War on Iraq---Israel's war!
ISRAEL’S AMEN CORNER
Who, what, and why
[Justin Raimondo is on the road. What follows is the text of a speech
he delivered on Thursday to the Palestine Center conference, at the
National Press Club, in Washington, D.C.]
How is it that U.S. policy in the Middle East has essentially nothing
to do with vital American interests? How is it that, in the midst of a
war against Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, the United
States is about to launch a war on the entire Arab-Muslim world,
pursuing a policy that pleases the Evil Imam to no end? What is
behind the relentless drive to war with Iraq – a country that has never
attacked us, and represents no military threat to U.S. territory or
forces?
Foreign policy is supposed to be about an abstract concept that goes
under the rubric of "the national interest." But since I am a libertarian
– that is, someone who believes in the primacy of the individual – this
kind of rhetoric doesn’t impress me. Since only individuals can have
interests and the means to pursue them, such a concept as the
"national interest" is highly suspicious, to say the least. So the
question, when it comes to foreign affairs, is really whose interests
are being served by a given policy. The idea that some noble,
disinterested goal is being achieved, like the growth of "democracy"
or the protection of the legitimate rights of our allies, is an illusion
perpetrated by the beneficiaries of those policies.
Likewise, the conceptual theory of foreign policy, that traces the
origin of a given government’s actions in the international arena to
abstract ideas and official ideologies, is utter nonsense. This confuses
the rationalization with the motivation. Ideals, noble and ignoble, are
the masks behind which governments conceal their real goals, which
can be boiled down to a single purpose: the maintenance and
expansion of the ruling elite’s power on the home front.
This dynamic is built in to the nature of all governments everywhere,
no matter what form they take. A fascist dictator, a
democratically-elected President or Prime Minister, the hereditary
tribal chief – all must constantly reinforce their own legitimacy in the
eyes of the public, or at least some significant portion of it, in order to
retain their positions. The dictator of a one-party state cannot base
his rule solely on keeping the population terrorized: he must devote
an awful lot of resources to propaganda directed at his own subjects.
He isn’t all-powerful, not really, and he knows it. If, one day, the
majority (or even a significant minority) of his subjects decide to
withhold their sanction from the system, and simply cease
cooperating, the dictator’s goose is cooked. The Soviets, to their great
chagrin, learned this lesson too late.
In a democracy, the process of obtaining popular consent for
government action involves elections, in some form, but in all other
respects is essentially similar, albeit vastly more complicated. Foreign
policy gets made like every other policy: as part of the horse-trading
and mutual back-scratching that characterizes the political process.
Having said this, we can now at least begin to imagine the answer to
our initial question, and yet it still seems quite mysterious that our
policy is not only morally misguided but also so directly opposed to
our own interests, objectively understood. Why are we alienating the
entire Middle East at such a crucial conjuncture? As Professor Paul
W. Schroeder of the University of Illinois pointed out in regard to the
upcoming invasion of Iraq:
"It would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It
is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting
smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first
instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would
do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state."
That "small client state" is, of course, Israel, a nation that makes up
for its smallness in a geographic sense for the large-scale heft and
reach of its American lobby. And, in the age of "democratic"
imperialism, it helps a great deal to have an American lobby.
The old-line Zionist organizations in America are one component of
Israel’s amen corner in the U.S., naturally enough, but these are
probably by far the least influential and are certainly not a decisive
factor. Traditionally liberal, Democratic, and pro-secular, these
groups have very little influence in the Republican party. However,
the two other principal tendencies that make up the pro-Israel lobby,
the neoconservatives and the Christian conservatives, are both
deeply ensconced in the GOP. Acting in tandem, and playing
complementary roles, they have co-opted American foreign policy
and made it the instrument of Israel’s right-wing Likud party.
Of these two groups, the neoconservatives are dominant, not
numerically – there are only a few dozen of them, after all – but
ideologically. Half of them are newspaper columnists, and the other
half are influential writers and academics, who shuttle between jobs in
government and cushy niches at influential Washington thinktanks.
The neocons are the generals and the Christian conservatives of Jerry
Falwell’s ilk are the spear-carriers—and naturally it is the former who
are far more interesting, so we’ll start with them.
Neoconservatism is a political tendency that grew out of the
American left: its initial cadres came out of the Communist movement
and especially the Trotskyist tradition. These were high-powered
Marxist intellectuals who lost their faith in socialism, hated the
Kremlin, and down through the years retained little of their original
ideology except a monomanical hatred of Stalin and his heirs, and an
overriding belligerence. Whatever stand they took on domestic issues
shifted with the political winds, but the neocons were consistent about
one thing: the need for an aggressive foreign policy. Back when they
were Trotskyists, they insisted on the necessity of "permanent
revolution" and attacked the Stalinists for not doing enough to export
the Revolution abroad. Now that they are conservatives, of a sort,
they insist that we must export "democracy" abroad, and criticize the
White House whenever it fails to display the proper crusading spirit.
The career of Christopher Hitchens demonstrates this syndrome in its
purest form.
When the cold war ended, the great enemy the neocons had railed
against for half a century was suddenly gone – along with the rationale
for a foreign policy of global interventionism. The energizing factor
that had fueled American interventionism since the end of World War
II, an implacable enemy, disappeared overnight – and did not
reappear until 9/11/01. From the fall of the Berlin wall until the fall of
the twin towers we had a blessed interregnum of quasi-peace, and the
possibility that American conservatives would return to the problem
of how to shrink the size and power of Big Government here at home.
But it was not to be.
For that whole decade, the neoconservatives had pined away for lack
of an enemy, and had fought off the natural inclination of their fellow
conservatives to concern themselves with domestic issues. But when
the twin towers fell, the neoconservative movement was energized as
never before. With its number one platform plank a policy of global
empire-building, the movement was in a perfect position within the
Republican party to finally implement its idea of exercising what Bill
Kristol calls "benevolent global hegemony." We must become global
hegemons for our own protection, they aver, starting with the Middle
East.
Much has been said and written about the neoconservative
attachment to Israel, but it is a mistake to attribute this fealty entirely
or even primarily to ethnic and religious allegiances. It is true that
many neoconservatives are of the Jewish faith, but neoconservatism
is a set of ideas, not an ethnic but an ideological construction, which
explains why there is such a creature as a non Jewish neocon: Bill
Bennett and Michael Novak come immediately to mind. To say
nothing of Michael Barone. The idea that neocon is a synonym for
something else is a vicious canard meant to deflect criticism.
The special place that Israel enjoys in the heart of every
neoconservative is due to its nature as a self-created entity: that is,
one that reflects their concept of America itself as a country founded
on an abstract idea rather than an allegiance to a certain place with a
definite history. Israel, also, was America’s staunchest ally during the
cold war, and represents all the values that stand in such stark
contrast to its neighbors: modernity, democracy, Western culture, all
the things that neocons fervently believe must be spread over the
entire earth, by force if need be.
So how does this tie in to the "born again" Christians, who make up
such an integral part of the Republican party machinery? The
interface of these two disparate groups, with their wildly different
histories, is the contemporary conservative movement, where
support for Israel is unconditional. The neocons insinuated
themselves into the traditional institutions of that movement over the
years – the thinktanks, the magazines, the grassroots organizations –
and slowly co-opted the leadership from the more traditional
right-wing types. The Christian conservatives, however, came from
another place altogether, since their interest in Israel is entirely
theological.
In the gospel according to Saint Luke, the disciples ask the ascending
Jesus, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the Kingdom to
Israel?" This quote from the New Testament encapsulates the
fascination with Israel and its key role in the "end times" that
characterizes the Protestant tendency known as "dispensationalism,"
which came to such prominence in the late nineteenth century and is
now enjoying a revival.
The idea that Jesus will return, one day, and establish an eternal
Kingdom on earth is a central tenet of Christianity. The millennial
spirit is endemic to Christian doctrine. But the dispensationalists
deviate from the traditional Christian idea that the Kingdom of God
will be established after Christ’s return. Indeed, they reverse it:
according to them, the actions of human beings, and not God, are
enough to bring the Kingdom into being, and, what’s more, can
provide the catalyst for the Second Coming.
Reading the Bible literally, and seeing in it all sorts of predictions, the
dispensationalists see evidence that the "end times" are upon us based
on their interpretation of certain key passages in the Bible. As the
dispensationalists see it, the future will be a time of turmoil, but true
Bible-believing Christians will be "raptured" away (literally, carried
up into heaven) before it begins. This is known as the period of
tribulation, which will culminate in a valley northwest of Jerusalem
known as Armageddon. When the Christians are "raptured" away,
then Israel will take the place of the Church on earth, and, according
to the dispensationalists, this will mark the beginning of another
theological period or "dispensation" supposedly foreseen in the Bible.
This variant of Protestant fundamentalist doctrine is the root of what
is known as "Christian Zionism," a movement that preceded the
formal establishment of the Jewish variety by some years. As related
by Professor Donald Wagner in article in The Christian Century,
"Evangelicals and Israel: Theological Roots of a Political Alliance":
"When Israel captured Jerusalem in the 1967 war;
dispensationalists were certain that the end was near. L. Nelson
Bell, Billy Graham’s father-in-law and editor of Christianity Today,
wrote in July 1967: ‘That for the first time in more than 2,000 years
Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews gives the
student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and
validity of the Bible.’"
The political alliance of Zionism and dispensationalist Christianity set
down roots early in the century, here and in Britain, and these have
grown stronger over the years, finally culminating in an effective,
well-funded political machine that forms the base of the present-day
Republican party. With neoconservative theoreticians at the head of
the column, and a "born again" army of spear carriers standing behind
them, the Neocon-"born again" alliance, working in tandem with
mainstream Zionist organizations, has become a pervasive force in
American politics. Having won the White House, and established a
veritable stranglehold on Congress, Israel’s amen corner in the U.S.
has infiltrated the national security and diplomatic apparatus via the
GOP and effectively controls U.S. policy in the Middle East.
Why is the United States embarked on a war that cannot possibly
benefit us? Don’t let them tell you it’s all about oil. The price of oil will
go down once Saddam’s supply is unleashed on the open market. If
oil is a factor, it is a minor one: it is Israel, not oil, that energizes the
drive to war. And we are not just talking about war with Iraq, but a
regional war, one in which Iran, Syria, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia will
all be counted as our enemies. What the neocons – and the
dispensationalists – want (each for their own reasons) is what Norman
Podhoretz, a leading neocon, calls "World War IV." World War III,
you understand, was the cold war. The fourth world war will be, as
Poddy puts it, George W. Bush’s "war against militant Islam."
The war against Iraq will be the first shot of that war.
Here, in the scenario of World War IV and the subsequent conquest
of the Middle East by American armies, the ideas that motivate the
neocons and the dispensationalists come together. For the neocons,
this implements and validates both their desire to protect and expand
the Israeli state and their theories of American hegemonism; for the
dispensationalists, it fulfills their prophecies of the "end times" and
gives existential reality to the idea of Armageddon as an actual battle.
These are the two pillars that hold up our irrational and dangerous
policy in the Middle East, and we cannot even think of changing that
policy until their foundations are weakened, and, after the exertion of
Samson-like efforts on our part, they come tumbling down.
– Justin Raimondo |
