Neo-Cons, Syria & Greater Israel Jude Wanniski October 15, 2003

Memo To: Website Fans, Browsers, Clients
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Richard Perle Strikes Again

You just can't keep a good warmonger down these days. Here is an AP dispatch that ran in Tuesday's Jerusalem Post about Richard Perle, who cooked up the war with Iraq and who is now in Jerusalem promoting an Israeli war with Syria. No kidding, it would be a cakewalk for Israel, he says. Perle is still on the Pentagon's influential Defense Policy Board and also happens to be on the board of directors of the company that owns the Jerusalem Post. If you really want to know what's going on here, read the column by Paul Craig Roberts that I've posted following the AP story. My old supply-side friend Craig Roberts (who I persuaded the WSJournal to hire in my place when I resigned in 1978) knows Perle is in cahoots with the Likud Party to prevent any serious movement toward a Palestinian state -- and has as the goal a "Greater Israel" that includes southern Lebanon, other pieces of the region, and a Baghdad under perpetual control of Washington. He is more upset today than he usually is, but check him out anyway. GOP conservatives who have gone along with the neo-cons in support of the Iraq adventure are beginning to have second thoughts and this column is circulating along that grapevine. Craig has a PhD in economics, but he knows his military history and offers up a scary quote from Herman Goering (of the Third Reich) that I'd never seen before. First Perle:

 
Pentagon official: US may take action against Syria
Associated Press Oct. 14, 2003

Pentagon adviser Richard Perle said Tuesday that the recent Israeli attack on an alleged training camp for Palestinian militants in Syria was long overdue and that he would not rule out U.S. military action against the Arab state.

Perle, a close adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, spoke at a Jerusalem conference of conservatives from the United States and Israel.

"President Bush transformed the American approach to terrorism on Sept. 11, 2001, when he said he will not distinguish between terrorists and the states who harbor them," Perle said.

"I was happy to see that Israel has now taken a similar step in responding to acts of terror that originate in Lebanese territory by going to the rulers of Lebanon in Damascus."

Israel has said the training camp it targeted in an Oct. 5 airstrike was used by Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group that had carried out a suicide bombing in the Israeli port city of Haifa two days earlier, killing 20 people.

Israel has accused Syria of allowing Palestinian militant groups to train and operate from its territory. The Israeli air strike was the first attack on Syrian soil in three decades.

Perle said he hoped the air strike reflected a new Israeli policy similar to the Bush doctrine.

"We have problems with the Syrians who continue to support terrorism. We have to find a way to get them to stop," Perle later told The Associated Press.

Asked whether this would include possible U.S. military action against Syria, he said: "Everything's possible."

Perle said it would not be difficult to commit forces to Syria despite heavy U.S. troop commitments to Iraq and the Korean peninsula, along with a continued presence in areas such as the Balkans and Liberia.

"Syria is militarily very weak," he said.

Perle stepped down from his position as chair of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board this spring, following allegations that he had used his position with the Pentagon to further business deals in Singapore and the United States. He is still a member of the board.

Perle said that the Bush administration's "road map" to peace between Israel and the Palestinians by 2005 had failed, but that he supported the ideas Bush introduced in a speech on June 24, 2002.

In that speech, Bush outlined his vision for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and called for a change in Palestinian leadership.

Copyright 1995-2003 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/

* * * * *

Wisdom of the Father, Folly of the Son
Paul Craig Roberts
Saturday, Oct. 11, 2003

Americans will regret that Bush II did not read his father's memoirs, "A World Transformed." Written five years ago, George Bush Senior explained why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War:

"Trying to eliminate Saddam ... would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. ... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. ... [T]here was no viable 'exit strategy' we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

In the thrall of warmongering neoconservatives, Son of Bush has managed to achieve every dire consequence against which Father Bush warned.

Son of Bush is leading the United States into a wider war in the Middle East, the blame for which is shared by the Muslim-hating neocons and those Americans who tolerate President Bush's lies out of misguided patriotism.

On Oct. 7, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, one of the U.S. "coalition" partners in the invasion of Iraq, was censured by the Australian Senate for the lies he told to justify sending Australian troops to war with Iraq.

British polls show that Blair's participation in the invasion of Iraq has caused a majority of the British public to distrust him.

Americans, however, are so pumped up over Sept. 11 that they are slow to realize that they are being deceived and dragged through other people's quarrels into a wider war.

The opening shot of this wider war was fired by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Oct. 5 with an Israeli air strike against Syria.

U.S. coalition partners denounced the strike, declaring it a violation of international law. President Bush, however, thought the Israeli violation of international law was just dandy. He drew a parallel between the United States defending its homeland from terrorists by invading Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel's attack on Syria.

A flood of U.S. accusations and economic sanctions followed the Israeli attack, as neocons set up Syria for invasion.

Lest we forget, Americans were told that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would result in peace in the Middle East. To the contrary, by attacking Iraq, Bush "let slip the dogs of war."

At a minimum, the neoconservatives intend to knock off Syria, Iran and Lebanon. This plan consigns the Palestinians to genocide. Palestine will become a part of greater Israel.

A formidable paper trail, publicly available, links plans for war in the Middle East to the neoconservatives who control the Bush presidency and are firmly allied with the Likud Party of Israeli Prime Minister Sharon.

Most of President Bush's top officials in the State Department and Defense Department are identified with policy statements calling for the United States to overthrow virtually every Middle Eastern Muslim country. Statements issued by neoconservative organizations such as The Project for a New American Century, the Middle East Forum and the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon date back many years. The terrorist attack of Sept. 11 provided the excuse for the United States to invade the Middle East.

Despite the name, neoconservatives are not conservative. They are a reincarnation of 18th century French Jacobins. Radical ideologues, the Jacobins believed they had a monopoly on virtue, which gave them the right to conquer Europe and to reconstruct European civilization in their image.

As Professor Claes Ryn shows in his blockbuster book, "America the Virtuous" (soon to be released by Transaction Publishers), neoconservatives are ahistorical and stand outside the American tradition. They see themselves as a virtuous elite entitled to use U.S. power to "improve" the world.

Neoconservatives view traditional Muslim societies in the Middle East not only as threats to Israel, but also as obstacles to the spread of virtue – obstacles that must be cleared away.

Wrapping themselves in the flag, neoconservatives accuse their critics of being anti-American and unpatriotic.

The quagmire in Iraq might make a wider war seem unlikely. But where there's a will, there's a way, and the neocons have the will. Nazi Herman Goering told Gustave Gilbert that it is easy to lead people into war:

"Of course, the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same way in any country."

For the coming bloodshed and national bankruptcy, Americans have no one to blame but neocons and their own gullible selves.

Copyright 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.