything . . . Anti-Semitism is
resurgent."

This piece by David Brooks is an effort, first, to divert attention from
the extraordinarily well documented influence of the neocons and, second,
to squelch criticism of what many Americans believe are dangerous U.S.
policies toward Israel, Iraq, and the entire Middle East. The views of the
neocons have in no sense been a conspiracy. Information about them is wide
open and readily available. Raising the charge of anti-Semitism against
those who criticize U.S. -- and Israeli -- policies is, to put it bluntly,
appalling but not surprising. The British journalist Robert Fisk has
commented, with respect to the Brooks column, that:

"Brooks even tries to erase the word 'neo-conservative' from the narrative
of the Iraq war . . . And so here we go again. No weapons of mass
destruction. No links between Saddam and 11 September. No democracy. Blame
the press. Blame the BBC. Blame the spooks. But don't blame Messers Bush
and Blair. And don't blame the American neo-conservatives who helped to
push the US into this disaster. They don't even exist. And if you say they
did, you know what you're going to be called."

Most people who are knowledgeable on Middle Eastern affairs believe, as
Robert Fisk does, that the neocons are in no way a myth. And in the area
of intelligence, it is quite clear that the neocons are right now trying
to expand their influence. They are trying to switch the entire blame for
the fiasco over weapons of mass destruction and the continuing killings in
Iraq to the CIA. There is no question that the CIA deserves some of the
criticism directed against it, but most of the blame in my view belongs to
the administration's own distortions and exaggerations of intelligence.
The neocons want to reorganize the intelligence apparatus of the United
States to make it even easier for the administration to introduce more
distortions and exaggerations into intelligence analysis in the future.
The proper answer here is to make the CIA less susceptible to any
administration's attempts to slant and twist intelligence analysis to its
own liking. (For proposals on precisely how the CIA should be reorganized,
see http://www.counterpunch.org/)

One of the problems we face in trying to evaluate the true influence of
the neocons in supporting aggressive U.S. foreign policies that strengthen
Israel's position throughout the Middle East is the need to determine the
relative weight of the neocons versus other factors that are also at work
in influencing U.S. policy toward Israel. One of these other factors is
AIPAC -- the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the principal
pro-Israel lobby organization -- and its numerous subsidiary lobbies that
are able to generate majority support in both houses of Congress for
almost any measure that the government of Israel wants. Without the
activities of these organizations, the influence of the neocons in
Washington would be diminished, although by how much we cannot say.

It suffices to know, however, that the neocons and the lobby together form
a very powerful mutual support society, and their relationship is
symbiotic in the extreme. The neocons, as noted, have long pressed for
ever larger military expenditures by the U.S., thus throwing their full
support to the very groups that finance most heavily the election of
today's presidents. The influence of the lobby, for its part, is far more
than a matter of the money it has to spend. The extremely close ties that
many elements of the U.S. military-industrial complex have developed in
recent decades with the smaller but also powerful Israeli
military-industrial complex magnify the strength of the pro-Israel lobby
in Washington in ways that most people simply do not comprehend. The
Israeli activist, Jeff Halper, who is the founder and head of the Israeli
Committee Against House Demolitions and has had considerable experience
dealing with members of Congress in recent years, describes it this way:

"Israel has located itself very strategically right in the center of the
global arms industry. Israel's sophisticated military hardware and
military software are very important to weapons development in the United
States. Israel has also become the main subcontractor of American arms.
Just last year, Israel signed a contract to train and equip the Chinese
army. It signed another multi-billion dollar contract to train and equip
the Indian army. What is it equipping them with? It is equipping them with
American weapons.

"Israel is very important, because on the one hand it is a very
sophisticated, high-tech arms developer and dealer. But on the other hand,
there are no ethical or moral constraints: there is no Congress, there are
no human rights concerns, there are no laws against taking bribes -- the
Israeli government can do anything it wants to. So you have a very
sophisticated rogue state -- not a Libyan rogue state, but a high tech,
military-expert rogue state. Now that is tremendously useful, both for
Europe and for the United States."

Halper points out that there are still some American Congressional
constraints on selling arms to China because of China's human rights
problems. So Israel modifies American arms just enough that "they can be
considered Israeli arms, and in that way bypasses Congress." He adds that
"for the most part, Israel is the subcontractor for American arms to the
Third World. There is no terrible regime . . . that does not have a major
military connection to Israel. Israeli arms dealers are . . . like fish in
water in the rough and tumble countries that eat Americans alive:
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, China, Indonesia, these countries where
Americans just cannot operate, partly because of business practices, and
partly because they have [Congressional] constraints and laws."

Thus, when AIPAC sells Israel to Congress, it does not go to congressmen
and ask them to support Israel because it is Judeo-Christian, or because
it is the "only democracy in the Middle East." AIPAC sells Israel by
telling a congressman that he or she should support Israel because this is
how many industries in your state have business links to Israel, this is
how many military research people are sitting in universities in your
district, this is how many jobs in your district are dependent on the
military and the defense industry. Therefore, if you are voting against
Israel, you are voting against your own best interests. Halper adds that
in most congressional districts, "members of Congress have a great
dependence on the military. More than half of industrial employment in
California is in one way or another connected to defense. Israel is right
there, right in the middle of it all. And that is part of its strength."

When activists on the other side go to a member of Congress and talk about
human rights, about occupation, about Palestinians, the congressman
usually, in Halper's experience, says, "Look I know, I read the papers,
I'm not dumb, but that is not the basis on which I vote. The basis on
which I vote is what is good for my constituents."

Although Israel is a tiny country, its U.S. supporters present it as more
than an ally of the United States. The AIPAC website says, for example,
that the job of Israel is to protect American economic interests in the
Middle East. It even says that Israel is developing laser weapons from
outer space to protect American interests. Israel clearly sees itself as,
and is proud of being, a part of the American Empire. We need to expose
Israel as the regional superpower and necessary component in the U.S.
Empire that it really is.

So both the neocons and these other factors that strengthen the neocons
should be kept in mind when we try to answer questions about the neocons
and the 2004 presidential election. Let's look at two questions.

First, what role if any will the neocons and their views on foreign policy
play in this year's presidential election?

Perhaps the neocons will not play any role, but that may be wishful
thinking. If Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Karl Rove come to believe, around
September or October, that they are likely to lose the election, it is not
by any means beyond belief that they would, in desperation, undertake some
new aggressive and "preemptive" military action against Syria, Iran, North
Korea, or someplace else we cannot now even anticipate. In other words, a
new "October surprise." They have used lies to instill fear and advance
their ill-considered doctrine of preemption once, and it is not beyond the
realm of possibility that they might do so again. The neocons, of course,
would be among the strongest advocates of such moves, and that would be
one way in which they might influence the election. Peace movements in
this country and around the world should, in my view, be ready to
undertake massive demonstrations in the hope of preventing such an
eventuality.

Second, how might the outcome of the election affect the neocons
themselves?

The answer here is simple, but it is a limited answer. If the Democrats
win back the presidency this year, the neocons -- or most of them -- will
at least temporarily be out of work, and that will be excellent news. Any
conceivable Democratic administration would implement somewhat less
aggressive and less unilateral foreign policies. But most likely, a
Democratic administration would be almost as beholden to the nation's
military-national security-corporate complex for campaign funding as the
present Republican administration. There would be changes of tone in U.S.
foreign policies, but very likely only limited changes in the policies
themselves. The close ties between the U.S. and Israeli
military-industrial complexes that I described would continue, and changes
in U.S. policies toward the Middle East would be minimal.

***