MB Civic

We’re Being Set Up for Wider War in the Middle East
by Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan
administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal
editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor
of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at:
paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

07/17/06 “Information Clearing House” — — The old adage, “fool me once,
shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” does not apply to Americans, who
have shown that they can be endlessly fooled.

Neoconservatives deceived Americans into an illegal attack and
debilitating war in Iraq. American neoconservatives are closely allied
with Israel’s Likud Party. In the past, some neocons lost their security
clearances because of “mishandling” of classified information.

Despite questions of dual loyalties, neocons hold high positions in the
Bush regime.  According to Insight magazine, ten years ago these
architects of American foreign and military policy spelled out how they
would use deception to achieve “important Israeli strategic objectives” in
the Middle East. First, they would focus “on removing Saddam Hussein from
power in Iraq.” This would open the door for Israel to provoke attacks
from Hezbollah. The attacks would let Israel gain American sympathy and
permit Israel to seize the strategic initiative by “engaging Hezbollah,
Syria, and Iran as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon.”

Today, this neoconservative plan is unfolding before our eyes. Israel has
used the capture of two of its soldiers in Lebanon as an excuse for an
all-out air and naval bombardment against Lebanese civilian targets.
However, a number of commentators have pointed out that such a massive
attack requires weeks if not months of preparation that could not be done
overnight in response to the capture of the soldiers.

Regardless, in the first two days of the Israeli military attack on
Lebanon more than a hundred civilians, including Canadians, have been
killed by Israeli bombs (gifts from U.S. taxpayers). The Beirut
International Airport has been repeatedly bombed, as have residential
neighborhoods, roads, bridges, ports, and power stations.

Soldiers are a legitimate military target. Civilians, civilian
neighborhoods, tourists, and international airports are not. Under the
Nuremberg standard used to sentence Nazi war criminals to death, the
Israeli government is clearly guilty of war crimes.

Meanwhile, the Israelis are committing identical war crimes in Gaza. Again
Israel’s excuse is the capture of an Israeli soldier. However, the
distinguished Israeli professor Ran HaCohen said that the Israeli army
“had been demanding a massive attack on Gaza long before the Israeli
soldier was kidnapped.”

By blocking UN Security Council action against Israel for its massacre of
civilians in Gaza, the Bush regime has made itself complicit in these
monstrous war crimes. Just as Germans who supported Hitler were deemed to
be complicit in his war crimes, Americans who support Bush are complicit
in Bush’s war crimes.

Hezbollah is not the Lebanese government. It does not rule Lebanon.
Hezbollah is the militia organization founded in 1982 in response to
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Hezbollah defeated the Israeli army and
drove out the Israeli invaders six years ago.

According to the BBC, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that the two
Israeli soldiers “were captured to pressure Israel to release the
thousands of Palestinian prisoners in its jails,” especially the women and
children.

The BBC also notes that although Hezbollah operates “from Lebanese
territory and the militant group has two ministers in the Lebanese
government, the central government is almost powerless to influence the
militant group.” (Note that the BBC applies the loaded word “militant” to
Hezbollah but not to Israel.) Hezbollah, reports the BBC, “is also very
popular in Lebanon and highly respected for its political activities,
social services, and its military record against Israel.”

The prime minister of Lebanon, who was installed with President Bush’s
approval when Syria, under Bush’s pressure, recently withdrew its troops
from Lebanon, has twice appealed to Bush to pressure Israel to stop its
criminal attacks. Our great moral, democratic, Christian leader has twice
rebuffed the appeal from the legal representative of the Lebanese people.
Instead, Bush is willingly going along with the 1996 neocon script. Bush
is laying the blame on Syria and Iran, exactly as the neocon script calls
for him to do.

When Bush demands that Syria “stop Hezbollah attacks,” he forgets that he
was the one who forced Syria out of Lebanon (to enable Israel to attack
Lebanon). If Americans were attentive, they would be ashamed to witness
“their” president acting as an Israeli propagandist.

Fox “News,” CNN, and the rest of the Bush propaganda ministry are echoing
the lie that innocent Israel is under attack from the “terrorist states”
of Syria and Iran through their surrogate, Hezbollah. Americans, who are
sick of the Iraq occupation and want the troops home, are being fooled
again and set up for wider war in the Middle East.

Evangelical “Christians” are part of the propaganda show. Three thousand
of them, under the lead of the Rev. John C. Hagee, are heading to
Washington for a “Washington/Israel summit” to demand, needlessly, that
the neocon Bush regime show “stronger support for Israel.”

It is difficult to see how Bush could show any stronger support without
using the U.S. military to assist Israel in its attacks, which is, of
course, what the “Christian” Rev. Hagee intends when he declares: “There’s
a new Hitler in the Middle East [he doesn’t mean Bush or Olmert]. The only
way he will be stopped will be by a preemptive military strike in Iran.”

Present at Rev. Hagee’s “Washington/Israel Summit” will be Israel’s former
Minister of Defense, Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya’alon, Israeli Ambassador Daniel
Ayalon, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, Republican
Senators Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, and Gary
Bauer.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful lobby in
Washington, expressed its thanks to Rev. Hagee for demonstrating “the
depth and breadth of American support” for Israel. Recently, AIPAC has
been under investigation as a suspected nest for Israeli spies.

David Brog, former chief of staff for Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, has
gone to work for Rev. Hagee. Brog, who is Jewish, says he works for
Hagee’s evangelical enterprise because “we’re bringing into a pro-Israel
camp millions of Christians who love Israel and giving them a political
voice. Israel’s enemies are our enemies, and this group instinctively
understands that.” Brog goes on to say that Hagee’s evangelicals
understand that they are not supposed to talk about Jesus, only about
saving Israel: “Christians who work with Jews in supporting Israel realize
how sensitive we are in talking about Jesus. They realize it will
interfere with what they are trying to do.”

Gentle reader, is this an admission that evangelicals have set aside Jesus
for war? Do these bloody-minded evangelicals really believe they will be
wafted to Heaven for helping Israel involve the U.S. in more war? Have
evangelicals forgotten that “an eye for an eye” is Old Testament? “Turn
the other cheek” is New Testament.

On July 14, Reuters reported that alone among Christians, the “Vatican
condemns Israel for attacks on Lebanon.”

Whose delusion is the greatest – the evangelical “rapture” delusion, the
neocon delusion about American power, or the Zionist delusion? The three
together mean disaster for America, Israel, and the world.

One of the great evangelical/Zionist/neocon myths is that “tiny Israel”
armed with 200 nuclear weapons is threatened by Muslim Middle Eastern
countries. In actual fact, Egypt and Pakistan, which have the bulk of the
Middle Eastern Muslim population, are ruled by American puppets. Jordan,
Saudi Arabia, and the oil emirates are totally dependent on U.S.
protection and, thereby, are also under the American thumb. Iran is
Persian, not Arab, and has no common borders with Israel. Hezbollah was
created when Israel tried to seize Lebanon in 1982. Hamas is a Palestinian
response to the atrocities Palestinians have suffered for a half century
at Israel’s hands.

Israel’s land-stealing policy is the source of Middle Eastern instability.
America is hated because American money and weapons are what enable Israel
to steal Palestine from Palestinians.

As numerous Middle East experts have pointed out, what is decried as “Arab
terrorism against Israel” is, in fact, the only tactic Muslims have for
calling the world’s attention to the plight of the Palestinians, about
which Americans are generally ignorant.

It is absurd for Bush to condemn Syria for not behaving as an American
puppet and for not fighting Israel’s battles by taking on Hezbollah. Syria
and Iran (and Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion) are the only Middle Eastern
countries independent of American control. It is far beyond the boundaries
of reason and morality to expect these two remaining independent countries
to give up their independence in order to enable Israel to steal Palestine
and southern Lebanon.

It is the refusal of Syria and Iran (and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq) to stand
with Israel against Palestine that has made them targets for American
attack. Neocons have total control of U.S. foreign policy in the Bush
regime, and they have morphed our strategic interests into Israel’s.

As the neoconservative architects of Bush’s wars revealed in 1996, their
concern lies with Israeli strategic objectives.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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“Our German forbearers in the 1930s sat around, blamed their rulers, said ‘maybe everything’s going to be alright.’ That is something we cannot do. I do not want my grandchildren asking me years from now, ‘why didn’t you do something to stop all this?” –Ray McGovern,  former CIA analyst of 27 years, referring to the actions and crimes of the Bush Administration