'They engineered the Iraq War, as blatant and illegal an aggression as Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939. Britain's smarmy Tony Blair tagged along with the war boosters in hopes that the U.K. could pick up the crumbs from the invasion and reassert its former economic and political power in the Arab world. Blair had long been a favorite of British neoconservatives. The silver-tongued Blair became point man for the war in preference to the tongue-twisted, stumbling George Bush. But the real warlord was VP Dick Cheney.'
Whilst Margolis' viewpoint on the Zionist/Israeli influence in the decision to go to war in Iraq is especially insightful, it is far from unique. It's been highlighted by a few brave souls previously, not least by Stephen Sniegoski in his book The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel .
In this seminal work, the author provides an unflinching insight into the influence of the Zionist neoconservatives and those simpatico with them who populate the highest levels of the decision making process in the U.S. government, in think tanks, and in the mainstream news media, the latter acting as the chief carny-barkers for the war. The primary aim then and now is shaping U.S. foreign and national security policy to serve the prerequisites of Tel Aviv's 'Likudnik' hardliners ever more egregiously at the expense of the U.S. national interest. Placed in this context, the poster-boy for these hardliners Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's comments about 9/11 being "good for Israel" assume a whole new import.
The neoconservative cabal then persuaded Bush to invade Iraq in support of Israel's own parochial foreign policy and purported national security interests. Bush Junior of course -- the kindest thing about whom one might say was that he did not have a mind of his own and wasn't required to do any heavy lifting in respect of policy -- got 'jiggy' with it all without asking too many difficult questions. Most tellingly, for Sniegoski the fundamental reasons for embarking on this monumentally destructive conflict had less to do with oil than it did with Israel's priorities.
In their review of Sniegoski's book, former CIA 'alumni' Bill and Kathleen Christison, note that is the right wing of Israeli politics, the neoconservatives in the U.S. who strongly support Israel, and the Israel lobby in the United States who have worked together, and are still doing so 'to bring about more wars, regime changes, and instability, specifically the fragmentation of any Middle Eastern states that might ever conceivably threaten Israel'. They add the following:
'...one purpose of such wars and other changes is explicitly to intensify the discouragement of Palestinians as the latter's potential allies are knocked off one by one, making it easier for Israel, over time, to finish off the Palestinians. Those who believe it is vital to improve the human rights situation and the political outlook for the Palestinians must not only work to reverse present Israeli policies, but it's more important that we work even harder to reverse [our own] policies.'
In order to take our narrative full circle then, in his piece titled, US Still Ducks Iraq Accountability, former CIA analyst Paul Pillar expressed the view that the Chilcot findings provide Americans an opportunity to reflect on the singular reality of the Iraq War. This is one that seems to have been largely ignored especially in mainstream media analysis, that being: it was the America that initiated the Iraq debacle, with the U.K. becoming involved because Blair was concerned about 'keeping U.S.-U.K. relations harmonious', so much so he wrote to Bush declaring the geopolitical and diplomatic equivalent of unconditional, undying love, a declaration which speaks volumes, to wit: "I will be with you, whatever".
'Americans ought to think about the responsibilities of global leadership, and about how easy it is to abuse a position of power in which even [Britain] will fall in line. Dragging it into the Iraq mess was such an abuse of power. It was a betrayal of one of America's most important and staunchest allies. It gives many, including not just in Britain but elsewhere, reason to be less inclined to follow the U.S. lead in the future.'
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