As virtually every literate citizen on our planet knows, since the nineteenth century anti-Semites have been extolling the crackpot and wicked Protocols of the Elders of Zion in order to prove a conspiracy by Jews to rule the world. Even today, alas, the Protocols remain popular and believable throughout the world, especially the Middle East.
Yet, since the end of the Cold War there has been little in the political behavior of the Jews among America's neoconservatives to refute such beliefs. After all, it was people with the names Paul Wolfowitz, Irv Lewis Libby and Eric Edelman, who "in 1992…co-authored a security doctrine for the United States that aimed at perpetual hegemony and implied perpetual aggression to prevent the emergence of 'peer' powers." [Juan Cole, "Informed Comment," July 21, 2007]
Moreover, throughout the 1990s many Jews among America's neoconservatives demonstrated an alacrity to play fast and loose with the lives of America's soldiers. For example, in 1995 Charles Krauthammer urged the United States to "unashamedly" lay down "the rules of world order" and be "prepared to enforce them." In 1996 Robert Kagan wrote "Military strength alone will not avail if we do not use it actively to maintain a world order which both supports and rest upon American hegemony." [Quotes from Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism, pp. 84-85]
Granted, America's neocons were not the only people eager to expend American military blood on the battlefield during the 1990s, witness the now infamous question by Madeleine Albirght to Colin Powell in 1993: "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?" [Ibid, p. 24] But the neocons established a stranglehold on warmongering, especially when it came to attacking Iraq.
Simply recall the three chicken hawk American neoconservative Jews, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, who signed on in 1996 to write a policy paper -- "A Clean Break: A Strategy for Securing the Realm"-- for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Perle, Feith and Wurmser recommended that Israel find pretexts for waging wars of aggression that would roll back its Arab neighbors. Moreover, "The centerpiece of their recommendations was the removal of Saddam Hussein as the first step into remaking the Middle East into a region friendly, instead of hostile, to Israel." [James Bamford, A Pretext for War, p. 262]
Arguably, such behavior constituted treason. According to James Bamford: "It was rather extraordinary for a trio of former, and potentially future, high-ranking American government officials to become advisers to a foreign government. More unsettling still was the fact that they were recommending acts of war in which Americans could be killed, and also ways to masquerade the true purpose of the attacks from the American public." [Ibid, p. 263]
A year later, as Scott McConnell has written, William Kristol and Robert Kagan wrote an article, "Saddam Must Go," in which they asserted: "We know it seems unthinkable to propose another ground attack to take Baghdad. But it's time to start thinking the unthinkable." [Scott McConnell, "The Weekly Standard's War,"The American Conservative, September 21, 2005]
Explicitly willing to shed the blood of America's servicemen and women, in January 1998, Kristol and Kagan also wrote an Op Ed titled, "Bombing Iraq isn't Enough," which the New York Times was reckless enough to publish. (At this point, it's worth noting the observation made by Robert Parry: "Under principles of international law applied from Nuremberg to Rwanda, propagandists who contribute to war crimes or encourage crimes against humanity can be put in the dock alongside the actual killers." [Consortium News, Posted August 21, 2006])
Nevertheless, on January 26, 1998, Kristol and Kagan "along with more than a dozen other neoconservative luminaries sent a letter to President Bill Clinton denouncing the policy of containing Iraq as a failure and calling for the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein." [Bacevich, p. 90] Subsequently both houses of the Republican-controlled congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which the impeachment-threatened Clinton signed into law - notwithstanding the fact that it violated U.S. treaty obligations under the Charter of United Nations.
In 2001, months before the attacks on 9/11, neocon Michael Ledeen wrote that Mao was correct when he asserted that revolution sprang "from the barrel of a gun." It was America's "inescapable mission to fight for the spread of democracy." [Bacevich, p. 88]
After 9/11, the neocons' drumbeat for shedding American military blood became deafening. Krauthammer asserted: "the way to tame the Arab street is not with appeasement and sweet sensitivity but with raw power and victory…. The elementary truth that seems to elude the experts again and again…is that power is its own reward." [Ibid, p. 93] (In light of the fact that the reckless spilling of American military - and innocent Iraqi - blood has produced a proliferation of terrorists and terrorist attacks around the world, it's surprising that jingoist Krauthammer still has his job at the Washington Post.)
Three months before the U.S. invaded Iraq, Joshua Muravchik observed, "Military conquest has often proved to be an effective means of implanting democracy." [Ibid, p. 85] And, three months into the war, Max Boot (another neocon chicken hawk warmonger who, subsequently, even attempted to excuse the war crimes committed at Abu Ghraib), urged the spilling of American military blood for the purpose of "imposing the rule of law, property rights and other guarantees, at gunpoint if need be." [Ibid. p. 33]
But perhaps the worst of all the bloviating "gutless wonders," who demanded the spilling of American military blood after 9/11 was effete William Kristol. After 9/11, it was Kristol's Weekly Standard that incessantly beat the war drums for invading Iraq. And it did so by repeating the BIG LIE: Saddam was linked to al Qaeda.
According to Scott McConnell, in the very first issue published after 9/11, the Weekly Standard "laid down a line from which the magazine would not waver over the next 18 months." Their line was "to link Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in virtually every paragraph, to join them at the hip in the minds of readers, and then lay out a strategy that actually gave attacking Saddam priority over eliminating al Qaeda." [McConnell, "The Weekly Standard's War," The American Conservative, September 21, 2005]
Neocon Douglas Feith supported the Weekly Standard party line from inside the bowels of the Pentagon. It was Feith's Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group that devoted almost a year after 9/11 to hyping shards of evidence already dismissed by the officially responsible intelligence agencies in order to falsely assert that Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda.
Neocon Richard Perle did something similar, but in the public realm. In October 2002, Perle criticized the intelligence about Iraq coming from the CIA while assuring Judith Miller of the New York Times, that Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) "has been without question the single most important source of intelligence about Saddam Hussein." [Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco, p.57] Shamefully, Miller became the Times' stenographer for Chalabi and the neocons.
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