VIDEO - Greenwald plante le TDC Bill Maher sur les guerres d'occupation occidentales
Les raisons du "terrorisme":
VIDEO - Michael Scheuer: Ron Paul's Foreign Policy Puts War Profiteers out of Business
Ron Paul: Neocons’ ‘entangling alliances’ driving U.S. interventionism in Libya, Syria
VIDEO - Ron Paul Confounds Chickenhawk Gingrich
VIDEO - What the Israeli Shill really said
Emergency Committee for Israel vs Ron Paul
Un classique: Lawrence Dennis et l'importance du non-interventionnisme
Count’em—five wars: (1) Iraq; (2) Afghanistan; (3) Yemen; (4) Libya; (5) Pakistan. All going on simultaneously. And all for the cause of Zionism, Israel, and more wealth for Jewish bankers and plutocrats.
Discover the truth about the Zionist plot for a Greater Israel and why America is now involved in five wars in the Middle East.
America’s Security Not at Stake
These wars are not being fought to secure America’s safety and security. America’s citizens are not threatened by the poverty-stricken Arab countries thousands of miles distant. Thus, the only ones benefiting from this violence are the Jews. They are the ones who are intent on building up a socialist, theocratic empire called “Greater Israel.”
Discover the truth about the Zionist plot for a Greater Israel and why America is now involved in five wars in the Middle East.
America’s Security Not at Stake
These wars are not being fought to secure America’s safety and security. America’s citizens are not threatened by the poverty-stricken Arab countries thousands of miles distant. Thus, the only ones benefiting from this violence are the Jews. They are the ones who are intent on building up a socialist, theocratic empire called “Greater Israel.”
America is blowing over a trillion dollars a year to fight these five deadly, evil conflicts far from our shores. And the Israeli Beast is still not satisfied. The elite now demand that the U.S. attack Iran and Syria. The list of supposed “enemies” is never-ending. What country is next?—Turkey?...Egypt?...the Sudan?
America on Verge of Bankruptcy
The fact is, the United States is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. The bogus “War on Terror” and the ramping up of the U.S. military invasion of the Middle East has already cost us a staggering five trillion dollars, and there’s no end in sight! The red ink of the budget deficit is spilling out onto the streets. The way Obama and the Congress—Republicans and Democrats—figure it, there’s only one way to pay for these bloody, unnecessary wars: “slash entitlements.” In other words—rob the average man and woman of what is due them.
That means huge cuts in Social Security and Medicare. That’s why the media, owned by Jewish big-wigs, keep repeating the mantra, “cut entitlements...cut entitlements.”
“It’s the only thing we can do,” the lying politicians claim. No one in the Jewish-controlled media or government has the guts to admit that, in fact, there is a far better way.
It is a fact that two elements—(1) War spending; and (2) Entitlements (Social Security and Medicare)—are the largest outlays in the federal budget. But the government spends twice as much on War (including so-called Homeland Security and Intelligence) as it does on Social Security and Medicare. Yet we are told that spending cuts must be made immediately only in entitlements.
According to the bureaucrats and politicians, all the excessive war spending must remain intact, even as it expands with each passing day.
A Financial Abyss
The truth is, the wasteful and bogus War on Terror is driving America into a hellish financial abyss. The whole economic system is about to go under. Already the national debt is such that, according to the Wall Street Journal, every man, woman, and child in America owes the unbelievable amount of $534,000. And that figure is going up, up, up every single day. All this red ink is going to end in an abysmal, monumental Great Depression unless...unless... the feds dramatically slice the budget and do it fast.
As I said, while the federal budget has plenty of waste in other categories of spending, there are only two places where there is sufficient money to meet the voracious credit demands of the U.S. Government—(1) War Spending; and (2) Entitlements.
Bringing Back Sanity
Zionist shills like (left to right) Representatives Eric Cantor, Debbie Wasserman, Paul Ryan, and John Boehner in the House and Charles Schumer and John McCain in the Senate have already cut $800 billion from Social Security and Medicare and now want to steal even more billions from the people’s paid-for entitlements. Meanwhile, American troops are fighting and dying in five useless wars for Israel’s benefit in the Middle East, and the cost of these lethal conflicts is bankrupting our nation.
Bringing Back Sanity
Now, if sanity prevailed in this country, the angry American people would rise up as one and order the politicians: “Cut the nonsense. Bring our troops home. End the Satanic wars! And while you’re at it, send Janet Napolitano and her TSA crotch-grabbing pals at the airports packing. Dismantle the whole crazy, Big Brother Police State mess and return us to constitutional government.”
Presto! Deficit problem solved. No need to rob the taxpayer of his hard-earned Social Security and Medicare. Just end the war spending and bring our troops home. We’ll still have the world’s most powerful armed forces, but the troops will be here, in America, defending our borders, not bleeding and dying over in the Middle East massacring mostly innocent men, women, and children whose survivors end up hating us.
The Jewish Lobby Tells Congress What to Do
So, why not do this? Why not end the insanity? Well, simply put, the Zionist Jews won’t let us be sane! The White House and Congress are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Jewish lobbyists. Congressman Paul Ryan, a Republican who is head of the budget committee in the House, and Republican House Speaker John Boehner and his sidekick, Rep. Eric Cantor, are in rapturous love with the Jewish lobbyists. Democrats—like Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Debbie Wasserman—likewise are recruits in Netanyahyu’s Jewish legions of deceit. AIPAC, the ADL, the AJC (American Jewish Congress) and the rest of the Jewish power elite have taken our politicians captive.
So here is the bottom line: Something in the budget has got to go, but the Jews are going to make sure that (1) Israel continues to get its plush foreign aid money; (2) America’s five wars in the Middle East and the buildup of a Greater Israel Empire continue; and (3) Anyone who votes against these pro-Jew death programs better kiss their House or Senate seat goodbye!
Robbing You and Me is Their Goal
That means, dear friends, that if anything gets cut in our federal budget, it’s gonna be the money owed the folks—you and me. And that means Social Security and Medicare entitlements are dead meat.
Please don’t be misled: You are entitled to these benefits. You and your employer paid in to these funds. This is not welfare. These are insurance programs that are owed you and me.
We Owe the Zionist Crooks Nothing
In contrast, you and I owe Israel and the Zionists not a cent! Nothing; nada; zilch; zero. For decades the cheaters and thieves in Washington, D.C. have been gobbling up our Social Security and Medicare payments and promising us insurance benefits in return. Now they want to change the rules, simply because their Zionist masters say so.
Well, friends, let’s surprise these rascals. Phone, email and write your representatives and give ’em a piece of your minds. Tell them they better not cut the Social Security and Medicare benefits that are owed Americans who have faithfully paid in to Social Security and Medicare all their lives.
Not only that, but we do not want our government to pay out Social Security and Medicare to aliens in our country illegally. I say, let Mexico—or whatever country they are a citizen of—take care of their retirement needs and let America take care of its own.
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The U.S. has over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan now and 45,000 more in Iraq. In all, we have troops stationed in 130 nations around the globe. This is nuts!
Isn’t it about time that we the people took charge and ended the baloney of the fictitious Osama bin Ladens and the nonexistent “Al Qaidas?” Let’s bring the American troops home from the dust-filled deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan and everywhere else they’re stationed.
Once the troops are back home, we can put tens of thousands of them down on the southern border. Yes, assign the good old U.S. army, the Marines, and the Air Force the task of enforcing our existing immigration laws.
Close the border, keep the invaders out, and that alone will save taxpayers tens of billions in wasted welfare dollars, medical costs, and education expenses now going to foreigners here illegally. This also will help solve our current deficit problem while keeping us safer and more prosperous.
Put A Stop to the Zionist Agenda
The Zionist agenda calls for the end of America as a nation. The unpatriotic American Jews who put Israel first and America last are traitors. They are demanding that America spend billions more hard-earned dollars we do not have arming Israeli marauders to the teeth. They are more than happy to see our young men and women in uniform fighting and dying in insane foreign wars to build up a militant and greedy empire for Israel.
Isn’t it time we said, No!, No!, and again No! to the Jewish miscreants and traitors and their lackeys in Washington, D.C. who are bankrupting America?
Or is that “internationalist hawk”?
Justin Raimundo
The idea that the Republican party Establishment was going to tolerate a takeover of their party by a rag-tag bunch of insurgent “tea partiers” was never very convincing, and Rick Perry’s entrance into the race as the “Teastablishment” candidate – to the hosannas of the neocons — should put that delusion to rest.
For months, the media and the Republican mandarins have been anointing one candidate after another as the chief competitor to Mitt Romney, presumed by many to be the frontrunner. First it was Tim Pawlenty, and after he went nowhere fast it was Jon Huntsman, who has about as much chance as Gary Johnson of winning the race. Now it’s Texas Governor Perry who’s going to unite the various Republican factions around a post-Reaganite, post-Bush conservative consensus. The only problem with that is Perry has aroused the ire of Texas conservatives, who noted the Governor’s Texas Transit Corridor highway project made liberal – if you’ll pardon the expression – use of eminent domain. The TTC proposal put him on the other side of the barricades from most Texas conservatives – and also put him at odds with Rep. Ron Paul, another fast-rising GOP presidential contender, who introduced legislation to block federal money for the scheme. I’ll leave it to others to expose Perry’s RINO credentials on domestic issues, and focus instead on his hostility to the Tea Party when it comes to foreign policy.
At its inception, the Tea Party, as an inchoate movement with no real national leaders, and a fervently single-issue focus, had no foreign policy agenda. As time went on, however – that is, as the bills continued to stream in for our wars in the Middle East – that began to change. It changed because no one can address the fiscal crisis at the core of our problems without facing the question of how to cut the misnamed “defense” budget. It soon became apparent to the tea partiers that a military tasked with policing the world – instead of actually defending this country – accounted for a good chunk of change. Under the all-inclusive rubric of “defense” we spend more than a trillion dollars a year, as much as for so-called entitlements. The rest is “discretionary” spending – you know, like running the actual government.
In any case, the tea partiers, confronted with a bloated Leviathan, soon discovered that the military budget is among the holiest of the federal budget’s sacred cows, and that this reverence is bipartisan: neither the GOP Establishment nor the Democrats would sign on to any real cuts in this sector. The result: a budget deal that relegated possible cuts in the military and overseas budget to the final “tranches” of the budget-reduction process, to go into effect only if the “Super-Congress” fails to reach an agreement.
In short, they’ll yank your grandmother off her life support system, and cut your Social Security – which you’ve been “paying into” all these years – just as you reach retirement age, long before they’ll touch a penny of the trillions being funneled overseas to our far-flung outposts of empire.
The tea partiers, most of them, find this galling, to say the least, and the rumbles of discontent with this Americans-come-last policy provoked a response from the Establishment: the tea partiers, the neocons cried, are a modern manifestation of the dreaded “isolationists,” and the Obama cultists joined in the hand-wringing, defending the Dear Leader’s Libyan adventure against Republican “isolationists” like Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul, and George Will.
Undeterred, tea party activists are pushing ahead with their campaign to cut back Big Government on all levels – including the international level. As The Hill reports, tea partiers are putting pressure on Republicans appointed to the “Super-Committee” to wield the budget knife unsparingly:
“’Nothing should be sacred, and everything needs to be evaluated and cut as much as it can be,’ said Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots.
“Tea Party activists say defense programs should come under the same knife as any other taxpayer-funded programs, and that massive national security budgets were not exempt from their definition of ‘big government.’
“’The liberty movement is about the fundamental limitation of government, and that doesn’t have departmental boundaries with regards to this principle,’ said Chris Littleton, co-founder of the Ohio Liberty Council.”
The tea partiers aren’t “isolationists” – that smear word doesn’t really describe anyone in American politics outside of the labor unions and other advocates of economic protectionism. They’re nationalists, albeit not of the all-too-familiar militaristic variety, in that they want a foreign policy that puts America and American interests first, and last. As opposed to the traditional European conception of nationalism as warlike and expansionist, theirs is a distinctively American version that is inward looking and increasingly anti-imperialist.
This is in radical juxtaposition to the views of Señor Perry, who has been characterized by one of his top aides as a “hawk internationalist.” This is a good indication that the much-ballyhooed Perry bandwagon began going off the rails before it ever got started. Do the Perryites really believe they can sell their candidate to crusty conservative Republicans as an “internationalist”? Does Phyllis Schlafly know about this?
Just look at who’s been giving him foreign policy advice: according to Josh Rogin, over at Foreignpolicy.com, he’s been in meetings “sometimes for hours” with the likes of former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, former NSC “strategy guru” William Luti, and a host of other neocons from the last administration, many of whom were instrumental in lying us into war in Iraq. Feith and Luti were the nexus of a disinformation network which fed false “intelligence” to the Congress, the White House, and the public to justify a disastrous invasion which we are still paying for in lives and treasure.
Oh, and what a surprise: it turns out the Perry-neocon lash-up was brokered by disgraced former Defense Secretary Donald “Known Unknowns” Rumsfeld.
Another clueless Texas Governor surrounded by the same Praetorian Guard of conniving neocons who led us down the road to imperial overstretch and fiscal ruin last time around – isn’t that just what the GOP needs right now?
The neocons have anointed their candidate, and it’s clear they have some sense he’s swimming upstream:
“’He will distinguish himself from other Republicans as a hawk internationalist, embracing American exceptionalism and the unique role we must play in confronting the many threats we face,’ one foreign policy advisor with knowledge of Perry’s thinking told The Cable. ‘He has no sympathy for the neo-isolationist impulses emanating from some quarters of the Republican Party.’”
Perry is being sold as the one candidate who can bridge the gap between the tea partiers and the old line “mainstream” Republican Establishment, but those fault-lines are turning into a chasm, as Senator McCain’s anti-Tea Party eruption the other day confirms. When it comes to cutting “defense” – and, more broadly, redefining America’s proper role in the world – Perry and his neocon advisors are going to have to demonstrate how “American exceptionalism” means we’re an exception to the laws of economics. [.pdf] Empires are expensive: a foreign policy of perpetual war costs not only cash but lives. Aside from the fiscal aspect, for most Americans the death of Osama bin Laden has drawn the curtain on the threat from al-Qaeda – especially for those increasing numbers who face the far more immediate threat of financial insolvency. At a time when the homes of so many Americans have gone into foreclosure, Perry’s neocon “experts” are going to have a hard time coming up with a convincing pitch for more military spending, more wars, and more “internationalism.”
In trying to sell this warmed-over Bush-ism, the Perry camp is setting itself on a collision course with the tea partiers. Having been sold out by the Republican congressional leadership and its too-little-too-late budget deal – which authorized over a trillion to feed the maw of the Welfare-Warfare State, and only cut the rate of spending growth – the libertarian-constitutionalist wing of the GOP is in no mood for compromise. In a primary season in which the Tea Party is widely seen as the kingmaker, Perry the “internationalist” may see his coronation delayed indefinitely.
The Perry trial balloon was inflated with a lot of hot air when it was first floated in the media, but he may well turn out to be another Fred Thompson – remember him? – or, more precisely, another Rudy Giuliani. You’ll recall that Perry endorsed Giuliani in the last presidential go-round, and I have a sneaking suspicion – or is it a hope? – the Perry campaign is headed for a similar destiny.
At its inception, the Tea Party, as an inchoate movement with no real national leaders, and a fervently single-issue focus, had no foreign policy agenda. As time went on, however – that is, as the bills continued to stream in for our wars in the Middle East – that began to change. It changed because no one can address the fiscal crisis at the core of our problems without facing the question of how to cut the misnamed “defense” budget. It soon became apparent to the tea partiers that a military tasked with policing the world – instead of actually defending this country – accounted for a good chunk of change. Under the all-inclusive rubric of “defense” we spend more than a trillion dollars a year, as much as for so-called entitlements. The rest is “discretionary” spending – you know, like running the actual government.
In any case, the tea partiers, confronted with a bloated Leviathan, soon discovered that the military budget is among the holiest of the federal budget’s sacred cows, and that this reverence is bipartisan: neither the GOP Establishment nor the Democrats would sign on to any real cuts in this sector. The result: a budget deal that relegated possible cuts in the military and overseas budget to the final “tranches” of the budget-reduction process, to go into effect only if the “Super-Congress” fails to reach an agreement.
In short, they’ll yank your grandmother off her life support system, and cut your Social Security – which you’ve been “paying into” all these years – just as you reach retirement age, long before they’ll touch a penny of the trillions being funneled overseas to our far-flung outposts of empire.
The tea partiers, most of them, find this galling, to say the least, and the rumbles of discontent with this Americans-come-last policy provoked a response from the Establishment: the tea partiers, the neocons cried, are a modern manifestation of the dreaded “isolationists,” and the Obama cultists joined in the hand-wringing, defending the Dear Leader’s Libyan adventure against Republican “isolationists” like Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul, and George Will.
Undeterred, tea party activists are pushing ahead with their campaign to cut back Big Government on all levels – including the international level. As The Hill reports, tea partiers are putting pressure on Republicans appointed to the “Super-Committee” to wield the budget knife unsparingly:
“’Nothing should be sacred, and everything needs to be evaluated and cut as much as it can be,’ said Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots.
“Tea Party activists say defense programs should come under the same knife as any other taxpayer-funded programs, and that massive national security budgets were not exempt from their definition of ‘big government.’
“’The liberty movement is about the fundamental limitation of government, and that doesn’t have departmental boundaries with regards to this principle,’ said Chris Littleton, co-founder of the Ohio Liberty Council.”
The tea partiers aren’t “isolationists” – that smear word doesn’t really describe anyone in American politics outside of the labor unions and other advocates of economic protectionism. They’re nationalists, albeit not of the all-too-familiar militaristic variety, in that they want a foreign policy that puts America and American interests first, and last. As opposed to the traditional European conception of nationalism as warlike and expansionist, theirs is a distinctively American version that is inward looking and increasingly anti-imperialist.
This is in radical juxtaposition to the views of Señor Perry, who has been characterized by one of his top aides as a “hawk internationalist.” This is a good indication that the much-ballyhooed Perry bandwagon began going off the rails before it ever got started. Do the Perryites really believe they can sell their candidate to crusty conservative Republicans as an “internationalist”? Does Phyllis Schlafly know about this?
Just look at who’s been giving him foreign policy advice: according to Josh Rogin, over at Foreignpolicy.com, he’s been in meetings “sometimes for hours” with the likes of former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, former NSC “strategy guru” William Luti, and a host of other neocons from the last administration, many of whom were instrumental in lying us into war in Iraq. Feith and Luti were the nexus of a disinformation network which fed false “intelligence” to the Congress, the White House, and the public to justify a disastrous invasion which we are still paying for in lives and treasure.
Oh, and what a surprise: it turns out the Perry-neocon lash-up was brokered by disgraced former Defense Secretary Donald “Known Unknowns” Rumsfeld.
Another clueless Texas Governor surrounded by the same Praetorian Guard of conniving neocons who led us down the road to imperial overstretch and fiscal ruin last time around – isn’t that just what the GOP needs right now?
The neocons have anointed their candidate, and it’s clear they have some sense he’s swimming upstream:
“’He will distinguish himself from other Republicans as a hawk internationalist, embracing American exceptionalism and the unique role we must play in confronting the many threats we face,’ one foreign policy advisor with knowledge of Perry’s thinking told The Cable. ‘He has no sympathy for the neo-isolationist impulses emanating from some quarters of the Republican Party.’”
Perry is being sold as the one candidate who can bridge the gap between the tea partiers and the old line “mainstream” Republican Establishment, but those fault-lines are turning into a chasm, as Senator McCain’s anti-Tea Party eruption the other day confirms. When it comes to cutting “defense” – and, more broadly, redefining America’s proper role in the world – Perry and his neocon advisors are going to have to demonstrate how “American exceptionalism” means we’re an exception to the laws of economics. [.pdf] Empires are expensive: a foreign policy of perpetual war costs not only cash but lives. Aside from the fiscal aspect, for most Americans the death of Osama bin Laden has drawn the curtain on the threat from al-Qaeda – especially for those increasing numbers who face the far more immediate threat of financial insolvency. At a time when the homes of so many Americans have gone into foreclosure, Perry’s neocon “experts” are going to have a hard time coming up with a convincing pitch for more military spending, more wars, and more “internationalism.”
In trying to sell this warmed-over Bush-ism, the Perry camp is setting itself on a collision course with the tea partiers. Having been sold out by the Republican congressional leadership and its too-little-too-late budget deal – which authorized over a trillion to feed the maw of the Welfare-Warfare State, and only cut the rate of spending growth – the libertarian-constitutionalist wing of the GOP is in no mood for compromise. In a primary season in which the Tea Party is widely seen as the kingmaker, Perry the “internationalist” may see his coronation delayed indefinitely.
The Perry trial balloon was inflated with a lot of hot air when it was first floated in the media, but he may well turn out to be another Fred Thompson – remember him? – or, more precisely, another Rudy Giuliani. You’ll recall that Perry endorsed Giuliani in the last presidential go-round, and I have a sneaking suspicion – or is it a hope? – the Perry campaign is headed for a similar destiny.
US Ambassador: Support for Israel drives all US Mideast policies
By Alison WeirAntiwar
September 14, 2011
While many Americans may believe that US policies are designed to address American needs, America’s new Ambassador to Israel explains that this is far from the case.
In a recent speech before the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), Ambassador Daniel Shapiro clarified what drives US policies: “The test of every policy the Administration develops in the Middle East is whether it is consistent with the goal of ensuring Israel’s future as a secure, Jewish, democratic state. That is a commitment that runs as a common thread through our entire government.”
Shapiro went on to say: “This test explains our extraordinary security cooperation, our stand against the delegitimization of Israel, our efforts on Iran, our response to the Arab Spring, and our efforts on Israeli-Palestinian peace.”
Continue reading…
Pro-Israel Republicans demand more militarism
In his latest column for Antiwar.com, Philip Giraldi notes the Israeli connection to the Republican party’s “pervasive militarism.” As a particularly egregious example of one “clueless” Republican’s passionate attachment to Israel, Giraldi cites a statement by Florida Senator Marco Rubio:“We should always remember that the obstacle to peace isn’t Israel; it’s Palestinian extremists and Islamic terrorists who will not accept the Jewish state. Israel’s enemies are or will soon be America’s enemies as well. They are emboldened every time they sense any sort of daylight between the United States and Israel.”
Rick Perry and the Neocons
August 18, 2011
Phillip Giraldi
The only change anyone can believe in in Washington is that nothing ever changes. The choice between Republican and Democrat in 2012 will likely boil down to who will be making what kind of cuts in social programs to support continuous warfare overseas. Only Ron Paul stands out from the pack with his commitment to constitutionalism and nonintervention, but sustained efforts by establishment Republicans and the media to make his candidacy go away render him a long shot at best.
The most recent Republican presidential wannabe is Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Having lived in Texas, I know from personal experience that the Texas miracle of employment is based on low wages, no health benefits, and nonexistent protection for the employed, but I will let others who are better qualified than I make that argument. For me the issue is America’s wars and my fading hope that the insanity of multiple overseas conflicts combined with a global war against presumed terrorists everywhere will stop. It will certainly not stop if Perry is elected.
The following, which appeared on the Foreign Policy website, speaks for itself regarding where Rick Perry would take us if he is elected. He would return to George W. Bush’s foreign policy, complete with “you are with us or against us,” “they hate our freedom,” and 1-percent doctrines, and he would likely staff his administration with many of the same people who brought us disaster the first time around.
Doug Feith should be particularly noted, as it appears he might be resurfacing in government, a normal recycling that neocons go through as they move through the revolving door from high government office to the private sector and back again. He is also a poster boy for just how corrupt and dishonest the Bush regime was. Perhaps not inappropriately, Gen. Tommy Franks once referred to Feith as the “the f***ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth,” which apparently was not a disqualifier from holding one of the highest offices in the Department of Defense.
Feith and Luti were associated with the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, which used fabricated intelligence from Iraqi National Council head Ahmed Chalabi to convince the White House to support an invasion of Iraq. They might even have been involved in the Niger uranium forgeries that convinced the White House that Saddam Hussein was attempting to obtain fuel for a nuclear weapon. All of which led to American Secretary of State Colin Powell’s eventual humiliation after making a speech at the United Nations in which he claimed that Iraq had secret weapons and intentions that it clearly did not have. But he and the White House still managed to get their war, facts be damned. That war and the consequences of the American invasion still continue to bring death and destruction eight years later.
Feith’s activities while holding the number-three position at the Pentagon were eventually examined by Defense Department Inspector General Thomas Gimble in February 2007. Gimble condemned Feith’s attempt to create what he charitably called“an alternative intelligence assessment process,” lacking the checks and balances observed by CIA, DIA, and INR. But no punishment was recommended for anyone involved in the relentless advocacy that enabled the slide to war.
Per Gimble’s careful parsing, Feith’s activities were deemed “inappropriate” but “not illegal or unauthorized.”And his investigation’s scope was curiously limited: the yearlong inquiry only examined one of the many questionable activities carried out by the Office of Special Plans, the purported link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The role of Feith’s office in hatching the imaginary meeting between Mohammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague was significant, but it was only a single element in the much broader pattern of deception that provided the “evidence” President Bush used to convince the American people that Saddam’s Iraq was an existential threat akin to Hitler’s Germany.
Feith had also long been advising the Israeli government to pressure Washington to remove Saddam Hussein. So it was unsurprising when he joined Richard Perle, David Wurmser, and others in July 1996 to develop a position paper that had Iraqi regime change as its centerpiece. Intended for incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the document, titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” pushed the new government to launch preemptive war against Israel’s Arab neighbors.“Israel has the opportunity to make a clean break,” the paper said,“to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism.” Baghdad was first on the hit list — “Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically,” they wrote — followed by Syria and Lebanon. To secure American support for “rolling back” Arab regimes, the group advised developing contrived motives for the invasions — in Syria’s case, counterfeiting, drug running, and WMD development.
During the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Israeli military officers and diplomats had free access to Feith’s offices and those of his boss, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Both had been investigated earlier in their careers on suspicion of passing secrets to Israel — Feith in 1982, Wolfowitz in 1978. Analysts working for Feith who were not uncritically supportive of the U.S.-Israel relationship were weeded out. Feith’s sympathies were scarcely secret. In 2003, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice commented after a Feith presentation, “Thanks, Doug, but when we want the Israeli position we’ll invite the ambassador,”while Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson described Feith “as a card-carrying member of Likud.”
Then there is the issue — which has never been completely investigated despite a request from former CIA director George Tenet — of how Feith’s presentation of the case for an Iraq-al-Qaeda connection, based on over 50 documents, most of which were classified, was fortuitously leaked to Stephen Hayes at the always receptive Weekly Standard. At that time, several of The Weekly Standard’s regular contributors actually worked in Feith’s Office of Special Plans, a possible conflict of interest that has never been explained or examined. In November 2003, Hayes wrote an article called “Case Closed” based on Feith’s information. The article was subsequently cited by Vice President Dick Cheney as proof positive of the al-Qaeda-Saddam connection.
The Feith report is referred to as circular reporting, where one phony bit of information is used to support another suspect piece, deliberately leading to an incorrect conclusion. Deliberate evasion of the intelligence community’s vetting process and illegal exposure of classified information aside, the Office of Special Plans was scheming in other ways that the IG report didn’t even attempt to address. The OSP refined cherry-picking, permitting the consumer to select information that supported a case while rejecting that which did not. Feith’s office also perfected the stovepipe: if it had a rumor or some tidbit of questionable information that might be dismissed by the limp-wristed defeatists over at State or the CIA, it could be typed up on nice letterhead and sent directly up to friends at the National Security Council or the vice president’s office, where Stephen Hadley or Scooter Libby would ensure that it would be seen by their bosses.
So, Doug, that is quite a record, something to be proud of, and welcome back to the playing field. Another governor of Texas who knows nothing about foreign policy should be the perfect tabula rasa for you and your neoconservative friends to write upon. A badly battered United States has somehow survived eight years since you initiated your last adventure in Iraq, but it is unlikely to survive eight more if Rick Perry takes your advice and resumes the project of remaking the Middle East. “Hawk internationalist,” indeed.
The most recent Republican presidential wannabe is Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Having lived in Texas, I know from personal experience that the Texas miracle of employment is based on low wages, no health benefits, and nonexistent protection for the employed, but I will let others who are better qualified than I make that argument. For me the issue is America’s wars and my fading hope that the insanity of multiple overseas conflicts combined with a global war against presumed terrorists everywhere will stop. It will certainly not stop if Perry is elected.
The following, which appeared on the Foreign Policy website, speaks for itself regarding where Rick Perry would take us if he is elected. He would return to George W. Bush’s foreign policy, complete with “you are with us or against us,” “they hate our freedom,” and 1-percent doctrines, and he would likely staff his administration with many of the same people who brought us disaster the first time around.
Perry, who has no formal campaign policy team because he has not yet announced that he is running, has however held an increasing number of meetings with foreign policy experts of all stripes. These meetings, which have sometimes gone on for hours, have helped Perry brush up on a range of issues, from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to proliferation, from Middle East policy to international trade, according to those familiar with the meetings. The experts that he has reached out to include former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, former NSC strategy guru William Luti, former Assistant U.S. Attorney and National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy, former Pentagon official Charles “Cully” Stimson, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe Daniel Fata, former Pentagon China official Dan Blumenthal, the Heritage Foundation’s Asia expert Peter Brookes, and former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad. Politico reported that Donald Rumsfeld helped Perry set up the initial meeting with Feith, Luti, McCarthy, and Fata (Stimson was invited but couldn’t attend), but there have been several more since then and the Perry team is continuing to fly in experts to meet with the governor in Texas. Foreign policy hands with knowledge of the prospective candidate’s identity, which is still taking shape, told The Cable that Perry is planning to stake out political territory as a defense-minded but internationally engaged candidate, contrasting himself with the realism of Jon Huntsman, the ever-changing stance of Mitt Romney, or the tea party budget cutting focus of Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul. “He will distinguish himself from other Republicans as a hawk internationalist, embracing American exceptionalism and the unique role we must play in confronting the many threats we face,” one foreign policy adviser with knowledge of Perry’s thinking told The Cable. “He has no sympathy for the neo-isolationist impulses emanating from some quarters of the Republican Party.”The fact is, apart from Paul, all of the Republican candidates, like President Barack Obama, support a strong and assertive U.S. military and intelligence presence worldwide. When you hear the expression “American exceptionalism,”it is time to pull out the atlas and consider which Muslim country will be invaded or bombed next. Perry’s advisers are all hawks and supporters of both the Iraq War and of a continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan. They apparently believe, against the evidence, that military interventions produce good results.
Doug Feith should be particularly noted, as it appears he might be resurfacing in government, a normal recycling that neocons go through as they move through the revolving door from high government office to the private sector and back again. He is also a poster boy for just how corrupt and dishonest the Bush regime was. Perhaps not inappropriately, Gen. Tommy Franks once referred to Feith as the “the f***ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth,” which apparently was not a disqualifier from holding one of the highest offices in the Department of Defense.
Feith and Luti were associated with the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, which used fabricated intelligence from Iraqi National Council head Ahmed Chalabi to convince the White House to support an invasion of Iraq. They might even have been involved in the Niger uranium forgeries that convinced the White House that Saddam Hussein was attempting to obtain fuel for a nuclear weapon. All of which led to American Secretary of State Colin Powell’s eventual humiliation after making a speech at the United Nations in which he claimed that Iraq had secret weapons and intentions that it clearly did not have. But he and the White House still managed to get their war, facts be damned. That war and the consequences of the American invasion still continue to bring death and destruction eight years later.
Feith’s activities while holding the number-three position at the Pentagon were eventually examined by Defense Department Inspector General Thomas Gimble in February 2007. Gimble condemned Feith’s attempt to create what he charitably called“an alternative intelligence assessment process,” lacking the checks and balances observed by CIA, DIA, and INR. But no punishment was recommended for anyone involved in the relentless advocacy that enabled the slide to war.
Per Gimble’s careful parsing, Feith’s activities were deemed “inappropriate” but “not illegal or unauthorized.”And his investigation’s scope was curiously limited: the yearlong inquiry only examined one of the many questionable activities carried out by the Office of Special Plans, the purported link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The role of Feith’s office in hatching the imaginary meeting between Mohammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague was significant, but it was only a single element in the much broader pattern of deception that provided the “evidence” President Bush used to convince the American people that Saddam’s Iraq was an existential threat akin to Hitler’s Germany.
Feith had also long been advising the Israeli government to pressure Washington to remove Saddam Hussein. So it was unsurprising when he joined Richard Perle, David Wurmser, and others in July 1996 to develop a position paper that had Iraqi regime change as its centerpiece. Intended for incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the document, titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” pushed the new government to launch preemptive war against Israel’s Arab neighbors.“Israel has the opportunity to make a clean break,” the paper said,“to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism.” Baghdad was first on the hit list — “Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically,” they wrote — followed by Syria and Lebanon. To secure American support for “rolling back” Arab regimes, the group advised developing contrived motives for the invasions — in Syria’s case, counterfeiting, drug running, and WMD development.
During the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Israeli military officers and diplomats had free access to Feith’s offices and those of his boss, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Both had been investigated earlier in their careers on suspicion of passing secrets to Israel — Feith in 1982, Wolfowitz in 1978. Analysts working for Feith who were not uncritically supportive of the U.S.-Israel relationship were weeded out. Feith’s sympathies were scarcely secret. In 2003, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice commented after a Feith presentation, “Thanks, Doug, but when we want the Israeli position we’ll invite the ambassador,”while Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson described Feith “as a card-carrying member of Likud.”
Then there is the issue — which has never been completely investigated despite a request from former CIA director George Tenet — of how Feith’s presentation of the case for an Iraq-al-Qaeda connection, based on over 50 documents, most of which were classified, was fortuitously leaked to Stephen Hayes at the always receptive Weekly Standard. At that time, several of The Weekly Standard’s regular contributors actually worked in Feith’s Office of Special Plans, a possible conflict of interest that has never been explained or examined. In November 2003, Hayes wrote an article called “Case Closed” based on Feith’s information. The article was subsequently cited by Vice President Dick Cheney as proof positive of the al-Qaeda-Saddam connection.
The Feith report is referred to as circular reporting, where one phony bit of information is used to support another suspect piece, deliberately leading to an incorrect conclusion. Deliberate evasion of the intelligence community’s vetting process and illegal exposure of classified information aside, the Office of Special Plans was scheming in other ways that the IG report didn’t even attempt to address. The OSP refined cherry-picking, permitting the consumer to select information that supported a case while rejecting that which did not. Feith’s office also perfected the stovepipe: if it had a rumor or some tidbit of questionable information that might be dismissed by the limp-wristed defeatists over at State or the CIA, it could be typed up on nice letterhead and sent directly up to friends at the National Security Council or the vice president’s office, where Stephen Hadley or Scooter Libby would ensure that it would be seen by their bosses.
So, Doug, that is quite a record, something to be proud of, and welcome back to the playing field. Another governor of Texas who knows nothing about foreign policy should be the perfect tabula rasa for you and your neoconservative friends to write upon. A badly battered United States has somehow survived eight years since you initiated your last adventure in Iraq, but it is unlikely to survive eight more if Rick Perry takes your advice and resumes the project of remaking the Middle East. “Hawk internationalist,” indeed.
Romney Calls for New Century of War
by Ralph Forbes
by Ralph Forbes
The Citadel in Charleston, S.C. is brimming with history and symbolism. South Carolina also happens to be a key state in the Republican primaries.
It is an ideal setting for a patriot—or even a chicken hawk phony—to deliver a major campaign speech. And that is why Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney chose this stage to introduce on Oct. 7 his vision for a “New American Century” of more wars and global occupation.
As a former Marine, this writer identified with the 2,100 cadets, who have contributed 1,400 of their classmates to the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan. I was sickened by the thought of these youngAmericans being cold-bloodedly used as props in a slick political campaign—to be used as cannon fodder for profits—sacrificed to cynical schemes of a foreign power.
Why doesn’t the establishment media remind Romney of what he said, when asked in 2007, why none of his five sons—all perfect candidates for military service—had come forward to serve in the war that Romney supports enthusiastically? His response was: “My sons are adults. They’ve chosen not to serve in the military in active duty, and I respect their decision in that regard . . .
And one of the ways my sons is showing support for our nation is helpingme get elected, because they think I’d be a great president.”
Themainstreammedia also let Romney get away with it when he said, “Since 1842, every tyrant, petty thug or great power that threatened America learned that if you wanted to take on America, you were taking on the Citadel. That’s a line of heroes that’s never broken and never will be.” Romney didn’t say that Citadel Cadets were in the first Battles of Ft. Sumter—and valiantly fought for the Confederacy to the bitter end against tyranny in theWar Between the States.
But the real meat of his talk on Oct. 7 was his vision of the future. The following are excerpts of what Romney had to say in which he advocated more global meddling and more wars:
We are at war with Islamic fundamentalism. We must fight against themost ancient of prejudices: anti-Semitism.
Inmy first 100 days in office, Iwill . . . announce an initiative to increase the shipbuilding rate fromnine per year to 15.
Iwill begin . . . the full deployment of amultilayered national ballistic missile defense system.
I will enhance our deterrent against the Iranian regime by ordering the regular presence of aircraft carrier task forces, one in the EasternMediterranean and one in the Persian Gulf region. I will begin discussions with Israel to increase the level of our military assistance and coordination . . . an Iranian nuclear weapon is unacceptable.
I will launch a campaign to advance economic opportunity in Latin America . . . free trade . . .
I will reaffirm as a vital national interest Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. I will count as dear our special relationship with the United Kingdom . . .
We have this promise from a shameless chicken hawk: Nuclear war against Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan and billions of Muslims in the Middle East. Of course, this means no money for the American middle class, as well as an end to jobs, Social Security, healthcare, tax relief and infrastructure. Endless trillions will continue to go down the black holes of the military-industrial banking police state.
It is an ideal setting for a patriot—or even a chicken hawk phony—to deliver a major campaign speech. And that is why Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney chose this stage to introduce on Oct. 7 his vision for a “New American Century” of more wars and global occupation.
As a former Marine, this writer identified with the 2,100 cadets, who have contributed 1,400 of their classmates to the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan. I was sickened by the thought of these youngAmericans being cold-bloodedly used as props in a slick political campaign—to be used as cannon fodder for profits—sacrificed to cynical schemes of a foreign power.
Why doesn’t the establishment media remind Romney of what he said, when asked in 2007, why none of his five sons—all perfect candidates for military service—had come forward to serve in the war that Romney supports enthusiastically? His response was: “My sons are adults. They’ve chosen not to serve in the military in active duty, and I respect their decision in that regard . . .
And one of the ways my sons is showing support for our nation is helpingme get elected, because they think I’d be a great president.”
Themainstreammedia also let Romney get away with it when he said, “Since 1842, every tyrant, petty thug or great power that threatened America learned that if you wanted to take on America, you were taking on the Citadel. That’s a line of heroes that’s never broken and never will be.” Romney didn’t say that Citadel Cadets were in the first Battles of Ft. Sumter—and valiantly fought for the Confederacy to the bitter end against tyranny in theWar Between the States.
But the real meat of his talk on Oct. 7 was his vision of the future. The following are excerpts of what Romney had to say in which he advocated more global meddling and more wars:
We are at war with Islamic fundamentalism. We must fight against themost ancient of prejudices: anti-Semitism.
Inmy first 100 days in office, Iwill . . . announce an initiative to increase the shipbuilding rate fromnine per year to 15.
Iwill begin . . . the full deployment of amultilayered national ballistic missile defense system.
I will enhance our deterrent against the Iranian regime by ordering the regular presence of aircraft carrier task forces, one in the EasternMediterranean and one in the Persian Gulf region. I will begin discussions with Israel to increase the level of our military assistance and coordination . . . an Iranian nuclear weapon is unacceptable.
I will launch a campaign to advance economic opportunity in Latin America . . . free trade . . .
I will reaffirm as a vital national interest Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. I will count as dear our special relationship with the United Kingdom . . .
We have this promise from a shameless chicken hawk: Nuclear war against Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan and billions of Muslims in the Middle East. Of course, this means no money for the American middle class, as well as an end to jobs, Social Security, healthcare, tax relief and infrastructure. Endless trillions will continue to go down the black holes of the military-industrial banking police state.
Cabal of Rabid Warhawks Advising Mitt Romney
The American media is strangely silent about Mitt Romney’s shadow National Security Council, the 50-plus madmen Romney has surrounded himself with as “foreign policy advisers”—many of whom helped push the U.S. into the disastrous war against Iraq. Romney had the chutzpa to name his foreign policy after the Project for a NewAmerican Century, the neo-con dream of a new Pearl Harbor that was fulfilled on 9-11. Several include:
MICHAEL HAYDEN: On CNN (2010), former CIA director and prominent torture advocate, Michael Hayden said attacking Iran over its nuclear program might not be a bad idea. “In my personal thinking . . . I have begun to consider that [nuclear war] may not be the worst of all possible outcomes.”
ELIOT COHEN: Insanely used the 9-11 attacks to advocate war with Iran. Cohen, director of the strategic studies program at Johns Hopkins University, said either we attack Iran, or it gets nukes. “The choices are now what they ever were: an American or an Israeli strike, which would probably cause a substantial war.”
ERIC EDELMAN: Former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Earlier this year in an article in the Council on Foreign Relations’s publication Foreign Affairs, Edelman, along with two other co-authors, said that the U.S. will either have to attack Iran or contain its nuclear weapons capability. “The military option should not be dismissed because of the appealing but flawed notion that containment is a relatively easy or low-risk solution to a very difficult problem,” they wrote.
NORM COLEMAN: Former Republican senator from Minnesota. Said that if Israel ever attacks Iran, the United States should join in. Coleman said: “The United States is going to be part of that.”
KIM HOLMES: The Heritage Foundation’s Kim Holmes worried that negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program might be preventing the U.S. from using military force to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Holmes called peace a “serious mistake.”
Should Mitt Romney become president, get ready for more undeclared war, bigger government and a further expansion of the police state.
MICHAEL HAYDEN: On CNN (2010), former CIA director and prominent torture advocate, Michael Hayden said attacking Iran over its nuclear program might not be a bad idea. “In my personal thinking . . . I have begun to consider that [nuclear war] may not be the worst of all possible outcomes.”
ELIOT COHEN: Insanely used the 9-11 attacks to advocate war with Iran. Cohen, director of the strategic studies program at Johns Hopkins University, said either we attack Iran, or it gets nukes. “The choices are now what they ever were: an American or an Israeli strike, which would probably cause a substantial war.”
ERIC EDELMAN: Former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Earlier this year in an article in the Council on Foreign Relations’s publication Foreign Affairs, Edelman, along with two other co-authors, said that the U.S. will either have to attack Iran or contain its nuclear weapons capability. “The military option should not be dismissed because of the appealing but flawed notion that containment is a relatively easy or low-risk solution to a very difficult problem,” they wrote.
NORM COLEMAN: Former Republican senator from Minnesota. Said that if Israel ever attacks Iran, the United States should join in. Coleman said: “The United States is going to be part of that.”
KIM HOLMES: The Heritage Foundation’s Kim Holmes worried that negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program might be preventing the U.S. from using military force to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Holmes called peace a “serious mistake.”
Should Mitt Romney become president, get ready for more undeclared war, bigger government and a further expansion of the police state.
VIDEO - Des nouvelles de l'Empire - Mitt Romney un malade mental à l'assaut de la Maison Blanche
blog "Choc des Civilisations"
devoilement.blogspot.com
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Guerres perdues pour l'empire, mais gagnées pour Israel
Aucune des guerres engagées sur le mensonge du 11 septembre n'était faite pour être gagnée, du moins pour ceux qui les ont engagées. Les USA y ont tout perdu, l'Europe va faire de même, le seul gagnant sera celui qui les a fomenté depuis les années 80, Israël et son réseau mondial de juifs sans humanité.
Ces guerres en plus de lui livrer le monde arabe, lui livre sanguinolent le monde occidental, encore une fois.
Ces guerres n'ont jamais été créée pour faire gagner, leur seul but a été détruire, et faire revenir à l'age de pierre tant le monde occidental, que le monde arabe.
Le nouveau siècle américain comme le nouveau siècle européen ne sont que les chimères qui font rêver ceux qui sont imbus de puissance et de domination, que des moyens de réveiller la fierté chez ceux qui n'en ont plus depuis longtemps.
Le judaïsme conquérant a gagné toutes ces guerres qui vont lui permettre une domination totale sur les ruines des nations. Il faudra encore quelques années pour que le monde le réalise et se réveille, et quand les frigos seront vides, n'importe quel maitre qui permettra de les remplir sera le bon.
Les esclaves le seront en connaissance de cause, et l'accepteront comme naturel devant la puissance et le pouvoir juif. (...)
Smear Job
• Plutocrats ramp up efforts against Rep. Ron Paul• Launch media smear campaign in New York Times
Ron Paul - targeted by New York Times
By Michael Collins Piper
AFP got frontline mention as the very first words in the first paragraph of a muddled smear of Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul published as a lengthy hit piece beginning on the front page of The New York Times on Dec. 26. That article was followed up by a lead editorial by the Times in its Dec. 28 issue denouncing what it called “Mr. Paul’s Discredited Campaign,” citing its own article as the evidence. The Times article was clearly a sustained effort to undermine Paul, making no pretense otherwise.
Constituting no less than 80 full column inches, the articled zeroed in on AFP at the get-go and focused on the fact that AFP has promoted the book The Ron Paul Revolution, presenting an overview of Paul’s speeches and writings over the last two decades.*
The Times ranked AFP as its lead “evidence” that—in its view—unseemly groups and individuals endorse Paul’s efforts. The Times said a variety of “white nationalists,” “far right groups,” “white supremacists, survivalists and anti-Zionists”—and other villains—are rallying behind Paul.
Although the Times never categorized AFP per se, it described this paper by reporting that AFP “markets books like The Invention of the Jewish People and March of the Titans: A History of the White Race.”
Obviously seeking to impute “anti- Semitism” to AFP by referencing the book The Invention of the Jewish People, what the Times didn’t mention is that the book was written by an Israeli Jewish academic, first published in Hebrew in Israel where it was a national bestseller. Most people would not know that, and that’s what the Times counted on.
And while the Times was horrified AFP would carry an advertisement from another publisher on the history of the white race—proof somehow that AFP was “racist”—it never occurred to the Times that a book about the white race would seem no more shocking to the average American than books, for example, about the history of Africans, Chinese or Indians, which are in every library and bookstore.
The Times’ smear is an obvious effort to force Paul to denounce those who have united behind him and to divide Paul’s diverse groups of supporters and set them at odds with one another.
——
U.S. should be the world’s policeman
When there is no effective alternative, democratic countries have an ethical and humanitarian duty to threaten to use military force and, if there is no other option, to actually use it.
http://www.haaretz.com/culture/books/.premium-1.548974
Who was the most pro-Jewish U.S. president? Woodrow Wilson, obviously
A new biography of the 28th American president depicts him as an idealist Democrat whose moral and political influence still reverberates today. Haaretz talks to its author, A. Scott Berg.
——
U.S. should be the world’s policeman
When there is no effective alternative, democratic countries have an ethical and humanitarian duty to threaten to use military force and, if there is no other option, to actually use it.
U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc., September 21, 2013.
Photo by AFP
The United States should not be the world's policeman, or so U.S. President Barack Obama
argued in his address to the nation on September 10, in which he
explained his position on military intervention in the Syrian civil war.
The president is wrong. In light of the history and doctrine of the use
of force and military intervention, the United States, along with other
enlightened democracies in possession of military might, should and
must be the world's policeman.
The horrors of World War II taught us certain lessons. One led to the formation of the United Nations, for the purpose of preserving world peace and creating a mechanism for dialogue among states. Another resulted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which eventually gave rise to binding international treaties meant to protect human rights. But some questions remain: Do the lofty goals that inspired the establishment of the United Nations mean that the international community has a duty to intervene and raise the alarm in the event of the commission of war crimes or the use of weapons of mass destruction? (...)
It is legitimate to question whether intervention might lead to international escalation. Nevertheless, isolationism in cases where intervention is a moral necessity is supposed to be a thing of the past, of a time when states did not want to get bogged down in distant countries even in the event of war crimes. If this attitude becomes prevalent once again, it will be to the detriment of the entire world. It goes without saying that diplomacy, itself a form of intervention, is preferable as long as it is effective and not a kind of Munich Pact, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry noted in reference to Syria.
At the end of the day, America, together with other strong democratic countries, is indeed supposed to be the world's policeman - insofar as it is acting on behalf of the fundamental principles on which the United Nations was founded, even when political exigencies preclude obtaining UN approval. When there is no effective alternative or pressure must be exerted to kick-start diplomacy, democratic countries have an ethical and humanitarian duty to threaten to use military force and, if there is no other option, to actually use it. Proportionally, of course, but also effectively, in compliance with the two leading criteria of military law.
The writer is a former legal adviser to the Defense Ministry.
The horrors of World War II taught us certain lessons. One led to the formation of the United Nations, for the purpose of preserving world peace and creating a mechanism for dialogue among states. Another resulted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which eventually gave rise to binding international treaties meant to protect human rights. But some questions remain: Do the lofty goals that inspired the establishment of the United Nations mean that the international community has a duty to intervene and raise the alarm in the event of the commission of war crimes or the use of weapons of mass destruction? (...)
It is legitimate to question whether intervention might lead to international escalation. Nevertheless, isolationism in cases where intervention is a moral necessity is supposed to be a thing of the past, of a time when states did not want to get bogged down in distant countries even in the event of war crimes. If this attitude becomes prevalent once again, it will be to the detriment of the entire world. It goes without saying that diplomacy, itself a form of intervention, is preferable as long as it is effective and not a kind of Munich Pact, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry noted in reference to Syria.
At the end of the day, America, together with other strong democratic countries, is indeed supposed to be the world's policeman - insofar as it is acting on behalf of the fundamental principles on which the United Nations was founded, even when political exigencies preclude obtaining UN approval. When there is no effective alternative or pressure must be exerted to kick-start diplomacy, democratic countries have an ethical and humanitarian duty to threaten to use military force and, if there is no other option, to actually use it. Proportionally, of course, but also effectively, in compliance with the two leading criteria of military law.
http://www.haaretz.com/culture/books/.premium-1.548974
Who was the most pro-Jewish U.S. president? Woodrow Wilson, obviously
A new biography of the 28th American president depicts him as an idealist Democrat whose moral and political influence still reverberates today. Haaretz talks to its author, A. Scott Berg.
(...)
Obama's
address included more than faint echoes of another principled Democrat
intent on transforming American society and the world beyond it: Woodrow
Wilson, the 28th president of the United States, and the man who led
his country into the First World War.
(...)
However, in A. Scott Berg's biography, "Wilson" (Putnam Press), the book's namesake emerges as a formidable statesman, one who has influenced the decision-making of every American president since his tenure.
Berg, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Charles Lindbergh and Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn, sat down with Haaretz to discuss Wilson's legacy and its effect on modern politics and the Obama administration's policies – and why Wilson is what he calls the most pro-Jewish president in American history.
Why is the Wilson presidency so relevant to the Obama presidency?
"Wilson is the father of America's modern foreign policy. For 125 years, the U.S. was an introverted nation that clung on to its isolationism. Wilson posed the question: What is America's role in the world? And the answer he gave, in his speech to Congress on April 2, 1917, asking the legislature to declare war on Germany, was that it is America's duty to ensure "the world must be safe for democracy." This credo has been espoused, for good and bad, by every president since Wilson, most recently by Barack Obama.
"Wilson was the most idealistic of America's presidents. He spoke often and eloquently about America's moral obligation. He wed idealism with interventionism. He urged his countrymen to fight preemptively for principles, instead of retaliating for attacks against them. And he obliged the U.S. to assist all peoples in pursuit of freedom and self-determination. Obama has fully embraced this moralism, most recently, when he sought congressional approval to punish Syria for its deadly use of chemical weapons. In fact, listening to his speech [on Syria], I thought Obama's ideas and phraseology were ripped right out of Wilson's playbook."
(...)
In late 1917, the British Government asked President Wilson to support a declaration of sympathy with the Zionist movement.
"And he did. Wilson supported the Balfour Declaration – 'the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.' He did so despite the advice of his most trusted confidante, Col. Edward House, who acted as America's first national security adviser. You must remember that, at the time, the U.S. was an extremely anti-Semitic country,so expressing support for the Balfour Declaration was a very courageous act.
"Wilson was the most Christian president the U.S. has ever had. He was the son and grandson of Presbyterian ministers; he prayed on his knees twice a day and read the Bible every night. But he was also the most pro-Jewish president the U.S. has ever had. He appointed the first Jew to the Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis, a fervent Zionist, who counseled Wilson about the Balfour Declaration, and who would go on to champion an individual's right to privacy and free speech. He brought the financier Bernard Baruch into government, and he appointed Henry Morgenthau as the ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
"Earlier, as president of Princeton University, Wilson appointed the first Jew to the faculty, and as governor of New Jersey, prior to becoming president, he appointed the first Jew to the state's Supreme Court."
However, in A. Scott Berg's biography, "Wilson" (Putnam Press), the book's namesake emerges as a formidable statesman, one who has influenced the decision-making of every American president since his tenure.
Berg, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Charles Lindbergh and Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn, sat down with Haaretz to discuss Wilson's legacy and its effect on modern politics and the Obama administration's policies – and why Wilson is what he calls the most pro-Jewish president in American history.
Why is the Wilson presidency so relevant to the Obama presidency?
"Wilson is the father of America's modern foreign policy. For 125 years, the U.S. was an introverted nation that clung on to its isolationism. Wilson posed the question: What is America's role in the world? And the answer he gave, in his speech to Congress on April 2, 1917, asking the legislature to declare war on Germany, was that it is America's duty to ensure "the world must be safe for democracy." This credo has been espoused, for good and bad, by every president since Wilson, most recently by Barack Obama.
"Wilson was the most idealistic of America's presidents. He spoke often and eloquently about America's moral obligation. He wed idealism with interventionism. He urged his countrymen to fight preemptively for principles, instead of retaliating for attacks against them. And he obliged the U.S. to assist all peoples in pursuit of freedom and self-determination. Obama has fully embraced this moralism, most recently, when he sought congressional approval to punish Syria for its deadly use of chemical weapons. In fact, listening to his speech [on Syria], I thought Obama's ideas and phraseology were ripped right out of Wilson's playbook."
(...)
In late 1917, the British Government asked President Wilson to support a declaration of sympathy with the Zionist movement.
"And he did. Wilson supported the Balfour Declaration – 'the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.' He did so despite the advice of his most trusted confidante, Col. Edward House, who acted as America's first national security adviser. You must remember that, at the time, the U.S. was an extremely anti-Semitic country,so expressing support for the Balfour Declaration was a very courageous act.
"Wilson was the most Christian president the U.S. has ever had. He was the son and grandson of Presbyterian ministers; he prayed on his knees twice a day and read the Bible every night. But he was also the most pro-Jewish president the U.S. has ever had. He appointed the first Jew to the Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis, a fervent Zionist, who counseled Wilson about the Balfour Declaration, and who would go on to champion an individual's right to privacy and free speech. He brought the financier Bernard Baruch into government, and he appointed Henry Morgenthau as the ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
"Earlier, as president of Princeton University, Wilson appointed the first Jew to the faculty, and as governor of New Jersey, prior to becoming president, he appointed the first Jew to the state's Supreme Court."
Michael Collins Piper, The
Caiaphas Complex---An Unsettling, Unexpurgated Exploration of the Dark
Side of the Power Structure That Misrules Our World Today, p. 199-212:
Michael Collins Piper, YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH
