International Conflicts

Is the world too big to fail? Grand Plan for the World

2011-10-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/201192514364490977.html

The democracy uprising in the Arab world has been a spectacular display of courage, dedication, and commitment by popular forces - coinciding, fortuitously, with a remarkable uprising of tens of thousands in support of working people and democracy in Madison, Wisconsin, and other US cities. If the trajectories of revolt in Cairo and Madison intersected, however, they were headed in opposite directions: in Cairo toward gaining elementary rights denied by the dictatorship, in Madison towards defending rights that had been won in long and hard struggles and are now under severe attack.

Each is a microcosm of tendencies in global society, following varied courses. There are sure to be far-reaching consequences of what is taking place both in the decaying industrial heartland of the richest and most powerful country in human history, and in what President Dwight Eisenhower called "the most strategically important area in the world" - "a stupendous source of strategic power" and "probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign investment," in the words of the State Department in the 1940s, a prize that the US intended to keep for itself and its allies in the unfolding New World Order of that day.

Despite all the changes since, there is every reason to suppose that today's policy-makers basically adhere to the judgment of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's influential advisor A.A. Berle that control of the incomparable energy reserves of the Middle East would yield "substantial control of the world." And correspondingly, that loss of control would threaten the project of global dominance that was clearly articulated during World War II, and that has been sustained in the face of major changes in world order since that day.

'Grand Area'

From the outset of the war in 1939, Washington anticipated that it would end with the US in a position of overwhelming power. High-level State Department officials and foreign policy specialists met through the wartime years to lay out plans for the postwar world. They delineated a "Grand Area" that the US was to dominate, including the Western hemisphere, the Far East, and the former British empire, with its Middle East energy resources. As Russia began to grind down Nazi armies after Stalingrad, Grand Area goals extended to as much of Eurasia as possible, at least its economic core in Western Europe. Within the Grand Area, the US would maintain "unquestioned power," with "military and economic supremacy," while ensuring the "limitation of any exercise of sovereignty" by states that might interfere with its global designs. The careful wartime plans were soon implemented.

It was always recognised that Europe might choose to follow an independent course. NATO was partially intended to counter this threat. As soon as the official pretext for NATO dissolved in 1989, NATO was expanded to the East in violation of verbal pledges to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It has since become a US-run intervention force, with far-ranging scope, spelled out by NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who informed a NATO conference that "NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed for the West," and more generally to protect sea routes used by tankers and other "crucial infrastructure" of the energy system.

Grand Area doctrines clearly license military intervention at will. That conclusion was articulated clearly by the Clinton administration, which declared that the US has the right to use military force to ensure "uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources," and must maintain huge military forces "forward deployed" in Europe and Asia "in order to shape people's opinions about us" and "to shape events that will affect our livelihood and our security."

The same principles governed the invasion of Iraq. As the US failure to impose its will in Iraq was becoming unmistakable, the actual goals of the invasion could no longer be concealed behind pretty rhetoric. In November 2007, the White House issued a Declaration of Principles demanding that US forces must remain indefinitely in Iraq and committing Iraq to privilege American investors. Two months later, President Bush informed Congress that he would reject legislation that might limit the permanent stationing of US Armed Forces in Iraq or "United States control of the oil resources of Iraq" - demands that the US had to abandon shortly after in the face of Iraqi resistance.

In Tunisia and Egypt, the recent popular uprisings have won impressive victories, but as the Carnegie Endowment reported, while names have changed, the regimes remain: "A change in ruling elites and system of governance is still a distant goal." The report discusses internal barriers to democracy, but ignores the external ones, which as always are significant.

The US and its Western allies are sure to do whatever they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world. To understand why, it is only necessary to look at the studies of Arab opinion conducted by US polling agencies. Though barely reported, they are certainly known to planners. They reveal that by overwhelming majorities, Arabs regard the US and Israel as the major threats they face: the US is so regarded by 90 per cent of Egyptians, in the region generally by over 75 per cent. Some Arabs regard Iran as a threat: 10 per cent. Opposition to US policy is so strong that a majority believes that security would be improved if Iran had nuclear weapons - in Egypt, 80 per cent. Other figures are similar. If public opinion were to influence policy, the US not only would not control the region, but would be expelled from it, along with its allies, undermining fundamental principles of global dominance.

The invisible hand of power

Support for democracy is the province of ideologists and propagandists. In the real world, elite dislike of democracy is the norm. The evidence is overwhelming that democracy is supported insofar as it contributes to social and economic objectives, a conclusion reluctantly conceded by the more serious scholarship.

Elite contempt for democracy was revealed dramatically in the reaction to the WikiLeaks exposures. Those that received most attention, with euphoric commentary, were cables reporting that Arabs support the US stand on Iran. The reference was to the ruling dictators. The attitudes of the public were unmentioned. The guiding principle was articulated clearly by Carnegie Endowment Middle East specialist Marwan Muasher, formerly a high official of the Jordanian government: "There is nothing wrong, everything is under control." In short, if the dictators support us, what else could matter?

The Muasher doctrine is rational and venerable. To mention just one case that is highly relevant today, in internal discussion in 1958, president Eisenhower expressed concern about "the campaign of hatred" against us in the Arab world, not by governments, but by the people. The National Security Council (NSC) explained that there is a perception in the Arab world that the US supports dictatorships and blocks democracy and development so as to ensure control over the resources of the region. Furthermore, the perception is basically accurate, the NSC concluded, and that is what we should be doing, relying on the Muasher doctrine. Pentagon studies conducted after 9/11 confirmed that the same holds today.

It is normal for the victors to consign history to the trash can, and for victims to take it seriously. Perhaps a few brief observations on this important matter may be useful. Today is not the first occasion when Egypt and the US are facing similar problems, and moving in opposite directions. That was also true in the early nineteenth century.

Economic historians have argued that Egypt was well-placed to undertake rapid economic development at the same time that the US was. Both had rich agriculture, including cotton, the fuel of the early industrial revolution - though unlike Egypt, the US had to develop cotton production and a work force by conquest, extermination, and slavery, with consequences that are evident right now in the reservations for the survivors and the prisons that have rapidly expanded since the Reagan years to house the superfluous population left by deindustrialisation.

One fundamental difference was that the US had gained independence and was therefore free to ignore the prescriptions of economic theory, delivered at the time by Adam Smith in terms rather like those preached to developing societies today. Smith urged the liberated colonies to produce primary products for export and to import superior British manufactures, and certainly not to attempt to monopolise crucial goods, particularly cotton. Any other path, Smith warned, "would retard instead of accelerating the further increase in the value of their annual produce, and would obstruct instead of promoting the progress of their country towards real wealth and greatness."

Having gained their independence, the colonies were free to ignore his advice and to follow England's course of independent state-guided development, with high tariffs to protect industry from British exports, first textiles, later steel and others, and to adopt numerous other devices to accelerate industrial development. The independent Republic also sought to gain a monopoly of cotton so as to "place all other nations at our feet," particularly the British enemy, as the Jacksonian presidents announced when conquering Texas and half of Mexico.

For Egypt, a comparable course was barred by British power. Lord Palmerston declared that "no ideas of fairness [toward Egypt] ought to stand in the way of such great and paramount interests" of Britain as preserving its economic and political hegemony, expressing his "hate" for the "ignorant barbarian" Muhammed Ali who dared to seek an independent course, and deploying Britain's fleet and financial power to terminate Egypt's quest for independence and economic development.

After World War II, when the US displaced Britain as global hegemon, Washington adopted the same stand, making it clear that the US would provide no aid to Egypt unless it adhered to the standard rules for the weak - which the US continued to violate, imposing high tariffs to bar Egyptian cotton and causing a debilitating dollar shortage. The usual interpretation of market principles.

It is small wonder that the "campaign of hatred" against the US that concerned Eisenhower was based on the recognition that the US supports dictators and blocks democracy and development, as do its allies.

In Adam Smith's defence, it should be added that he recognised what would happen if Britain followed the rules of sound economics, now called "neoliberalism." He warned that if British manufacturers, merchants, and investors turned abroad, they might profit but England would suffer. But he felt that they would be guided by a home bias, so as if by an invisible hand England would be spared the ravages of economic rationality.

The passage is hard to miss. It is the one occurrence of the famous phrase "invisible hand" in The Wealth of Nations. The other leading founder of classical economics, David Ricardo, drew similar conclusions, hoping that home bias would lead men of property to "be satisfied with the low rate of profits in their own country, rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations," feelings that, he added, "I should be sorry to see weakened." Their predictions aside, the instincts of the classical economists were sound.

The Iranian and Chinese 'threats'

The democracy uprising in the Arab world is sometimes compared to Eastern Europe in 1989, but on dubious grounds. In 1989, the democracy uprising was tolerated by the Russians, and supported by western power in accord with standard doctrine: it plainly conformed to economic and strategic objectives, and was therefore a noble achievement, greatly honoured, unlike the struggles at the same time "to defend the people's fundamental human rights" in Central America, in the words of the assassinated Archbishop of El Salvador, one of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the military forces armed and trained by Washington. There was no Gorbachev in the West throughout these horrendous years, and there is none today. And Western power remains hostile to democracy in the Arab world for good reasons.

Grand Area doctrines continue to apply to contemporary crises and confrontations. In Western policy-making circles and political commentary the Iranian threat is considered to pose the greatest danger to world order and hence must be the primary focus of US foreign policy, with Europe trailing along politely.

"Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy"

- Martin van Creveld, Israeli military historian

What exactly is the Iranian threat? An authoritative answer is provided by the Pentagon and US intelligence. Reporting on global security last year, they make it clear that the threat is not military. Iran's military spending is "relatively low compared to the rest of the region," they conclude. Its military doctrine is strictly "defensive, designed to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities." Iran has only "a limited capability to project force beyond its borders." With regard to the nuclear option, "Iran's nuclear programme and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy." All quotes.

The brutal clerical regime is doubtless a threat to its own people, though it hardly outranks US allies in that regard. But the threat lies elsewhere, and is ominous indeed. One element is Iran's potential deterrent capacity, an illegitimate exercise of sovereignty that might interfere with US freedom of action in the region. It is glaringly obvious why Iran would seek a deterrent capacity; a look at the military bases and nuclear forces in the region suffices to explain.

Seven years ago, Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld wrote that "The world has witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy," particularly when they are under constant threat of attack in violation of the UN Charter. Whether they are doing so remains an open question, but perhaps so.

But Iran's threat goes beyond deterrence. It is also seeking to expand its influence in neighbouring countries, the Pentagon and US intelligence emphasise, and in this way to "destabilise" the region (in the technical terms of foreign policy discourse). The US invasion and military occupation of Iran's neighbours is "stabilisation." Iran's efforts to extend its influence to them are "destabilisation," hence plainly illegitimate.

Such usage is routine. Thus the prominent foreign policy analyst James Chace was properly using the term "stability" in its technical sense when he explained that in order to achieve "stability" in Chile it was necessary to "destabilise" the country (by overthrowing the elected government of Salvador Allende and installing the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet). Other concerns about Iran are equally interesting to explore, but perhaps this is enough to reveal the guiding principles and their status in imperial culture. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt's planners emphasised at the dawn of the contemporary world system, the US cannot tolerate "any exercise of sovereignty" that interferes with its global designs.

The US and Europe are united in punishing Iran for its threat to stability, but it is useful to recall how isolated they are. The nonaligned countries have vigorously supported Iran's right to enrich uranium. In the region, Arab public opinion even strongly favours Iranian nuclear weapons. The major regional power, Turkey, voted against the latest US-initiated sanctions motion in the Security Council, along with Brazil, the most admired country of the South. Their disobedience led to sharp censure, not for the first time: Turkey had been bitterly condemned in 2003 when the government followed the will of 95 per cent of the population and refused to participate in the invasion of Iraq, thus demonstrating its weak grasp of democracy, western-style.

After its Security Council misdeed last year, Turkey was warned by Obama's top diplomat on European affairs, Philip Gordon, that it must "demonstrate its commitment to partnership with the West." A scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations asked, "How do we keep the Turks in their lane?" - following orders like good democrats. Brazil's Lula was admonished in a New York Times headline that his effort with Turkey to provide a solution to the uranium enrichment issue outside of the framework of US power was a "Spot on Brazilian Leader's Legacy." In brief, do what we say, or else.

An interesting sidelight, effectively suppressed, is that the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal was approved in advance by Obama, presumably on the assumption that it would fail, providing an ideological weapon against Iran. When it succeeded, the approval turned to censure, and Washington rammed through a Security Council resolution so weak that China readily signed - and is now chastised for living up to the letter of the resolution but not Washington's unilateral directives - in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, for example.

While the US can tolerate Turkish disobedience, though with dismay, China is harder to ignore. The press warns that "China's investors and traders are now filling a vacuum in Iran as businesses from many other nations, especially in Europe, pull out," and in particular, is expanding its dominant role in Iran's energy industries. Washington is reacting with a touch of desperation. The State Department warned China that if it wants to be accepted in the international community - a technical term referring to the US and whoever happens to agree with it - then it must not "skirt and evade international responsibilities, [which] are clear": namely, follow US orders. China is unlikely to be impressed.

There is also much concern about the growing Chinese military threat. A recent Pentagon study warned that China's military budget is approaching "one-fifth of what the Pentagon spent to operate and carry out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," a fraction of the US military budget, of course. China's expansion of military forces might "deny the ability of American warships to operate in international waters off its coast," the New York Times added.

"Washington has converted the island into a major military base in defiance of vehement protests by the people of Okinawa."

Off the coast of China, that is; it has yet to be proposed that the US should eliminate military forces that deny the Caribbean to Chinese warships. China's lack of understanding of rules of international civility is illustrated further by its objections to plans for the advanced nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington to join naval exercises a few miles off China's coast, with alleged capacity to strike Beijing.

In contrast, the West understands that such US operations are all undertaken to defend stability and its own security. The liberal New Republic expresses its concern that "China sent ten warships through international waters just off the Japanese island of Okinawa." That is indeed a provocation - unlike the fact, unmentioned, that Washington has converted the island into a major military base in defiance of vehement protests by the people of Okinawa. That is not a provocation, on the standard principle that we own the world.

Deep-seated imperial doctrine aside, there is good reason for China's neighbours to be concerned about its growing military and commercial power. And though Arab opinion supports an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, we certainly should not do so. The foreign policy literature is full of proposals as to how to counter the threat. One obvious way is rarely discussed: work to establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the region. The issue arose (again) at the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference at United Nations headquarters last May. Egypt, as chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, called for negotiations on a Middle East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the US, at the 1995 review conference on the NPT.

International support is so overwhelming that Obama formally agreed. It is a fine idea, Washington informed the conference, but not now. Furthermore, the US made clear that Israel must be exempted: no proposal can call for Israel's nuclear programme to be placed under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency or for the release of information about "Israeli nuclear facilities and activities." So much for this method of dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat.

Privatising the planet

While Grand Area doctrine still prevails, the capacity to implement it has declined. The peak of US power was after World War II, when it had literally half the world's wealth. But that naturally declined, as other industrial economies recovered from the devastation of the war and decolonisation took its agonising course. By the early 1970s, the US share of global wealth had declined to about 25 per cent, and the industrial world had become tripolar: North America, Europe, and East Asia (then Japan-based).

There was also a sharp change in the US economy in the 1970s, towards financialisation and export of production. A variety of factors converged to create a vicious cycle of radical concentration of wealth, primarily in the top fraction of 1 per cent of the population - mostly CEOs, hedge-fund managers, and the like. That leads to the concentration of political power, hence state policies to increase economic concentration: fiscal policies, rules of corporate governance, deregulation, and much more. Meanwhile the costs of electoral campaigns skyrocketed, driving the parties into the pockets of concentrated capital, increasingly financial: the Republicans reflexively, the Democrats - by now what used to be moderate Republicans - not far behind.

Elections have become a charade, run by the public relations industry. After his 2008 victory, Obama won an award from the industry for the best marketing campaign of the year. Executives were euphoric. In the business press they explained that they had been marketing candidates like other commodities since Ronald Reagan, but 2008 was their greatest achievement and would change the style in corporate boardrooms. The 2012 election is expected to cost $2bn, mostly in corporate funding. Small wonder that Obama is selecting business leaders for top positions. The public is angry and frustrated, but as long as the Muasher principle prevails, that doesn't matter.

While wealth and power have narrowly concentrated, for most of the population real incomes have stagnated and people have been getting by with increased work hours, debt, and asset inflation, regularly destroyed by the financial crises that began as the regulatory apparatus was dismantled starting in the 1980s.

None of this is problematic for the very wealthy, who benefit from a government insurance policy called "too big to fail." The banks and investment firms can make risky transactions, with rich rewards, and when the system inevitably crashes, they can run to the nanny state for a taxpayer bailout, clutching their copies of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.

That has been the regular process since the Reagan years, each crisis more extreme than the last - for the public population, that is. Right now, real unemployment is at Depression levels for much of the population, while Goldman Sachs, one of the main architects of the current crisis, is richer than ever. It has just quietly announced $17.5bn in compensation for last year, with CEO Lloyd Blankfein receiving a $12.6m bonus while his base salary more than triples.

It wouldn't do to focus attention on such facts as these. Accordingly, propaganda must seek to blame others, in the past few months, public sector workers, their fat salaries, exorbitant pensions, and so on: all fantasy, on the model of Reaganite imagery of black mothers being driven in their limousines to pick up welfare checks - and other models that need not be mentioned. We all must tighten our belts; almost all, that is.

Teachers are a particularly good target, as part of the deliberate effort to destroy the public education system from kindergarten through the universities by privatisation - again, good for the wealthy, but a disaster for the population, as well as the long-term health of the economy, but that is one of the externalities that is put to the side insofar as market principles prevail.

Another fine target, always, is immigrants. That has been true throughout US history, even more so at times of economic crisis, exacerbated now by a sense that our country is being taken away from us: the white population will soon become a minority. One can understand the anger of aggrieved individuals, but the cruelty of the policy is shocking.

Targeting immigrants

Who are the immigrants targeted? In Eastern Massachusetts, where I live, many are Mayans fleeing genocide in the Guatemalan highlands carried out by Reagan's favourite killers. Others are Mexican victims of Clinton's NAFTA, one of those rare government agreements that managed to harm working people in all three of the participating countries. As NAFTA was rammed through Congress over popular objection in 1994, Clinton also initiated the militarisation of the US-Mexican border, previously fairly open. It was understood that Mexican campesinos cannot compete with highly subsidised US agribusiness, and that Mexican businesses would not survive competition with US multinationals, which must be granted "national treatment" under the mislabeled free trade agreements, a privilege granted only to corporate persons, not those of flesh and blood. Not surprisingly, these measures led to a flood of desperate refugees, and to rising anti-immigrant hysteria by the victims of state-corporate policies at home.

Much the same appears to be happening in Europe, where racism is probably more rampant than in the US One can only watch with wonder as Italy complains about the flow of refugees from Libya, the scene of the first post-World War I genocide, in the now-liberated East, at the hands of Italy's Fascist government. Or when France, still today the main protector of the brutal dictatorships in its former colonies, manages to overlook its hideous atrocities in Africa, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy warns grimly of the "flood of immigrants" and Marine Le Pen objects that he is doing nothing to prevent it. I need not mention Belgium, which may win the prize for what Adam Smith called "the savage injustice of the Europeans."

The rise of neo-fascist parties in much of Europe would be a frightening phenomenon even if we were not to recall what happened on the continent in the recent past. Just imagine the reaction if Jews were being expelled from France to misery and oppression, and then witness the non-reaction when that is happening to Roma, also victims of the Holocaust and Europe's most brutalised population.

In Hungary, the neo-fascist party Jobbik gained 17 per cent of the vote in national elections, perhaps unsurprising when three-quarters of the population feels that they are worse off than under Communist rule. We might be relieved that in Austria the ultra-right Jörg Haider won only 10 per cent of the vote in 2008 - were it not for the fact that the new Freedom Party, outflanking him from the far right, won more than 17 per cent. It is chilling to recall that, in 1928, the Nazis won less than 3 per cent of the vote in Germany.

In England the British National Party and the English Defence League, on the ultra-racist right, are major forces. (What is happening in Holland you know all too well.) In Germany, Thilo Sarrazin's lament that immigrants are destroying the country was a runaway best-seller, while Chancellor Angela Merkel, though condemning the book, declared that multiculturalism had "utterly failed": the Turks imported to do the dirty work in Germany are failing to become blond and blue-eyed, true Aryans.

Those with a sense of irony may recall that Benjamin Franklin, one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment, warned that the newly liberated colonies should be wary of allowing Germans to immigrate, because they were too swarthy; Swedes as well. Into the twentieth century, ludicrous myths of Anglo-Saxon purity were common in the US, including among presidents and other leading figures. Racism in the literary culture has been a rank obscenity; far worse in practice, needless to say. It is much easier to eradicate polio than this horrifying plague, which regularly becomes more virulent in times of economic distress.

I do not want to end without mentioning another externality that is dismissed in market systems: the fate of the species. Systemic risk in the financial system can be remedied by the taxpayer, but no one will come to the rescue if the environment is destroyed. That it must be destroyed is close to an institutional imperative. Business leaders who are conducting propaganda campaigns to convince the population that anthropogenic global warming is a liberal hoax understand full well how grave is the threat, but they must maximize short-term profit and market share. If they don't, someone else will.

This vicious cycle could well turn out to be lethal. To see how grave the danger is, simply have a look at the new Congress in the US, propelled into power by business funding and propaganda. Almost all are climate deniers. They have already begun to cut funding for measures that might mitigate environmental catastrophe. Worse, some are true believers; for example, the new head of a subcommittee on the environment who explained that global warming cannot be a problem because God promised Noah that there will not be another flood.

If such things were happening in some small and remote country, we might laugh. Not when they are happening in the richest and most powerful country in the world. And before we laugh, we might also bear in mind that the current economic crisis is traceable in no small measure to the fanatic faith in such dogmas as the efficient market hypothesis, and in general to what Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, 15 years ago, called the "religion" that markets know best - which prevented the central bank and the economics profession from taking notice of an $8tn housing bubble that had no basis at all in economic fundamentals, and that devastated the economy when it burst.

All of this, and much more, can proceed as long as the Muashar doctrine prevails. As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. He is the author of numerous bestselling political works, including 9-11: Was There an Alternative? (Seven Stories Press), an updated version of his classic account, just being published this week with a major new essay - from which this post was adapted - considering the 10 years since the 9/11 attacks.

A version of this piece was originally published on TomDispatch.com.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Palestinian Statehood must be approved by United Nations

2011-09-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

Since President Truman, none of the American presidents have had the balls to take a stand and do the right thing; facilitate a lasting solution for the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The talk of two states remains a hoax without recognition of Palestine as a nation. It is a necessity for the security of Israel to recognize Palestine; it will tie the loose ends.

Two videos:..

MR. PRESIDENT, YOU MUST VOTE FOR PALESTINE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hb0Y-4lRkM

YES TO PALESTINE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WA2NlDU-LM

Sixty three years have been squandered with no signs of genuine security for the Jews; they have been living with an unsettling fear and have been on-the-run for their whole history. Not a week goes by where Anti-Semitism is not countered in Europe, it is there in Latin America and it is there in Asia.
The Jews have not been able to breathe freely. There is a genuine phobia that someday a segment of radical Christians will uproot them as Germany did in the recent past and Spain some five hundred years ago, those were the only nations where the Jews felt home twice in their history but were betrayed both the times.

Shamelessly, anti-Semitism continues to operate under the radar in the United States. Not a month passes here in the United States without the markings of Anti-Semitism. Some one’s house is painted with Swastika, someone yells at them “you people” or opens the fire in the Holocaust Museum or demonstrates hateful placards like “Christ Killers”, there are still a few Christians out there who cannot shake this off from their chests.

Shame on our civilization that one group of people has to live in apprehensions of the other. It is just not the Jews but many a minorities in the world live in fears of the other. Shouldn’t we feel bad about it? Are we evil that someone has to be afraid of us? It has got to change.

Recognition of Palestine will put an end to the phobias and fears. The Jewish anxieties will subside when they realize for the second time in their history (first one was creation of Israel) that they are able to live a life of justice, which is a central tenet of Judaism that they had abandoned for security. It will free their psyche. It will have a domino effect, one by one, the Arab nations will recognize Israel’s right to exist over a few years. It simply means acceptance of Israel and a welcome call to the neighborhood.

The real enemies of Israel are those who are milking monies in the name of Israel. It is business to them, they are the Madoffs whose sincerity to Israel is doubtful but loyalty to cashing in the name of Israel is certain. They are manipulators and constantly coerce our congress and senate and get their way. Heck, they have made it worse for Israel by aggravating the conflicts.

The Judeo-Christian phrase was thrown around 40's to make up for the guilt. A whole industry of opportunists was born from that. The two faced support for Jews by Billy Graham, Richard Nixon, Pat Robertson, John Hagee, Glenn Beck and other chest thumpers had ulterior motives. They wanted to cash in on the name of Israel and perhaps convert them or pre-empt God for the Armageddon.

Jews need sincerity and not duplicity to feel secure. A genuine security is like a child in mother’s lap; safe and free from fears. Jews need to feel there is a home for them, where they can chat with friends in a café and carry on conversations without any fear, have zero fears for their school going children or ride the bus without fear. More than that, Jews can live their life again as they wanted to; to be a just people.

All of that is possible once the Palestinians feel justice is finally served to them. Shame on our cvilization, we have not cared for the lives of Palestinians, they are deprived of the very basics of life; a home and a nationality. We have stripped them from their hopes, it will change with this recognition.

President Obama has an opportunity to finalizing the transaction for Israel which was opened by President Truman. Prior to President Truman’s decision to recognize Israel, he was vehemently opposed by many in his administration including the Secretary of State George Marshall, Truman was threatened that his administration will be wrecked, indeed “the wise men” firmly opposed recognition of Israel. Did Truman budge?

President Obama will be equally hounded by Fox News and the right wingers. He has a choice to stand up and act with courage and become a one term president with balls and leave a lasting legacy of bringing genuine security to Israel and hope for the Palestinians.

If President Obama vetoes for Palestinian Statehood, he will do more damage to America’s stature in the community of nations besides keeping Israel in the state of anxiety until another Truman is born.

Let’s recognize Palestine and continue the peace process. It will abate the strife between Jews and Muslims and restore the cordiality that existed prior to the World War I. It is good for Israel, good for Palestine, good for America and good for the Middle East and the World.

Mike Ghouse is committed to building cohesive Societies and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day to the media and the public. He is a speaker thinker and a writer on the topics of pluralism, cohesive societies, Politics, Islam, interfaith, India and Peace. Over a thousand articles have been published on the topics and two of his books are poised to be released on Pluralism and Islam. Mike's work is reflected in 4 website's and 27 Blogs indexed at http://www.mikeghouse.net/ and you can find all of his current articles at www.TheGhousediary.com

Do Jews, Christians and Muslims better understand each other since 9/11?

2011-09-07T13:41:00.001-07:00

TEXAS FAITH: Do Jews, Christians and Muslims better understand each other since 9/11?

Abstract: Jews need sincerity and not duplicity. Native Americans need an apology and there is a good amount of phobia embedded in Hindus about conversions. We believe in Jesus as a Prophet and not as a son of God. Unless we deal with tough issues about our differences, we will continue to fake being nice to each other and brood with ill-will within. There is indeed improved understanding among faiths since 9/11. But there also is deepening suspicion among them. One is spiritually motivated and the other is political. Please note, most of my writings are inclusive of all theist and atheists traditions, we all inhabit the earth and we need to figure how best to co-exist cohesively.

# # #

Since September 11, 2001, many conversations have taken place among Muslims, Jews and Christians. There are official interfaith conversations occurring all over the globe, where participants dig into each other's texts. And numerous personal dialogues have been established over the last decade. Many of us have learned more about the three Abrahamic faiths since September 11, 2001 than perhaps we knew before that day.

But here's this week's question, which is simple in its wording but not necessarily simple to answer: Do followers of the three Abrahamic faiths really understand each other better since 9/11?

Eight Texas Faith Panelists including Mike Ghouse weighs in at: http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/09/texas-faith-do-jews-christians.html

MIKE GHOUSE, President, Foundation for Pluralism, Dallas

There is indeed improved understanding among faiths since 9/11. But there also is deepening suspicion among them. One is spiritually motivated and the other is political.

We were better off when we knew very little about each other. But as we faced the hostage crisis in 1979, the evangelical foray into politics, the Baptist convention on harvesting poor souls and finally 9/11, religion moved on to center stage. It will get better when we know more about each other.

On September 11, 2001, I was on the radio in Dallas attempting to make sense out of the chaos of the day and pave the way for relevant actions. Interfaith-faith prayers, blood donation and fundraising for the men and women in uniform were all in place by evening. The fog was clearing up. Osama bin Laden was the bad guy and Muslim-Americans had nothing to do with his actions, nor did they authorize him to terrorize any one. Indeed, he placed a wedge between Americans that still needs to be undone.

Atheists, Baha'i, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Jews, Native Americans, Pagans, Sikhs, Wicca and Zoroastrians along with area city mayors, FBI, police and fire chiefs and community leaders graced the first interfaith event in Frisco. Out of which a new tradition evolved called Unity Day. It continues year after year.

But while we are trying to know more about each other, more needs to be done. Here are a few examples;

* Mosques in Dallas/ Fort Worth area opened their doors right after the 9/11 incident. As Christians walked in, they were naively welcomed by yet-to-be trained volunteers who said, "We believe in Jesus as a Prophet and not as a son of God." However, the volunteers were trained to welcome without conflict the very next week.

Of course, back in the 8th Century, a Syrian bishop had declared that Islam was a false religion. That declaration has remained in the psyche of a few Christians forever.

Pastor Robert Jeffress of the First Baptist Church of Dallas reiterated the statement and added, "Quran is a false book written by a false prophet." He was asked to prove it but failed.

There are several verses in Quraan that are mistranslated for political gains. Steve Blow in Dallas Morning News quoted me, "In the Middle Ages, European leaders commissioned a hostile Quran translation to foster warfare against Muslim invaders. Later, Muslim leaders produced another translation to inflame Muslims against Christians and Jews."

One such difficult passage is "Kill the infidels wherever you find them." Ten such propaganda verses were read to separate the myths from reality. They were not read by Muslim clergy, but by Baptist, Mormon, Protestant, Catholic, Unitarian, Methodist, New Age, Unificationists, Sikhs, Hindu and others at the Quraan Conference

*Shamelessly, anti-Semitism continues to operate under the radar. The anti-circumcision bills in San Francisco and Santa Monica were irksome to some, but frightening to others. Indeed, there are still a few Christians out there who cannot shake off what Fred Phelps was demonstrating with reckless posters such as "Christ Killers."

The Judeo-Christian phrase was thrown around in the 40's to build relationships between Jews and Christians. A whole industry of opportunists was born from it. The support for Jews by Billy Graham, Richard Nixon, Pat Robertson, John Hagee, Glenn Beck and other chest thumpers have ulterior motives. They want to cash in on the name of Israel and perhaps convert them. Jews need sincerity and not duplicity to feel genuinely secure.

*Native Americans need an apology for the destruction of their religion and there is a good amount of phobia embedded in Hindus about conversions. Some of them feel that Governors Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal made it in politics because they converted to Christianity.

*The spiritual balance in the community needs to be restored through observing and following the Golden Rule, which is treat others as you would like others to treat you. Although we have failed in the past, such as when the city of Plano rejected a permit to build a Hindu temple in the early 80's and Richardson did not permit a Muslim school to open there in the mid-1990s, we still have come a long way. Thank God, those are now history and the public in the metroplex welcomes diversity.

* Interfaith meetings are still social gatherings. Leaders from smaller groups are invited as tokens rather than to genuinely get to know each other. Unless we deal with tough issues about differences, we will continue to fake being nice to each other and brood with ill-will within. There is plenty of room for honesty to grow and mature.

If we can learn to respect the otherness of other people and accept the God-given uniqueness of each one of us, then conflicts fade and solutions emerge. One of these days we will get there. Meanwhile, I am pleased to invite you to the 7th Annual 9/11 Memorial, the Unity Day USA on Sunday September 11 at 5:00 PM at the Unity Church of Dallas on Forest Lane. Details are at www.UnitydayUSA.com

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References:
Steve Blow – Dallas Morning News: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/steve-blow/20100919-In-defense-of-Islam-pursuing-9397.ece

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List of difficult passages: http://quraan-today.blogspot.com/2010/12/difficult-passages-in-quraan.html

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Quraan Conference program sequence: http://quraanconference.blogspot.com/2010/12/quraan-conference-program-sequence.html

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Mike Ghouse is committed to building a cohesive America and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day to the media and the public. He is a speaker thinker and a writer on the topics of pluralism, cohesive societies, Politics, Islam, interfaith, India and Peace. Over a thousand articles have been published on the topics and two of his books are poised to be released on Pluralism and Islam. Mike's work is reflected in 4 website's and 27 Blogs indexed at http://www.mikeghouse.net/ and you can find all of his current articles at www.TheGhousediary.com

Muslim Speaker Mike Ghouse

2011-04-14T19:39:00.001-07:00

NURTURING PLURALISTIC VALUES EMBEDDED IN ISLAM

A Muslim Speaker, thinker, organizer and an activist committed to building cohesive societies with a belief that what is good for Muslims has got to be good for the world and vice versa to sustain peace, harmony and prosperity.

To be a Muslim is to be a peace maker, one who constantly seeks to mitigate conflicts and nurtures goodwill for peaceful co-existence of humanity. God wants us to live in peace and harmony with his creation; Life and Matter. Over 1000 articles have been published on a range of topics in Islam and Pluralism. Insha Allah, a book outlining the Muslim vision is on the horizon.

In defense of Islam, pursuing a civil dialogue

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/steve-blow/20100919-In-defense-of-Islam-pursuing-9397.ece
Over and over you hear it said: If Muslims oppose terrorism, why don't they stand up and say it?

If that has been you, Mike Ghouse ought to be your hero.

It is hard to imagine that anyone has worked harder than the Carrollton resident to demonstrate the peaceful and moderate side of Islam.

And that effort includes personally visiting Dallas' First Baptist Church last Sunday just to put a friendly face on the "evil, evil religion" that the Rev. Robert Jeffress denounced a few weeks before.

"It was wonderful," Ghouse said of the visit. "We were so warmly received."
He hopes a quick chat with Jeffress will be the start of deeper discussion about Islam and the importance of respect between religions.

"I want to have a dialogue with him, not to say he is wrong but to share another point of view," Ghouse said.

The 57-year-old Muslim was born in India and has lived in the United States for 30 years. He owns a small property management firm. But most of his day is devoted to building bridges between people of different faiths.

"It is my passion," he said in his distinctive raspy voice.

He has been a guest a dozen times on Sean Hannity's TV and radio talk shows. "I don't like the way Sean cuts me off, but I have to honor him for giving the American public a semblance of another point of view."

Ghouse said he can understand fear and criticism of Islam because he went through a time of similar feelings. As a teen, he was troubled by passages of the Quran. He called himself an atheist for a while.

But he said deeper study led him to realize the Quran had been purposely mistranslated down through history.

In the Middle Ages, European leaders commissioned a hostile Quran translation to foster warfare against Muslim invaders.

Later, Muslim leaders produced another translation to inflame Muslims against Christians and Jews.

"It was all for politics," he said.
Ghouse said he hopes to present Jeffress with a modern, faithful translation and challenge him to find evil verses.

"If he can, I will convert. I will join his church," Ghouse said. "If he can't, I will call on him to retract his statements and become a peacemaker."

Ghouse acknowledges that deep problems persist within Islam. "Three steps forward, two steps back," he said with a sigh.

And he agrees that mainstream Muslims have not done enough to counter violent images of their faith.

"That is very true," he said. "But part of it is that many Muslims have given up hope that we will ever be heard."

He said repeated denunciations of terrorism seem to fall on deaf ears.

And some efforts have backfired - like the proposed Islamic information center in New York. He said it should be hailed for furthering the moderate Muslim cause.
Instead, it has deepened hostility toward Muslims.

I have been astounded by the amount of anti-Islam propaganda that circulates via e-mail. Tons of it has come my way in the last few weeks.

One theme is that people like Mike Ghouse can't be trusted, that Islam encourages deception.

But Ghouse says actions speak louder than words. And he points to elections in Muslim nations.

More than half of Muslims live in countries with some degree of democracy. And time and time again, Islamist parties are overwhelmingly rejected in favor of secular, mainstream parties.

"The religious parties don't get more than 3 percent of the vote," Ghouse said.
Polls show deep mistrust of Muslims. "But the most important question in those surveys is: 'Do you know anything about Islam?' " Ghouse said. "Most people say no."
What keeps him going is faith in Americans, he said.

"The majority of Americans, if they know the truth, they will change their minds."

# # #

Mike Ghouse is a speaker, writer, thinker, futurist and an activist of Pluralism, Islam, India and Civil Societies passionately offering pluralistic solutions on issues of the day.

He is a commentator at Fox News on the Hannity show, nationally syndicated Radio shows along with Dallas TV, Print and Radio networks and occasional interviews on NPR. He has spoken at international forums including the Parliament of Worlds Religions in Melbourne, Middle East Peace initiative in Jerusalem, International Leadership conference in Hawaii, Washington and elsewhere.

Concerned by the divisiveness, he saw the need to bring Americans together and founded America Together Foundation committed to building a cohesive America, indeed it is in response to ACT America which is bent on pitching one American against the other. We will be holding series of educational programs, conferences and workshops to address the issues that divide us such as Civil Right, GLBT, Quraan, Abortion, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Racial Profiling and Stereotyping.

The Annual Unity Day USA is in its 7^th year now, it is a purposeful event to bring Americans together, on this Unity Day, we the people of the United States of America of every faith, race, ethnicity, culture and background will gather to express our commitment to co-existence, unity, prosperity and wellbeing of our nation.

Thanksgiving Celebration is in its 15^th year showcasing cultural diversity.

The 5^th Annual Reflections on Holocaust and Genocides is to learn and to acknowledge and reflect upon the terrible things we have inflicted upon each other and commit to avert such tragedies. Through this event non-Jewish people have consciously learned about Holocaust for the first time, it was also for the first time that people of 14 faiths came together to join in to commemorate the Holocaust that commemorated within the Jewish Community for years. They are not alone anymore in their anguish, we are all in it together with them, and it is a Muslim initiative to effect a positive change.

The programs, seminars and workshops conducted by the Foundation for Pluralism have become a part of the America Together Foundation. While the Foundation for Pluralism continues championing the idea of co-existence through respecting and accepting the otherness of other, the commitment to nurturing the pluralistic ideals embedded in Islam through the World Muslim Congress continues.

# # #

Fuller Profile is at: http://www.mikeghouse.net/MuslimSpeaker.MikeGhouse.asp

Mike is working on two books scheduled to be released this year; The American Muslim Agenda and My Journey to Pluralism.

Mike has written over 1000 Articles on Pluralism, Islam, India, Peace & Justice and civil societies published in a wide spectrum of Newspapers and Magazines around the world.

Locally, he is a panelist at Dallas Morning News's and writes weekly on a range of issues facing the nation. Washington Post, Huffington Post and other news papers and sites regularly publish his work.

Mike is available to speak on Pluralism, Islam, Civil Societies, and Peace & Justice at your place of worship, school, work place, seminars, workshops or conferences. His work is reflected at three websites & twenty two Blogs listed at http://www.MikeGhouse.net/

Dallas Conference on building an inclusive America

2010-12-02T21:58:00.001-08:00

No American has to live in anxieties, discomfort or fear of the other. The purpose of this conference is to understand the issues and find ways to remove such fears in an open forum and restore the cohesiveness of our society and work towards building a safe and secure America.
When: 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM on Sunday, December 5, 2010
Where: Unity Church,
6525 Forest Lane, Dallas, TX
. 75230

PRESS RELEASE | INVITATION

Contact: MikeGhouse@aol.com

You are invited, details below

No American has to live in anxieties, discomfort or fear of the other. The purpose of this conference is to remove such myths in an open forum and restore the cohesiveness of our society and work towards building a safe and secure America.
Since our independence in 1776, we have been tested time and again by various political, economic and religious forces to divide us, however, at the end we have come out strong as one nation. The Civil War, the Great Depression, the World War, Pearl Harbor, Women’s rights, Abortion, the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, Budget Deficits, Unemployment, 9/11, the Iraq and Afghanistan War have all been difficult, but we will make it through and sanity will prevail.

The controversy over the Muslim Community Center in New York has unraveled the difficulties Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Wicca and others have endured.

We have come a long way to embrace and accept the otherness of other. However, this year has given rise to yet another temptation; to blame Islam, calling it an evil, evil religion and calling its prophet a false prophet. No American has to live in fear of the other, nor live in anxieties or discomfort.

Religion has been “abused” and “misused” to someone’s advantage, as Americans, are we going to let that happen? No, we can pull ourselves together and not fall for the temptations to divide ourselves.

If we make an effort, goodness will come to our rescue. Mike Ghouse adds, “As members of diverse family of faiths, we seek to demystify the myths, malice and falsification of our respective faiths. It is time for all of us to gather and understand the Qur’aan, the holy book of Muslims, which has been the subject of attack by a few among us. Indeed, a conference is a positive response to negative sermons delivered from a few pulpits of America this year.”

The Conference puts the Quraan in the hands of panelists made up of Pastors, Rabbis, Pundits, Shamans, Clergy, lay persons, elected officers and the public. The uniqueness of the event is highlighted by facing the “terrifying passages” of Quraan. For the first time in history, the actual verses from Quraan will be read directly and explained by panelists made up of Pastors, Rabbis, Pundits, Shamans, Clergy, lay persons and elected officials who have a deep interest in bringing Americans together on common grounds. The Muslim scholars either affirm their reading or share the additional information right from the very Quraan for further understanding.

It is time now to replace the ill-will with goodwill; no American has to live in anxieties, discomfort or fear of the other. The purpose of this conference is to remove such myths in an open forum in the public and restore the cohesiveness of our society and work towards building a safe and secure America.

When: 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM on Sunday, December 5, 2010
Where: Unity Church,

6525 Forest Lane, Dallas, TX

. 75230

Event: Qur’aan Conference in Dallas
Purpose: To demystify the myths about Quraan and Islam
Website: http://www.quraanconference.com/
Inquiries: quraanconference@gmail.com
RSVP: Confirmattendance@gmail.com
Call: Mike Ghouse (214) 325-1916

THE EVENT IS FREE

Thank you.
Mike Ghouse for
A COHESIVE AMERICA,
AMERICANS TOGETHERhttp://www.quraanconference.com/

Documentary – listed at www.QuraanConference.com

Quran (Koran) Conference in Dallas, an American effort to build cohesive societies

2010-10-14T03:49:00.001-07:00

The Conference puts a Quraan in the hands of panelists made up of Pastors, Rabbis, Pundits, Shamans, lay persons, elected officers and the public. It is to demystify the myths about Quraan and Islam. An American effort to build cohesive societies.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Oct 10, 2010 - DALLAS, TEXAS - The Foundation for Pluralism and the World Muslim Congress have announced a conference on Quraan in Dallas to be held between 3:00 PM and 6 PM on Sunday, December 5, 2010 at the Unity Church of Dallas.

Representing the organizations, Mike Ghouse adds, "As members of diverse family of faiths, we seek to demystify the myths and falsification of our respective faiths. It is time for all of us to gather and understand the Qur'aan, the holy book of Muslims, which has been the subject of attack by a few among us. Indeed, the conference is a positive response to negative sermons delivered from a few pulpits of America this year."

The uniqueness of the event is highlighted by facing the "terrifying passages" of Quraan. For the first time in history, the actual verses from Quraan will be read directly and explained by non-Muslim panelists made up of Pastors, Rabbis, Pundits, Shamans, Clergy, lay persons and elected officials who have a deep interest in bringing Americans together on common grounds. The Muslim scholars either affirm their reading or refer to the Quraan for further understanding. It would be indeed a first hand educational experience.

It is time now to replace the ill-will with goodwill; no American has to live in anxieties, discomfort or fear of the other. The purpose of this conference is to remove such myths in an open forum in the public and restore the cohesiveness of our society and work towards building a safe and secure America.

Bring your children to experience the multi-cultural costumes in a designated room for them.

Refreshments will be served after the event.

THE EVENT IS FREE

Please R.S.V.P. to confirmattendance@gmail.com
Direct your inquiries to QuraanConference@gmail.com .

For details visit website http://www.quraanconference.com/

Mike Ghouse is a speaker, thinker, writer, optimist, educator and an activist of Pluralism, Interfaith, Islam and Civil Societies. He heads the Foundation for Pluralism and World Muslim Congress and offers Pluralistic solutions to the media and the public on issues of the day. Mike's work is reflected at three websites & twenty two Blogs listed at http://www.mikeghouse.net/

Qur’aan Conference, an American event

2010-09-30T20:30:00.001-07:00

Qur’aan Conference, an American event

From times immemorial Religion has been “abused” and “misused” to someone gain, usually for controlling others. Are we going to let that happen? As Americans, we can pull ourselves together and not fall for the temptations to divide ourselves. No American has to live in fear of the other, nor live in anxieties or discomfort.

All our faiths reinforce the creed of "One Nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.” Details at http://www.quraanconference.com/

Mike Ghouse is a speaker on Pluralism and Islam offering pluralistic solutions to the media and public on issues of the day. His blogs and sites are listed at www.MikeGhouse.net

Rethinking American Options on Iran

2010-09-06T22:40:00.000-07:00

September 6, 2010

If we are smart, we would spend our energy on diplomatic solutions.

The US or Israel cannot be threatening Iran and expect them to lay down and get walked over, they will certainly hurt us as they get hurt. Both of us lose.

Our war in Iraq has hurt us the ordinary Americans, the SOB's who talk about war and destruction don't give rat's tail about the Americans or the Israelis, they are not affected. Talk to the people whose homes are being foreclosed, cannot afford to drive or find a Job or feed their children properly - and these guys want to kill otehrs and get killed.

Only the war mongers will benefit, not the Americans. We need to hose their minds to clean them out to start thinking peace. Peace brings stability and prosperity. We need to speak up, if not the evil men will bring more destruciton to the oridinary people.

Mike Ghouse
www.mikeghouse.net

# # #
Rethinking American Options on Iran
Ahmedinejad is a foul mouth and we are out matching him, we have to be and act civilized.
By George Friedman
Courtsey: www.stratfor.com

Public discussion of potential attacks on Iran’s nuclear development sites is surging again. This has happened before. On several occasions, leaks about potential airstrikes have created an atmosphere of impending war. These leaks normally coincided with diplomatic initiatives and were designed to intimidate the Iranians and facilitate a settlement favorable to the United States and Israel. These initiatives have failed in the past. It is therefore reasonable to associate the current avalanche of reports with the imposition of sanctions and view it as an attempt to increase the pressure on Iran and either force a policy shift or take advantage of divisions within the regime.

My first instinct is to dismiss the war talk as simply another round of psychological warfare against Iran, this time originating with Israel. Most of the reports indicate that Israel is on the verge of attacking Iran. From a psychological-warfare standpoint, this sets up the good-cop/bad-cop routine. The Israelis play the mad dog barely restrained by the more sober Americans, who urge the Iranians through intermediaries to make concessions and head off a war. As I said, we have been here before several times, and this hasn’t worked.

The worst sin of intelligence is complacency, the belief that simply because something has happened (or has not happened) several times before it is not going to happen this time. But each episode must be considered carefully in its own light and preconceptions from previous episodes must be banished. Indeed, the previous episodes might well have been intended to lull the Iranians into complacency themselves. Paradoxically, the very existence of another round of war talk could be intended to convince the Iranians that war is distant while covert war preparations take place. An attack may be in the offing, but the public displays neither confirm nor deny that possibility.

The Evolving Iranian Assessment

STRATFOR has gone through three phases in its evaluation of the possibility of war. The first, which was in place until July 2009, held that while Iran was working toward a nuclear weapon, its progress could not be judged by its accumulation of enriched uranium. While that would give you an underground explosion, the creation of a weapon required sophisticated technologies for ruggedizing and miniaturizing the device, along with a very reliable delivery system. In our view, Iran might be nearing a testable device but it was far from a deliverable weapon. Therefore, we dismissed war talk and argued that there was no meaningful pressure for an attack on Iran.

We modified this view somewhat in July 2009, after the Iranian elections and the demonstrations. While we dismissed the significance of the demonstrations, we noted close collaboration developing between Russia and Iran. That meant there could be no effective sanctions against Iran, so stalling for time in order for sanctions to work had no value. Therefore, the possibility of a strike increased.

But then Russian support stalled as well, and we turned back to our analysis, adding to it an evaluation of potential Iranian responses to any air attack. We noted three potential counters: activating Shiite militant groups (most notably Hezbollah), creating chaos in Iraq and blocking the Strait of Hormuz, through which 45 percent of global oil exports travel. Of the three Iranian counters, the last was the real “nuclear option.” Interfering with the supply of oil from the Persian Gulf would raise oil prices stunningly and would certainly abort the tepid global economic recovery. Iran would have the option of plunging the world into a global recession or worse.

There has been debate over whether Iran would choose to do the latter or whether the U.S. Navy could rapidly clear mines. It is hard to imagine how an Iranian government could survive air attacks without countering them in some way. It is also a painful lesson of history that the confidence of any military force cannot be a guide to its performance. At the very least, there is a possibility that the Iranians could block the Strait of Hormuz, and that means the possibility of devastating global economic consequences. That is a massive risk for the United States to take, against an unknown probability of successful Iranian action. In our mind, it was not a risk that the United States could take, especially when added to the other Iranian counters. Therefore, we did not think the United States would strike.

Certainly, we did not believe that the Israelis would strike Iran alone. First, the Israelis are much less likely to succeed than the Americans would be, given the size of their force and their distance from Iran (not to mention the fact that they would have to traverse either Turkish, Iraqi or Saudi airspace). More important, Israel lacks the ability to mitigate any consequences. Any Israeli attack would have to be coordinated with the United States so that the United States could alert and deploy its counter-mine, anti-submarine and missile-suppression assets. For Israel to act without giving the United States time to mitigate the Hormuz option would put Israel in the position of triggering a global economic crisis. The political consequences of that would not be manageable by Israel. Therefore, we found an Israeli strike against Iran without U.S. involvement difficult to imagine.

The Current Evaluation

Our current view is that the accumulation of enough enriched uranium to build a weapon does not mean that the Iranians are anywhere close to having a weapon. Moreover, the risks inherent in an airstrike on its nuclear facilities outstrip the benefits (and even that assumes that the entire nuclear industry is destroyed in one fell swoop — an unsure outcome at best). It also assumes the absence of other necessary technologies. Assumptions of U.S. prowess against mines might be faulty, and so, too, could my assumption about weapon development. The calculus becomes murky, and one would expect all governments involved to be waffling.

There is, of course, a massive additional issue. Apart from the direct actions that Iran might make, there is the fact that the destruction of its nuclear capability would not solve the underlying strategic challenge that Iran poses. It has the largest military force in the Persian Gulf, absent the United States. The United States is in the process of withdrawing from Iraq, which would further diminish the ability of the United States to contain Iran. Therefore, a surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear capability combined with the continuing withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq would create a profound strategic crisis in the Persian Gulf. The country most concerned about Iran is not Israel, but Saudi Arabia. The Saudis recall the result of the last strategic imbalance in the region, when Iraq, following its armistice with Iran, proceeded to invade Kuwait, opening the possibility that its next intention was to seize the northeastern oil fields of Saudi Arabia. In that case, the United States intervened. Given that the United States is now withdrawing from Iraq, intervention following withdrawal would be politically difficult unless the threat to the United States was clear. More important, the Iranians might not give the Saudis the present Saddam Hussein gave them by seizing Kuwait and then halting. They might continue. They certainly have the military capacity to try.

In a real sense, the Iranians would not have to execute such a military operation in order to gain the benefits. The simple imbalance of forces would compel the Saudis and others in the Persian Gulf to seek a political accommodation with the Iranians. Strategic domination of the Persian Gulf does not necessarily require military occupation — as the Americans have abundantly demonstrated over the past 40 years. It merely requires the ability to carry out those operations.

The Saudis, therefore, have been far quieter — and far more urgent — than the Israelis in asking the United States to do something about the Iranians. The Saudis certainly do not want the United States to leave Iraq. They want the Americans there as a blocking force protecting Saudi Arabia but not positioned on Saudi soil. They obviously are not happy about Iran’s nuclear efforts, but the Saudis see the conventional and nuclear threat as a single entity. The collapse of the Iran-Iraq balance of power has left the Arabian Peninsula in a precarious position.King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia did an interesting thing a few weeks ago. He visited Lebanon personally and in the company of the president of Syria. The Syrian and Saudi regimes are not normally friendly, given different ideologies, Syria’s close relationship with Iran and their divergent interests in Lebanon. But there they were together, meeting with the Lebanese government and giving not very subtle warnings to Hezbollah. Saudi influence and money and the threat of Iran jeopardizing the Saudi regime by excessive adventurism seems to have created an anti-Hezbollah dynamic in Lebanon. Hezbollah is suddenly finding many of its supposed allies cooperating with some of its certain enemies. The threat of a Hezbollah response to an airstrike on Iran seems to be mitigated somewhat.

Eliminating Iranian Leverage In Hormuz

I said that there were three counters. One was Hezbollah, which is the least potent of the three from the American perspective. The other two are Iraq and Hormuz. If the Iraqis were able to form a government that boxed in pro-Iranian factions in a manner similar to how Hezbollah is being tentatively contained, then the second Iranian counter would be weakened. That would “just” leave the major issue — Hormuz.

The problem with Hormuz is that the United States cannot tolerate any risk there. The only way to control that risk is to destroy Iranian naval capability before airstrikes on nuclear targets take place. Since many of the Iranian mine layers would be small boats, this would mean an extensive air campaign and special operations forces raids against Iranian ports designed to destroy anything that could lay mines, along with any and all potential mine-storage facilities, anti-ship missile emplacements, submarines and aircraft. Put simply, any piece of infrastructure within a few miles of any port would need to be eliminated. The risk to Hormuz cannot be eliminated after the attack on nuclear sites. It must be eliminated before an attack on the nuclear sites. And the damage must be overwhelming.

There are two benefits to this strategy. First, the nuclear facilities aren’t going anywhere. It is the facilities that are producing the enriched uranium and other parts of the weapon that must be destroyed more than any uranium that has already been enriched. And the vast bulk of those facilities will remain where they are even if there is an attack on Iran’s maritime capabilities. Key personnel would undoubtedly escape, but considering that within minutes of the first American strike anywhere in Iran a mass evacuation of key scientists would be under way anyway, there is little appreciable difference between a first strike against nuclear sites and a first strike against maritime targets. (U.S. air assets are good, but even the United States cannot strike 100-plus targets simultaneously.)

Second, the counter-nuclear strategy wouldn’t deal with the more fundamental problem of Iran’s conventional military power. This opening gambit would necessarily attack Iran’s command-and-control, air-defense and offensive air capabilities as well as maritime capabilities. This would sequence with an attack on the nuclear capabilities and could be extended into a prolonged air campaign targeting Iran’s ground forces.The United States is very good at gaining command of the air and attacking conventional military capabilities (see Yugoslavia in 1999). Its strategic air capability is massive and, unlike most of the U.S. military, underutilized. The United States also has substantial air forces deployed around Iran, along with special operations forces teams trained in penetration, evasion and targeting, and satellite surveillance. Far from the less-than-rewarding task of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, going after Iran would be the kind of war the United States excels at fighting. No conventional land invasion, no boots-on-the-ground occupation, just a very thorough bombing campaign. If regime change happens as a consequence, great, but that is not the primary goal. Defanging the Iranian state is.It is also the only type of operation that could destroy the nuclear capabilities (and then some) while preventing an Iranian response. It would devastate Iran’s conventional military forces, eliminating the near-term threat to the Arabian Peninsula. Such an attack, properly executed, would be the worst-case scenario for Iran and, in my view, the only way an extended air campaign against nuclear facilities could be safely executed.

Just as Iran’s domination of the Persian Gulf rests on its ability to conduct military operations, not on its actually conducting the operations, the reverse is also true. It is the capacity and apparent will to conduct broadened military operations against Iran that can shape Iranian calculations and decision-making. So long as the only threat is to Iran’s nuclear facilities, its conventional forces remain intact and its counter options remain viable, Iran will not shift its strategy. Once its counter options are shut down and its conventional forces are put at risk, Iran must draw up another calculus.

In this scenario, Israel is a marginal player. The United States is the only significant actor, and it might not strike Iran simply over the nuclear issue. That’s not a major U.S. problem. But the continuing withdrawal from Iraq and Iran’s conventional forces are very much an American problem. Destroying Iran’s nuclear capability is merely an added benefit.

Given the Saudi intervention in Lebanese politics, this scenario now requires a radical change in Iraq, one in which a government would be quickly formed and Iranian influence quickly curtailed. Interestingly, we have heard recent comments by administration officials asserting that Iranian influence has, in fact, been dramatically reduced. At present, such a reduction is not obvious to us, but the first step of shifting perceptions tends to be propaganda. If such a reduction became real, then the two lesser Iranian counter moves would be blocked and the U.S. offensive option would become more viable.

Internal Tension in Tehran

At this point, we would expect to see the Iranians recalculating their position, with some of the clerical leadership using the shifting sands of Lebanon against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, there have been many indications of internal stress, not between the mythical democratic masses and the elite, but within the elite itself. This past weekend the Iranian speaker of the house attacked Ahmadinejad’s handling of special emissaries. For what purpose we don’t yet know, but the internal tension is growing.

The Iranians are not concerned about the sanctions. The destruction of their nuclear capacity would, from their point of view, be a pity. But the destruction of large amounts of their conventional forces would threaten not only their goals in the wider Islamic world but also their stability at home. That would be unacceptable and would require a shift in their general strategy.

From the Iranian point of view — and from ours — Washington’s intentions are opaque. But when we consider the Obama administration’s stated need to withdraw from Iraq, Saudi pressure on the United States not to withdraw while Iran remains a threat, Saudi moves against Hezbollah to split Syria from Iran and Israeli pressure on the United States to deal with nuclear weapons, the pieces for a new American strategy are emerging from the mist. Certainly the Iranians appear to be nervous. And the threat of a new strategy might just be enough to move the Iranians off dead center. If they don’t, logic would dictate the consideration of a broader treatment of the military problem posed by Iran.

Ground Zero Mosque Articles

2010-08-08T13:02:00.000-07:00

We have to respect and honor the sentiments of every one who was a victim of terrorism and their friends and relatives who have suffered through this….The Ground Zero Mosque is engaging the American Public and bringing out emotions and intellectualism to the forefront to tackle the issue of co-existence. The questions abound…..

In behalf of the men and women who have lost their loved ones, a few are genuinely opposing the building of the communtiy Center, a few are Altruistic and want the center to stand out as a beaocon of hope and peace and yet a few are falling prey to the political opportunists. At the end, if we envision an America that is good for all, we have to consider dropping the “me, me, and me” and yeild to what is good for America, the land of the free.

If Saudi is a bad country, why do we want to emulate them?

Continued: http://mikeghouseforamerica.blogspot.com/2010/08/ground-zero-mosque-articles.html

Mike Ghouse is a speaker, thinker and a writer of Pluralism and offers pluralistic solutions for the issues of the day. He is a frequent guest in the media and his work is encapsulated in 22 Blogs and 3 websites listed at www.MikeGhouse.net

Themes for the Parliament of Worlds Religions in 2014

2010-07-22T21:40:00.000-07:00

The theme that might capture our imagination and encapsulate our issues in 2014 would be, “A legacy for the next generation” or “A legacy for seven generations.” It is not a new idea; it is a tradition of the native peoples of America.The issues that affect our lives in the coming decade will continue to be environment, water, hunger, religious and ethnic intolerance. If we shy away from consciously shaping our future, we may drift into the abyss of incoherence. We may be fighting against deeply entrenched positions rather than finding solutions to the common issues.

Continued: http://wisdomofreligion.blogspot.com/2010/07/parliament-of-worlds-religions-summit.html

http://www.mikeghouse.net/

Mosque at Ground Zero religious freedom too far?

2010-07-16T17:32:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Dallas Morning News for presenting different points of view. Our own Rabbis and Pastors have spoken respectfully.

Indeed, it is another opportunity to the world to see what we are made of; the world will see the spirit of our freedom and who we are, we are open to others, our freedom does not scare us, we are secure with ourselves and secure with the God given diversity; and we live with confidence of who we are.

We set the tone for the world, so other nations can emulate us and not the other way around.
Continued: http://wisdomofreligion.blogspot.com/2010/07/is-mosque-at-ground-zero-religious.html

www.MikeGhouse.net

Perception of America

2010-02-05T17:04:00.000-08:00

PERCEPTION OF AMERICA

America is not what is depicted here in this anti-American, ironically funny video that I don't like. I hope to find a good piece to offset this one. The world loves us, they don't like our government, just as we don't like other governments around the world, but we have no problems with their people as they don't have with us. We failed in our duties and let people like Saddam and Bush reign in, our Brute removed the other but missed the real evil man; Osama, and instead killed close to a Million people. Are we responsible, was our government, government of the people? What was the difference between Iraqi people and us?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnlMnf7t4t4

Press Release, Holocaust and Genocides in Dallas

2010-01-16T16:37:00.000-08:00

PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Mike Ghouse (214) 325-1916,
email: MikeGhouse@aol.com
event email: HolocaustandGenocides@gmail.com
Website: http://www.holocaustandgenocides.com/

III ANNUAL REFELCTIONS ON THE HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDES

DALLAS – (January 14, 2010) –The Foundation for Pluralism announces the 7/7 speakers Panel to reflect upon the Holocaust and Genocides event at 5:00 PM on Sunday, January 24, 2010 at the Center for Spiritual Center, 4801 Spring Valley Road, Dallas, TX. 75244.

Each individual in the seven member panel would acknowledge the inhumanity in each one of us and reflect upon the solutions for co-existence. It is a purposeful event to learn, acknowledge and reflect upon the terrible things, that we humans have inflicted upon each other.

What can you do as individual?

Continue: http://holocaustandgenocides.blogspot.com/2010/01/press-release-on-holocaust-and.html
~ ~ ~

A tribute to Jesus

2009-12-23T23:31:00.001-08:00

A tribute to Jesus on this Christmas;

What does it mean to be religious?

Mike Ghouse

This column is dedicated to Rev. Petra Weldes of the Center for Spiritual Living in Dallas. Some of my conversation with her inspired me to write this tribute to Jesus and what it means to be religious.

Continued: http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2009/12/tribute-to-jesus.html

~~~

Copenhagen is about Climate Justice

2009-12-14T00:09:00.000-08:00

Climate Justice assures every one in the long haul that one can continue living and breathing regardless of being rich or poor. Protecting the environment is the right thing to do; indeed it is a sacred duty of every human. As an individual or a nation we cannot shut ourselves in a bubble; either we suffer the damage together or save the environment for all. None of us can live in silos.

Continued: http://wisdomofreligion.blogspot.com/2009/12/copenhagen-is-about-climate-justice.html
~~~

Israel and Saudi Cohorts Now?

2009-07-08T08:42:00.000-07:00

"You cannot have security when you threaten others around you- Mike Ghouse" I am responding to two columns about the subject line posted below.

The Neocons are individuals with an extremist mind-set regardless of their religious or political affiliations. They are in every group.

They believe that only war and annihilation of others solves their conflict, how dumb! You cannot have security when you threaten others around you; it is such a simple idea to understand.

They are the real threat to the security of every nation including Israel and the United States. They are Cheney, Bush, Rove, Palin, McCain, Netanyahu, Lieberman and their likes. Their policies and actions are the reason conflicts flare and continue it is time to dump them and take the approach of diplomacy.

The more wedges they create between Saudi Arabia and Iran, Hamas and the Fatah groups, the more instability they will bring to the region. The Neocons (extremist) are adept in creating chaos and insecurity all around them. I hope they resort to do the opposite of what they do – their passion for destruction if turned around for peace; they can bring peace and stability to the region, until then, we the common people of all nations need to speak up.

I am disappointed in Joe Biden; he has joined the bandwagon of the Neocons. Bombing Iran will aggravate the situation and not bring any solution.

Mike Ghouse is a Pluralist, Speaker, Thinker, Writer and a Moderator. He is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing Pluralism, politics, Islam, Peace, extremism, India and civic issues. His comments, news analysis, opinions and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website http://www.mikeghouse.net/

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THE IRANIAN ‘REVOLUTION’ HAS FAILED
SO IT’S BACK TO THE ‘IRAN HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS’ RHETORIC TO BOMB THEM INTO ‘REGIME CHANGE’.

http://lataan.blogspot.com/2009/07/iranian-revolution-has-failed-so-its.html

With the failure of the Western powers to foment a popular uprising after the 12 June elections in Iran that they hoped would lead to regime change, the West has now had to return to the ‘Iran has nuclear weapons’ meme in order to pave the way for an attack against Iran in the hope that regime change can be affected that way.

In an interview on Sunday, Vice-President Joe Biden, when asked, “…if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?” responded saying: “Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.”

Biden was then asked: “You say we can't dictate, but we can, if we choose to, deny over-flight rights here in Iraq. We can stand in the way of a military strike”, to which he responded, “I'm not going to speculate… on those issues, other than to say Israel has a right to determine what's in its interests, and we have a right and we will determine what's in our interests.”

Yesterday (5 July) ‘Timesonline’ reported that the Saudis had made it clear to Meir Dagan, Israel’s Mossad chief, that they would not object to Israeli overflights if they were on their way to targets in Iran. While a flight to Iran from Israel via Saudi Arabia would be much longer that a direct flight to Iran overflying Jordan and Iraq, a flight via Saudi Arabia would not require permission from any other country; not even the US to fly over Iraq. And if the Israelis can get permission from the Saudis to have support aircraft in the air in Saudi airspace to refuel the Israeli strike aircraft over, say, the Persian Gulf, then an Israeli strike against Iran is feasible.

It’s interesting that the report about the Saudi’s giving clearance for overflights to attack Iran were quickly denied by Netanyahu’s office. Clearly, the Israelis are anxious to bury this information though, one suspects, that it is now too late and the Iranians will now have their spies in Saudi Arabia scanning the skies and radio bands for high flying aircraft heading west to east across Saudi Arabia toward the Persian Gulf.

It may well be that Israel could be keen to take advantage of the unrest that has recently unsettled Iran but now seems to have died down. A strike now, they may feel, might just reignite the embers of insurrection that still glow especially if there was also a strike against Iran’s security forces and it’s military.

Even if Israel did strike against Iran via Saudi skies, Israel would still need to rely on the US for support. The fuel required for the mission would need to be supplied by the US as would most of the munitions. US forces would also need to be on standby ready to prevent any Iranian retaliatory strikes against Israel and the US. Israel would also need to have its troops on standby at home in preparedness for retaliatory attacks from both Hezbollah and Hamas.

For Israel, a Hamas and Hezbollah strike against them would be what they want. It would provide the casus belli for Israel to invade both the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon – perhaps all of Lebanon – knowing that the Iranians would not be in a position to help them. And with Iran out of the equation, Syria would not dare move against Israel.

With the failure of the post-election Iranian revolution, Israel will now resort to its old rhetoric of ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ to try again to get public opinion onside for when they launch their attack against Iran to effect regime change. With the US now clearly not standing in the way and the Saudis prepared to let the US off the hook with regard to being seen by the world as facilitating an Israeli attack by allowing the Israelis to overfly Iraq despite all the talk of pursuing a “diplomatic solution”, everything seems in place for the Israelis to feel free to attack Iran when ever they feel they are ready.

The prospect of a final confrontation between Israel and Iran is now off the back burner and back on to the front burner. The problem is, If and when it happens, it won’t be a simple make or break fight for Israel or Iran; the repercussions will reverberate around the world for years to come.

Saudis give nod to Israeli raid on Iran
Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Sarah Baxter
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6638568.ece

The head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.

Earlier this year Meir Dagan, Mossad’s director since 2002, held secret talks with Saudi officials to discuss the possibility.

The Israeli press has already carried unconfirmed reports that high-ranking officials, including Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, held meetings with Saudi colleagues. The reports were denied by Saudi officials.

“The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia,” a diplomatic source said last week.

Although the countries have no formal diplomatic relations, an Israeli defence source confirmed that Mossad maintained “working relations” with the Saudis.
John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations who recently visited the Gulf, said it was “entirely logical” for the Israelis to use Saudi airspace.

Bolton, who has talked to several Arab leaders, added: “None of them would say anything about it publicly but they would certainly acquiesce in an overflight if the Israelis didn’t trumpet it as a big success.”

Arab states would condemn a raid when they spoke at the UN but would be privately relieved to see the threat of an Iranian bomb removed, he said.

Referring to the Israeli attack on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility in 2007, Bolton added: “To this day, the Israelis haven’t admitted the specifics but there’s one less nuclear facility in Syria . . .”
Recent developments have underscored concerns among moderate Sunni Arab states about the stability of the repressive Shi’ite regime in Tehran and have increased fears that it may emerge as a belligerent nuclear power.

“The Saudis are very concerned about an Iranian nuclear bomb, even more than the Israelis,” said a former head of research in Israeli intelligence.

The Israeli air force has been training for a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear site at Natanz in the centre of the country and other locations for four years.

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Support for Israel Feeds Terrorism

2009-05-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

Support for Israel Feeds Terrorism
Cheney Breaks the Taboo
By RAY McGOVERN

If we hear in the coming days that former Vice President Dick Cheney has fired one of his speechwriters — or perhaps grounded Lynne or Liz — it will be clear why.

Oozing out of the sleazy speech he gave Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute was an inadvertent truth regarding the Israeli albatross hanging around the neck of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

I watched the speech, but had missed the gaffe until I went carefully through the written text before a radio interview Thursday evening. It amounts to a major faux pas, though I’ll give you odds that the usual-suspect pundits of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) will not touch it, because it raises troubling questions about the close U.S. relationship with Israel.

I wanted my 10-year-old grandson to learn a nice word to describe the arguments in the former Vice President’s speech, so he has now learned “disingenuous.” Today we’ll study “superficial,” for that is the right adjective to assign to both Cheney and President Barack Obama as they addressed the threat of “terrorism,” the threat always guaranteed to resonate among Americans — much like the threat of communism did, not too many decades back.

To burnish his anti-terrorist credentials, Obama pledged to do whatever is necessary to protect the United States and warned that al-Qaeda is "actively plotting to attack us again.”

What continues to be missing in the rhetoric of both Obama and Cheney is any discussion of al-Qaeda’s actual capability to perpetrate, in Cheney’s words, “a 9/11 with nuclear weapons” or some other scary thought designed to make Americans hand over their liberties for some dubious promise of safety. Equally important -- and equally missing -- there is never any sensible examination of the motives that might be driving what Cheney called this “same assortment of killers and would-be mass murderers [who] are still there.”

There are a number of reasons why al-Qaeda and other terrorist movements wish to attack us, but this question never gets a complete – or honest – answer, certainly not from the FCM or from the mouths of politicians like Cheney and Obama.

Why They Hate Us

Cheney’s explanation of a motive mostly reprised George W. Bush’s old “the terrorists hate our freedoms” canard. Cheney said the terrorists hate “all the things that make us a force for good in the world — for liberty, for human rights, for the rational, peaceful resolution of differences,” an odd set of qualities for Cheney to cite given his roles in violating constitutional rights, torturing captives and spreading falsehoods to justify invading Iraq.

But that’s also where Cheney slipped up. You didn’t notice? Well, Cheney couldn’t resist expanding on the complaints of the terrorists:

“They have never lacked for grievances against the United States. Our belief in freedom of speech and religion…our belief in equal rights for women…our support for Israel… — these are the true sources of resentment…”

“Our support for Israel.” Cheney got that part right.

My radio interview Thursday was with an FCM station, and I thought I would make an extra effort to be “fair and balanced.” So I noted that, to his credit, Cheney — advertently or inadvertently — did articulate one of the (usually unspoken) key reasons “why they hate us.”

I was immediately jumped on, figuratively, not only by the interviewee representing “the other side,” but also by the not-so-fair-and-balanced moderator. My interlocutors did not seem all that hospitable to facts, but I thought I owed them a try at adducing some anyway.

9/11, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed…and 9/11…

In his speech, Cheney mentioned 9/11 some 30 Times — for reasons that by this stage are obvious to all. Referring specifically to waterboarding, Cheney said that waterboardee Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, “the mastermind of 9/11 … also boasted about beheading Daniel Pearl.” (Here, I thought, is a really good example of “disingenuous” — a nice concrete example for my grandson. For the only thing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did NOT take responsibility for, after being waterboarded 183 Times, was climate change.)

But since the name Khalid Sheikh Mohammed came up, I asked my two interlocutors if they knew how “KSM” explained why he masterminded 9/11. Apparently, neither had made it as far as page 147 of the 9/11 Commission Report, so I told them what the 9/11 Commission found on that key point:

“By his own account, KSM’s animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experience there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.”

KSM, you see, had attended North Carolina A & T in Greensboro, and apparently the first thought that came to those drafting the 9/11 report was that perhaps he had suffered some gross indignity accounting for his hatred for America. Not so.

Moreover, the footnote section (page 488 of the 9/11 Commission Report) reveals that KSM was not the only terrorist motivated by “U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel”:

“On KSM’s rationale for attacking the United States, see Intelligence report, interrogation of KSM, Sept. 5, 2003 (in this regard, KSM’s statements echo those of Yousef, who delivered an extensive polemic against U.S. foreign policy at his January 1998 sentencing).”

The reference is to Ramzi Yousef, KSM’s nephew. The 9/11 Commission Report had noted earlier (page 147) that, “Yousef’s instant notoriety as the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing inspired KSM to become involved in planning attacks against the United States.”

In the “Recommendations” section of its final report, the 9/11 Commission suggested:

“America’s policy choices have consequences. Right or wrong, it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world. … Neither Israel nor the new Iraq will be safer if worldwide Islamist terrorism grows stronger.” (pp 376-377)

These observations seemed to strike my radio interlocutors as unfit for the airwaves. When the shouts of protest died down, there was an opportunity to offer additional evidence, so I threw in what a prestigious board appointed by the Pentagon had to say about all this over four years ago.

Defense Science Board Report

Are you ready for a scoop that is not a scoop, but that almost no one knows about?

It has to do with an unclassified study published, not by some “liberal” think-tank, but by the Pentagon-appointed U.S. Defense Science Board just two months after the 9/11 Commission Report. That report directly contradicted what Cheney and President Bush had been saying about “why they hate us,” letting the elephant out of the bag and into the room, so to speak:

“Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.”

You didn’t know about that report? Well, maybe this is because of the timing. The Defense Science Board final report was given to Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Sept. 23, 2004, just weeks before the presidential election.

That is a time when presidential candidates and the U.S. Establishment in general are hyper-allergic to discussing how U.S. support for Israeli policies toward the Palestinians encourages the recruitment of anti-American terrorists.

Suppressed, Then Gutted

Bending over backwards to oblige, the FCM suppressed the Defense Science Board findings until after the election. On Nov. 24, 2004, the New York Times, erstwhile “newspaper of record,” did publish a story on the board’s report — but performed some highly interesting surgery.

Thom Shanker of the Times quoted the paragraph beginning with "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom'" (see above), but he or his editors deliberately cut out the following sentence about what Muslims do object to; i.e., U.S. "one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights" and support for tyrannical regimes. The Times did include the sentence that immediately followed the omitted one. In other words, it was not simply a matter of shortening the paragraph. Rather, the offending middle sentence was surgically removed.

Similarly creative editing showed through the Times' reporting in late October 2004 on a videotaped speech by Osama bin Laden. Almost six paragraphs of the story made it onto page one, but the Times saw to it that the key point bin Laden made at the beginning of his presentation was relegated to paragraphs 23 to 25 at the very bottom of page nine.

Buried there was bin Laden's assertion that the idea for 9/11 first germinated after "we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American-Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon."

Wading through the drivel in the FCM’s Times and Washington Post on Friday morning, I am hardly surprised that they missed Cheney’s slip about U.S. policy toward Israel being one of the terrorists’ “true sources of resentment.”

Ray McGovern was an Army officer and CIA analyst for almost 30 year. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair (Verso). He can be reached at: rrmcgovern@aol.com

A shorter version of this article appeared at Consortiumnews.com.
http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern05222009.html

Israel and Iran's nuclear programs

2009-05-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

Here's how Israel would destroy Iran's nuclear program.

The authors conclude "The time has come to adopt new ways of thinking. No more fiery declarations and empty threats, but rather a carefully weighed policy grounded in sound strategy. Ultimately, in an era of a multi-nuclear Middle East, all sides will have a clear interest to lower tension and not to increase it.”

Continue: http://mikeghouseforamerica.blogspot.com/2009/05/israel-and-iran-conflict.html

Muslim Response to Lies about Qur'aan

2009-03-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

Muslim response to Dutch Legislator's lies about Qur'aan.

The link following this note is a Muslim response to Geert Wilders’ documentary called "Fitna", presenting Islam as a danger to his society. The article in the link is authored by Mike Ghouse* and Imam Zia Shaikh, Imam and an Islamic Scholar of the largest Mosque in Texas.

Mr. Wilders, a Dutch parliamentarian is in Washington DC to dupe a few of our Congressman and Senators. I hope they will have their staff members verify the statements he has quoted in the documentary (the link is in the link) and then check it in the Qur'aan and tell the man to come up with truth and not dupe the Americans any more.

Evil persists, because we the good people do not stop the hate mongering and some of us even fund such documentaries. I have seen a series of such documentaries this year where Islam is deliberately misrepresented with the sole purpose of frightening their insecure and cashing it. It is all about money, they are fooling you and several of us.

There was the “obsession” documentary fraught with misquotes and lies, some 2 million copies were shipped to frighten the Americans to vote the other way prior to November 4th elections. A few more documentaries were shown loaded with blatant lies, one of them was downright stupid but to the producer it had its effect, drill fear and gain favors, in that documentary, the propped up Non-Muslim French Expert on Islam was saying the dumbest things I have ever heard. I challenged the producer to pick up the phone and call any Muslim any where in the world to find it if Muslims don’t believe in the coming of Messiah.

We have a choice to know the truth, and I urge those who truly want peace and co-existence to set up a panel of conservatives, liberals and a whole bunch of moderates to review and answer the audience. Private showings to exclusive groups has an intent of evilness, if it is the truth, let it be in the open, let it be subject to questions and another point of view.

Ultimately it is not the Imam, Rabbi, Pastor, Pundit, Politician, Savior, Policy maker or the Clergy who is responsible for our pain, anguish, pangs of conscience, our actions and our bad intent; it is us who have to deal with it in our lonely moments. Men of God do not sell hate, they are about inclusion and love. We need to have true freedom to find the truth on our own.

Should we fund fear mongering or peace making? The choice is ours. I hope to wake you up and have you fund those who are working on mitigating conflicts and nurturing goodwill.

Mr. Wilders has read my piece linked below and is un-willing to retract the false statements he has made; he quoted them as if they are in Qur'aan, and they are not. His intent is not education but chaos. Wikipedia has made similar mistakes and even the prestigious University of Southern California's website has a quote ascribed to Qur'aan, even with a verse number to give the idea that it is legitimate, but that verse is not in Qur'aan either. Of course, only 1/10th of 1% of the extremists blindly believes in such statements without verifying.

Full article at: http://quraan-today.blogspot.com/2008/03/wilders-fitna-and-muslims_30.html

Mike Ghouse is a Dallas based writer, blogger, speaker and a thinker. A frequent guest on talk radio and local television networks offering pluralistic perspectives on issues of the day. His comments, news analysis and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website www.MikeGhouse.net
.

Saudi Arabia; A change is in the making

2009-02-21T22:08:00.001-08:00

Saudi Arabia; a change is in the making

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was perhaps the first head of a government, who was secure enough to initiate the Madinah pact, one of the first Pluralist documents in the history of mankind that respected and accepted God's intentional diversity to remain intact.I sincerely hope, that the Saudi King will pave the way to make the land of the prophet to once again become a beacon of pluralism, that Islam was and I pray that God help the King achieve it. Amen.

Continued: http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/WorldMuslimCongress/Articles/Saudi-Arabia-change-is-in-the-making.asp

Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker and a Writer on Pluralism, interfaith, peace, Islam and India. He is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television networks discussing these and the civic issues. His comments, news analysis and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website www.MikeGhouse.net. Mike is a Dallasite for nearly three decades and Carrollton is his home town. He can be reached at GhouseMike@gmail.com

PR on Second Annual “Reflections on Holocaust and Genocides"

2009-01-18T15:39:00.000-08:00

II Annual Reflections on Holocaust and Genocides
Sunday, January 25, 2009 5:00 PM - 7:15 PM
Dallas Holocaust Museum/Center for Education and Tolerance
211 N. Record St. Suite 100,
Dallas, TX 75202-3361

Website: www.HolocaustandGenocides.org

Admission is free - Your are invitedLimited Seating -
Please RSVP to: ConfirmAttendance@gmail.com

You may become a part of the history as this event is a stepping stone towards Peace in the Middle east.

Continued: http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/Articles/Holocaust-and-Genocides-Press-Release-011709.asp

HR 34 : Are we pleasing the lobbyists or the people?

2009-01-10T19:25:00.001-08:00

HR 34 : Are we pleasing the lobbyists or the people?

HR 34 : Are we pleasing the lobbyists or the people?The question is about the House Resolution 34 which “barely mentions the human suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza.”We are the most powerful nation on the earth and Israel is the most powerful nation in the Middle East, both of us can decide whatever we want. Who will question us?

Continued: http://www.mikeghouse.net/Articles/House-Resolution-34-Congressman-Ellison.asp

Story behind Gaza War

2009-01-04T07:44:00.000-08:00

Johann Hari:
The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-true-story-behind-this-war-is-not-the-one-israel-is-telling-1214981.html

Monday, 29 December 2008

The world isn't just watching the Israeli government commit a crime in Gaza; we are watching it self-harm. This morning, and tomorrow morning, and every morning until this punishment beating ends, the young people of the Gaza Strip are going to be more filled with hate, and more determined to fight back, with stones or suicide vests or rockets. Israeli leaders have convinced themselves that the harder you beat the Palestinians, the softer they will become. But when this is over, the rage against Israelis will have hardened, and the same old compromises will still be waiting by the roadside of history, untended and unmade.

To understand how frightening it is to be a Gazan this morning, you need to have stood in that small slab of concrete by the Mediterranean and smelled the claustrophobia. The Gaza Strip is smaller than the Isle of Wight but it is crammed with 1.5 million people who can never leave. They live out their lives on top of each other, jobless and hungry, in vast, sagging tower blocks. From the top floor, you can often see the borders of their world: the Mediterranean, and Israeli barbed wire. When bombs begin to fall – as they are doing now with more deadly force than at any time since 1967 – there is nowhere to hide.

There will now be a war over the story of this war. The Israeli government says, "We withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and in return we got Hamas and Qassam rockets being rained on our cities. Sixteen civilians have been murdered. How many more are we supposed to sacrifice?" It is a plausible narrative, and there are shards of truth in it, but it is also filled with holes. If we want to understand the reality and really stop the rockets, we need to rewind a few years and view the run-up to this war dispassionately.

The Israeli government did indeed withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005 – in order to be able to intensify control of the West Bank. Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weisglass, was unequivocal about this, explaining: "The disengagement [from Gaza] is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians... this whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely."

Ordinary Palestinians were horrified by this, and by the fetid corruption of their own Fatah leaders, so they voted for Hamas. It certainly wouldn't have been my choice – an Islamist party is antithetical to all my convictions - but we have to be honest. It was a free and democratic election, and it was not a rejection of a two-state solution. The most detailed polling of Palestinians, by the University of Maryland, found that 72 per cent want a two-state solution on the 1967 borders, while fewer than 20 per cent want to reclaim the whole of historic Palestine. So, partly in response to this pressure, Hamas offered Israel a long, long ceasefire and a de facto acceptance of two states, if only Israel would return to its legal borders.

Rather than seize this opportunity and test Hamas's sincerity, the Israeli government reacted by punishing the entire civilian population. It announced that it was blockading the Gaza Strip in order to "pressure" its people to reverse the democratic process. The Israelis surrounded the Strip and refused to let anyone or anything out. They let in a small trickle of food, fuel and medicine – but not enough for survival. Weisglass quipped that the Gazans were being "put on a diet". According to Oxfam, only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza last month to feed 1.5 million people. The United Nations says poverty has reached an "unprecedented level." When I was last in besieged Gaza, I saw hospitals turning away the sick because their machinery and medicine was running out. I met hungry children stumbling around the streets, scavenging for food.

It was in this context – under a collective punishment designed to topple a democracy – that some forces within Gaza did something immoral: they fired Qassam rockets indiscriminately at Israeli cities. These rockets have killed 16 Israeli citizens. This is abhorrent: targeting civilians is always murder. But it is hypocritical for the Israeli government to claim now to speak out for the safety of civilians when it has been terrorising civilians as a matter of state policy.

The American and European governments are responding with a lop-sidedness that ignores these realities. They say that Israel cannot be expected to negotiate while under rocket fire, but they demand that the Palestinians do so under siege in Gaza and violent military occupation in the West Bank.

Before it falls down the memory hole, we should remember that last week, Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable compromises. Don't take my word for it. According to the Israeli press, Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet, "told the Israeli cabinet [on 23 December] that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms." Diskin explained that Hamas was requesting two things: an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank. The cabinet – high with election fever and eager to appear tough – rejected these terms.

The core of the situation has been starkly laid out by Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad. He says that while Hamas militants – like much of the Israeli right-wing – dream of driving their opponents away, "they have recognised this ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future." Instead, "they are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967." They are aware that this means they "will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals" – and towards a long-term peace based on compromise.

The rejectionists on both sides – from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Bibi Netanyahu of Israel – would then be marginalised. It is the only path that could yet end in peace but it is the Israeli government that refuses to choose it. Halevy explains: "Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas."

Why would Israel act this way? The Israeli government wants peace, but only one imposed on its own terms, based on the acceptance of defeat by the Palestinians. It means the Israelis can keep the slabs of the West Bank on "their" side of the wall. It means they keep the largest settlements and control the water supply. And it means a divided Palestine, with responsibility for Gaza hived off to Egypt, and the broken-up West Bank standing alone. Negotiations threaten this vision: they would require Israel to give up more than it wants to. But an imposed peace will be no peace at all: it will not stop the rockets or the rage. For real safety, Israel will have to talk to the people it is blockading and bombing today, and compromise with them.

The sound of Gaza burning should be drowned out by the words of the Israeli writer Larry Derfner. He says: "Israel's war with Gaza has to be the most one-sided on earth... If the point is to end it, or at least begin to end it, the ball is not in Hamas's court – it is in ours."

Interesting? Click here to explore further

Gaza Petitions to stop Killing

2009-01-04T07:10:00.001-08:00

Gaza Petitions to stop Killing
Mike Ghouse

The leadership on both sides seems to rejoice death and destruction. In reality, these criminals don't give rat's xss about the Jews or the Palestinians, manufacturing and then destroying the enemies makes heroes out of these criminal leaders. These individuals have made shameful statements about each other.

They can be still heroes working for peace and dialoguing instead of killing and blaming each other. Shame on us if we revel death and destruction of any human being and shame on us if we keep electing these opportunists. When we elect the leaders, the critical requirement should be their peace making plans despite the hurdles and road blocks. It is time the majority of Israeli and Palestinians speak up, the few on both sides are determining the fates of all people.

Saving a life is like saving the whole humanity, says Torah and Qur'aan, it is time the individual criminal leaders follow their books and not stain their faiths, both of them are violating their own religion.

They are not Israelis, Jews, Palestinians or Muslims, they are simply criminals. It is time that we single out the individuals leaders on both sides and bring them to justice, neither public wants war and destruction and the bullies are not giving a crap and running propaganda's to justify their criminal activity of killing each other. To be true to ourselves, we need to hear both sides of the story to bring an end to the killing spree.

We need to question our prejudice and integrity as humans, if we are bent on blaming each other instead of saving the lives. Saving life should be our priority at this moment. Please sign the petitions and leave your comments at the bottom of this page.

http://www.mikeghouse.net/Articles/Save-Gaza-Petition.asp

Mike Ghouse

The Gaza Solutions

2008-12-28T17:42:00.000-08:00

The Gaza Solutions
Mike Ghouse,
Saturday, December 27, 2008

The world sympathized with Israel for the rockets they endured in their backyards, but when they get on the revenge bandwagon and indiscriminately kill, they lose sympathy. The oppressed ones all around the world including the majority of Israelis and Jews feel the pain of this violence, it flies in the face of our continued efforts to stop massacres, it is time for all of us to speak up. This is not the act of peace making; this is the act of destroying a people.

Continued at: http://www.mikeghouse.net/Articles/Gaza.Solutions.asp

All Articles

2008-12-27T21:52:00.001-08:00

JANUARY 2008

Rafah - worse than a crime
Gaza: Concentration camp
The Farce of Sovereignty
Neocons who?
Bomb-bomb-bomb Iran?
Reflections on Holocaust
Bush's Middle East Hopes
Chile dosen't need arms
Latin America - Arms race
Reason for Kenya violence
Kenyans avoid violance
Bush's Middle East Tour
Congo: War Against Women
International Conflicts

FEBRUARY 2008

Kosova - Unpalatable realities
Kosovo - Problems for US
Kosovo - brth of a nation
Cuba - Open armed policy
Progress in Pakistan.
Pakistan - individual action
End Gaza Seige
A Rabbi speaks the truth

MARCH 2008

Fitna, Wilders & Quraan
Fitan, Wilders and Quraan
Tibet - A search for Balance
Bloodbath in Jerusalem
Terrorism is anti-Islamic
The Five-Day War in Gaza
Yes we can, peace in Gaza
Obama, the shepherd

APRIL 2008

1.25 Million sign Tibet petition
Tibet - Uri Avnery

MAY 2008

Clinton stoking anti-semitism
Sarkozy is Wrong About Turkey

JULY 2008

McCain would start WWIV
Pro-Israel or Pro-Palestine are divise words

AUGUST 2008
Georgia, Russia, Neocons and America

OCTOBER 2008

Bibliogrpahy of Neocons
List of Neocons

NOVEMBER 2008
Muslims Beware, kaaba and wikipedia blunder
Obama you should not have teased that dog.
Jewish-Muslim dialogue, a necessity

DECEMBER 2008

Genocide Prevention task force
Scream Bloody Murder, reflections on Holocaust and...
Pakistan will have to pay a heavy price

Genocide Prevention task force

2008-12-08T19:36:00.000-08:00

I am pleased to see this initiative, this would be a good first step for the Obama Administration.
However, Ms. Albright is the wrong person to speak on this topic, some one who had justified killing of Children for the safety.

Mike Ghouse

For Immediate Release
December 8, 2008
Contact: Andrew Hollinger,
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Lauren Sucher, United States Institute of Peace.
Genocide Prevention Task Force Delivers Blueprint for U.S. Government to Prevent Genocide and Mass Atrocities

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen and other leading figures call on new administration and Congress to make preventing genocide and mass atrocities a national priority

(Washington, DC) – The Genocide Prevention Task Force today released its final report on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The report makes the case for why genocide and mass atrocities threaten core American values and national interests, and how the U.S. government can prevent these crimes in the future.

Jointly convened by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The American Academy of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute of Peace, the Task Force began its work last November with the goal of generating concrete recommendations to enhance the U.S. government’s capacity to recognize and respond to emerging threats of genocide and mass atrocities.

“The world agrees that genocide is unacceptable and yet genocide and mass killings continue,” said Madeleine K. Albright, former Secretary of State and Co-Chair of the Genocide Prevention Task Force. “We believe that preventing genocide is possible, and that striving to do so is imperative both for our national interests and our leadership position in the world.”

“This report provides a blueprint that can enable the United States to take preventive action, along with international partners, to forestall the specter of future cases of genocide and mass atrocities,” said William S. Cohen, former Secretary of Defense and Co-Chair of the Genocide Prevention Task Force. “There is a choice for U.S. policymakers between doing nothing and large-scale military intervention. We hope this report will help us utilize those options.” Other Members of the Genocide Prevention Task Force include: John Danforth, Thomas Daschle, Stuart Eizenstat, Michael Gerson, Dan Glickman, Jack Kemp, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, Thomas R. Pickering, Vin Weber, Anthony Zinni, and Julia Taft who passed away earlier this year.

The report, which is entitled “Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers”, asserts that genocide is preventable, and that making progress toward doing so begins with leadership and political will. The report provides 34 recommendations, starting with the need for high-level attention, standing institutional mechanisms, and strong international partnerships to respond to potential genocidal situations when they arise; it lays out a comprehensive approach, recommending improved early warning mechanisms, early action to prevent crises, timely diplomatic responses to emerging crises, greater preparedness to employ military options, and action to strengthen global norms and institutions.

“We are keenly aware that the incoming president’s agenda will be massive and daunting from day one,” Secretaries Albright and Cohen noted. “But preventing genocide and mass atrocities is not an idealistic add-on to our core foreign policy agenda. It is a moral and strategic imperative.” The Task Force calls for the development of a new government-wide policy on genocide prevention, which would include the following specific actions designed to better equip the U.S. government to prevent genocide and mass atrocities:

Having the president himself demonstrate that preventing genocide is a national priority, for example by an early executive order, and continuing public statements on genocide prevention. Creating an interagency Atrocities Prevention Committee at the National Security Council to analyze threats of genocide and mass atrocities and consider appropriate preventive action. Making warning of genocide or mass atrocities an “automatic trigger” of policy review. Developing military guidance on genocide prevention and response and incorporating it into doctrine and training.

Preparing interagency genocide prevention and response plans for high-risk situations. Investing $250 million in new funds for crisis prevention and response, with a portion of this available for urgent activities to prevent or halt emerging genocidal crises.
Launching a major diplomatic initiative to create an international network for information-sharing and coordinated action to prevent genocide and mass atrocities. Providing assistance to build capacity of international partners—including the UN and regional organizations—to prevent genocide and mass atrocities.

The report concludes that “a core challenge for American leaders is to persuade others—in the U.S. government, across the United States, and around the world, that preventing genocide is more than just a humanitarian aspiration, but a national and global imperative.” The Task Force was funded by Humanity United and other private organizations.

About the Convening Organizations:

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, a living memorial to the Holocaust, inspires citizens and leaders to confront hatred, promote human dignity and prevent genocide. Federal support guarantees the Museum’s permanence, and its far-reaching educational programs and global impact are made possible by donors nationwide.

The American Academy of Diplomacy is dedicated to strengthening the resources and tools America brings to managing its diplomatic challenges, and accomplishes this through outreach programs, lectures, awards, and writing competitions. In doing so, the Academy promotes an understanding of the importance of diplomacy to serving our nation and enhancing America’s standing in the world.

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan, national institution established and funded by Congress. Its goals are to help prevent and resolve violent international conflicts, promote post-conflict stability and development, and increase peacebuilding capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering others with knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by directly engaging in peacebuilding efforts around the globe.

The report and a brochure about the report may be downloaded for free at: www.ushmm.org, www.academyofdiplomacy.org, www.usip.org.

# # #Genocide Prevention Task Force United States Holocaust Memorial Museum100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW Washington, DC 20024-2126 202.488.0449 gptf@ushmm.org

Scream Bloody Murder, reflections on Holocaust and Genocides

2008-12-07T16:40:00.000-08:00

Scream Bloody Murder, reflections on Holocaust and Genocides

You feel angry knowing that the world stood by silently when the Jews were put on the train to the gas chambers; you feel anger when the Bosnian Muslims children were given chocolates and told not to worry and go right behind and open gunfire and massacre them; you feel anger when the Canadian general sends faxes upon faxes to the United Nations to send help, while the UN and USA did not want to get involved and 800,000 Rwandans were massacred, they were even announcing on their radio how to torture pregnant women to pull out the babies… It was a difficult documentary to watch, but you must watch and face the world; you have to do your share to clean your own slate of conscience.

Continued: http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/Articles/Scream-bloody-Murder-reflection-on-holocaust-genocides.asp

Pakistan will have to pay a heavy price

2008-12-05T09:08:00.001-08:00

It is a shame that the People of Pakistan have not had their own government; either it was a puppet regime or some tin-pot dictator running and frightening them even to speak up. When the Lawyers brought down Musharraf Government to its knees, I thought, finally it is going to be the government of the people, and as Indians we can look forward to dealing with the people of Pakistan and their legitimate representatives.

None of that is happening, it is time for the people of Pakistan to wake up and have guts to let their government do what is good for the them; jobs, safety, security and prosperity, NOT Kashmir, it has given them nothing but misery and for what?

It is time to own responsibility and incarcerate the terrorists from LeT and other outfits, they have brought nothing but destruction to Pakistan and India. Getting rid of the terrorists should be their first focus. How long are they going to be duped by their dictators and useless politicians? Tom Friedman had asked the Pakistani public to take up on the streets and bring their government on their knees; you either rid of the terrorist or we will get rid of you.

If their government is not going to do it, unfortunately they will have to pay a heavy price before doing the right thing. I hope they wake up and bring the change. Mr. Singh should send a clear signal "Don't mess with India". Obama was asked on the day he made the announcement of Hilary Clinton, if he believed America has the right to go into Pakistan and take out the terrorist, then why shouldn't India do the same? I know India can do it without collateral damage, with least loss of life and with far less money to set an example to the world once again that we can do things non-violently.

Mike Ghouse
# # #

'Pakistan will have to pay a heavy price'

M J Akbar December 02, 2008 16:13 IST
Last Updated: December 02, 2008 19:24 IST

M J Akbar is one of India's best-known journalists and commentators, someone with a deep insight into the Indian people and their mindset. In this first-person, as-told-to piece, Akbar discusses the Mumbai attacks and their relevance for India.

Many people forget that India is a tough nation. Toothless leaders have turned India into a soft nation. People forget that India has fought back Muslim terrorism in Kashmir; Sikh terrorism in Punjab, Christian terrorism in Nagaland and Hindu terrorism in Assam, and amongst the Naxalites [Images].

We have had everything thrown at the Indian nation State. Still, we have stood up. The people of India have shown the courage and ability to believe in their nation and to fight back. But the completely impotent leadership of five years have turned a tough country into a soft State.

I am very sad. I keep feeling that if they protect India as they protect their leaders -- whether it is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh [Images] or Congress President Sonia Gandhi [Images] -- I think I would be safe. Today, India's leaders are safe and India is in panic.

On what India's response should be:

India's proper reaction would be possible if we understand the extent of the disease.

If the disease is cancer, you can't apply band aid. After making a complete mess of security issues for five years by asking Shivraj Patil [Images] to go finally we may have a home minister who doesn't comb his hair and change his clothes. But we want something more than that. If it is cancer, we need chemotherapy, a much more serious exercise. It needs a legislative and executive framework. It needs political mobilisation. People are numbed.

The Indian people have no leadership. You have a prime minister. Did you see him when he addressed the nation? Nobody knew if he was addressing the nation or having a cup of tea?

He looked serious, but he didn't talk to us about our anger and about our anguish. I think this administration is tone deaf to the anguish of the people. They just cannot understand what the people are going through. They just don't understand our pain or our anger. The most important thing is that, perhaps, we have politicised not only the instruments of the State like the police but we have also politicised the understanding of the nature of the problem.

I think the very first thing to do is to ensure security so that it prevents the next attack. If any attack takes place under some ones job should go. Don't come to me with alibis.

On the terrorists getting local support:

I am an Indian Muslim and I am very proud of both, being an Indian and a Muslim. I do not see any contradictions. This is my land and I have nowhere else to go.

But can I say because I am an Indian Muslim that no Indian Muslim is involved? Can you, because you are a Hindu, say that no Hindu is involved? We have to behave like Indians first. Not as a Muslim or as a Hindu first. Because we need Hindu votes and Muslim votes and because this government thinks that it needs Muslim votes so it has been in complete denial.

Do you think that these people came across from Pakistan and had no support in Mumbai?

It is not possible. It was a huge operation. Ten people hit nine places and you killed nine of them. You want to say that they went from place to place? Who knows some of them must have slipped away to create new sleeper cells to hit us six months later.

They are hiding things. I would like to believe that there was an underworld connection. Because, Karachi and Mumbai are also linked by drug smuggling. The culture of criminals is aggression. It comes naturally to them. It is not easy for you and I to become aggressive, however angry we are. It does not come naturally to us. These are people who are trained psychologically in aggression. They have no respect for the State. They have no love for the country. And they have no respect for authority.

Why? Because the only face of authority is the corrupt policeman. The criminal gives money in the morning and money in the evening. Why should he have respect for somebody he gives bribes to? For the guy from the underworld his understanding of the Indian State and authority is corruption. He has no patriotism to stop him. Why would he not join hands with the terrorists? In any case, he belongs to another world. We have not even begun to address and discuss this.

On the Pakistan factor

I am tired of giving Pakistan a long rope on some excuse or the other. Everybody is saying this will happen if we do this, that will happen if we do this. Our relations with Pakistan will go, then, let them go. What has our relations with Pakistan brought us except violence and terror? Why should we be in charge of saving Pakistan? For what? Every time they turn around and they say they want evidence. Now, finally we have evidence.

I have been an editor for 35 years from the age of 23. From that time on, since the days of General Zia-ul Haq, I have been hearing 'Pakistan is asking for evidence'. We asked for withdrawal of their support to the movement for Khalistan, they said, 'Oh, we don't know anything about it.' On Kashmir, they kept repeating where is the evidence. Benazir Bhutto [Images] came, she asked for evidence. Nawaz Sharif came, he asked for evidence. I think Pervez Musharraf [Images] asked for less evidence. Now again, they are asking for evidence.

There is a terrorist in Mumbai, captured and arrested. How much more evidence do you want? If what he is saying is not evidence, then how can you get more evidence?

This government is in its 11th hour. Now they will bluff the people to protect their votes. There is no time left for them. The agony of departure will be hard from this government.

On the reaction in the West

The US and Britain have a vested interest in telling India to look within. Why? When Americans die then they can send their air force 7,000 miles and bomb every country to smithereens. But when Indians die, they tell us no, no, you must be patient. You must act like a swami and a yogi. Why? Is an American life more precious than an Indian life? Why should we keep listening to them? But we have a government that keeps listening to them all the time. We don't get tough.

The last time we got tough was after the attack on Parliament. We took some tough actions under Operation Parakram and then there was a certain lull. Three years ago, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was able to tell President George W Bush [Images] that there are no terrorists amongst Indian Muslims. That means that lull continued.

Pakistan must be made to realise that it will have to pay a heavy price. Not necessarily through war, but a heavy price will have to be paid in loss in trade, in cancellation of orders and other engagements. They should pay a heavy price in terms of people to people relations. I am not saying you can freeze a relationship to death, but the message must go out that if there is a crime there will be a penalty. You just can't get away with it.

Let the Pakistan government cooperate with us. But look at how the Pakistan government has buckled down and we are sitting here whimpering.

They want to send some lowly officers to India. For what? Even Pakistan is treating the Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi government with total contempt. They know how weak it is.

Delink Hindu-Muslim relations and Pakistan

Look, you must not confuse the Pakistan issue with the Indian Muslims issue. Their so-called alienation or their economic deprivation is not linked to the issue of Pakistan.

Indian Muslims have nothing to do with Pakistan. They have absolutely no sympathy for Pakistan. They know that Pakistan was the biggest mistake committed in the history of Indian Muslims. They know it. You can ask anyone in Baroda, Bihar or Mumbai. They know how they are suffering the backlash of all the consequences of cross-border terrorism.

Today, they fear retribution from the government, they fear retribution from popular disenchantment and anger. They feel helpless. They feel afraid.

We must understand finally that it is not so much the 'local people', it is the local underworld that is involved in anti-India activities. In 1993, who were involved in terrorism? The underworld. Why have you not done anything about it? The State turns a blind eye to the police and corruption. I don't know how many readers smoke hashish and other stuff, but I am accusing them of cross-border terrorism. Drugs come to India from Afghanistan via Karachi.

What we can do as individuals

If whoever is responsible for protecting the nation fails, then he or she should not be allowed to continue in power. That is the toughest and sharpest message we can give. You can tell that you may be a soft State, but we are a hard people and we are hard voters.

We are not going to forgive you for your lies and deception and for your waffling. How many blasts do we need to understand that? When Jaipur [Images], Ahmedabad [Images], Mumbai and Delhi [Images] happened no one who was genuinely guilty was caught.

We have to understand now that corruption has eaten away vitals of this nation. It is the biggest danger to the security of India. It is not just the case of some spectrum being sold to someone by some minister in. Everyone who is corrupt get out!

It Is a failure all around. We have to be extremely practical and pragmatic. There is great deal to be depressed about as an Indian. Frankly speaking, I feel very angry and upset. I am never upset by the behaviour of our enemies. I am only upset by the betrayal of those I trust.

M J Akbar, editor-in-chief, Covert magazine, spoke to Sheela Bhatt

Mike Ghouse
www.MikeGhouse.net
www.MikeGhouseforAmerica.net
www.FoundationforPluralism.com
www.WorldMuslimCongress.com
2665 Villa Creek Dr, Suite 206
Dallas, Texas 75234
(214) 325-1916

Muslims Beware, kaaba and wikipedia blunder

2008-11-22T11:13:00.000-08:00

MUSLIMS BEWARE

Kaaba and the Wikipedia Blunder

Mike Ghouse, Dallas, Texas

I cannot believe Wikipedia is taken as a gospel by so many, every word in it is taken as the ultimate truth. You will discover it's danger in the following report. A statement is made "While destroying each idol, Muhammad recited [Qur'an 17:81] which says "Truth has arrived and falsehood has perished for falsehood is by its nature bound to perish."[28][29] . A few of my Hindu friends have assumed that Terrorism has it's origin in the above act, of course the very same statement is a fodder to the Neocons, who rejoice and pass it one to every one with a comment, "I told you so, Islam is an intolerant religion".

Continued: http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/WorldMuslimCongress/Articles/Kaaba-and-the-wikipedia-blunder.asp

Obama you should not have teased that dog.

2008-11-19T22:39:00.000-08:00

Obama, you goofed on your 60 minutes interview.You can do better than that. There is a Chinese proverb, you kill the enemy, you make more enemy,you friend the enemy, no more enemy.To see the pictures of attack dog click here:

http://www.mikeghouse.net/Articles/Obama-you-should-not-have-teased-that-dog.asp

Jewish-Muslim dialogue, a necessity

2008-11-14T11:09:00.000-08:00

Jewish-Muslim dialogue, a necessity
PROMPTED BY THE DOCUMENTARY "THE MONSTER AMONG US"
Mike Ghouse, Dallas, Texas

The Jewish Community Center in Dallas recently screened a documentary about Anti-Semitism in Europe called, “The Monster among us”, produced and directed by Dallas filmmakers Allen and Cynthia Mondell. Watching this film (as well as other films in the past) and listening to the responses of the audience has confirmed my belief that one of the primary obstacles to peace is simply inadequate communications stemming from the unwillingness to see another point of view.

If you find this article offensive, please clarify with me before you draw your conclusions, it is our obligation to repair the world. Prior to publication of this article my Jewish, Christian and Muslim friends have reviewed it to ensure it meets the intent as close as it can and it is to improve communications and a civil dialogue. The producers of the movie have reviewed and shared their point of view, which is included in the essay verbatim.Muslims should participate in Jewish events and vice-versa. Staying away from each other will not contribute towards peace-making that both communities so deserve. We have to come together without conditions and learn each others concerns and clarify mis-information and together find solutions. If we don’t, the who will?

Anti-Semitism is hate for Jews, and to his credit, the producer acknowledged in his comments that both Muslims and Jews are facing this abuse in Europe. As responsible citizens, we need to stand up against hate towards every one. I cannot have peace if others around me aren't peaceful.

To borrow a sentence from my friend Sheila Musaji “these films are to be viewed as opportunities for dialogue and not to further distance ourselves from the other.” We need to consciously guard ourselves from despair and disorientation and focus on hope and goodness to humanity that includes you and I.

I challenge the Muslim and Jewish community to watch this film together with a focus on just the film and its content, we must carry a civil dialogue and learn to take the jolts, then we would have developed the capacity to embark on finding a solution to the crux of the world problem - security of Jews and hope for the Palestinians, together we have an opportunity to find solutions. I am planning to have a showing of the film with a panel of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus and others, if you wish to attend, please confirm via an email to: confirmattendance@gmail.com . Sponsorships of a neutral place for 300 People and refreshments are invited.

Continue to read the arcticle by clicking:
http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/Articles/Jewish-Muslim-dialogue-a-necessity.asp You are welcome to write you comments at the end of the article, all civil comments will be posted.

http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/Articles/Jewish-Muslim-dialogue-a-necessity.asp

Bibliogrpahy of Neocons

2008-10-11T13:57:00.000-07:00

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF NEO-CONSERVATIVE
Author:: Unkown

It is a fascinating account of the origins and sustenance of Neocons, a long article, but worth reading if you have the interest.

Mike Ghouse

Neoconservatism is a political movement, mainly in the United States, which is generally held to have emerged in the 1960s, coalesced in the 1970s, and has had a significant presence in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The prefix neo- refers to two ways in which neoconservatism was new. First, many of the movement's founders, originally liberals, Democrats or from socialist backgrounds, were new to conservatism. Also, neoconservatism was a comparatively recent strain of conservative socio-political thought. It derived from a variety of intellectual roots in the decades following World War II, including literary criticism and the social sciences. Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz and others described themselves as neoconservatives during the Cold War.

Today, however, the movement's critics use the term more often than supporters. In fact, some people described as "neocons" today say that neoconservatism no longer exists as an
identifiable movement. Many associate neoconservatism with periodicals such as Commentary and The Weekly Standard, along with the foreign policy initiatives of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Neoconservative journalists, pundits, policy analysts, and politicians, often dubbed "neocons" by supporters and critics alike, have been credited with (or blamed for) their influence on U.S. foreign policy, especially under the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Neoconservative: Definition and views

According to Irving Kristol, the founder and "god-father" of the Neoconservatism, there are three basic pillars of Neoconservatism:

1. Economics: Cutting tax rates in order to stimulate steady, wide-spread economic growth and acceptance of the necessity of risks in that growth, such as budget deficits

2. Domestic Affairs: Preferring strong government but not intrusive government, slight acceptance of the welfare state, adherence to social conservatism, and disapproval of counterculture

3. Foreign Policy: Patriotism is a necessity, world government is a terrible idea, the ability to distinguish friend from foe, protecting national interest both at home and abroad, and the necessity of a strong military.

The original neoconservatives were a band of liberal intellectuals who rebelled against the Democratic Party's leftward drift on defense issues in the 1970s. At first the neoconservatives clustered around Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democrat, but then they aligned themselves with Ronald Reagan and the Republicans, who promised to confront Soviet expansionism. The neoconservatives, in the famous formulation of one of their leaders, Irving Kristol, were "liberals mugged by reality."

The meaning of the term has evolved over time. James Bryce offered it as a neologism in his Modern Democracies (1921). In "The Future of Democratic Values" in Partisan Review, July-August 1943, Dwight MacDonald complained of "the neo-conservatives of our time [who] reject the propositions on materialism, Human Nature, and Progress." He cited as an example Jacques Barzun, who was "attempting to combine progressive values and conservative concepts." In the early 1970s, Socialist Michael Harrington prominently used the term in a manner similar to the modern meaning. He characterized neoconservatives as former leftists -- whom he derided as "socialists for Nixon" -- who had moved significantly to the right. These people tended to remain supporters of social democracy, but distinguished themselves by allying with the Nixon administration over foreign policy, especially by their support for the Vietnam War and opposition to the Soviet Union.

They still supported the "welfare state," but not necessarily in its contemporary form. Critics take issue with neoconservatives' support for aggressive foreign policy, especially what they characterize as unilateralism and lack of concern with international consensus through organizations such as the United Nations. Neoconservatives respond by describing their shared view as a belief that national security is best attained by promoting freedom and democracy abroad through the support of pro-democracy movements, foreign aid and in certain cases military intervention. This is a departure from the traditional conservative tendency to support friendly regimes in matters of trade and anti-communism even at the expense of undermining existing democratic systems. Author Paul Berman in his book Terror and Liberalism describes it as, "Freedom for others means safety for ourselves. Let us be for freedom for others."

Irving Kristol remarked that a neoconservative is a "liberal mugged by reality," one who became more conservative after seeing the results of liberal policies. The term "neoconservative" also refers more often to institutions like the Project for the New American Century (PNAC),Commentary and The Weekly Standard than to the Heritage Foundation, Policy Review or National Review. Some observers name political philosopher Leo Strauss as a major intellectual antecedent of neoconservativism. For example, some of his ideas entered the political mainstream through his pupil Allan Bloom's bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind. Although Strauss rarely stated positions on foreign policy issues, some argue that he influenced neoconservative strategy, including attitudes some U.S. officials demonstrate towards international law in situations where terrorism is alleged.

Overview of Neoconservative views

Historically, neoconservatives supported a militant anticommunism, tolerated more social welfare spending than was sometimes acceptable to libertarians and mainstream conservatives, supported civil equality for blacks and other minorities, and sympathized with a non-traditional foreign policy agenda that was less deferential to traditional conceptions of diplomacy and international law and less inclined to compromise principles, even if that meant unilateral action. There is a widespread impression that domestic policy does not define neoconservatism— that it is a movement founded on, and perpetuated by an aggressive approach to foreign policy, free trade, opposition to communism during the Cold War, support for Israel and Taiwan and opposition to Middle Eastern and other states that are perceived to support terrorism. The movement began to focus on such foreign issues in the mid-1970s. However it first crystallized in the late 1960s as an effort to combat the radical cultural changes taking place within the United States. Irving Kristol wrote: “If there is any one thing that neoconservatives are unanimous about, it is their dislike of the counterculture.” Norman Podhoretz agreed: “Revulsion against the counterculture accounted for more converts to neoconservativism than any other single factor."

Ira Chernus, a professor at the University of Colorado, argues that the deepest root of the neoconservative movement is its fear that the counterculture would undermine the authority of traditional values and moral norms. Because neoconservatives believe that human nature is innately selfish, they believe that a society with no commonly accepted values based on religion or ancient tradition will end up in a war of all against all. They also believe that the most important social value is strength, especially the strength to control natural impulses. The only alternative, they assume, is weakness that will let impulses run riot and lead to social chaos.

According to Peter Steinfels, a historian of the movement, the neoconservatives' "emphasis on foreign affairs emerged after the New Left and the counterculture had dissolved as convincing foils for neoconservatism . . . The essential source of their anxiety is not military or geopolitical or to be found overseas at all; it is domestic and cultural and ideological." Neoconservative foreign policy parallels their domestic policy. They insist that the U.S. military must be strong enough to control the world, or else the world will descend into chaos. Believing that America should "export democracy," that is, spread its ideals of government, economics, and culture abroad, they grew to reject U.S. reliance on international organizations and treaties to accomplish these objectives. Compared to other U.S. conservatives, neoconservatives may be characterized by an idealist stance on foreign policy, a lesser social conservatism, and a much weaker dedication to a policy of minimal government, and, in the past, a greater acceptance of the welfare state, though none of these qualities are necessarily requisite. Aggressive support for democracies and nation building is founded on a belief that, over the long term, it will reduce the extremism that is a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism.

Neoconservatives, along with many other political theorists, have argued that democratic regimes are less likely to instigate a war than a country with an authoritarian form of government. Further, they argue that the lack of freedoms, lack of economic opportunities, and the lack of secular general education in authoritarian regimes promotes radicalism and extremism. Consequently, neoconservatives advocate the spread of democracy to regions of the world where it currently does not prevail, most notably the Arab nations of the Middle East, communist China, North Korea and Iran. Neoconservatives also have a very strong belief in
the ability of the United States to install democracy after a conflict - comparisons with denazification in Germany and installing a democratic government in Japan starting in 1945 are often made - and they have a principled belief in defending democracies against aggression. This belief has guided U.S. policy in Iraq after the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime, where the U.S. insisted on organizing elections as soon as practical.

Distinctions from other conservatives

Most people currently described as "neoconservatives" are members of the Republican Party, but while neoconservatives have generally been in electoral alignment with other conservatives, have served in the same Presidential Administrations, and have often ignored intra-conservative ideological differences in alliance against those to their left, there are notable differences between neoconservative and traditional or "paleoconservative" views. In particular, neoconservatives disagree with the nativist, protectionist, and isolationist strain of American conservatism once exemplified by the ex-Republican "paleoconservative" Pat Buchanan, and the traditional "pragmatic" approach to foreign policy often associated with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, which emphasized pragmatic accommodation with dictators; peace through negotiations, diplomacy, and arms control; détente and containment — rather than rollback — of the Soviet Union; and the initiation of the process that led to ties between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the United States.

Neoconservative writers have frequently expressed admiration for the "big stick" interventionist foreign policy of Theodore Roosevelt. In foreign policy, critics argue that neoconservatives tend to view the world in 1939 terms, comparing the threat from adversaries as diverse as the Soviet Union, Osama bin Laden (and, more broadly, Islamic extremism, dubbed Islamofascism by many neoconservatives), and China to the threat then-posed by Nazi Germany and Japan, while American leaders "stand in" for Winston Churchill. In this analogy, leftists and others who oppose them are cast either as Neville Chamberlain-style appeasers or as an Anti-American fifth column. For example, Donald and Frederick Kagan's book While America Sleeps argues, at book length, an analogy between the post-cold war United States and Britain's post-World War I reduction in its military and avoidance of confrontation with other major powers. As compared with traditional conservatism and libertarianism, which sometimes exhibit an isolationist strain, neoconservatism is characterized by an increased emphasis on defense capability, a willingness to challenge regimes deemed hostile to the values and interests of the United States, pressing for free-market policies abroad, and promoting democracy and freedom. Neoconservatives are strong believers in democratic peace theory.

Shortcomings and criticism of the term "Neoconservative"

Some of those identified as neoconservatives refuse to embrace the term. Critics argue that it lacks coherent definition, that it is coherent only in a Cold War context, or is used as a pejorative by anti-Semites. See e.g. Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Institute, Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya, in a letter from Washington for Sunday, April 6, 2003:

First, "neo-conservative" is a codeword for Jewish. As antisemites did with big business moguls in the nineteenth century and Communist leaders in the twentieth, the trick here is to take all those involved in some aspect of public life and single out those who are Jewish. The implication made is that this is a Jewish-led movement conducted not in the interests of all the, in this case, American people, but to the benefit of Jews, and in this case Israel.

The fact that the use of the term "neoconservative" has rapidly risen since the 2003 Iraq War is cited by conservatives as proof that the term is largely irrelevant in the long term. David Horowitz, a neoconservative author, offered this critique in a recent interview with an Italian newspaper:

Neo-conservatism is a term almost exclusively used by the enemies of America's liberation of Iraq. There is no "neo-conservative" movement in the United States. When there was one, it was made up of former Democrats who embraced the welfare state but supported Ronald Reagan's Cold War policies against the Soviet bloc. Today neo-conservatism identifies those who believe in an aggressive policy against radical Islam and the global terrorists.

Similarly, many other supposed neoconservatives believe that the term has been adopted by the political left to stereotype supporters of U.S. foreign policy under the George W. Bush administration. Others have similarly likened descriptions of neoconservatism to a conspiracy theory and attribute the term to anti-Semitism. Paul Wolfowitz has denounced the term as a meaningless label, saying:

[If] you read the Middle Eastern press, it seems to be a euphemism for some kind of nefarious Zionist conspiracy. But I think that, in my view it's very important to approach [foreign policy] not from a doctrinal point of view. I think almost every case I know is different. Indonesia is different from the Philippines. Iraq is different from Indonesia. I think there are certain principles that I believe are American principles – both realism and idealism. I guess I'd like to call myself a democratic realist. I don't know if that makes me a neo-conservative or not.

Jonah Goldberg and others have rejected the label as trite and over-used, arguing "There's nothing 'neo' about me: I was never anything other than conservative." Other critics have similarly argued the term has been rendered meaningless through excessive and inconsistent use. For example, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are often identified as leading "neoconservatives" despite the fact that both men have ostensibly been life-long conservative Republicans (though Cheney has been vocally supportive of the ideas of Irving Kristol). Such critics thus largely reject the claim that there is a neoconservative movement separate from traditional American conservatism. Other traditional conservatives are likewise skeptical of the contemporary usage of the term, and may dislike being associated with the stereotypes, or even the supposed agendas of neoconservatism. Conservative columnist David Harsanyi wrote, "These days, it seems that even temperate support for military action against dictators and terrorists qualifies you a neocon."

During the 1970s, for example in a book on the movement by Peter Steinfels, the use of the term neoconservative was never identified with the writings of Leo Strauss. The near synonymity, in some quarters, of neoconservatism and Straussianism is a much more recent phenomenon, which suggests that perhaps two quite distinct movements have become merged into one, either in fact or in the eyes of certain beholders.

Reagan and the Neoconservatives

During the 1970s political scientist Jeane Kirkpatrick increasingly criticized the Democratic Party, of which she was still a member, since the nomination of the antiwar George McGovern. Kirkpatrick became a convert to the ideas of the new conservatism of once-liberal Democratic academics. According to Peter Steinfels, a historian of the movement, the neoconservatives' "emphasis on foreign affairs emerged after the New Left and the counterculture had dissolved as convincing foils for neoconservatism . . . The essential source of their anxiety is not military or geopolitical or to be found overseas at all; it is domestic and cultural and ideological." During Ronald Reagan's successful 1980 campaign, he hired her as his foreign policy advisor and later nominated her as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a position she held for four years. Known for her anti-communist stance and for her tolerance of right-wing dictatorships (her criticism of which was often tempered, calling them simply "moderately repressive regimes"), she argued that U.S. policy should not aid the overthrow of right-wing regimes if these were only to be replaced by even less democratic left-wing regimes. The overthrow of leftist governments was acceptable and at times essential because they served as a bulwark against the expansion of Soviet interests. Under this doctrine, known as the Kirkpatrick Doctrine, the Reagan administration initially tolerated leaders such as Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and General Ziaul Haq in Pakistan.

As the 1980's wore on, however, younger, second-generation neoconservatives, such as Elliot Abrams, pushed for a clear policy of supporting democracy against both left and right wing dictators. Thus, while U.S. support for Marcos continued until and even after the fraudulent Philippine election of February 7, 1986, there was debate within the administration regarding
how and when to oppose Marcos. In the days that followed, with the widespread popular refusal to accept Marcos as the purported winner, turmoil in the Philippines grew. The Reagan administration then urged Marcos to accept defeat and leave the country, which he did. The Reagan team, and particularly the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Elliot Abrams, also supported the 1988 Chilean plebiscite that resulted in the restoration of democratic rule and Pinochet's eventual removal from office. Through the National Endowment for Democracy, led by another neoconservative, Carl Gershman, funds were directed to the anti-Pinochet opposition in order to ensure a fair election. In this sense, the neoconservative foreign policy makers of the Reagan era were different from some of their more traditionalist conservative predecessors, and from the older generation of neoconservatives as well. While many of the latter believed that America's allies should be unquestionably defended at all costs, no matter what the nature of their regime, many younger neoconservatives were more supportive of the idea of changing regimes to make them more compatible and reflective of U.S. values. The belief in the universality of democracy would be a key neoconservative value which would go on to play a larger role in the post-Cold War period. Some critics would say however, that their emphasis on the need for externally-imposed "regime change" for "rogue" nations such as Iraq conflicted with the democratic value of national self-determination. Most neocons view this argument as invalid until a country has a democratic government to express the actual determination of its people.

For his own part, President Reagan largely did not move towards the sort of protracted, long-term interventions to stem social revolution in the Third World that many of his advisors would have favored. Instead, he mostly favored quick campaigns to attack or overthrow terrorist groups or leftist governments, favoring small, quick interventions that heightened a sense of post-Vietnam triumphalism among Americans, such as the attacks on Grenada and Libya, and arming right-wing militias in Central America, including backing the Contras seeking to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.
Most importantly, Reagan took the opposite course from the neoconservatives in relation to the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, pursuing a conciliatory strategy toward disarmament and eventual liberalization as opposed to one of confrontation and rearmament. Reagan had made his most decisive break with the neocons in 1983 when he refused to remain engaged in the civil war in Lebanon and was at the same time generally indifferent to Israel. Many neocons became furious with Reagan for all of these reasons, most infamously, Norman Podhoretz came to liken him to Neville Chamberlain. In general, many neocons see the collapse of the Soviet Union as having occurred directly due to Reagan's hard-line stance, and the bankruptcy that resulted from the Soviet Union trying to keep up the arms race. They therefore see this as a strong confirmation of their worldview, in spite of the accusation that they have largely rewritten this history. Neoconservativism under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton During the 1990s, neoconservatives were once again in the opposition side of the foreign policy establishment, both under the Republican Administration of President George H. W. Bush and that of his Democratic successor, President Bill Clinton. Many critics charged that the neoconservatives lost their raison d'être and influence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Others argue that they lost their status due to their association with the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration. Neoconservative writers were critical of the post-Cold War foreign policy of both George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, which they criticized for reducing military expenditures and lacking a sense of idealism in the promotion of American interests. They accused these Administrations of lacking both "moral clarity" and the conviction to pursue unilaterally America's international strategic interests.

Particularly galvanizing to the movement was the decision of George H. W. Bush and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell to leave Saddam Hussein in power after the first Gulf War in 1991. Some neoconservatives viewed this policy, and the decision not to support indigenous dissident groups such as the Kurds and Shiites in their 1991-1992 resistance to Hussein, as a betrayal of democratic principles. Ironically, some of those same targets of criticism would later become fierce advocates of neoconservative policies. In 1992, referring to the first Gulf War, then United States Secretary of Defense and future Vice President Dick Cheney, said:

"I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home..."

"And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq." Within a few years of the Gulf War in Iraq, many associated with neoconservatism were pushing for the ouster of Saddam Hussein. On February 19, 1998, an open letter to President Clinton was signed by dozens of pundits, many identified with both neoconservatism and, later, related groups such as the PNAC, urging decisive action to remove Saddam from power. Neoconservatives were also members of the blue team, which argued for a confrontational policy toward the People's Republic of China and strong military and diplomatic support for Taiwan.

Administration of George W. Bush

Thus, neoconservative thinkers were eager to implement a new foreign policy with the change in Administrations from Clinton to George W. Bush. Despite this, the Bush campaign and then the early Bush Administration did not appear to exhibit strong support for neoconservative principles, as candidate Bush stated his opposition to the idea of "nation-building" and an early foreign policy confrontation with China was handled without the vociferous confrontation suggested by some neoconservative thinkers. Also early in the Administration, some neoconservatives criticized Bush's Administration as insufficiently supportive of the State of Israel, and suggested Bush's foreign policies were not substantially different from those of President Clinton.

China spy plane incident

The Bush Administration was criticized by some neoconservatives for their non-confrontational reaction during the U.S.-China spy plane incident. On April 1, 2001, a Chinese J-8 fighter collided with a U.S. Navy EP-3E spy plane over the South China Sea, killing the Chinese pilot and forcing the EP-3E to make an emergency landing on the Chinese island of Hainan, where the twenty-four members of the American crew were held and interrogated for eleven days while their plane was searched and photographed by the Chinese. The Bush Administration conducted diplomacy and then issued a statement of regret to the Chinese Foreign Ministry. President Reagan's former Assistant Secretary of Defense, Frank Gaffney, wrote in an article in National Review Online that President Bush "should use this occasion to make clear to the American people that the PRC is acting in an increasingly belligerent manner. Mr. Bush needs to talk about these threats as well as his commitment
to defend the American people, their forces overseas and their allies."

September 11, 2001

The influence of neoconservatism in the Bush administration appeared to have found its purpose in the shift from the threat of Communism to the threat of Islamic terrorism. The administration undertook an invasion of Afghanistan shortly after the September 11 attacks, to remove the al-Qaeda-supporting Taliban from power. The administration also began planning and obtaining political and diplomatic support for an invasion of Iraq, citing Iraq's dictatorial government, support for terrorism, purported links to al-Qaeda, work on chemical and nuclear weapons, and refusal to abide by U.N. resolutions regarding inspection of weapons programs. Neoconservative identification with the State of Israel's struggle against terrorism was furthered by the September 11 attacks, which served to create a perceived parallel between the United States and Israel as democratic nations under the threat of terrorist attack. Moreover, some neoconservatives have long advocated
that the United States should emulate Israel's tactics of pre-emptive attacks, especially Israel's strikes in the 1980s on nuclear facilities in Libya and Osirak, Iraq.

"Bush Doctrine"

The Bush Doctrine, promulgated after September 11th, incorporates the concept that nations harboring terrorists are themselves enemies of the United States. It also embraces the Clinton Doctrine, which is the view that pre-emptive military action is justified to protect the United States from the threat of terrorism or attack. Both doctrines state that the United States "will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States."
This doctrine can be seen as the abandonment of a focus on the doctrine of deterrence (in the Cold War through Mutually Assured Destruction) as the primary means of self-defense. While there have been occasional preemptive strikes by American forces, until recently preemptive strikes have not been an official American foreign and military policy. Neoconservatives won a landmark victory with the Bush Doctrine after September 11th. Thomas Donnelly, a resident fellow at the influential conservative think-tank, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which has been under neoconservative influence since the Reagan Administration, argued in "The Underpinnings of the Bush doctrine" that "the fundamental premise of the Bush Doctrine is true: The United States possesses the means—economic, military, diplomatic—to realize its expansive geopolitical purposes. Further, and especially in light of the domestic political reaction to the attacks of September 11, the
victory in Afghanistan and the remarkable skill demonstrated by President Bush in focusing national attention, it is equally true that Americans possess the requisite political willpower to pursue an expansive strategy."

In his well-publicized piece "The Case for American Empire" in the conservative Weekly Standard, Max Boot argued that "The most realistic response to terrorism is for America to embrace its imperial role." He countered sentiments that the "United States must become a kinder, gentler nation, must eschew quixotic missions abroad, must become, in Pat Buchanan's phrase, 'a republic, not an empire'," arguing that "In fact this analysis is exactly backward: The September 11 attack was a result of insufficient American involvement and ambition; the solution is to be more expansive in our goals and more assertive in their implementation."

President Bush has expressed praise for Natan Sharansky's book, The Case For Democracy, which promotes a foreign policy philosophy nearly identical to neoconservatives'. President Bush has effusively praised this book, calling it a "glimpse of how I think". As of 2005, the most prominent supporters of the neoconservative stance inside the Administration are Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. At the same time, there have been limits in the power of neoconservatives in the Bush administration. The former Secretary of State Colin Powell (as well as the State department as a whole) was largely seen as being an opponent of neoconservative ideas. However, with the resignation of Colin Powell and the promotion of Condoleezza Rice, along with widespread resignations within the State department, the neoconservative point of view within the Bush administration has been solidified. While the
neoconservative notion of tough and decisive action has been apparent in U.S. policy toward the Middle East, it has not been seen in U.S. policy toward China and Russia or in the handling of the North Korean nuclear crisis.

Neoconservative proponents of the 2003 Iraq War likened the conflict to Churchill's stand against Hitler.United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld[15] likened Hussein to Stalin and Hitler. President George W. Bush singled out Iraq's dictator as the "great evil" who "by his search for terrible weapons, by his ties to terrorist groups, threatens the security of every free nation, including the free nations of Europe." In the writings of Paul Wolfowitz, Norman Podhoretz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Max Boot, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, William Bennett, Peter Rodman, and others influential in forging the foreign policy doctrines of the Bush administration, there are frequent references to the appeasement of Hitler at Munich in 1938, to which are compared the Cold War's policies of détente and containment (rather than rollback) with the Soviet Union and the PRC. While more conventional foreign policy experts argued that Iraq
could be restrained by enforcing No-Fly Zones and by a policy of inspection by United Nations inspectors to restrict its ability to possess chemical or nuclear weapons, neoconservatives considered this policy direction ineffectual and labeled it appeasement of Saddam Hussein.

Neoconservatism, Judaism, and "Dual Loyalty"

Some opponents of neoconservatives have sought to emphasize their interest in Israel and the relatively large proportion of Jewish neoconservatives, and have raised the question of "dual loyalty". A number of critics, such as Pat Buchanan and Juan Cole, have accused them of putting Israeli interests above those of America[citation needed]. In turn these critics have been labeled as anti-Semites by many neoconservatives. David Duke and some other white nationalists attack neoconservatism as advancing Jewish interests. They say a "Jewish supremacist" movement exists in the United States. Critics conclude that some of their claims, such as that Jews achieve influence through the intellectual domination of national leaders, are anti-Semitic. Similarly, during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the politically left-wing magazine AdBusters published a list of the "50 most influential neocons in the United States", noting that half of these were
Jewish, and insinuating that the preponderance of Jews in neoconservatism leads them to "not distinguish enough between American and Israeli interests". The article asks "For example, whose interests were they protecting in pushing for war in Iraq?", and ends with the statement "And half of the them are Jewish." Neoconservatives say that they were much less interested in Israel before the June 1967 Six Day War. It was only after this conflict, which raised the specter of unopposed Soviet influence in the Middle East, that the neoconservatives became interested in Israel's security interests. They promote the view that Israel is the United States' strongest ally in the Middle East as the sole Western-style democracy in the region, aside from Turkey (George W. Bush has also supported Turkey in its efforts to join the European Union.

Commenting on the alleged overtones of this view in more mainstream discourse, David Brooks, in his January 6, 2004 New York Times column wrote, "To hear these people describe it, PNAC is sort of a Yiddish Trilateral Commission, the nexus of the sprawling neocon tentacles". In a similar vein, Michael Lind, a self-described 'former neoconservative,' wrote in 2004, "It is true, and unfortunate, that some journalists tend to use 'neoconservative' to refer only to Jewish neoconservatives, a practice that forces them to invent categories like nationalist conservative or Western conservative for Rumsfeld and Cheney. But neoconservatism is an ideology, like paleoconservatism and libertarianism, and Rumsfeld and Dick and Lynne Cheney are full-fledged neocons, as distinct from paleocons or libertarians, even though they are not Jewish and were never liberals or leftists." Lind argues that, while "there were, and are, very few Northeastern WASP mandarins in the
neoconservative movement", its origins are not specifically Jewish. "...[N]eoconservatism recruited from diverse farm teams including Roman Catholics (William Bennett and Michael Novak) and populists, socialists and New Deal liberals in the South and Southwest (the pool from which Jeane Kirkpatrick, James Woolsey and I [that is, Lind himself] were drawn)".

The Axis of Evil cabal and
the case of Iran

Exactly what is behind the phrase “Axis of Evil” that seemingly has surprised observers world round? Was it a faux pas or the weathervane for a new Middle East policy? With the arrival of new actors and the new militant political culture at the Pentagon is the Department of Defense preempting the State Department in selective foreign policy matters, such as the negotiation of key international treaties and the U.S. Middle East policy? In the periphery and in the Gulf region, there may have been a naïve understanding that, historically, a Republican administration with its oil company constituents can consistently provide a more pragmatic and conducive climate to resolve Middle East issues. Yet, the issue is considerably more complex. In reality, since the “Reagan Revolution,” Republican administrations have also been full of a cohesive, yet relatively little known, phenomenon called neo-con (neo-conservatism)—a political movement legible to
the Washington elite insider, yet invisible to the general public. This political movement is a dense web of affiliates that is present in numerous spheres and active in different social domains. As a whole, the radical right has been striving to appropriate the September 11 atrocities and to push forward several extremist agendas on the domestic front and in foreign policy. While initially the stated U.S. government (State Department) objective after September 11 was the pursuit of those responsible for the terrorist attack and to locate and destroy the Al-Qaida terrorist network, there were right wing policy advisors with certain agendas who intended to widen the scope of the U.S. initiative. There is the impression that the policy advisors brought in by the Bush/Cheney team, anchored around the Department of Defense (DoD) and the National Security Council (NSC), struggled to add an Israeli right-wing wish list to the agenda. A study of these policy
advisors illustrates a Neo-con ideological affiliation and demeanor. This clique is not the result of an accidental club of “experts.” Historically, and principally, ever since its inception in the late 1960s it has focused on the issues of foreign policy, Pax-Zionica through Pax-Americana (more later). A neo-con activist, Michael Ledeen holds the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute. In the Reagan administration he served as an adviser to Oliver North on the National Security Council. In his column last year (“Time for a Good, Old-Fashioned Purge” National Review Online, March 8, 2001), Ledeen asked the Bush team to purge the “environmental whack-os,” “the radical feminazis,” the “foreign policy types on the National Security Council Staff and throughout State, CIA, and Defense, who are still trying to create Bill Clinton’s legacy in the Middle East…”

For several months after the September 11 tragedy, a dispute ensued between the State Department and the neo-con policy assets in other agencies such as DoD and NSC. The recent civilian leadership of the DoD includes such right-wing hawks as Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense; Doug- las Feith, the Pentagon’s third-highest official, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; and Richard Perle, Chief of the Defense Policy Board. Their agenda echoes neo-con political views and program. On the other side, Secretary of State Colin Powell and his aides, Richard Armitage (Deputy Secretary of State) and Richard Haas (Chief of Policy Planning), and the Near East Bureau of the State Department seem to have a strategically more global and regional perspective on the issues. They had been engaged with Iran in the war with the Taliban in the context of the 6+2 Group in Bonn, leading up to the possibility of a thaw in U.S.-Iran relations and a rapprochement.

A number of experts such as Gary Sick, the Acting Director of the Middle East Institute who served in NSC under Ford, Reagan, and Carter, view the deliberate utterance of the phrase Axis of Evil in the president’s State of the Union address as the triumph of DoD over the Department of State. Not surprisingly, David Frum, the author of the address, had been associated with the neo-con movement and the journal the Weekly Standard. What the recent thrust entailed was an agenda that went beyond Al-Qaida and those responsible for the September 11 attack. It intended to shift the paradigm and create a linkage with other international issues, most of which concern Israel, such as the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in three named “rogue states,” and in the case of Iran, support for Hamas and the Hizbollah of Lebanon. This nexus of the WTC tragedy, and the issue of WMD in Iran and other “rogue nations,” as the new expanded objective
of the war on terrorism, does not seem like a smooth and reasonable transition to some policymakers and Middle East observers. In the case of Iran, it was noted that the government had claimed that they have always been open to inspections by the international nonproliferation bodies. Moreover, Gary Sick differs with Zalmay Khalilzad, the current director of Near East/Southwest Asia in the NSC, that Iran had been destabilizing the current Afghan government.

The phrase Axis of Evil puzzled those observers who clearly could see its implications in the internal political situation of Iran, as complex as it is; that is, weakening the hand of reformist President Khatami and the reform movement at large. But survival of Khatami’s democratic movement may not be a priority to some. Patrick Clawson, Director of Research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, claims Bush was not trying to influence Iranian domestic politics so much as putting the world on notice that Iran’s leaders have to change course. In the final analysis, the WMD hardware does not seem to matter as much as the political positioning of the regime. The neo-con elements associated with the right wing think-tank institutes saw “momentous possibilities” in the Axis of Evil phraseology and were quick to celebrate the State of the Union address in their writings and to chastise Secretary Powell. In numerous editorials, William
Kristol of the right-wing Weekly Standard openly criticized Powell’s position before and after the State of the Union address and his position on war (”Bush v. Powell,” 9/24/2001; “Bush Doctrine Unfolds,” 3/04/2002). Again, Michael Ledeen in a more recent column (“Iran and the Axis of Evil,” National Review Online, March 4, 2002) reprimanded Powell because his position on Iran was not adequately belligerent. Reuel Marc Gerecht, also of the American Enterprise Institute, in a Weekly Standard article, dismisses Secretary Powell’s “pragmatist” approach and states, “…this détentist view of commerce and politics still has currency in establishment circles.” Gerecht goes further and berates Le Monde Diplomatic and the Near East bureau of the State Department as having the same reaction to the State of the Union address as the speaker of Iran’s Majlis, Ayatollah Karroubi. As the logical extension of this sentiment, Gerecht
maintains that unless Iran’s regime falls, its penchant for unconventional weaponry “will not evanesce.” This myopic analysis makes the presumption with certainty that a secular democratic government in Iran—as opposed to an Islamic democratic one—would not have the inclination to seek strategic parity with the client states in the region.

The Economist reports on Pentagon’s number two man, Paul Wolfowitz, and his “enthusiasm for changing governments.” The piece detects Wolfo- witz’s “fingerprints” all over the State of the Union speech (“Paul Wolfowitz velociraptor,” the Economist, February 9, 2002). Since the State of the Union address and the perceived threat of “rogue nations,” the Axis of Evil parlance creates a hype and a psychological state of belligerence that would accommodate and support dramatic increases in defense spending. Accordingly, this year’s Pentagon budget was substantially expanded. Moreover, the Missile Defense Program, which was looming in the background, seems to be back on the table. According to Hadar the major figures of the movement were initially people like Irving Kristol, later contributor to the Wall Street Journal; Norman Podhoretz, the present editor of Commentary—a bastion of neoconservatism—Democratic Party activist, Ben
Wattenberg; Midge Dector, wife of Podhoretz, who, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, served as officers of Committee for the Free World. This neo-con core was later joined by other Cold Warriors and pro-Israeli advocates, such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Walt and Eugene Rostow, Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams (Podhoretz’s son-in-law), Kenneth Adelman, Max Kampelman (aide to Senator Hubert Humphrey), and, of course, Michael Ledeen. (A good number of them in the Bush/Cheney team are reincarnates of the Reagan administration.)

Israel became a central cause for these neo-cons; and, as Hadar observed, the pivotal axiom was that “only a militarily strong and perpetually interventionist America can guarantee the security of Israel.” The civil rights and social justice ambiance of the 1960’s movements had influenced the philosophy of the Democratic Party, hence making the rhetoric and platform potentially susceptible to recognition of self-determination for all peoples which may have included Palestinian rights. After all, at this stage, the Vietnam War was being criticized on moral grounds. By virtue of George McGovern representing the antiwar liberal forces within the Democratic Party in 1972, the neo-cons mobilized support for Henry (Scoop) Jackson who possessed Cold War, pro-Israel credentials in the party. As a counterforce to the McGovern victory in 1972, the neo-cons formed the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM) in 1973. Later on, Richard Perle and Elliot Abrams
were to become top aids to Senator Jackson. President Jimmy Carter did not include many of the CDM members in his Administration. Certain elements of his foreign policy agenda—improving the U.S.-Soviet relationship and addressing the Palestinian matter—gave the neo-cons serious pause. At this juncture, with a sense of grievance, the neo-cons considered crossing the floor and moving to the Republican Party, which would undoubtedly welcome the neo-con intellectual prowess and media connections, and, in fact, did. Thus the CDM neo-con members helped shape Ronald Reagan’s agenda and, in return, because their primary concerns and interests revolved around external issues and hegemony, they were rewarded with top foreign policy positions in his Administration. The top brass included Jeane Kirkpartick (contributor to Commentary), Kenneth Adleman, Director of Arms Control; Richard Perle became the Assistant Secretary of Defense; Richard Pipes (of Harvard)
was assigned to NSC; and Elliot Abrams, the rising star, was placed as Assistant Secretary of State.

From their top positions, they encouraged the Reagan administration to view indigenous issues, such as the Palestinian statehood/nationalism, the Nicaraguan revolution, and the South African and the Middle East conflicts from the prism of a Cold War context—i.e., international communism and Soviet expansionism—were behind most Third World struggles. Initially, for reasons of ideology, most of the old-guard conservatives of the Barry Goldwater- Richard Nixon types were weary of these newcomers, but later came on board, accepted them and continued to work with them. For some time now, neo-con writers have appeared in William F. Buckley’s National Review. Segments of the more traditional right, however, committed to conservative social values had viewed the neo-cons as closet liberals and considered their presence in the conservative movement as a hostile takeover. The Old Right accused the neo-cons of over-preoccupation with interventionist foreign
policy and indifference to the size of government and the “Welfare State.” They object to the appropriation of the mantle of the conservative movement by the neo-cons. In the foreword to the second edition of Justin Raimondo’s 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, Patrick J. Buchanan wrote: “With Reagan’s triumph, the neocons came into their own, into his government and his movement.” Raimondo considers the neo-cons the “the War Party” or the cowbirds of conservatism.

There have been diverse reactions to the Neo-con phenomenon from the liberal and New Left corner as well. In an historic essay titled, “The Empire Lovers Strike Back,” (The Nation, March 22, 1986) Gore Vidal took aim at the elders of the neo-con wave; they in return landed him labels of anti-Semitism. Vidal called the deans of the movement “publicists for Israel” or “fifth columnists”; he declared that pro-Israel lobbyists “make common cause with the lunatic fringe” in order to scare Americans into spending enormous sums of money for defense against the Soviet Union and for support of Israel. In a way, the neo-con establishment is an axis of political-lobby/academic-cultural/media/defense- policy network in pursuit of a clearly defined agenda.

In the post-September tragedy, there appeared a curiosity, a spontaneous public discourse in an effort to demystify the political, theological, cultural aspects of Islam and Islamic movements. In contrast, meanwhile, a literature began to resurface centered on a (dis)-Orientalism that has been associated with the exoticization of Islamic societies and Islamic history. There are cultural orientalists who possess clear policy/political preferences; they tend to also polemicize their scholarship to push for overt political agendas. The neo-con wave is more than political appointees and lobbies; it is also a matter of culture and attitude. One of the most referred to in the neo-con ideological pursuits and literature is Bernard Lewis, the semi-retired Princeton scholar. As pointed out above, during the Reagan term and based on the Cold War Zeitgeist of the time, the neo-con propagandists encouraged the Israel-Palestinian conflict to be seen in that light.
After the end of the Cold War, an Huntingtonian clash of civilization theory struggled to dominate the discourse on East/West relations and understandings; the sort of ethos that defamiliarizes and demonizes “the other.” Likewise, it carried over that dualistic Manichean worldview. In this Gemeinschaft, the Muslim and Arab world would replace the Soviet threat. In this polarized view of the world, Israel is presented as the bastion of the West. On the occasion of reviewing Judith Miller’s book for the Nation (“A Devil Theory of Islam,” August 12, 1996), Edward Said wrote, “To demonize and dehumanize a whole culture on the ground that it is (in Lewis’s sneering phrase) enraged at modernity is to turn Muslims into the objects of a therapeutic, punitive attention.” Reuel Marc Gerecht, an admirer of Lewis, is another Princeton “Orientalist” and a neo-con scholar at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. In an interview with the
Ha’aretz Magazine, he reveals, “I was a passionate believer in the Cold War…. One of my professors had ties with the agency and he put me in touch with them….” (Ronen Bergman, “Their Man in Iran,” August 20, 1999). As a CIA operations officer for seven years from 1987 to 1994, Gerecht coordinated the network of agents in and outside Iran. Although in his book Know Thine Enemy he finds the Agency inept, it is possible that his agenda load was too heavy for the Agency. Earlier in December, Gerecht stated in an interview with the Atlantic (“Unbound,” December 28, 2001), “the only way to douse the fires of Islamic radicalism is through stunning, overwhelming, military force….” Ann Coulter, one of the right-wing celebrities wrote, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” (“This Is War,” National Review Online, September 13, 2001). The Axis of Evil terminology may have taken many
by surprise, but a review of culturally-charged articles from September 2001 to January 2002 in various journals such as the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly and, of course, the New Republic would illustrate that a “Clash of Civilization” and estrangement of “the other culture” was in the making. Alexander Cockburn once remarked metaphorically that the offices of the New Republic in Washington are attached to the back of the Israeli embassy. Although neo-con writers such as Richard Pipes, Daniel Pipes, and Michael Ledeen are regular contributors to such “mainstream” media as the Wall Street Journal, the citadel of their journalism is publications like the New Republic, Commentary, the Weekly Standard (edited by William Kristol, son of Irving Kristol) and the Washington Times. William Safire in the New York Times and Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post carry the neo-con torch, deliberating issues. While conservative hawks have wide
access to the media hegemony created by moguls Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black (Hollinger International, Inc.), issues around the Middle East and the proliferation of WMD seldom get an objective hearing.

In the fall of 2001, there were initiatives on the part of some right-wing forces that caused worry for the academia. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) in which Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Cheney is involved, produced a document titled “Defense of Civilization” in which it published the names, colleges, and statements of about 100 academics who seemingly had been critical. Similarly, Martin Kramer of the pro-Israel institute Washington Institute for Near East Policy published the monograph “Ivory Towers on Sand” where he blames Middle East studies in American academia for “incorrect analysis” in not being able to “predict or explain” Middle East politics, and questions continued Federal funding. Even though the neo-cons’ institutional incarnation was in the liberal Democratic Party, their reincarnation nonetheless has been in right-wing WASP think-tank institutes such as the Committee on Present Danger, the
Committee for the Free World, the Project for the New American Century, Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute. A casual study of the advisory boards and officers reveals the usual neo-con listings—William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard; Carl Gershman, special councilor to Jeane Kirkpatrick while at the UN, and president of the National Endowment for Democracy which supports selective causes in the Third World; Donald Rumsfeld; Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff, I. Lewis Libby; Newt Gingrich; William F. Buckley Jr.; Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. There exist in Washington many organizations that are active on behalf of the American Jewish community and Israel; but none have nearly the influence the neo-cons have in terms of lobbying impact on behalf of right-wing Israeli hawks. In 1998, Fortune Magazine recognized the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as one of the most influential lobbies in the
country. In a recent piece in the Los Angeles Times, Michael Massing describes in detail this lobbying powerhouse located near Capital Hill, and asserts that the leadership personalities “…have developed ready access to the U.S. State Department, Defense Department and National Security Council” (“Conservative Jewish Groups Have Clout,” March 10, 2002). While serving as Senator, Hubert Humphrey’s Communist Control Act was drafted by his aide, Max Kampelman, one of the neo-con elders. Similarly, there was word around that AIPAC drafted Senator DAmato’s Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. Graham E. Fuller, a former vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council for long-range forecasting at the CIA, writes, “And efforts to portray Iran with some analytical balance have grown more difficult, crowded out by inflamed rhetoric and intense pro-Israeli lobbying against Tehran in Congress…. Improved U.S. ties with Iran should bring about a more balanced
reckoning of just what Iran is and is not” (Middle East Policy, October 1998).

It is no secret that Dick Cheney nominated his old mentor Rumsfeld to the post of Defense Secretary. Rumsfeld in turn brought Wolfowitz (who had been Cheney’s right-hand person when he ran the Pentagon) as his deputy. As hawkish veterans of the Cold War, some of the Neo-con associates had understandably become proficient in the issues of strategic nuclear arms and national security; they had been critics of multilateral arms agreements (détente) and were involved with policy institutes as vehicles and proponents of those politics. As strong proponents of Star Wars, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) during the Reagan administration, it is believed that they were instrumental in the death of SALT II under the Carter administration. This leads to what is known inside the Beltway as the “Wolfowitz cabal.” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, the new chief of the 18-member advisory panel of Defense Policy Board, were both
mentored by arch-hawk nuclear strategist Albert Wohlseteller of the RAND Corp. in the 1960s. While the Defense Policy Board is an advisory panel, its new chief, Richard Perle, has an office in the E-Ring of the Pentagon. Known as “the prince of darkness,” he previously served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy in the Reagan administration. In Seymour Hersh’s book on Henry Kissinger, The Price of Power, we learn that the FBI wiretaps had heard Richard Perle—then foreign policy aide to Senator Jackson—passing NSC classified material to the Israeli Embassy; this infuriated Kissinger. Other additions among the Wolfowitz circle are Douglas J. Feith; I. Lewis Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff; and, according to the Economist article, the latter is “Wolfowitz’s Wolfowitz.”

Douglas J. Feith, previously associated with the Center for Security Policy (CSP), has been appointed to the position of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. In the Reagan administration, Feith had served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and a Middle East specialist on the National Security Council staff. Because he holds strong pro-Israel views and is perceived as having a partisan position, Feith’s appointment to that policy post has been a matter of great concern for Arab-American spokespeople. In 1996, Feith and Richard Perle co-authored a paper for the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. In that piece titled “A Clean Break: a New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” they advised Israeli leader Netanyahu to halt the land for peace process.
If Elliot Abrams could serve as NSC’s senior director for democracy and human rights, then it is not so bizarre to have John Bolton as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, and non-proliferation. Apparently Bolton, a Vice President at the American Enterprise Institute, was forced on the State Department. Earlier, the Institute had openly opposed the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) treaty that was signed by the U.S. in 1988. In November 1999, Bolton wrote a short piece for the American Enterprise Institute titled “Kofi Annan’s UN Power Grab”—“United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has begun to assert that the UN Security Council is ‘the sole source of legitimacy on the use of force.’ If the United States allows that claim to go unchallenged, its discretion in using force to advance its national interests is likely to be inhibited in the future.”

Neo-cons are not political novices and seem to have little tolerance for dissenters. The NSC is not immune to this political culture either. In a New Yorker article Seymour Hersh reports that several regional experts left the NSC “after a series of policy disputes with the civilian officials in the Pentagon” (“The Debate Within,” March 11, 2002). Zalmay Khalilzad has replaced Bruce Reidel for the Middle East portfolio. The Axis of Evil vocabulary may appear novel, but clearly the grammar is familiar and legible. It translates to a $48 billion increase in this year’s Pentagon budget, up to $379 billion annually—the largest defense spending increase in more than two decades. In terms of strategic policy, it is highly likely we may see the unilateral abandonment of the 1972 ABM Treaty, the abandonment of the goal of the formal implementation of Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty START II, and a strong push to pursue the controversial National
Defense Initiative. The recent Nuclear Posture Review is alarming to many in the sense that it is changing deterrence to feasibility of nuclear application, viewing unconventional arms almost in conventional terms, and developing nuclear arsenals for possible use against non-nuclear states. Whereas the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) does not prohibit the U.S. from targeting non-nuclear states, it has historically pledged not to do so, extending what is known as “a negative security assurance.” Under the new regime, the U.S. is seriously considering not offering a negative security assurance to non-nuclear states.

During the Reagan administration, the ultra-hawkish attitude of the neo-con clique produced policy that found pronouncements and support for “constructive engagement” with apartheid, support for the Contras in Nicaragua, Duvalier (FRAP) of Haiti, the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982, and the proliferation of death squads in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Undue influence of hawkish ideologues has alarmed experts and the policy community at large. There are those who believe that this political culture has created an atmosphere that obstructs any serious debate on the Middle East. To bulldoze and elbow a one-sided policy over a long period may lead to a political/moral tipping point.

How neo-cons influence the Pentagon

An ad hoc office under US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith appears to have acted as the key base for an informal network of mostly neo-conservative political appointees that circumvented normal inter-agency channels to lead the push for war against Iraq.

The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which worked alongside the Near East and South Asia (NESA) bureau in Feith's domain, was originally created by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to review raw information collected by the official US intelligence agencies for connections between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

Retired intelligence officials from the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have long charged that the two offices exaggerated and manipulated intelligence about Iraq before passing it along to the White House.

But key personnel who worked in both NESA and OSP were part of a broader network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other George W Bush political appointees scattered around the national security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lieutenant-Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003.
The heads of NESA and OSP were Deputy Undersecretary William Luti and Abram Shulsky, respectively.
Other appointees who worked with them in both offices included Michael Rubin, a Middle East specialist previously with the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI); David Schenker, previously with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Michael Makovsky; an expert on neo-conservative icon Winston Churchill and the younger brother of David Makovsky, a senior WINEP fellow and former executive editor of the pro-Likud Jerusalem Post; and Chris Lehman, the brother of the John Lehman, a prominent neo-conservative who served as secretary of the navy under former president Ronald Reagan, according to Kwiatkowski.

Along with Feith, all of the political appointees have in common a close identification with the views of the right-wing Likud Party in Israel. Feith, whose law partner is a spokesman for the settlement movement in Israel, has long been a fierce opponent of the Oslo peace process, while WINEP has acted as the think tank for the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which generally follows a Likud line.
Also like Feith, several of the appointees were proteges of Richard Perle, an AEI fellow who doubled as chairman until last April of Rumsfeld's unpaid Defense Policy Board (DPB), whose members were appointed by Feith, and also had an office in the Pentagon one floor below the NESA offices.
Similarly, Luti, a retired naval officer, was a protege of another DPB board member also based at AEI, former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich. Luti in turn hired retired Colonel William Bruner, a former Gingrich staffer, and Chris Straub, a retired lieutenant-colonel, anti-abortion activist, and former staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Also working for Luti was another naval officer, Yousef Aboul-Enein, whose main job was to pore over Arabic-language newspapers and CIA transcripts of radio broadcasts to find evidence of ties between al-Qaeda and Saddam that may have been overlooked by the intelligence agencies, and a DIA officer named John Trigilio.
Through Feith, both offices worked closely with Perle, Gingrich and two other DPB members and major war boosters - former CIA director James Woolsey and Kenneth Adelman - in ensuring that the "intelligence" that they developed reached a wide public audience outside the bureaucracy.
They also debriefed "defectors" handled by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an opposition umbrella group headed by Ahmed Chalabi, a long-time friend of Perle, whom the intelligence agencies generally wrote off as an unreliable self-promoter.

"They would draw up 'talking points' they would use and distribute to their friends," said Kwiatkowski. "But the talking points would be changed continually, not because of new intel [intelligence], but because the press was poking holes in what was in the memos."

The offices fed information directly and indirectly to sympathetic media outlets, including the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard and FoxNews Network, as well as the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and syndicated columnists, such as Charles Krauthammer.
In inter-agency discussions, Feith and the two offices communicated almost exclusively with like-minded allies in other agencies, rather than with their official counterparts, including even the DIA in the Pentagon, according to Kwiatkowski.
Rather than working with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, its Near Eastern Affairs bureau, or even its Iraq desk, for example, they preferred to work through Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security (and former AEI executive vice president) John Bolton; Michael Wurmser (another Perle protege at AEI who staffed the predecessor to OSP); and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of the Vice President Dick Cheney.

At the National Security Council (NSC), they communicated mainly with Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, until Elliott Abrams, a dyed-in-the-wool neo-conservative with close ties to Feith and Perle, was appointed last December as the NSC's top Middle East aide.
"They worked really hard for Abrams; he was a necessary link," Kwiatkowski told Inter Press Service on Wednesday. "The day he got [the appointment], they were whooping and hollering, 'We got him in, we got him in'."
They rarely communicated directly with the CIA, leaving that to political heavyweights, including Gingrich, who is reported to have made several trips to the CIA headquarters, and, more importantly, I Lewis "Scooter" Lilly, Dick Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser.
According to recent published reports, CIA analysts felt these visits were designed to put pressure on them to tailor their analyses more to the liking of administration hawks.

In some cases, NESA and OSP even prepared memos specifically for Cheney and Libby, something unheard of in previous administrations because the lines of authority in the vice president's office and the Pentagon are entirely separate. "Luti sometimes would say, 'I've got to do this for Scooter'," said Kwiatkowski. "It looked like Cheney's office was pulling the strings."
Kwiatkowski said that she could not confirm published reports that OSP worked with a similar ad hoc group in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office. But she recounts one incident in which she helped escort a group of half a dozen Israelis, including several generals, from the first floor reception area to Feith's office. "We just followed them, because they knew exactly where they were going and moving fast."

When the group arrived, she noted the book which all visitors are required to sign under special regulations that took effect after the September 11, 2001. "I asked his secretary, 'Do you want these guys to sign in'? She said, 'No, these guys don't have to sign in'." It occurred to her, she said, that the office may have deliberately not wanted to maintain a record of the meeting.
She added that OSP and MESA personnel were already discussing the possibility of "going after Iran" after the war in Iraq last January and that articles by Michael Ledeen, another AEI fellow and Perle associate who has been calling for the US to work for "regime change" in Tehran since late 2001, were given much attention in the two offices.
Ledeen and Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, recently created the Coalition for Democracy in Iran to lobby for a more aggressive policy there. Their move coincided with suggestions by Sharon that Washington adopt a more confrontational policy vis-a-vis Tehran.

Iran recently said it was prepared to turn over five senior al-Qaeda figures, including the son of Osama bin Laden, who are currently in its custody if Washington permanently shuts down an Iraqi-based Iranian rebel group that is listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department.
Pentagon officials, particularly Feith's office, have reportedly opposed the deal, which had been favored by the State Department, because of the possibility that the group, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, might be useful in putting pressure on Tehran.
After two years of dominating United States foreign policy, are unilateralist hawks in the administration of President George W Bush losing power to the so-called realists whom they have long disdained?
Although internal fights within the administration on issues such as policy towards Syria, Iran and North Korea remain fierce, there are growing indications that the influence of the hawks, neo-conservatives in particular, is on the wane.

New attacks on the neo-cons by key foreign policy figures, as well as suggestions that hawks in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office are losing influence in several key areas, including Iraq, are adding to this impression.
While Bush himself still deploys the soaring "we're-bringing-democracy-to-the-Arab-world" rhetoric that has been a neo-conservative trademark for the past 15 months - most recently in his trip last week to Britain - the growing consensus here is that the decision to accelerate the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government belies a sharp reduction in those ambitions.
Similarly, the speed with which Washington is trying to recruit former soldiers and police - with only pro-forma training and vetting for past loyalties to the Ba'ath regime of former president Saddam Hussein - marks a major departure from the thorough de-Ba'athification program that neo-conservatives said was absolutely necessary if democratic governance was to have a chance in Iraq.
Even some neo-conservatives themselves, such as Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, have conceded that the new plans suggest the administration is looking for an "exit" strategy, rather than a "victory" strategy.

But the loss of neo-conservative influence is also visible beyond Iraq.
Bush's announcement during his trip to Asia late last month that he was willing to put into writing his verbal commitment that Washington would not attack North Korea marked a significant victory for the realists in the State Department, leading former ambassador Donald Gregg, a Korea expert close to Bush's father, George H W Bush, to declare "the administration's pragmatists are in charge".

Other recent straws in the wind included the abrupt resignation late last month of a major hawk, assistant defense secretary for international security J D Crouch II, and the announcement by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage that Washington intended to resume a dialogue with Iran in the near future, although the latter remains a source of great contention within the administration.
But Washington's quiet agreement this week to not press for a resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency that would ask the United Nations Security Council to consider sanctions against Iran for maintaining secrecy about its nuclear program - in other words, to defer to the advice of France, Germany and Britain - marked a defeat for the hawks.
Secretary of State Colin Powell also scored another major - albeit little-noticed win - in another conflict with the hawks, including his ultra-unilateralist undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, John Bolton.
The administration decided to waive sanctions against six central European countries that have refused to sign bilateral treaties that would have barred them from handing over US citizens to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigation or prosecution for crimes against humanity or war crimes.

Bolton, who is close to both the neo-conservatives and Cheney, has been on an 18-month global crusade to punish countries that refuse to sign such agreements, and the administration's waiver, which was also urged by a unanimous Senate Foreign Relations Committee, could undermine his efforts and credibility.
Analysts detect in these moves the growing influence of several officials, not least of whom is Karl Rove, Bush's closest political adviser, who is reported to have warned already in September that there should be "no wars in 2004", advice that makes a lot of sense in view of Bush's precipitous drop in the polls, much of it due to a growing lack of confidence about Iraq policy.
The fact that only a minority of voters now believe the president's reasons for going to war - Iraq's alleged ties to al-Qaeda terrorists and weapons of mass destruction programs - were based on real evidence has clearly undermined administration hawks, who were most insistent about the threat Baghdad supposedly posed to the US.

Similarly, the patent and continuing failure of the hawks to anticipate the post-war situation in Iraq has clearly weakened their hand in internal deliberations. This was clearly signaled by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in early October when she formed the Iraq Stabilization Group based in her National Security Council, a move that clearly displeased Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.

More important was her hiring of former US ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, who appears to have effectively taken control of Iraq policy and a great deal more at the expense of the Pentagon hawks. Blackwill, who was Rice's boss in the first Bush administration, is considered on the right, but with a far more pragmatic temperament than the neo-cons.

The recent announcement that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which is officially controlled by Rumsfeld, is doubling the number of foreign-service officers to 110 - most of them from the State Department's Near East bureau - marks a major defeat for the Pentagon's neo-cons, who had vetoed virtually all of the State Department's Arabists for top CPA positions before the occupation due to suspicions that they were too pro-Sunni or elite-oriented. Worse, CPA chief L Paul Bremer appears to be working directly with Blackwill in the White House, effectively circumventing Rumsfeld and his neo-conservative aides.
According to the Washington Post, the two men have a "close relationship" dating back some 30 years. The newspaper quoted one unidentified friend of both who characterized them as "basically conservative ... but focused on national interest and power - not neo-conservatism. They are not ideological dreamers".
Their mutual loss of confidence in the hawks was suggested by Bremer's sudden return to Washington two weeks ago with a pessimistic Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)report, the existence of which was promptly leaked to a reporter to ensure that the White House knew to press for the decision to accelerate the transition process in Iraq.

Bremer, according to one source, attached a personal endorsement to the report by the CIA - which is considered as much of a "bete noire" of the neo-cons as State's Near East bureau - in what was seen as another slap at the hawks.
In this context, the publication by the Post on Sunday of a comprehensive attack on the hawks' push for unilateral war in Iraq by Powell's former director of policy planning, Richard Haass, also suggests growing confidence on the part of the realists, of which Haass, now president of the ultra-establishment Council on Foreign Relations, is an exemplar.
His column argues that unilateral "wars of choice" - including Iraq - can be fought successfully only on two conditions: first, the US public must be "on board ... to the extent of being psychologically prepared for the possible costs"; and second, Washington must "line up international support", lest it be "stretched too thin or [go] deeply into debt".

Haass, who left the State Department only last summer and served the elder Bush as a top Middle East aide, not only made clear that he felt neither condition had been met in Iraq; but that "American democracy ... [does] not mix well with empire" and that "the United States is not geared to sustain costly wars of choice". He depicted the recent decision to speed the transition process as a politically realistic move that will necessarily fall short of the neo-cons' more ambitious goals.
"Such a mid-course correction in US policy reflects in part the political realities of Iraq ... even more, though, the policy shift reflects political realities at home. Domestic tolerance for costs - disrupted and lost lives above all - is not unlimited. As a result, the president is wise to reduce the scale of what we try to accomplish."

Assuming that Haass' analysis about the motives for the White House's change of course in Iraq is correct, it still begs the question of whether it, as well as the administration's softening on North Korea, Iraq and the ICC, represents a major shift in the balance of power in favor of the realists or a mere tactical feint designed to ease growing popular concerns in advance of next year's election.
Neo-conservatives, who have shown uncharacteristic disarray in response to setbacks in Iraq, still insist they have full confidence in Bush to follow their policy advice as part of the global war on terrorism, including in Iraq. Some even argue that stepped-up "Iraqification" is what they had recommended for years before the invasion, and that the president and Bremer have now come around to those views.
But it is clear that the process now under way bears little relation to their original plans, and the fact that the dreaded Near East bureau and veterans of the Bush I administration appear to be gaining control of Iraq policy suggests their displays of confidence may be unfounded. Similarly, recent speculation here that Bremer and Blackwill - rather than Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Cheney's national security chief, I Lewis Libby - might inherit the State Department and the national security adviser post, respectively, in a second Bush term, add further evidence to the notion that the neo-cons might be in eclipse.

Creating a 'secure Israel'

Several mechanisms have been advanced to link Israeli security and the invasion of Iraq. Some say that neo-conservatives do indeed want to "install" democracy in Iraq. Democracy is then viewed as either a "real" thing or a rhetorical tool used by the elites to control the masses. In the former case, the argument is made that democratic countries abstain from warfare with other democracies.
Leo Strauss, the father of US neo-conservatism, tells us, however, that democratic masses are susceptible to political charlatans and innately anti-Semitic: just look at what happened to the Weimar Republic in Germany in the lead-up to World War II. Thus democracy can't be a real thing. In the latter case, does it really matter whether the elite rules by democracy or by tyranny, as long as this elite recognizes a master in the United States? This brings us to the second mechanism for ensuring Israeli interests. But before proceeding further, let us take a diversion to see what neo-conservatives may mean when they talk about "democratizing" the Middle East.

Bringing democracy to the Middle East intuitively implies making "them" in our image. But what is the difference between "us" and "them"? There is no better authority on this subject than Strauss, once again. Here is what the old master sees as the essential difference between Christianity and Islam:
"Revelation as understood by Jews and Muslims has the character of law (Tora, Sharia) rather than of faith. Accordingly, what first came to the sight of the Islamic and Jewish philosophers in their reflections on revelation was not a creed or a set of dogmas, but a social order, if an all-comprehensive order, which regulates not merely actions but thoughts or opinions as well." (Persecution and the Art of Writing, Introduction, page 9)

Furthermore: "For the Christian, the sacred doctrine is revealed theology; for the Jew and the Muslim, the sacred doctrine is, at least primarily, the legal interpretation of the divine law (talmud or fiqh). The sacred doctrine in the latter sense has, to say the least, much less in common with philosophy than the sacred doctrine in the former sense. It is ultimately for this reason that the status of philosophy was, as a matter of principle, much more precarious in Judaism and in Islam than in Christianity: in Christianity philosophy became an integral part and even required training of the student of the sacred doctrine. The difference explains partly the eventual collapse of philosophic inquiry in the Islamic and in the Jewish world, a collapse which has no parallel in the Western Christian world." (Persecution and the Art of Writing, Introduction, page 18)
Finally: "Classical Greek philosophy permitted, nay, demanded an exoteric teaching (as a supplement to its esoteric teaching) which, while not claiming to be strictly speaking true, was considered indispensable for the right ordering of human society." (Plan of a book tentatively titled Philosophy and the Law: Historical Essays in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, Appendix1)

By esoteric teaching, Strauss means Greek natural philosophy, and by exoteric teaching he means Christianity. Indeed, many Greek thinkers were notorious doubters frequently accused of disbelief in gods. Thus the Western Christian world carried in itself Greek values "of the full dedication of the individual to the contest for excellence, distinction, supremacy" (Jerusalem and Athens, page 4) and in secret, preoccupation with natural philosophy, while the Muslim world developed cohesive societies a la Plato's Republic. And here we are now, with Western countries preoccupied with individual rights and technical advances and Middle Eastern societies deeply in poverty and dominated by totalitarian regimes.

Can Islam be reformed to promote individual excellence and technological development? Vladimir Lenin abolished private property and religion in Russia through ruthless extermination of whole classes of people. Perhaps a similar feast could be accomplished in the Middle East. Lenin, however, was a Russian and had a base of followers in the country. An occupying force is clearly poorly positioned and equipped to ban and much less to reform an alien religion. Is Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, an Iraqi Lenin?

Returning to our subject at hand, another mechanism to ensure Israeli interests is to replace regimes hostile to Israel, such as Syria and Iran, with friendly ones. Note that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was in the category of "friendly" regimes: there is no evidence that it planned to interfere with US interests. Perhaps to get to Syria and Iran, Iraq had to fall. This approach has several drawbacks. For one, there is no certainty that regimes that emerge will be friendly to the United States. It seems that an alternative of keeping the current regimes weakened through sanctions was and is more feasible. Second, an immediate external threat will and does surely promote cohesion in the Middle Eastern ethnocentric Muslim societies and lead to destabilization of currently friendly regimes. Finally, "friendly" regimes require continuous maintenance. At some point, US dedication to these regimes, as well as to Israel, might wane. The US is a democracy
susceptible to quickly changing political winds and political charlatans. Thus a better, more permanent mechanism is badly needed.

Such a mechanism is a war of "civilizations": in a conflict between the Western Christian world and Middle Eastern Muslim societies, the awesome might of the West comes down on the side of Israel against its enemies for generations to come, regardless of the administration in the White House, until one warring party accepts defeat. To be successful in a continuous conflict of such a magnitude, the West must become more like the East. Individuals must surrender their personal freedoms for security; religion in a religious war must dramatically ascend in importance; Western societies must become cohesive and mobilized for the military efforts.

The idea of conflict of civilizations received some attention with the publication of a book by Samuel Huntington called The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. The rulers in the United States chose to package the Iraq invasion as a "war on terror" and a messianic mission to bring "democracy" to the oppressed. The goal, however, was and remains to launch the logic of revenge and retaliation that would surely escalate into an all-out civilizational struggle for survival. The Iraq invasion was a revenge for September 11, 2001, exerted on the whole of the Islamic world and a preemptive insult. Pictures of Iraqi detainees being tortured by US soldiers in a Baghdad prison dispelled any remaining aura of honor associated with the Iraqi mission. These same images forced the American populace to realize that the US really did do harm to Iraqis and that Iraqis are now entitled to retaliation. This brings about a sober justification for the
war: we harmed them, they want revenge, we must fight to defend ourselves. Notably, the Pentagon neither tried to remedy the situation in the prisons nor to cover it up. The logic of mutual hatred may have already passed the point of no return.

Commenting on the conversation between Thrasymachus and Socrates on the nature of justice in Plato's Republic, Strauss wonders: "No association can last if its members do not practice justice among themselves. This, however, amounts to an admission that justice may be a mere means, if an indispensable means, for injustice, for exploitation of outsiders. Above all, it does not dispose of the possibility that the city is a community held together by collective selfishness and nothing else, or that there is no fundamental difference between the city and a gang of robbers." (An Introduction to Political Philosophy, page 177)

The West must never forget that it is not a gang of robbers and that its roots go deeply into Greek tradition. The condition in which we come out of this "conflict of civilizations" depends on whether we always remember who we are and where we are coming from.

Leo Strauss and the Straussians

Until quite recently, Leo Strauss and his disciples were considered (insofar as anyone took any notice of them) just a particular variety of conservative intellectuals, with a special interest in political philosophy and American constitutional history. Now we are beginning to discover that something peculiar has been going on all this time. The greatest peculiarity of Straussianism is that there is such a thing. Not a single other "conservative" thinker has inspired a following remotely comparable, in size, continuity, and influence, to that of Leo Strauss. There is a Straussian school as there is no Weaveran or Burnhamite or Meyeran or Kendallist or Voegelinist school. And this school has its own interests, ideas, and purposes, which are clearly distinct from mainstream conservatism, however close to their collective chest they play their cards. The Straussians are also the only group of "conservatives" ever to amount to anything in the academic
world. They have reportedly been gradually, quietly infiltrating and taking over political-science departments, making that discipline characteristically theirs, as Marxists have done with sociology, and libertarians with economics. Then along came Allan Bloom, who was catapulted to momentary fame by The Closing of the American Mind (1987), briefly becoming one of the most publicly-recognized "conservative" figures ... second only to William F. Buckley, Jr., who had spent decades making his name as the liberal establishment's token conservative. Curiously (and characteristically) enough, in Bloom's famous (or infamous) book, he only mentions his master once, and in passing, so that the vast majority of his readers remained blissfully ignorant of any connection (probably never having heard of Leo Strauss anyway); yet those in the know could immediately recognize Bloom's intellectual affiliation.

Strauss and the Straussians began to attract more attention, both journalistic and scholastic. One liberal scholar, Shadia Drury, has made a career of writing anti-Straussian exposés: The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988), Alexandre Kojeve: the Roots of Postmodern Politics (1994), Leo Strauss and the American Right (1997). The distinctively Straussian approach to political philosophy is, quite simply, to take premodern philosophers seriously, and to try to understand them as they understood themselves. This is, by itself, a radical challenge to modern historicism (i.e. historical relativism), which holds that the thoughts of premodern philosophers are "outmoded" and irrelevant; they were mental prisoners of their epoch -- usually ignoring the implication that we, too, are mental prisoners of our own epoch, so that contemporary prejudices are no better than "outmoded" ones. But this is only a prelude to an even more radical challenge to modern
thought: the Straussians believe that premodern philosophy is better than modern philosophy. This turns the whole "progressive" view of history topsy-turvy, and provides a very distinctive point of view, and line of criticism, about modernity. The Straussians are pre-modern and anti-modern, not in the name of religion (like the various forms of religious fundamentalism all over the world) or of tradition (like conservatives since Edmund Burke), but in the name of reason, of philosophy: an understanding of reason and philosophy different from the Enlightenment's. The teaching of Leo Strauss is "political philosophy" in a very special sense: his primary, if not exclusive, concern is the relation of philosophy (and the philosophers themselves) to society as a whole. Moreover, he imputes this primary concern to the premodern and early modern philosophers. The lesson of the trial and execution of Socrates is that Socrates was guilty as charged: philosophy
is a threat to society. By questioning the gods and the ethos of the city, philosophy undermines the citizens' loyalty, and thus the basis of normal social life. Yet philosophy is also the highest, the worthiest, of all human endeavors. The resolution of this conflict is that the philosophers should, and in fact did, keep their teachings secret, passing them on by the esoteric art of writing "between the lines." Strauss believed that he alone had recovered the true, hidden message contained in the "Great Tradition" of philosophy from Plato to Hobbes and Locke: the message that there are no gods, that morality is ungrounded prejudice, and that society is not grounded in nature.

With Machiavelli, however, there came a shift in emphasis. He was the first to deviate from the esoteric tradition that began with Plato, thereby initiating the Enlightenment. Machiavelli de-moralized political philosophy, and thereby created "political science." Virtue, whether defined in classical or Christian terms, was dethroned, because no regime could live up to its demands. Instead, a new regime could and should be created, by accepting, understanding, and harnessing men's lower, self-interested nature. The modern world is held to be the deliberate creation (with some unintended consequences) of the modern philosophers -- namely, the Enlightenment, which gave birth to both scientific-technological progress and the liberal ideology of social-political progress. The Enlighteners argued (though still covertly) that instead of hiding philosophy, philosophers should reform society to make it more hospitable to philosophy: in particular, by undertaking
the "project" of modern science, by which reason masters nature and provides material gratifications -- safety, health and wealth -- to common men, bribing them into acquiescence to philosophy. Physical science and technology would provide the know-how, while a new kind of regime, liberalism, would provide the conditions of liberty and equality enabling men to pursue their self-interest.

The problem with this (in the Straussian view) is that it exposed philosophy once more, and ultimately prostituted philosophy itself into the service of common men. The esoteric tradition was forgotten, and with it philosophy as such. At the same time, philosophy inadvertently exposed men to certain hard truths, truths too hard for them to bear: that there are no gods to reward good or punish evil; that no one's patria is really any better than anyone else's; that one's ancestral ways are merely conventional. This leads to nihilism, epitomized by the listless, meaningless life of bourgeois man, or to dangerous experiments with new gods -- gods like the race and the Fuehrer. Strauss, an ethnic Jew and refugee from Nazi Germany, looked at the regnant liberalism of mid-century America, and saw the Weimar Republic: morally weak, incapable of self-preservation. His prophecy was fulfilled by the ignominious collapse of the liberal establishment, both political
and academic, in the face of the New Left. Now, this unique interpretation of Western history depends on the existence of a "hidden agenda" in the history of philosophy. If there was, in fact, such an esoteric tradition, it has escaped the attention of most scholars. Of course, that might only prove how well-hidden it is ... which goes to show how seductive esotericism can be, once you start flirting with it. But in the end, what really matters is the philosophical questions Strauss raised, whether or not he was correct in ascribing them to the historic philosophers. There are several problems with his "teaching." First, is the philosopher (in the original, literal sense: a "lover of wisdom") really a superior type of person? I think that he is -- but not that he is a superior being. The difference between the philosopher and the ordinary person is one of degree, not of kind. His impulses are the same, but ordered differently. No matter how rational he
is, he is still a rational animal: a sexual one, for instance, and a social one. His curiosity is more fully developed than theirs, but unless his other faculties are at least as well developed as theirs, this one trait does not make him better than they are.

The ancient philosophers did believe that the philosophic life is the highest and best, but only a few are suited to it. The Straussians concur, and go on to imply that the major evil of modern egalitarianism is that it makes philosophy impossible, by devaluing anything that is not accessible to the common man. But philosophy is not the only thing that suffers: so do creativity, heroism, authority, and all other "elitist" qualities. Bloom makes much of this, even though he regards these other "types of soul" as rivals to philosophy, because he wants to undermine egalitarianism, and these others are more appealing. Philosophy is all the less appealing if, as he seems to assume, the ultimate truth is that there is no truth. It is all the more important, then, to convey this truth through misdirection: the desire to know cannot be aroused unless the allure of truth is held out.
The main difference between the Straussians and Left-wing nihilists is that the former think the "truth" of value-relativism should be known only to the few. All the philosophical problems with relativism apply to the Straussians' Right-wing version, and in spades. Suffice it here to say that the Straussians, too, have to introduce quasi-objective standards of judgment, covertly and unintentionally: e.g., the social utility of religion and patriotism. Surely, the very fact that society requires certain things -- communal loyalty, for instance -- in itself justifies these things: they are rooted in nature, the social nature of humanity.

Then there is an evident contradiction between the idea of philosophy as the pursuit of truth, and the idea of philosophy as a body of esoteric lore. If the Straussian reading is correct, it would seem that the history of philosophy consists of practically nothing but pondering the relation of philosophy to civil society, rather than pondering philosophical questions themselves. All the important questions have already been answered, or declared to be unanswerable: this is what created the tension between philosophy and civil society in the first place. So what is there for philosophers to do? The Straussians themselves are not even philosophers, but historians of philosophy, custodians of the esoteric lore. The perceived need to write obscurely also tends to obscure thought. The Closing of the American Mind is much better-written (in style, at least, if not in convoluted structure and argumentation) than anything by Leo Strauss. But even Bloom makes his
argument complex and subtle to the point of evasiveness, as if he wants to confuse and mislead the reader. (In particular, his critics -- those who actually did read him -- were hardly ever able to tell when he was or was not speaking in propria persona.) Bloom, at least, writes so well that he charms rather than repulses the reader, so one is (if sympathetic) willing to read his book again and again, with closer and closer attention; but not even the most sympathetic reader can really be sure, in the end, precisely what Bloom really means, behind all the good and important things he does say. Bloom's analysis of our cultural predicament is so true, so profound, that there must be some truth in his speculations as to its causes; but he all-too-carefully avoids making clear and specific claims that can be put to the test. This is the great weakness of the Straussian method: so careful is he to hide the point of his argument, he nearly fails to make it.
Certainly he fails to support it. Strauss puts his students to such a mental effort to try to understand him that they are too exhausted to make the mental effort to criticize him.

Given the inherent obscurity of the Straussian teaching, one should only be surprised if it did not produce conflicting interpretations. There are in fact two schools of Straussians: those like Bloom, who accept and propound this esoteric teaching; and those, such as Harry Jaffa, who interpret Strauss in terms of a more conventional understanding of classical philosophy. One might call them the esoterics and the exoterics, but it is hard to tell which is which. It may be that the seeming exoterics are just better at hiding their esotericism, which makes them the true esoterics. Both of them challenge the prevailing relativism of twentieth-century thought, harking back to classical standards of truth and justice; but the esoterics only do so because truth and justice are salutary myths, while the exoterics (perhaps) really do believe in truth and justice. The two schools are also divided on their interpretation of American history, and particularly the
American Founding. Both follow Strauss's division of philosophical history into the (good) "ancients" and the (bad) "moderns." According to the esoteric version, America was wholly modern from its inception: it is entirely the creation of the "modern project." The exoteric Straussians, like conservatives, prefer to emphasize America's continuity with the classical and Christian sources of Western civilization. The esoterics, then, basically agree with the libertarian and (pre-1960s) liberal understanding of American history: we are a "proposition nation," liberal to the core, and conservatism is un-American. The cult of the Founding Fathers is just a salutary myth. The truth is that the Founders, under the tutelage of Hobbes and Locke, deliberately created a squalid regime ruled by self-interest, sacrificing virtue to liberty and equality, and are ultimately responsible for the philistinism, mediocrity, and deracination of contemporary America.

Both esoterics and exoterics seem to agree that we need to try to refurbish the old notion of "natural rights," on which the republic was founded. Bloom regards "natural rights" as illusory, and bourgeois society as distasteful; but they are at least preferable to the nihilism of the New Left. The question is whether the New Left was the inevitable culmination of the ideology of liberty and equality -- and he strongly implies that it is. His only hope seems to be the cultivation of a tiny remnant to pass on the old lore through the new Dark Age. Now, conservatism might or might not be un-American, but this sort of quietism certainly is. Straussianism is an extraordinarily complex and subtle body of ideas, and I am sure that I have hardly done it justice in this small space. But in the end, Straussianism offers more questions than answers. This is not necessarily bad: the questions need to be asked. What is the relation of nature to culture? Can society
be founded on rational principles? Has the Enlightenment brought about its own downfall? How did this happen? What can be salvaged from the wreck? -- etc. Strauss, through his disciple Bloom, started me thinking about these questions, which have preoccupied me ever since.

Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception

Many neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz are disciples of a philosopher who believed that the elite should use deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant masses. What would you do if you wanted to topple Saddam Hussein, but your intelligence agencies couldn't find the evidence to justify a war? A follower of Leo Strauss may just hire the "right" kind of men to get the job done – people with the intellect, acuity, and, if necessary, the political commitment, polemical skills, and, above all, the imagination to find the evidence that career intelligence officers could not detect.

The "right" man for Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, suggests Seymour Hersh in his recent New Yorker article entitled 'Selective Intelligence,' was Abram Shulsky, director of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) – an agency created specifically to find the evidence of WMDs and/or links with Al Qaeda, piece it together, and clinch the case for the invasion of Iraq. Like Wolfowitz, Shulsky is a student of an obscure German Jewish political philosopher named Leo Strauss who arrived in the United States in 1938. Strauss taught at several major universities, including Wolfowitz and Shulsky's alma mater, the University of Chicago, before his death in 1973. Strauss is a popular figure among the neoconservatives. Adherents of his ideas include prominent figures both within and outside the administration. They include 'Weekly Standard' editor William Kristol; his father and indeed the godfather of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol; the new
Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone, a number of senior fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (home to former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and Lynne Cheney), and Gary Schmitt, the director of the influential Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is chaired by Kristol the Younger. Strauss' philosophy is hardly incidental to the strategy and mindset adopted by these men – as is obvious in Shulsky's 1999 essay titled "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)" (in Greek philosophy the term nous denotes the highest form of rationality). As Hersh notes in his article, Shulsky and his co-author Schmitt "criticize America's intelligence community for its failure to appreciate the duplicitous nature of the regimes it deals with, its susceptibility to social-science notions of proof, and its inability to cope with deliberate concealment." They argued that Strauss's
idea of hidden meaning, "alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception."

Rule One: Deception

It's hardly surprising then why Strauss is so popular in an administration obsessed with secrecy, especially when it comes to matters of foreign policy. Not only did Strauss have few qualms about using deception in politics, he saw it as a necessity. While professing deep respect for American democracy, Strauss believed that societies should be hierarchical – divided between an elite who should lead, and the masses who should follow. But unlike fellow elitists like Plato, he was less concerned with the moral character of these leaders. According to Shadia Drury, who teaches politics at the University of Calgary, Strauss believed that "those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior." This dichotomy requires "perpetual deception" between the rulers and the ruled, according to Drury. Robert Locke, another Strauss analyst says,"The people
are told what they need to know and no more." While the elite few are capable of absorbing the absence of any moral truth, Strauss thought, the masses could not cope. If exposed to the absence of absolute truth, they would quickly fall into nihilism or anarchy, according to Drury, author of 'Leo Strauss and the American Right' (St. Martin's 1999).

Second Principle: Power of Religion

According to Drury, Strauss had a "huge contempt" for secular democracy. Nazism, he believed, was a nihilistic reaction to the irreligious and liberal nature of the Weimar Republic. Among other neoconservatives, Irving Kristol has long argued for a much greater role for religion in the public sphere, even suggesting that the Founding Fathers of the American Republic made a major mistake by insisting on the separation of church and state. And why? Because Strauss viewed religion as absolutely essential in order to impose moral law on the masses who otherwise would be out of control. At the same time, he stressed that religion was for the masses alone; the rulers need not be bound by it. Indeed, it would be absurd if they were, since the truths proclaimed by religion were "a pious fraud." As Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine points out, "Neoconservatives are pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers."

"Secular society in their view is the worst possible thing,'' Drury says, because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, precisely those traits that may promote dissent that in turn could dangerously weaken society's ability to cope with external threats. Bailey argues that it is this firm belief in the political utility of religion as an "opiate of the masses" that helps explain why secular Jews like Kristol in 'Commentary' magazine and other neoconservative journals have allied themselves with the Christian Right and even taken on Darwin's theory of evolution.

Third Principle: Aggressive Nationalism

Like Thomas Hobbes, Strauss believed that the inherently aggressive nature of human beings could only be restrained by a powerful nationalistic state. "Because mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed," he once wrote. "Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united – and they can only be united against other people." Not surprisingly, Strauss' attitude toward foreign policy was distinctly Machiavellian. "Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat," Drury wrote in her book. "Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured (emphases added)." "Perpetual war, not perpetual peace, is what Straussians believe in," says Drury. The idea easily translates into, in her words, an "aggressive, belligerent foreign policy," of the kind that has been advocated by neocon groups like PNAC and AEI scholars – not to mention
Wolfowitz and other administration hawks who have called for a world order dominated by U.S. military power. Strauss' neoconservative students see foreign policy as a means to fulfill a "national destiny" – as Irving Kristol defined it already in 1983 – that goes far beyond the narrow confines of a " myopic national security." As to what a Straussian world order might look like, the analogy was best captured by the philosopher himself in one of his – and student Allen Bloom's – many allusions to Gulliver's Travels. In Drury's words, "When Lilliput was on fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace. In so doing, he saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but the Lilliputians were outraged and appalled by such a show of disrespect." The image encapsulates the neoconservative vision of the United States' relationship with the rest of the world – as well as the relationship between their relationship as a ruling elite with the
masses. "They really have no use for liberalism and democracy, but they're conquering the world in the name of liberalism and democracy," Drury says.

US Mid-Term Elections; Challenge to Neo-Cons

With James Webb celebrating a narrow victory in the Senate elections in Virginia State, the Democrats had the last laugh in the US mid-term elections. The Democratic Party has not only won back control of the House of Representatives, but won a majority in the Senate, with 51 seats to 49. This is a result the Democratic Party has dreamed of for years, and it marks a major change in the political map of the United States. Observers of American politics are comparing this mid-term election to that held 12 years ago. In that election, the Republicans wrestled away the House from the Democrats, who had had control for more than 50 years. The right-wing faction, led by Newt Gingrich, promised a "contract with America", the beginning of a new conservative age in American political history. Later, in 2000, the Republican Party took the White House and in 2004 the two houses of Congress. It was at this point that the conservative revolution peaked. Right across
the board, Republican conservatives have introduced dramatic and revolutionary changes to the United States. The Republicans took advantage of the 9/11 attacks to win support for the Patriot Act they introduced. Under the banner of anti-terrorism, they abused human rights. The most publicized of these were abuses of prisoners in Iraq, the illegal imprisonment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay and the torture and abuse of prisoners in secret European jails. Under a Republican government, a tax abatement policy came in to "rob the poor for the benefit the rich", allowing international energy prices to skyrocket. Religious conservatism increased and the government opposed abortion, homosexuality and gun controls. The conservative revolution backlash has been particularly prominent in foreign policy and security. The old conservatives, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and neo-conservatives, represented by Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton, dominated
foreign policy during Bush's first term. They introduced the United States to the so-called "Bush Doctrine" of preemptive strikes, unilateralism and global democracy. Accordingly, the US launched the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and attempted to implement the "Greater Middle East Initiative". As the Republican Party controlled both the White House and Congress, legislative organs were in fact unable to perform their checking and balancing function. Congress became a mere rubber stamp, used whenever the White House needed its endorsement. Although this year's mid-term elections only involved the legislative organs, to a certain extent, the election was a referendum on the Republican's conservative revolution. The results of various public opinion polls show that the Iraq war was the most important issue in the election. More and more questions are being asked about the legitimacy of this war. The Bush administration has also been severely criticized for
its incompetence in post-war reconstruction. Seeing Iraq become another Vietnam, more and more Americans came to realize the predicament the US was in. "The tumultuous mid-term elections came to an end. Americans voted to punish hard and cold-blooded right-wing extremist conservatives. The Democratic Party's regaining the control of the Senate and House of Representatives, together with Rumsfeld's departure, might mark the end of the golden years of neo-conservatism." The tumultuous mid-term elections came to an end. Americans voted to punish hard and cold-blooded right-wing extremist conservatives. The Democratic Party's regaining the control of the Senate and House of Representatives, together with Rumsfeld's departure, might mark the end of the golden years of neo-conservatism. "The tumultuous mid-term elections came to an end. Americans voted to punish hard and cold-blooded right-wing extremist conservatives. The Democratic Party's regaining the
control of the Senate and House of Representatives, together with Rumsfeld's departure, might mark the end of the golden years of neo-conservatism."

Where Pakistan stands after US MID TERM ELECTIONS?

India need have no worries. New Delhi has friends in both parties, with many prominent Democrats among its most vocal supporters. Lest we forget, this administration’s pursuit of a “strategic relationship” with India was built on Clinton’s strong desire to craft special relations with New Delhi. The July 2005 Bush-Manmohan Singh agreement on the sale of nuclear reactors may face some scrutiny as a few of the Democrats are zealously opposed to proliferation. But since it enjoys support of the leadership of both parties, it could get approved at an early date.
Bush has said repeatedly that he is “tight” with Musharraf, describing him as a close friend and ally. Pakistan’s role and contribution to the US-led global war on terror has been invaluable to the US and widely acknowledged by this administration. This has enabled the Pakistani leader to escape congressional scrutiny of many of his policies. It has also enabled him to dismiss the growing clamour in the country, including from former associates, that he leave the army and stand for election as a genuine civilian political leader rather than insist on remaining army chief.

The senate foreign affairs committee is now likely to be headed by Delaware Senator Joe Biden, a liberal Democrat, who has been harsh with Pakistan, even in the best of times. He can be expected to focus on the absence of genuine democracy in Pakistan, as well as on issues such as the treatment of minorities and women. And, of course, since we have ourselves been so generous in detailing our alleged indiscretions as regards the control and command of our nuclear programme, Biden is sure to ask the administration what it has done about this concern. Congress may also ask the administration to take measures to ensure that the forthcoming elections in Pakistan are genuinely free and fair.

"UNQUOTE"

List of Neocons

2008-10-11T13:55:00.000-07:00

Author :: to be determined

Both, either Republicans or Democrat are same as far as the Third World is concerned.
My reply would be in two Parts:

1 - Republicans [Grand Old Party - GOP]:

US Government is in the hands of Zionists and i.e. 100%

For example one must not overlook a fact that John Kerry [Democart voted in favour of US War on Iraq like John Kerry [Democrat].

Political Activist type of Mullahs e.g. Qazi Hussain Ahmed/Jamat-e-Islami often raise hue and cry against the so-called Imperialism of the US. I call it the connivance of MMA-Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Jamat-e-Islami to support General Musharraf Martial Law Regime [basically US Republican War Machine] from 2002-2007 particularly in reference with 17 th Constitutional Amendment i.e. LFO to offer Musharraf a complete free hand through this notorious and illegal constitutional amendment rather tampering.

A key member of MMA [Alliance of Religious Parties of Pakistan which supported General Musharraf] Akram Khan Durrani [the then Chief Minister of NWFP - 2002 - 2007] visited the USA-PENTAGONE- US DEFENCE DEPTT, for discussing what Propblem of Muslim Ummah? Read

Let me tell you about Zionists lobby i.e. basically Neocons lest you foget history which is second nature of nowadays Ummah while completely forgetting the facts during Afghan War of Independence 1979-1989 the very same Zionist lobby i.e. Neo-Cons in US were the ones who helped Afghans through Pakistan. Many of the present Neo-Cons [also Zionists] were very young while serving Ronald Reagan's Jihad in Afghanistan e.g. Armitage, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and countless others. [Do check US State Deptt. website]

Under this doctrine, known as the Kirkpatrick Doctrine, the Reagan administration initially tolerated leaders such as Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and General Ziaul Haq in Pakistan. As the 1980's wore on, however, younger, second-generation neoconservatives, such as Elliot Abrams, pushed for a clear policy of supporting democracy against both left and right wing dictators.

Thus, while U.S. support for Marcos continued until and even after the fraudulent Philippine election of February 7, 1986, there was debate within the administration regarding how and when to oppose Marcos. In the days that followed, with the widespread popular refusal to accept Marcos as the purported winner, turmoil in the Philippines grew.

I am amazed at selective and compartmentalized approach of Islamists and Pakistanists of Pakistan which condmens Asif Ali Zardair but absolves General Zia and Jamat-e-Islami. Even during the of Musharraf, his allies in NWFP and Baluchistan [i.e. MMA Alliance of Religio Political Parties] visited the USA and even if that was not enough they were welcomed in Pentagon and US Defence Department.

Under the very nose of US Republican Party and George Bush, the Radical Islamic Fundamentalist were allies [MMA an alliance of religio political party were partners in power with Musharraf in NWFP AND Baluchistan 2002-2007].

The amazing thing is that a key leader of this Radical Islamic Fundamentalist Group met with several highups of US Department of Defence and Pentagon and leading US Power Brokers and guess what MMA leader were given a detailed tour of Pentagon under this very George W Bush and his "War on Terror".

As per news reports in 2005 [GEO TV and Daily Dawn reference is at the end] the then Chief Minister NWFP [Pakistan] Akram Khan Durrani's [member of Religious Parties Alliance]US Visit where he met senior policy advisor on South Asia Jonah Blank and Senator Sanatorium at Capital Hill. Earlier, Mr Durrani met Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Peter Floury at Pentagon where he visited various sections. During his meetings with US authorities, Mr Durrani explained policies of the MMA government. Addressing members of Brooking Institution , he said that a government of the people was in place in the NWFP. He said that common man had easy access to MMA government and minorities and women were being given special
care.

As per Mr. Shaheen Sehbai [A correspondent in The News International in Pakistan had written]

"QUOTE"

As the guest of a Christian organization which calls itself “a Think Tank with Legs”, the Chief Minister of Pakistan’s North-western Province, NWFP, Akram Khan Durrani, has used the legs of the think tank to reach the Pentagon and Washington’s thinking elite. And the Opposition religious coalition, Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA), leader has been preaching the US
decision-makers a word or two about the controversial Hasba Act, the recently passed law which, critics say, means Talibanization of Pakistan. It is being introduced by the Provincial Government to appeal to its conservative constituency in the backward province before the Local Government elections later this month.

It is the Law against which the Federal Government of General Pervez Musharraf has petitioned the Supreme Court of Pakistan claiming it was against the Constitution and should be declared null and void. The MMA says it will contest forcibly in the SC. “Yes I visited the Pentagon and gave them a copy of the Hasba Act,” Durrani (above) told the South Asia Tribune on Saturday night, explaining that it was not at all odd that he was trying to convince Washington that the Act was not meant to Talibanize the Pakistani society. Durrani has been in Washington from July 9-19 as guest of Institute for Global Engagement (IGE) which, according to its web site, was “created to develop sustainable environments for religious freedom worldwide, and to inspire and equip emerging leaders with faith-based methodologies of engagement.”

Founded by Robert A. Seiple, the first-ever US Ambassador-at- Large for International Religious Freedom, “IGE uniquely combines strategic analysis with an operational component that seeks solutions to complex political and religious problems in difficult parts of the world.” “In this age of widespread religious conflict, pluralism, and change, finding such solutions requires a deep understanding of geopolitical realities as well as an approach that is "shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves," the web site of IGE says.

To meet this challenge, IGE partners with governments, religious organizations, scholars, practitioners, and international advocacy groups to take on innovative projects that strike at the root of religious intolerance and educate emerging leaders to take religion seriously in their consideration of international affairs. “We're a "think tank with legs," or if you're feeling less poetic, a "think-and-do- tank." What does that mean? We recognize that thinking is simply our initial step. We're also committed to praying and acting on the basis of our thought and research,” the IGE web site explains.

Chief Minister Durrani has been in Washington with his three sons, one Principal Officer and an Interpreter, all hosted by IGE for 11 days in the US capital and New York. “I had a wonderful trip, my children also saw America and we had good meetings with National Security Council and Pentagon officials. I gave every one a copy of the Hasba Act,” Durrani told the South Asia Tribune. The religious leader from the radically Islamized province has been trying in all his meetings to convince the Americans that his party was not as radical as perceived and they could do business with the Americans on the same terms as any one else. But as a slip of his tongue in one of the TV interviews, Durrani claimed that after he explained the provisions of the Hasba Act to Pentagon officials, they almost approved it and gave a green light to go ahead. But he quickly stopped making the remark to other media channels and when he was specifically asked by South Asia Tribune whether he was able to convince the Pentagon, he was non-committal and said it was for Pentagon to give their opinion.

He was asked whether the Hasba Act, now in the Supreme Court of Pakistan after it was challenged by the Federal Government as violative of the Constitution, would still be pursued if the Court ruled against the MMA, and whether MMA would accept the Court decision, Durrani was a little uncomfortable answering the question saying “Let us think positively as our legal brains have studied the Act in detail and they can successfully argue that it does not come into conflict with the Constitution.” Durrani was, however, almost sure after his round of meetings with think tanks and NSC/Pentagon officials in Washington that his Government in NWFP would not be dismissed by General Musharraf because of the Hasba Act. “I did say that we will wreak havoc if Governor’s Rule was imposed, but I am sure that stage would never be reached as we have worked with the Center on many sensitive issues in the past and reached a mutually acceptable solution,” he said. But Durrani could not convincingly respond to the question that by bringing up the Hasba issue at this stage, the Opposition MMA had actually played into the hands of the Musharraf Government and diverted the focus of national politics from the up-coming unity talks and a possible alliance between the MMA, PPP and PML-N on the more basic issue of getting rid of a military dictator. “We are talking to the Opposition parties for a joint struggle at the Federal level but provinces can legislate and opposition to local laws does not mean we would stop talking to each other at all levels,” he said.

Yet the fact is that MMA has hijacked the national agenda by introducing and passing the Hasba Act in a hurry which prompted other major parties including PPP to sharply attack the MMA and condemn it. No one would have been happier than General Musharraf with this political move. And MMA itself is almost in a win-win situation because if the Hasba Act is enforced, they will have a new Islamic Police at their command which can ultimately be used politically against the Center and other political opponents. On the other hand, if the Act is not allowed by the Supreme Court or if the NWFP Assembly is dismissed, MMA would emerge as “martyrs of Islam” and would be able to recruit more supporters for its hardline policies.

"UNQUOTE"

On one hand these Mullahs particularly of Jamat-e-Islami talk against the West particularly the USA, Secularism, Democracy, Liberalism and on the other hand they had sought from the same quarter as NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani, who visited USA, and met US Senator Mr Biden in Washington.

Addressing members of Brooking Institution [According to Islamist Mullahs/Pakistanists every Think Tank is CIA backed and Zionist in nature], he said that a government of the people was in place in the NWFP. He said that common man had easy access to MMA government and minorities and women were being given special care. Since last many decades these numskulls Mullah declare anybody an agent of Zionists, USA, and CIA, if he/she belongs to MQM, PPP, PML-N and they since 9/11 declaring Musharraf and Co an agents of Zionists, I wonder what was in the mind of Pro Taliban Mullah Chief Minister NWFP when he was 'briefing' the brains and strategists in the US Defence department which as per a news article overwhelmingly Zionist.

The Israeli lobby has many "thinktanks" that provide future advisors to the various administrations, both Republican and Democrat. During the Clinton Administration, the Israeli lobby provided officials from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy like Martin Indyk. During the Bush Jr Administration, many of the officials the Israeli lobby provided are from their Republican "thinktanks, " like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

1). Richard Perle----One of Bush's foreign policy advisors, he is the chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. A very likely Israeli government agent, Perle was expelled from Senator Henry Jackson's office in the 1970's after the National Security Agency (NSA) caught him passing Highly-Classified (National Security) documents to the Israeli Embassy. He later worked for the Israeli weapons firm, Soltam. Perle came from one the above mentioned pro-Israel thinktanks, the AEI. Perle is one of the leading pro-Israeli fanatics leading this Iraq war mongering within the administration and now in the media.

2). Paul Wolfowitz--- -Deputy Defense Secretary, and member of Perle's Defense Policy Board, in the Pentagon. Wolfowitz is a close associate of Perle, and reportedly has close ties to the Israeli military. His sister lives in Israel. Wolfowitz came from the above mentioned Jewish thinktank, JINSA. Wolfowitz is the number two leader within the administration behind this Iraq war mongering.

3). Douglas Feith----Under Secretary of Defense and Policy Advisor at the Pentagon. He is a close associate of Perle and served as his Special Counsel. Like Perle and the others, Feith is a pro-Israel extremist, who has advocated anti-Arab policies in the past. He is closely associated with the extremist group, the Zionist Organization of America, which even attacks Jews that don't agree with its extremist views. Feith frequently speaks at ZOA conferences. Feith runs a small law firm, Feith and Zell, which only has one International office, in Israel. The majority of their legal work is representing Israeli interests. His firm's own website stated, prior to his appointment, that Feith "represents Israeli Armaments Manufacturer. " Feith basically represents the Israeli War Machine. Feith also came from the Jewish thinktank JINSA. Feith, like Perle and Wolfowitz, are campaigning hard for this Israeli proxy war against
Iraq.

4). Edward Luttwak----Member of the National Security Study Group of the Department of Defence at the Pentagon. Luttwak is reportedly an Israeli citizen and has taught in Israel. He frequently writes for Israeli and pro-Israeli newspapers and journals. Luttwak is an Israeli extremist whose main theme in many of his articles is the necessity of the U.S. waging war
against Iraq.

5). Henry Kissinger--- --One of many Pentagon Advisors, Kissinger sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle. For detailed information about Kissinger's evil past, read Seymour Hersh's book (Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House). Kissinger likely had a part in the Watergate crimes, Southeast Asia mass murders (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos),
Installing Chilean mass murdering dictator Pinochet, Operation Condor's mass killings in South America, and more recently served as Serbia's Ex-Dictator Slobodan Milosevic's Advisor. He consistently advocates going to war against Iraq. Kissinger is the Ariel Sharon of the U.S. Unfortunately, President Bush nominated Kissinger as chairman of the September 11 investigating commission. It's like picking a bank robber to investigate a fraud scandal.

6). Dov Zakheim----Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller, and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for the Department of Defense. He is an ordained rabbi and reportedly holds Israeli citizenship. Zakheim attended attended Jew's College in London and became an ordained Orthodox Jewish Rabbi in 1973. He was adjunct professor at New York's Jewish Yeshiva University.
Zakheim is close to the Israeli lobby.

7). Kenneth Adelman----- One of many Pentagon Advisors, Adelman also sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle, and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor, who supports going to war against Iraq. Adelman frequently is a guest on Fox News, and often expresses extremist and often ridiculus anti-Arab and anti-Muslim views. Through his hatred or stupidity, he actually called Arabs "anti-Semitic" on Fox News (11/28/2001) , when he could have looked it up in the dictionary to find out that Arabs by definition are Semites.

8). I. Lewis Libby -----Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff. The chief pro-Israel Jewish advisor to Cheney, it helps explains why Cheney is so gun-ho to invade Iraq. Libby is longtime associate of Wolfowitz. Libby was also a lawyer for convicted felon and Israeli spy Mark Rich, whom Clinton pardoned, in his last days as president.

9). Robert Satloff----U. S. National Security Council Advisor, Satloff was the executive director of the Israeli lobby's "think tank," Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Many of the Israeli lobby's "experts" come from this front group, like Martin Indyk.

10). Elliott Abrams-----National Security Council Advisor. He previously worked at Washington-based "Think Tank" Ethics and Public Policy Center. During the Reagan Adminstration, Abrams was the Assistant Secretary of State, handling, for the most part, Latin American affairs. He played an important role in the Iran-Contra Scandal, which involved illegally selling U.S. weapons to Iran to fight Iraq, and illegally funding the contra rebels fighting to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government. He also actively deceived three congressional committees about his involvement and thereby faced felony charges based on his testimony. Abrams pled guilty in 1991 to two misdemeanors and was sentenced to a year's probation and 100 hours of community service. A year later, former President Bush (Senior) granted Abrams a full pardon. He was one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the Reagan Administration' s State Department.

11). Marc Grossman---- -Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He was Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources at the Department of State. Grossman is one of many of the pro-Israel Jewish officials from the Clinton Administration that Bush has promoted to higher posts.

12). Richard Haass-----Director of Policy Planning at the State Department and Ambassador at large. He is also Director of National Security Programs and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He was one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the first Bush (Sr) Administration who sat on the National Security Council, and who consistently advocates going
to war against Iraq. Haass is also a member of the Defense Department's National Security Study Group, at the Pentagon.

13). Robert Zoellick---- -U.S. Trade Representative, a cabinet-level position. He is also one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the Bush (Jr) Administration who advocated invading Iraq and occupying a portion of the country in order to set up setting up a Vichy-style puppet government. He consistently advocates going to war against Iraq.

14). Ari Fleischer--- -Official White House Spokesman for the Bush (Jr) Administration. Prominent in the Jewish community, some reports state that he holds Israeli citizenship. Fleischer is closely connected to the extremist Jewish group called the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidics, who follow the Qabala, and hold very extremist and insulting views of non-Jews. Fleischer was the co-president of Chabad's Capitol Jewish Forum. He received the Young Leadership Award from the American Friends of Lubavitch in October, 2001.

15). James Schlesinger- ----One of many Pentagon Advisors, Schlesinger also sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor, who supports going to war against Iraq. Schlesinger is also a commissioner of the Defense Department's National Security Study Group, at the Pentagon.

16). David Frum-----White House speechwriter behind the "Axis of Evil" label. He lumps together all the lies and accusations against Iraq for Bush to justify the war.

17). Joshua Bolten----White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Bolten was previously a banker, former legislative aide, and prominent in the Jewish community.

18). John Bolton----Under- Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. Bolton is also a Senior Advisor to President Bush. Prior to this position, Bolton was Senior Vice President of the above mentioned pro-Israel thinktank, AEI. He recently (October 2002) accused Syria of having a nuclear program, so that they can attack Syria after Iraq. He must have forgotten that Israel has 400 nuclear warheads, some of which are thermonuclear weapons (according to a recent U.S. Air Force report).

19). David Wurmser----Special Assistant to John Bolton (above), the under-secretary for arms control and international security. Wurmser also worked at the AEI with Perle and Bolton. His wife, Meyrav Wurmser, along with Colonel Yigal Carmon, formerly of Israeli military intelligence, co-founded the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri),a Washington-based
Israeli outfit which distributes articles translated from Arabic newspapers portraying Arabs in a bad light.

20). Eliot Cohen-----Member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor. Like Adelman, he often expresses extremist and often ridiculus anti-Arab and anti-Muslim views. More recently, he wrote an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal openly admitting his rascist hatred of Islam claiming that Islam should
be the enemy, not terrorism.

21). Mel Sembler----- President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. A Prominent Jewish Republican and Former National Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee. The Export-Import Bank facilitates trade relationships between U.S. businesses and foreign countries, specifically those with financial problems.

22). Michael Chertoff ----Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, at the Justice Department.

23). Steve Goldsmith--- -Senior Advisor to the President, and Bush's Jewish domestic policy advisor. He also serves as liaison in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (White House OFBCI) within the Executive Office of the President. He was the former mayor of Indianapolis. He is also friends with Israeli Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert and often visits Israel to coach mayors on privatization initiatives.

24). Adam Goldman----- White House's Special Liaison to the Jewish Community.

25). Joseph Gildenhorn-- ---Bush Campaign's Special Liaison to the Jewish Community. He was the DC finance chairman for the Bush campaign, as well as campaign coordinator, and former ambassador to Switzerland.

26). Christopher Gersten----- Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families at HHS. Gersten was the former Executive Director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Husband of Labor Secretary, Linda Chavez, and reportedly very pro-Israel. Their children are being raised Jewish.

27). Mark Weinberger-- ---Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy.

28). Samuel Bodman-----Deputy Secretary of Commerce. He was the Chairman and CEO of Cabot Corporation in Boston, Massachusetts.

29). Bonnie Cohen-----Under Secretary of State for Management.

30). Ruth Davis-----Director of Foreign Service Institute, who reports to the Office of Under Secretary for Management. This Office is responsible
for training all Department of State staff (including ambassadors) .

31). Lincoln Bloomfield-- ---Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs.

32). Jay Lefkowitz--- --General Counsel of the Office of Budget and Management.

33). Ken Melman-----White House Political Director.

34). Brad Blakeman---- --White House Director of Scheduling.

NOTES:

The Proposed Hasba Bill at a Glance Tahseen Ullah Khan
NRDF, Peshawar

http://www.khyber.org/articles/2005/TheProposedHasbaBillataGlance.shtml

Durrani meets US senator Bureau Report

July 16, 2005 Saturday Jumadi-us-Sani 8, 1426

http://www.dawn.com/2005/07/16/nat38.htm

Life under the Hasba law By Iqbal Haider

http://www.dawn.com/2005/07/30/op.htm#3

Towards a shackled society, perhaps By Omar R. Quraishi

http://www.dawn.com/2005/07/19/op.htm#5

What's wrong with the Hasba Bill Iqbal Haider

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jul2005-daily/30-07-2005/oped/o4.htm

Zionist Influence On The US War Machine

http://www.rense.com/general36/zinf.htm

Georgia, Russia, Neocons and America

2008-08-16T20:31:00.000-07:00

No community or a nation can have undue advantages over others. Such benefits are temporary and deleterious to lasting peace.We have to maintain a healthy balance within our communities and with all nations, what is good for America, has got to be good for the world and vice versa. Sadly, our foreign policy is run by short-sighted men who do not understand the concept of Justice.

I am looking forward to the end of Bush-Cheney-Rice era and hope for a bright future for America with Obama. We still have extremists controlling the media and our administration who are intolerant to another point of view. We need to restore America to what it stood for; democracy and respect for international law.

I have a dream, a dream to strengthen the pluralistic values of America, and the desire to encourage the community of nations to review our values of Liberty, Justice and co-existence as catalysts for prosperity.

We should consciously abandon the fear mongering Neocons, whose policies have done nothing but destruction of us and other nations. Every thing they have proposed was out of the fear and they have miserably failed America, and it is time to ask them work from the angle of live and let live or simply take a vacation and relax and come back to a better world.

A few article on the Georgia-Russia conflict are listed below

Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker and a Writer. He is president of the Foundation for Pluralism and is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing interfaith, political and civic issues. He is the founding president of World Muslim Congress with a simple theme: Good for Muslims and good for the world. His comments, news analysis and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website www.MikeGhouse.net. Mike is a Dallasite for nearly three decades and Carrollton is his home town. He can be reached at MikeGhouse@gmail.com
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Who Restarted the Cold War
Pat Buchanan

"Putin's Hostile Course," the lead editorial in The Washington Times of Oct. 18, began thus:

"Russian President Vladimir Putin's invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Moscow is just the latest sign that, more than 16 years after the collapse of Soviet communism, Moscow is gravitating toward Cold War behavior. The old Soviet obsession – fighting American imperialism – remains undiluted. ...

"(A)t virtually every turn, Mr. Putin and the Russian leadership appear to be doing their best in ways large and small to marginalize and embarrass the United States and undercut U.S. foreign policy interests."

The Times pointed to Putin's snub of Robert Gates and Condi Rice by having them cool their heels for 40 minutes before a meeting. Then came a press briefing where Putin implied Russia may renounce the Reagan-Gorbachev INF treaty, which removed all U.S. and Soviet medium-range missiles from Europe, and threatened to pull out of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, whereby Russia moved its tanks and troops far from the borders of Eastern Europe.

On and on the Times indictment went. Russia was blocking new sanctions on Iran. Russia was selling anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. Russia was selling weapons to Syria that found their way to Hezbollah and Hamas. Russia and Iran were talking up an OPEC-style natural gas cartel. All this, said the Times, calls to mind "Soviet-era behavior."

Missing from the prosecution's case, however, was the motive. Why has Putin's Russia turned hostile? Why is Putin mending fences with China, Iran and Syria? Why is Putin sending Bear bombers to the edge of American airspace? Why has Russia turned against America? For Putin's approval rating is three times that of George Bush. Who restarted the Cold War?

To answer that question, let us go back those 16 years.

What happened in 1991 and 1992?

Well, Russia let the Berlin Wall be torn down and its satellite states be voted or thrown out of power across Eastern Europe. Russia agreed to pull the Red Army all the way back inside its border. Russia agreed to let the Soviet Union dissolve into 15 nations. The Communist Party agreed to share power and let itself be voted out. Russia embraced freedom and American-style capitalism, and invited Americans in to show them how it was done.

Russia did not use its veto in the Security Council to block the U.S. war to drive Saddam Hussein, an ally, out of Kuwait. When 9-11 struck, Putin gave his blessing to U.S. troops using former republics as bases for the U.S. invasion.

What was Moscow's reward for its pro-America policy?

The United States began moving NATO into Eastern Europe and then into former Soviet republics. Six ex-Warsaw Pact nations are now NATO allies, as are three ex-republics of the Soviet Union. NATO expansionists have not given up on bringing Ukraine, united to Russia for centuries, or Georgia, Stalin's birthplace, into NATO.

In 1999, the United States bombed Serbia, which has long looked to Mother Russia for protection, for 78 days, though the Serbs' sole crime was to fight to hold their cradle province of Kosovo, as President Lincoln fought to hold onto the American South. Now America is supporting the severing of Kosovo from Serbia and creation of a new Islamic state in the Balkans, over Moscow's protest.

While Moscow removed its military bases from Cuba and all over the Third World, we have sought permanent military bases in Russia's backyard of Central Asia.

We dissolved the Nixon-Brezhnev ABM treaty and announced we would put a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Under presidents Clinton and Bush, the United States financed a pipeline for Caspian Sea oil to transit Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea and Turkey, cutting Russia out of the action.

With the end of the Cold War, the KGB was abolished and the Comintern disappeared. But the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and other Cold War agencies, funded with tens of millions in tax-exempt and tax dollars, engineered the ouster of pro-Russian regimes in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia, and sought the ouster of the regime in Minsk.

At the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, historic or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred.

We blew it.

Who Restarted the Cold War
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Premen Addy

Georgia learns a brutal lesson

The anniversary of Indian independence was to have been the event of my week, evoking remembrance of things past, reflections on time present, with perhaps a cursory glance at mysterious runic shapes for clues to the future. That, alas, was a not to be. Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvilli decided to strut his hour upon the stage, little realising that the exercise would release bolts of lightning accompanied by claps of thunder, which have begun to reverberate across the globe. An adventurer by instinct, a huckster in search of a role, Mr Saakashvilli was primed and programmed by his American mentors and put through his paces at the Harvard University Law School with a State Department scholarship. He returned to his native Georgia, with an American spouse in tow, and ignited the 'Rose Revolution' whose force lifted him to the seat of power.

Not cut from the cloth of Brutus or Mark Antony, Mr Saakashvilli is invariably his inimitable self, much given to incontinent perorations on his democratic and human rights credentials and Russia's sins of commission and omission down the ages. He is a case study of creatures great and small trapped in a great game in which they are at best hapless pawns.

The mainstream and creationist American view of America is not far removed from Catholicism's immaculate conception. The systematic extermination of the Indian peoples of the North American plain, the long years of Black slavery, the use of atom bombs on Japan when the country's rulers were suing for peace, the massacre of the Vietnamese and Indo-Chinese peoples through carpet bombing and defoliation and the deceitful war on Iraq (without the discovery of the weapons of mass destruction, which were its alleged justification) are conspicuously absent from mainstream American political discourse. Its commanding heights are dominated increasingly by dipsomaniac disquisition on the threat to world order from the Professor Moriarty of modern crime, Mr Vladimir Putin himself.

America is a great country with a multitude of wonderful accomplishments but its self-serving theology of unblemished virtue and rectitude is in danger of taking all humanity over the abyss. The United States is deep in the constructing of empire: American exceptionalism through Calvinistic grace makes the exercise credible in many American eyes. The dissolution of the Soviet Union constituted an opportunity for a divinely ordained enterprise; the vast expanses of Eurasia and its natural wealth to be dominated and exploited by American decree.

Nato's noose is drawn ever tighter round the Russian neck. American military and missile bases are already ensconced in Romania and Bulgaria -- two states once in harness with Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and the invading Nazi legions into the USSR -- in a bid to strangle the possible emergence of a rival centre of power in the Black Sea. Mr Saakashvilli, a midget in a grand design, was instrument in the baiting of the Russian bear. His troops and tanks, guns blazing, entered the rebellious Georgian enclave of South Ossetia to subdue its recalcitrant Russian-speaking population. He and his Anglo-American handlers calculated wrongly that a quiescent Kremlin, absorbed by the glittering opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympiad, would take the blow in humiliated silence.

It was delusional fantasy. The Georgian President has received a salutary and brutal lesson, and the US and Europe have been put on notice that Russia's era of passive accommodation is now closed. The Sunday Telegraph -- the haw-haw voice of Toryism -- produced an inebriating leader threatening Russia with combat based on the West's superior economy and military technology. Nazi Germany was similarly convinced of a triumph that never was, as was Napoleon a century earlier.

The US-led coalition of the willing hasn't covered itself in glory in either Iraq or Afghanistan, with Britain engaged in an urgent recruitment drive in Jamaica to replenish the diminishing manpower of its armed forces, particularly its under-strength Army. Nato may not have the stomach for a replay of Stalingrad.

The Independent's Mark Siegal, reporting from the border town of Vladikavkaz, Russia's old Caucasian staging post, tells of young Russians streaming in from all parts of this huge nation to volunteer for action. Muscular 30-year-old Nikolai from Stavropol, the birthplace of Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, had "left his job, jumped into the car and driven 600 miles through the night to sign up to defend the Russian cause". Another young compatriot barked, "This war is absolutely a war between Russia and America. The biggest mistake was in underestimating us. Now you'll see what happens."

A pity that American neocons are not much given to reading, let alone understanding, history. Having taken repeated provocations from Imperial Japan's forces along the Mongolian-Manchurian border in the summer of 1939, Marshal Zhukov was despatched to the frontier to sort out the problem -- which he did to such telling effect that Tokyo's military turned southwards and attacked the European colonial presence in South-East Asia rather than try conclusions again with the Red Army. Marshal Zhukov, the conqueror of Berlin, had saved his country the hazards of a possible two-front war in the aftermath of the Nazi assault. Appropriate force projection in pursuance of a political goal was thus vindicated. Thirty years later, in 1969, along their common frontier on the giant Amur river, the Soviet response to an unprovoked Chinese assault, which resulted in 61 Russian dead, left China's territory looking like a moonscape.

Mr Gorbachev, poor man, had wound up the Cold War (much to his credit) without precautionary insurance against Western bad faith. Western leaders made false promises on Nato non-expansion eastwards. Realpolitik, not pie-in-the-sky bromides on peace and brotherhood, is still the surest guarantor of peace and security.

A perusal of Barbara Crossette's report in the New York Times, at the commencement of the Pakistan-incubated Islamist insurgency in Kashmir in January 1990, will reveal the prognostication of an unnamed Islamabad-based Western diplomat, that the world was about to witness a permanent shift in the Sub-continental balance of power. The prediction mercifully was as still-born as the Nixon Administration's hope of similar geopolitical change in the wake of its support for the Pakistani military dictatorship in its war with India in December 1971.

India's public discourse on foreign and strategic policy is prone to mix political metaphors: The organising principles of a yogic ashram have no place in the fundamentals of statecraft. Force in the defence of dharma, as Krishna expostulated to Arjuna, is morally justified. It was so more than two millennia ago; it is as true today.
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McCain would start WWIV

2008-07-26T17:32:00.000-07:00

Would John McCain start WWIV?
Mike Ghouse

Most Americans understand the message of Jesus, where he says, even if you are slapped, work on mitigating the conflict rather than slapping back and continuing the slap cycles to eternity.

Cheney, Bush, McCain, Lieberman and Giuliani do not get that message, they are either insecure and want to keep fighting an imaginary enemy cooked by them or simply they don't understand that if by aggravating the conflicts, the opposite of what they imagine happens; insecurity to one an all. If others are not secure, we cannot be safe either.

We become a great nation by earning the respect from the community of nations, by being just and fair to the parties where there is conflict. We have to earn our name back as a nation that gives and cares where help was needed.

From a business point of view, the gang is downright stupid. Had we invested half of that money we blew in Iraq and Afghanistan on education, jobs, friendship and exchange programs, we would have had greater returns, we would have fewer enemies and the world would have been a safe place for us Americans as well as the people of the world. I am sure some one will come out with the statistics. Do we have more people frustrated at us American now, than before Bush’s misadventure. Brzezinski speaks sense, when he says, McCain could start the WWIV.

It is time to have leaders who reflect the sentiments of Americans, and make sure our democracy remains, government of the people, by the people for the people.

Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker and a Writer. He is president of the Foundation for Pluralism and is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing interfaith, political and civic issues. His comments, news analysis and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website http://www.mikeghouse.net/. Mike is a Dallasite for nearly three decades and Carrollton is his home town. He can be reached at MikeGhouse@gmail.com

Brzezinski: McCain would start WWIV
Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:26:50

Former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski
Former White House national security adviser says if John McCain becomes the next US president the world will move toward World War IV.

Former US President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski criticized US officials in Senator McCain's camp for pushing the presumptive Republican nominee toward a radical foreign policy on issues such as Iran.

Brzezinski described McCain's presidency as an 'appalling concept' as it would lead to the World War IV, arguing that from the viewpoint of figures surrounding the Arizona senator the Cold War counted as World War III.

"Well, if McCain is president and if his Secretary of State is Joe Lieberman and his Secretary of Defense is [Rudolph] Giuliani, we will be moving towards the World War IV that they have been both favoring and predicting," Brzezinski cautioned.

Earlier in October 2007, President George W. Bush, who has endorsed John McCain, warned of the eruption of World War III should Iran continue uranium enrichment.

CS/HGH

Pro-Israel or Pro-Palestine are divise words

2008-07-26T07:35:00.000-07:00

http://internationalconflicts.blogspot.com/2008/07/pro-israel-or-pro-palestine-are-divise.html

My comments are followed by the article "Durban redux? Vitriol may follow Israel to Geneva" and I do hope, we look at humans without a branding them with a label.

The idea of pro-Israel or pro-Palestine in itself is a divise, we ought to consider looking at the issue in terms of Justice, peace and security for the people of the area understood as Israel and Palestine.

It is human to crave for Justice and every faith is designed to deliever that to the people. Justice is the only thing that sustains peace and security for the people. The simple truth is that neither the Palestinians, nor the Israelis will have peace for themselves, unless they want the peace for the other and take steps to achieve it. Security will not come to either party, if other party is not in the equation.

Gun power is short lived, neither the Palestinians were able to succeed with it in the last sixty years, nor the history has oppressed the Jewish people in the three thousand years of their history.

What do the real people want? Not the Media not the Administration nor the hawks who believe in gun powder and all of them combined are a tiny minority.

Take a look at our own country. For the last seven years that will come to a conclusion in January 2008, our Administration and their policies did not represent the will of the people, the media failed to focus on it, instead they became the mouth pieces of the administration like they do in the non-democratic nations. Is Israel going through the same?

Justice must be the corner stone of any governance. The idea of partitioning the grops as Pro-Palestine and Pro-Israel is wrong, they should rather look at the issue from a human rights perspective.

Mike Ghouse
http://www.mikeghouse.net/

Durban redux? Vitriol may follow Israel to Geneva
By Michael J. Jordan Published Yesterday Cover Story

http://www.jstandard.com/articles/4550/1/Durban-redux%3F-Vitriol-may-follow-Israel-to-Geneva

Michael J. Jordan

View all articles by Michael J. Jordan GENEVA – In less than a year, the United Nations will try again to tackle the thorny questions of racism around the world. Its effort in 2001 devolved into a virulent attack on Israel and Jews.

While it’s too early to tell which groups hostile to Israel will show up at the follow-up conference in April, at least two hint at what treatment awaits the Jewish state.

The Ford Foundation, the powerful philanthropy whose money fueled much of the anti-Israel activity at the anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, has opted out of the event in this Swiss city.

The New York headquarters of the Ford Foundation, which following JTA’s 2003 investigative series "Funding Hate," published stringent new guidelines on its grantees. JTA Photo
Indeed, Durban reportedly has become something of a dreaded "D word" in some diplomatic circles, prompting widespread concern that the follow-up could be a repeat of the anti-Israel extravaganza seven years ago.

At least two Palestinian organizations have declared publicly their intent to carry the crusade launched in Durban to Geneva.

That crusade paints Israel as an "apartheid state" like the South Africa of old to be similarly crippled through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. And by most accounts, even more pro-Palestinian groups are sure to arrive in Geneva to trumpet their cause célebre.

At the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, the rabid activism of numerous anti-Israel nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, virtually drowned out much of the world’s other ills.

Last month in Brazil, at the first regional meeting to determine the substance of next year’s conference, one group hinted at what to expect.

BADIL: The Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (www.badil.org) issued an open letter (www.badil.org/Publications/Press/2008/press481-08.htm) to the "Latin American people, its governments, movements and organizations."

The letter stated: "The world’s imperial powers, with the United States and Israel at the forefront, are putting pressure on states" to "silence the principled voices of the victims of racism."

Latin America should resist, the letter said, because "the struggle against Israel’s colonial apartheid regime is one of the cornerstones of the struggle against state-sponsored racism and ongoing colonial policies worldwide."

BADIL was not present in Durban.

A second group created since Durban recently sought and gained accreditation to the Geneva conference. The Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, (www.stopthewall.org) is at the forefront of the international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel.

It’s too soon to know which funding agencies will help send NGOs such as BADIL and the Wall Campaign to Geneva, but one watchdog suggests European money will likely be involved.

"European aid agencies give tens of millions of euros per year to very political, in some cases radical, anti-Israel NGOs, and these groups are the most active in the Durban process," said Gerald Steinberg, the executive director of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, which recently detailed these links in its report "Europe’s Hidden Hand".

"There are many officials in those agencies who come from an anti-colonialist, anti-American, anti-Israel political ideology," Steinberg said, "and they have almost no supervision, almost no open discussions in their parliaments over these budgets."

European Union officials told JTA that none of its grants are explicitly for NGOs to attend conferences, like the Durban follow-up, but rather are directed toward specific projects.

Beyond the Durban process, the EU officials say a grantee’s words — like branding Israel as apartheid or endorsing boycotts — are the "sole responsibility" of the grantee and do not reflect EU positions.

Brussels "cannot be held responsible" for these statements, nor can it "oblige them to refrain" from making them, said David Kriss, a spokesman for the European Commission delegation to Israel.

"The Commission is respectful of freedom of expression as a key feature of a democratic society," Kriss wrote in an e-mail from his office in Ramat Gan, Israel. "An open debate over political issues is indispensable on the way towards better mutual understanding.

"At the same time, the Commission is firmly committed to the fight against incitement to hatred between ethnic or religious groups as well as to the expressions of racism, xenophobia, discrimination, anti-Semitism, or Islamophobia, and will continue fighting these deplorable phenomena."

The 2009 Durban follow-up will likely cost "several million dollars," according to a U.N. official in Geneva, with U.N. member-states expected to foot the entire bill.

Few, however, have ponied up so far. Some $750,000 left over from the 2001 event is now being used, said the U.N. official, with Russia recently adding a contribution of $250,000 and China another $20,000.

Other countries have pledged funds but not yet delivered, which is typical among member-states that sometimes promise money but are slow to act.

Meanwhile, the United States, Israel, Canada, and France have threatened to boycott the event, saying it should focus on racism and discrimination generally, not stir the Middle East conflict.

To urge fellow NGOs and U.N. member-states to rise above at Geneva, the Magenta Foundation of Holland, the American Jewish Committee’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights and Human Rights First have circulated a petition with five "core principles" (www.magenta.nl/coreprinciples.html) that would reject any effort to "foment hateful stereotyping in the name of human rights" and instead "uphold language and behavior that unites rather than divides."

The New Israel Fund, a group that promotes human rights and pluralism in Israel, is one of 96 signatories pushing for a more productive conference. But NIF told JTA it will not allocate funds for any of its grantees to attend the event. In 2001, the fund provided $50,000 for such participation through a Ford grant it had received.

There is no contradiction, said an NIF spokeswoman, nor does it indicate a lack of trust that its own grantees — some of whom were most active in Durban — would adhere to these higher standards.

"Basically, NIF was outraged at the misuse" of the Durban forum and was concerned about "a possible repetition" of the tone and substance, said the spokeswoman, Naomi Paiss.

"We are a family of organizations representing a range of opinions," she said. "As strongly as we feel about Durban, this is not a question of forbidding another group from attending. We are saying we will not fund it."

One NIF and Ford grantee that played a prominent role in Durban — Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (www.adalah.org/eng/index.php) — says it has yet to decide whether to attend.

"Adalah will deal with the follow-up issues regarding Durban at the relevant time, not now," Eva Mousa, the group’s media director, told JTA. "At that time, Adalah will speak about it and discuss it with our donors, including Ford and NIF."

The United Nations, meanwhile, stung by criticism of the 2001 event, is taking steps to prevent a repetition.

In late May, member-states decided to host the event on the serene, secure U.N. campus in Geneva. In Durban, with thousands of activists milling about inside tents and on the streets, Jewish activists say the atmosphere often grew tense — even intimidating— punctured by anti-Semitic incidents.

The world body also is expected to eliminate a separate NGO Forum, which in Durban was the source of the harshest anti-Israel rhetoric (www-personal.umich.edu/~hfc/mideast/NGO_WCAR.htm). At the forum, the Jewish state was accused of such human rights crimes as genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

Startled by the protest walkout of the American and Israeli delegations — and the discredit it brought upon the conference — the member-states that remained settled on two rather benign references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the government declaration (www.unhchr.ch/pdf/Durban.pdf).

At this point, it’s "very likely" that NGO participation in Geneva will be restricted and woven into the governmental gathering, said a U.N. official who asked not to be identified because there was no authorization to speak on the record.

NGOs instead will probably be encouraged to attend, but at most official U.N. meetings will have to request an opportunity to address the gathering beforehand. Each will be allotted three minutes to speak.

None of the 775 NGOs that attended Durban saw their accreditation revoked for their actions there, so they remain accredited and free to attend April’s event, according to the U.N. official.

"The NGO issue is a highly political issue here," the official said.

This format may mean less Israel-bashing, but also less criticism of U.N. member-states that rank at the bottom of most global surveys of racism and other forms of discrimination. After all, few governments choose to freely chastise themselves.

This is left to the NGOs.

Still, three minutes available every day at a four- or five-day conference – the world’s largest in the sphere of human rights — is enough time to sling arrows, hammer home a message to the media and have it documented for eternity in U.N. archives.

That’s why some Jewish observers were taken aback by the conference accreditation granted to the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign.

The group, according to its Website, was formed one year after Durban, in October 2002, by one of the more extremist NGOs that did attend Durban — the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network.

The Wall Campaign partnered with another prominent Israel basher at Durban, the Palestinian NGO Network, or PNGO, to hold the First Palestinian Conference for the Boycott of Israel (BDS) on Nov. 18, 2007. At the time of Durban, PNGO was a Ford grantee, but is no longer.

In addition, the Wall Campaign and PNGO are two members of the National Committee to Commemorate the Nakba, the Arab term for catastrophe used to depict Israel’s creation as a state.

On its Website, the Wall Campaign links to BADIL, the group based in Bethlehem, on the west bank, which declared its intent in Brazil last month to bang the apartheid drum against Israel in Geneva.

This link refers to BADIL’s role in leading the current "Nakba 60 campaign," an international effort aimed at countering Israel at 60 celebrations.

At the April planning conference for the Durban follow-up, the Wall Campaign won accreditation without debate. More public attention in Geneva was devoted to Iran’s intervention to deny a Canadian Jewish group accreditation to attend the event next year. The group, the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy, citing bureaucratic and political hurdles, eventually withdrew its application.

BADIL’s home page in July announced a new Website, "It Is Apartheid," with a "viral, guerrilla marketing" campaign that includes tips on how to propagandize neighbors, co-workers and strangers (www.itisapartheid.org/itisapartheid.org).

The group’s presence in Brasilia and its lobbying of Latin American delegations was another harbinger for Jewish observers who warn the Geneva event may follow in the politicized footsteps of Durban.

The Geneva-based UN Watch declared that the current working paper (http://blog.unwatch.org/?p=168), in U.N. lingo known as a "non-paper," already "breaches red lines" as laid out by the Europeans: It singles out the Palestinians for sympathy, implicitly criticizing Israel.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which sent two observers to Brasilia, described the event as a "lost opportunity" to underscore those red lines.

Latin Americans "have failed to stand up and be counted," Shimon Samuels, Wiesenthal’s director for international relations, told JTA.

Meanwhile, with the Ford Foundation announcing that it won’t pay to send any grantee to the Geneva conference — both because of its prospects for failure and potential to become another anti-Israel festival — and with other donors, governmental and nongovernmental, reportedly wavering, Samuels says that some have found a target to blame in case the Durban follow-up disintegrates.

Samuels said that in Brasilia, he discussed how to prevent a pro-Palestinian "hijacking of the agenda" with an Afro-American group lobbying for slavery compensation.

The fellow activist agreed, he said, but "blew my mind with a vehement accusation of Jewish control of the Durban boycott movement" and "attacked me for stopping foundation funding of their participation in Geneva and destroying possibilities for a NGO Forum."

JTA
Article Series
This article is part 4 of a 5 part series. Other articles in this series are shown below:
Durban’s descendants
Linking to South Africa
Questions raised about actions of some New Israel Fund grantees
Durban redux? Vitriol may follow Israel to Geneva
Ford funding to Jewish groups

Clinton stoking anti-semitism

2008-05-05T15:45:00.000-07:00

According to a new report from the US State department, Anti-Semitism is on rise.

Nick Mackenzie writes in the religious intelligence report. "Today, more than 60 years after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is not just a fact of history, it is a current event," the report, presented to Congress on March 13, read. "The distinguishing feature of the new anti-Semitism is criticism of Israeli policy that whether intentionally or unintentionally has the effect of promoting prejudice against all Jews by demonizing Israel and Israelis and attributing Israel's perceived faults to its Jewish character," the report stated.

The anti-Semitic attacks continue to occur in Europe and the United States. Just recently two Jewish commuters were beaten up in the subway for wishing happy Hanukkah. A few years ago a council person referred to the other as “you people” in the Dallas City Hall referring to “Jewish people” as though they were cause of a discrepancy. What is the point in throwing in religion in a civic transaction, unless it anti-Semitism?

Every now and then I read disgusting anti-Semitic comments in stray emails I get from groups all across the world; oddly it is not from Muslims but everyone else. I continue to speak out against such acts and point out the unrighteousness of it. There is a growing perception that Israeli Lobby buys and manipulates our law makers to do things that are detrimental to American as well as the Israeli interests.

Equally disgusting are McCain and Clinton’s comments; one wants to bomb, bomb and bomb Iran and the other wants to “obliterate it’. Give two minutes to John McCain on the TV, he shoots the Anti-Islam rhetoric. I have not seen McCain’s mouth spew out anything but hate and war. Give the same two minutes to Clinton; she wants to be the commander in Chief from day one. It sounds downright stupid to the community of nations that a Democratic America talks about Commander in Chief’s as though we are a dictatorship. Most Americans realize the cheap gimmick to gain votes.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” said Edmund Burke. It is time for the moderate majority of Americans of all hues to speak out and discourage the rhetoric of Clinton and McCain.

With friends like Clinton, Jews don’t need enemies. Her words fuel the anti-Semitic repressed sentiments among average Americans and certainly evoke anger in the Middle East; where as McCain’s Islamophobic attitude fuels terrorist outfits like Al-Qaeda. Do we need these two to run our nation down?

To be fair in the media, Clinton’s Obliteration and McCain’s bombing should be looped 24 hours on CNN and Fox like the Wright sound bites.

We need our President who talks and brings peace to the community of nations that is true leadership. We certainly don’t want an eager beaver to sacrifice our men and women and bent on destruction of others.

Mike Ghouse is a writer, speaker, moderator, pluralist and a peace thinker based in Dallas. The list of his Blogs and websites are listed at www.MikeGhouse.net and he can be reached at MikeGhouse@aol.com

Sarkozy is Wrong About Turkey

2008-05-03T06:24:00.000-07:00

The root cause of conflicts begins in the exclusive ideologies, where there is no reason or rationality. Sarkozy is a trouble maker and a neocon and we have to watch him.

Mike Ghouse
# # #

Amir Taheri was born in Iran and educated in Tehran, London and Paris. Between 1980 and 1984 he was Middle East editor for the London Sunday Times. Taheri has been a contributor to the International Herald Tribune since 1980. He has also written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Taheri has published nine books some of which have been translated into 20 languages, and In 1988 Publishers'' Weekly in New York chose his study of Islamist terrorism, "Holy Terror", as one of The Best Books of The Year. He has been a columnist Asharq Alawsat since 1987

Sarkozy is Wrong About Turkey
http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=12615 02/05/2008
Amir Taheri

“I am no ideologue,” insists French President Nicolas Sarkozy at every opportunity. He was doing so the other evening during a 90-minute long live television exposé marking the first anniversary of his election victory. By saying he is no ideologue, the French leader tries to present himself as a pragmatic politician, open to argument and ready to admit errors. This was what he did during his TV marathon. On at least six occasions, referring to various aspects of his policies, he said: I admit
I made an error!

There was, however, one issue on which Sarkozy sounded like an ideologue: Turkey’s application for membership of the European Union. Sarkozy has opposed Turkish membership for years, a position he emphasised during his campaign last year.

Hoping that Sarkozy is open to argument, let us see if we could persuade him to change his mind for to shut Turkey out of the EU is harmful to both.

Sarkozy’s key argument is based on geography. He insists that Turkey is not “in Europe”. However, the EU is an economic and political club, not a geographical one. Geographically, Switzerland is in the heart of Europe but not in the EU. Norway and Iceland are also European in terms of geography but neither wishes to join the EU. Albania, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Moldova and Ukraine are all geographically in Europe and wish to join the EU but cannot because membership requires something more than geography. Belarus is in Europe but the EU would not touch it with a bargepole because it lacks the minimum political qualifications.

As far as the conventional geographical description of Europe is concerned, only five per cent of Turkish territory is European. But Europe is not always defined in such narrow terms. Turkey is a founding member of the Council of Europe, a body that includes countries such as Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Kazakhstan that have no geographical connection with the continent.

Should the fact that a part of a country’s territory falls outside the traditional geographical limits of Europe automatically exclude it from EU membership?

There is no such rule in any of the treaties that have produced the EU since 1949. If such a rule were to be established, Russia, most of whose territory is geographically in Asia, could never consider joining the EU. Denmark would also be excluded because its vast possessions in Greenland are far away from the continent. France itself has quite a few overseas possessions in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australasia.

When France, in association with West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries, was building the future EU it still regarded Algeria as two if its provinces. That meant that only a quarter of French territory was actually located in Europe at the time.

Turkey has strong geographical links with Europe.

It has land and sea borders with five European nations: Russia, Ukraine, Moldova Romania, Bulgaria and Greece (the last three are members of the EU).

Turkey controls the vital link between two key European waters: the Black Sea and the Aegean, and occupies a strategic position on the Mediterranean, the heart of European civilisation.

Turkey’s historic ties with Europe are even stronger.

Several of the earliest European states, including those of the Hittites and the Greeks, were located in Anatolia. For many centuries, the Ottoman Empire, based on present-day Turkey, was a major European power with a leading role in the Balkans. In the 19th century, when Western Europeans called the Ottoman Empire “the sick man of Europe”, they never questioned its place in the continent.

Furthermore, ethnically, Turkey is predominantly European. The majority of the population are from Lydian, Hittite, Greek, and Thracian stock with addition from Slavs, Armenians, Caucasian nations, and, of course, Turkic peoples from central Asia. If Turks were “Asiatic” as Sarkozy implies, they would look like Kazakhs, Uzbeks or Koreans rather than southern Europeans.

Sarkozy might point out that the Turkish language is not European.

That is true. Turkish belongs to the Altaic family of languages while all but three European languages come from the Indo-European family. The EU, however, is not a linguistic club either. If it were, Finland and Hungary, whose national languages are not Indo-Europeans, would be excluded. France itself, along with Spain, is home to the Basque language that is also “alien” because it is not related to any European linguistic family.

In any case, there are already more Turkish speakers within the current EU than there are Bulgarian, Catalonian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Gallic, Greek, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Portuguese, Swedish, or Slovenian speakers.

Turkish is already a major EU language thanks to the presence of an estimated 12 million Turkish immigrants. Only seven of the EU’s 25 recognised languages, German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Polish and Romanian, are spoken in its present boundaries by a larger number of people.

There is one other factor that Sarkozy takes into account, albeit without giving it headline treatment: Turkey is a majority Muslim nation.

However, that factor, too, need not exclude Turkey.

Islam is already the second religion of the EU in terms of the number of its adepts. France itself is home to some six million Muslims. In 22 of the 27 current EU members, Muslims represent the largest religious minority. Islam may also be the fastest growing faith in EU in terms of demography. Some scholars project Islam to become a majority faith in Europe within the current century.

However, the EU is not a Christian club either. If it were it would have to exclude its 2.5 million Jews as well as its 20 million Muslims, not to mention millions who practice no faith at all. Should Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Muslims form majorities, never become EU members? Both have already started the preliminary stages of applying for membership.

If there are no objective reasons to keep Turkey out of the EU, there are many reasons to support its candidacy.

The EU is Turkey’s largest trading partner. It is also the biggest foreign investor in the Turkish economy. Some 80 per cent of visitors to Turkey come from the EU while the EU is the number-one destination for Turks doing business, receiving education or holidaying abroad.

It is not only by adopting the Latin alphabet that Turkey has tried to draw closer to Europe. It has adopted the democratic system, is building a secular republic and promoting a culture of pluralism. Trying to meet EU conditions, Turkey has reformed its cultural, social, and economic policies, and judicial system (the process is known as mise-a-niveau or bringing up to standard). Today, Turkey is closer to EU standards than many of the current members.

As already mentioned, Turkey is a founding member of the Council of Europe. But it is also a founding ember of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and provides its second largest army. No so long ago, Turkey led NATO’s efforts to stabilise post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Sarkozy is wrong on Turkey, and the sooner he admits it the better for all concerned.

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http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/steve-blow/20100919-In-defense-of-Islam-pursuing-9397.ece
Over and over you hear it said: If Muslims oppose terrorism, why don't they stand up and say it?