"Our media, our sheltering parents"
Printed on Friday, March 14, 2003 @ 01:17:05 EST
By Gabriel Ash
YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)
(YellowTimes.org) – Suppose you were a journalist and there were elections. Suppose that the new government administration decided to wage a war of choice on another country for reasons that the whole world finds perplexing. Suppose that another journalist finds out the decision to start a war was not even reviewed according to standard procedures in the State Department, but was based on Pentagon recommendations alone. What would you do?
Would you perhaps make a list of the top Pentagon people? Would you perhaps look at their biographies, their public statements and affiliations, in order to figure out their world views and motivations?
Suppose you found out that the third-highest ranking officer in the Pentagon was one of a tightly knit group of people with strong connections to a political party in another country? This officer, for example, was a board member of an organization called JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Wouldn't you be intrigued? Wouldn't you want to know what obscure connection could possibly exist between Judaism and national security -- perhaps a lost biblical theory of nuclear deterrence?
And wouldn't you want to know who else is in JINSA, what JINSA does, where JINSA's budget comes from? Wouldn't your curiosity be piqued if you knew that JINSA was brimming with senior employees of top military contractors, or that the CEO of JINSA also managed a "charity" that funded Jewish settlements on Syrian territory? Wouldn't you want to know if the Pentagon people also supported blatant violations of Security Council resolutions?
Suppose you discovered that JINSA lobbies on behalf of Israel (not a secret -- it takes a few mouse clicks on JINSA's website to find out). Wouldn't you find it noteworthy that Israel is the only country in the world whose leaders actually want a war against Iraq? Wouldn't you want to know why?
What if you discovered that this officer -- his name, by the way, is Douglas Feith -- while in office, gave Israel advice designed to undermine U.S. influence abroad? Would you publish an article about all these troubling discoveries?
I bet you would.
But the New York Times wouldn't. Not, as you might think, because the Times is careful with people's reputations. The Times had no problem wrapping itself in the flag when it published half-baked lies about the Chinese-American nuclear physicist Wen Ho Lee. Of course, Lee was just a racially challenged immigrant. The Times has different standards for Washington insiders.
You'd think newspapers exist to keep the public informed. The Times, however, sees itself the guardian of our peace of mind. Like a protective parent, it shelters us from the disturbing world of adulthood -- questioning the loyalties of Washington insiders is just too traumatic for our tender minds.
It's hard being a parent in the age of the Internet. Information flows faster than ever. Others have dug up the stories the Times finds too unsettling. People communicate across the globe in the blink of an eye. The news about the Zionist connection in Washington keep circulating, with or without the Times' parental consent.
Finally, when the story is too big to ignore, the Times switches strategy.
On March 8, we were treated to one of those serious parental conversations about life – an op-ed by Bill Keller. The subtext of his condescending article was to remind us that we shouldn't be talking to strangers because only information vetted by "mainstream discussion," i.e. by Keller's boss, is safe and healthy for us.
Keller's arguments are bunk. His power lies in magnifying and manipulating the insecurity of his readers by the threat of ridicule and rejection. His strategy is to label the diligent work of journalists such as Jason Westas as a "conspiracy theory."
In a trivial sense, every decision taken behind closed doors is a conspiracy. Every explanation that deduces such a decision from circumstantial evidence is a conspiracy theory. The theory that the leadership of the Third Reich conspired to exterminate Europe's Jews is a conspiracy theory, and so is the theory that eleven bearded men from Afghanistan took down the Twin Towers. I assume Keller believes both theories, and so do I.
The term "conspiracy theory" used to be reserved to describe a paranoid mode of explanation that does not allow falsification. In this paranoid mode, positive evidence proves the thesis, but so does contradictory evidence, which "shows" that evidence has been suppressed or planted. A conspiracy theory used to be a theory that postulates a secret and all-powerful conspiracy, while manipulating the rules of inference so as to always reach the same conclusion, whatever the evidence.
The White House's theory that Iraq possesses nuclear weapons even when all evidence suggests that it doesn't (not including the forged documents provided by the Pentagon) is a classic example of the conspiracy theorist's way of thinking. In Rumsfeld's words, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," but evidence of effort to suppress evidence.
For Keller, however, "conspiracy theory" is merely an insult one hurls against those who question the motives of people in power. If you believe that there is a difference between rhetoric and reality, that understanding politics requires more than quoting official speech, if you believe people are often motivated by things other than noble ideals, or that politicians do say behind closed doors things they don't say publicly, Keller thinks you're a "conspiracy theorist."
Keller never bothers to quote a credible opponent. Instead of grappling with serious and deeply troubling issues, such as the unwholesome synergies between Zionism and the U.S. military industry, Keller ridicules "the notion that we are about to send a quarter of a million American soldiers to war for the sake of Israel." To phrase it that way is simplistic and wrong. The Times, however, has so far not allowed its readers to be exposed to a cogent analysis of the role of Zionists in Washington.
Keller's major "argument" is a non sequitur. Keller dismisses the relevance of the strategic document in which Perle, Feith and Wurmser, three Pentagon insiders, advised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 to seek the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. The document, called "Clean Break," is supposedly irrelevant because the authors "did not call for an American conquest of Saddam," but suggested Israel act on its own. Ignore for a moment the Bushist dislexicality that took over Keller's pen -- the "conquest of Saddam" sounds like the title of an XXX-rated film I'd rather not see. Keller wants us to believe that the advice Perle, Feith and Wurmser gave Israel in 1996, to seek the overthrow of the government of Iraq, has nothing to do with the current drive towards war, which just happens to have exactly the same goal. But then Keller admits that the authors could not expect the U.S. to attack Iraq in 1996 only because Clinton was in office and they were not. Keller obviously believes most of his readers are too dumb to notice that he has nothing to say.
The Clean Break document does show that three Zionist neo-cons with strong ties to Israel's right-wing saw the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as a strategic goal for Israel in 1996. The document also reveals how strongly the authors identify with Israel, sharing fanatic beliefs about Israel's "right to the land," the legitimacy of building settlements in the Occupied Territories, etc. The three are now implementing the same "regime change" strategy as American policy. This doesn't prove that Israel controls U.S. policy. But it does suggest that Zionism plays an important role, arguably too important, in shaping American policy.
Keller points out that Clean Break calls for a more independent Israel that would "re-arrange" the Middle East to suit itself. Indeed, according to a March 20, 2002 article in Haaretz, only last year Douglas Feith visited Israel and privately advised the Sharon government to phase out U.S. military aid in order to be less dependent on Washington. The Pentagon Zionists are so zealous in their support for an ultra-militant Israel that they consider U.S. influence too moderating. Their beliefs put them not only to the right of Colin Powell, but also to the right of Ariel Sharon; they are at home among the most fanatic settlers. It is often said that the goal of the pro-war neo-cons is an American empire that imposes its will on the whole world. At least for Feith, there is one exception. Feith clearly prefers to see U.S. ability to influence Israel weakened rather than strengthened!
The rest of Keller's op-ed piece is no better. He practically admits that Israel want war in Iraq so that they are better able to "dig in their heels" and refuse to compromise with Palestinians. But he still sees no evil and hopes George Bush will force Israel to dismantle settlements. Namely, Keller expects the same president who got his 60 seconds of geopolitical education from a cabal of extreme right-wing Zionists to get really tough with the Golden Calf his top advisers worship. Let's get real. If Keller truly wants peace for Israel, I suggest that he join me in calling for impeaching Emperor Bush and prosecuting all his senior advisers for attempted crimes against humanity.
For all its pretentious claptrap, Keller's article is a small victory for those working to inform Americans about the Zionist connection to the war on Iraq. The op-ed column is a measure of our success in disseminating the information the Times wants suppressed.
In a couple of months, when the role of the Zionists in the war will become widely known, the Times will publish an editorial sheepishly bemoaning the way some Pentagon officials have let their personal views influence U.S. policy. If Keller is lucky, his article might even be proof that the Times broke the news in time, but nobody listened. This is how the public record is written.
Gandhi said "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." We've just been promoted.
[Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel. He is an unabashed "opssimist." He writes his columns because the pen is sometimes mightier than the sword - and sometimes not. Gabriel is the Middle East Editor of YellowTimes.org's News From the Front, located at the following URL: yellowtimes.org. He lives in the United States.]
Gabriel Ash encourages your comments: gash@YellowTimes.org
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