Friday, July 6, 2012

Zioconned America Adopts the Israel Paradigm....

Philip Giraldi;


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/06/the-last-time-we-fought-iran.html


Zioconned America Adopts the Israel Paradigm...., they are Siamese twins!

I recently read a fascinating article by Scott McConnell, “The Special Relationship With Israel: Is It Worth the Cost?,” which appeared in the spring 2012 Middle East Policy Council Journal. Even for those of us who have closely followed the issue of Israel’s asymmetrical relationship with the United States, Scott provides some unique insights. He observes, for example, that the result of the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel has been the wholesale adoption of Israeli policies and viewpoints by Washington’s policymakers and pundits. As Scott puts it, there exists “a transmission belt, conveying Israeli ideas on how the United States should conduct itself in a contested and volatile part of the world. To a great extent, a receptive American political class now views the Middle East and their country’s role in it through Israel’s eyes.”

I would add that Israel has not only shaped America’s perceptions, it has also supported policies both overseas and domestically that have fundamentally shifted how the United States sees itself and how the rest of the world sees the United States. This is most evident in failed national security policies, damaging interactions with the Muslim world, and the loss of basic liberties at home because of legislation like the PATRIOT Act. Israel and its powerful lobby have been instrumental in entangling Washington in a constant state of war overseas while at the same time planting the seeds for a national security state at home. In short, the end product of the relationship is that the United States has abandoned many liberties, constitutional restraints, and its rule of law to become more like Israel.

This all came about initially because of the false impression that somehow Israel knew more about the Arab world than did U.S. statesmen and diplomats. The Israelis were widely perceived as experts on what was going on in their backyard, but a more correct interpretation would have been that Tel Aviv was working hard right from the beginning to produce a negative perception of Arabs and their ways. American diplomats described as Arabists actually had quite a good understanding of the countries they served in, a vanished world in which the U.S. was welcomed and widely perceived in the most positive terms. After the Second World War, nearly all Arab countries were well-disposed toward the United States, and before the creation of Israel, the U.S. had only friends in the region. After the birth of Israel, Washington’s increasing tilt toward Tel Aviv meant that Israel’s enemies inevitably became America’s enemies.

I can personally recall intelligence reports from the Israelis that circulated through the U.S. government in the 1980s and 1990s. The reports were always designed to cast doubts on Arab leaders and their intentions while carefully avoiding any mention of the Israeli hand in regional instability. Information from Israel was regarded as something of a joke, never considered credible except by those in government who were already on message. Even then it was not wise to be seen as too critical of the Israeli relationship. And Israel had little else to offer Washington beyond its line of self-serving propaganda. Ironically, the reality was that Israeli leaders then and now did not treat the United States as an ally at all. Jeff Stein cites a poll of CIA officers that ranked Israel “dead last” among friendly countries in intelligence cooperation with Washington.

As part of the evolutionary process to change Washington’s perspective on the Middle East, politicians who criticized Israel found themselves confronting well-funded opponents at reelection time, sending the message that it was career-ending to do so. Meanwhile, the Arabists in the State Department were weeded out with the pendulum swinging so far in the other direction that the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv has abandoned much of its raison d'ĂȘtre, rarely making any attempt to protect American citizens who are being mistreated or illegally confined by the Israeli government. By the time of the Gaza flotillas, the Obama administration made it plain that American citizen participants would receive no help from the embassy and even implied that such individuals were little more than criminals or terrorist dupes who might be prosecuted, accepting the Israeli definition of any critic as ipso facto a terrorist.

Since the Clinton administration, every senior diplomat or official dealing with the Middle East has had to pass through a vetting process to ensure full support of and deference to Israeli interests. Chas Freeman, who was named to head the National Security Council in 2009, was quickly forced to step down when it was determined that he was not sufficiently pro-Israel. Since 2001, many senior appointees throughout the federal government no longer make any effort to hide their strongly pro-Israel sentiments; witness the ascent of Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, William Boykin, and Eric Edelman at the Pentagon under George W. Bush.

The Israelization of the U.S. national security model entered a new phase with 9/11, a disaster for America welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as good news because it would bind the two countries together in the fight against what his country perceived as terrorism. In the first few days after 9/11, Congress invited Netanyahu to come to Washington to present his “we are all targets” speech, unleashing a flood of Israeli guidance on how to conduct the newly minted War on Terror. This involved a “with us or against us” policy toward all Islamic countries combined with enhanced security at home and considerable infringements of civil liberties. In short, Israel and its lobby, ably assisted by friends in Congress and the media, pushed the United States into becoming more like Israel to defend itself against what was essentially an overblown terrorist threat.

A book by Israeli Diaspora Minister Natan Sharansky was a potent symbol of the shift in American attitudes. The Case for Democracy began to make the rounds within the Bush administration with the president himself recommending it, stating that it provided a “glimpse of how I think about foreign policy.” Condi Rice was also seen reading the book and even quoted from it in a Senate hearing. Sharansky, who claims to be a human rights activist even though he has never accepted basic rights for Palestinians, subsequently helped Bush write his second inaugural address, with a bit of assistance from leading neocons Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer. The address pledged the United States to launch what was described as a “global freedom mission.” Sharansky’s embrace of the democracy concept for the entire world, particularly the Muslim part of it, has at its heart the objective of encouraging Arabs to evolve into weak democracies riven by tribalism and religious conflict. The Arabs would therefore be no threat to Israel. That strategy was first developed in “A Clean Break,” a list of recommendations presented to Prime Minister Netanyahu in 1996 by a group of American neoconservatives.

By exploiting the influence of well-placed officials in the Pentagon, Israel’s leaders began to see that the United States could become an instrument for across-the-board regime change in the Arab world. The first target was Iraq, which was supporting the families of Palestinians killed on the West Bank and Gaza. Israel, in line with the Clean Break strategy, sought to create a fragmented Iraqi state that would no longer be a threat. The incessant Israeli drumbeat for war was not the only element in the near hysteria that led to the attack on Saddam Hussein, but it was the key enabling factor. If Israel had said no to the war and had directed its friends in Congress and the media to support that view, the war would not have happened.

Domestically, the imprint of Israel is also easy to find in the spread of anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States, a phenomenon that hardly existed even in the immediately aftermath of 9/11. Islamophobia has become mainstream largely thanks to the work of a number of commentators who, not coincidentally, are also the most outspoken supporters of Israel. And the hatred has been institutionalized through the creation of a number of projects and institutes, not to mention websites and think tanks headed by Islamophobes such as Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney, and Robert Spencer. A number of pro-Israel resource centers emphasize the worst aspects of Islam and attempt to portray the religion and culture in completely negative terms. This perception has also spilled over into the political arena. The arguments seek to make the U.S. conform to the Israeli view of the Muslim world, and there are plenty of signs that they have had considerable success. Christian Zionists have taken up the issue of the evils of Islam. There have been suggestions that First Amendment rights and even citizenship should be denied to Muslims. Military academies and schools as well as the FBI have hosted training courses describing the evils of Islam. Also note the denunciations by Newt Gingrich of Shariah law and the denigration of Muslims in general by leading Republicans. Gingrich’s principal source of funds was casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to Israeli causes whose wife is Israeli. Adelson is now reported to be funding Mitt Romney.

So what has the tie that binds with Israel wrought? The U.S. government has taken on Israel’s enemies as America’s enemies, including resistance groups such as Hamas and states such as Iran. Nuanced diplomacy is not possible and the U.S. national interest is no longer relevant anywhere in the Middle East that Israel believes itself to have a security problem. In one bizarre case, United States Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois actually sponsored an amendment that would strip most Palestinian refugees of their legal status. The amendment was reportedly drafted by Israeli politician Einat Wilf.

Israeli pressure also leads Washington to engage in reckless behavior such as the creation of the Stuxnet and Flame computer viruses, while the extension of the War on Terror to include countries that had nothing to do with 9/11, and to groups that do not directly threaten the U.S., is a perceived interest of Israel, not of the United States. It has made numerous enemies unnecessarily and has also turned every American into a target for terrorism.

Here at home, many of the passionate supporters of Israel, including Sens. Joe Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain, are also advocates of more government snooping in areas that were once regarded as private. This is no coincidence, as supporting both Israel and the growing police state appear to go together. The Transportation Security Administration is modeled on Israeli border security, with its intrusive searches and ability to engage in largely arbitrary behavior. There are frequent demands from Congress to force the TSA to copy exactly Israeli air travel security practices, including profiling and prolonged interrogations of travelers. Indeed, many of the private security companies operating in the United States, particularly relating to air travel, are already Israeli. The PATRIOT Act also derives from the Israeli model of limiting civil liberties in terrorism cases to enable the police and security services to operate more freely. Unlimited detention without charges for terrorism suspects, recently introduced in the U.S. as part of the National Defense Appropriation Act of 2013, is similar to Israeli practices when dealing with Palestinians. In a step toward the “disloyal” second-class status afforded to Arab citizens of Israel, American Muslims have been singled out as enemies of the state by Rep. Peter King and others, a convenient label that also allows critics to indict their countries of origin as terrorist havens.

So we are Israel and Israel is us. Although the synergy has benefited Israel in the short term in that it has enabled the Netanyahu government to act with relative impunity, it is difficult to see what Americans might have gained from the exchange apart from a now well-established tradition of constant warfare against numerous enemies overseas and diminished rights and the seeds of sectarian conflict planted here at home....



File: http://www.IRmep.org/ila/krytons/06272012_milco_mdr.pdf

**********************************************Analysis********************************

Netanyahu Worked Inside Nuclear Smuggling Ring
Counterespionage debriefing reveals how Israel targeted U.S.

by Grant F. Smith

http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2012/07/03/netanyahu-worked-inside-nuclear-smuggling-ring/


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Philip Giraldi is a recognized authority on international security and counterterrorism issues. He became famous for claiming in 2005 that the USA was preparing plans to attack Iran with nuclear weapons in response to a terrorist action against the US, independently of whether or not Iran was involved in the action. He is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served eighteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was Chief of Base in Barcelona from 1989 to 1992 designated as the Agency’s senior officer for Olympic Games support. Since 1992, Phil Giraldi has been engaged in security consulting for a number of Fortune 500 corporate clients. He is currently President of San Marco International, a consulting firm that specializes in international security management and risk assessment, and also a partner in Cannistraro Associates, a security consultancy located in McLean, Virginia. Phil was awarded an MA and PhD from the University of London in European History and holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the University of Chicago. He speaks Spanish, Italian, German, and Turkish.
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Illustration: Hakbari / PressTV
Article published here:
Antiwar.com


URL: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2012/07/05/america-adopts-the-israel-paradigm




let's just count from WWII......bombing of Dresden, fire bombing of Tokyo, nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, No Gung Ri massacre in Korea, Mai Lai Massacre in Vietnam, Agent Orange, bombing of Laos and Cambodia, CIA Proxy Militias in Lebanon and a savage war that lasted 40 years, many bombings, Qana1, Qana2, and Israeli invasions wholly supported by the thugs in Washington DC, bombings of Libya, Massacre in Panama (1989, not 1859), bombing of Yugoslavia, Highway of Death Kuwait, the invasion of Iraq, Abou Ghraib, secret torture prisons all over the world, Guantanamo, secret CIA flights and kidnappings of innocent people, (massacres of Haditha, Fallujah etc), Invasion of Afghanistan and the ongoing daily killings (and pissing on corpses) and ongoing drone killings of weddings, funerals etc in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia etc......
After "the coalition of the wiling" respectively NATO bombed the hell out of them killing and injuring hundreds of thousands and causing many millions to flee their homeland installed/are installing a government of their liking. Both, Iraq and Libya, are ruled by US puppets. Including also the ex-middle-manager of a US oil company who is now ruling over Afghanistan....
The US scheme to draw Iran into a regional war so Americans can get their "boots on the ground" in both Syria, Lebanon and Iran is on track and, so far, under budget. America plans to remove Russia's Mediterranean naval base in Syria and install a "friendly" government in Tehran. In the process of failing to realize this impossible dream, they will turn the entire middle east into a smoking ruin with hundreds of Tribes with Flags that will spread all over ASIA, MENA, Africa and beyond...., much as they have already done in Iraq....


Having spent ten years in Turkey ( 1969-93 & 1992-98 ) and kept a watch on Turkey since 1967 , I have been dismayed by the events in and around Turkey in the last decade , some engineered by the Turks themselves , others beyond their control like the US led 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq , which fortuitously it did not join , thanks to strong peoples opposition and a non-committal Military .The military, a well organized and disciplined force and till now secular and stake holder in the country having helped Kemal Ataturk create it out of the ashes of the ruins of the defeated Ottoman empire after WWI , when the victorious and rapacious Europeans led by the British wanted to reduce the present state to one fourth of its current territory .
The autonomous military establishment has been fiddled with and weakened perhaps even as a war machine in the wake of arrest of many serving and retired senior officers including respected generals on not too believable charges by special courts, the kind which Ataturk used in 1930s against London conspiracies against the new republic after the British forces moved into Iraqi Kurdistan oil areas of Kirkuk after the ceasefire .Turkey has still hopes of recovering that area.
In spite of late President Turgot Ozal itching to get into the war into Iraq in 1991 , the Turkish military opposed it and military chief even resigned on this question . Turkey has little experience of a real full scale war since WWI , and the War of independence against encroaching European forces from all sides , wherein Ataturk and the military made its reputation .
A Turkish brigade fought valiantly in the 1950s Korean war, to help entry into NATO .Since then a police action against the militia in Cyprus in 1974 has nothing to write home about .Yes it has fought a war of attrition against Kurdish rebellion in SE Turkey since 1984, in which 45,000 Turks mostly Kurds but including 5000 soldiers have lost their lives.
Syria was the base for the Kurdish PKK under the leadership of Abdullah Ocalan, now imprisoned in a prison near Istanbul. He was expelled from Syria in 1999 when following the collapse of USSR , Damascus sans its ally USSR was forced to send out Ocalan under threat of military attack from Turkey .Now Syria has full support of Russia , Iran and indirectly of China and Shia ruled Baghdad and Hezbollah in Lebanon .
After the expulsion of Ocalan and the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 , relations between Ankara and Damascus improved beyond recognition , but the revolt of the Arab masses against US supported dictators in the Middle East and Washington and Riyadh concern to divert the movements away from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf , and Riyadh's massive financial aid and support has made a mincemeat of FM Davutoglu's foreign policy of Zero friction with neighbors not helped by PM Erdogan's hot headedness and love for applause of Arabs ( for speaking out against Israel) , now Sunni leaders if not the masses on its stand first on Libya and now Syria ..But it is not going be anything like that .Turkey has got itself into a real mess in its foreign policy ,with no friend around in neighborhood.
Turkey should also remember that it's not happy population of Kurds is around 20% looking at Kurds in autonomous north Iraq , lording over oil revenues ( while Turkey has little) and about 15% Alevis, Shias like those of Iran and ruling minority Alwaite dominated leadership in Damascus .Turkey' border province of Hatay –Antakya( old Antioch) has a sizable Alevi population , and was awarded to Turkey after allegedly a rigged referendum by the West , which hoped that Ankara would join the Allies in WWII , in which it remained neutral as wisely advised by Ataturk to his successors before his death in 1938 .Damascus then ruled by Sunnis did not object much but it has not given up hope .Whenever the author crossed over to Syria while posted in Jordan ( 1989-92) , he found the Syrian border officers very friendly and hospitable but also noticed that Hatay was shown inside Syria in its maps .
The Middle East is a tapestry of religions, beliefs, nationalities, ethnicities and languages which the Ottoman Sultans with their Turkestan's imperial and catholic outlook kept together by allowing them called Millets freedom in their beliefs, education, language and customs. It is estimated that the population of those who migrated from central Asia to Turkey is no more than 15% .The rest are local population who were Islamized and Turkified over centuries .Kurds, an Indo-Iranian people are indigenous, while the Turks entered what was known as Anatolia/Asia Minor in early 11th century when it was Byzantine empire and Istanbul was known as Constantinople.
As perceptive diplomats have known, big powers can make deal at the cost of smaller nations, while still maintaining an adversarial posture....
Read below what Pepe has to say in his inimitable style.
K. Gajendra Singh 7 July 2012. Delhi