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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doc Bones who wrote (48433)	10/1/2002 8:47:29 AM
From: Rascal	Respond to of 281500

I found this from your post startling! So, one has to wonder, where did all of the eerie "Go to Iraq!" mania gripping this city really start? The Guardian in London recently put in place one piece of the puzzle with several long articles by reporter Brian Whitaker, in which he revealed a paper published (publicly) in 1996 by an Israeli think-tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, titled "A Clear Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." When it was issued, it was intended as a political blueprint for the then-incoming right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu. To many readers' amazement, it has turned out to be exactly the blueprint for the Iraq policy of the Bush administration! Reporter Whitaker quoted the plan by which Israel would "shape its strategic environment," beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a monarchy in Baghdad related to the Jordanian Hashemite kingdom, which ruled Iraq briefly in the middle of the 20th century. He quoted the paper further: "With Saddam out of the way ... Jordan and Turkey would form an axis along with Israel to weaken and roll back Syria. ... Israel will not only contain its foes, it will transcend them." And to succeed, Israel would have to win broad American support for these new policies using language "familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the Cold War, which apply well to Israel." Now such a policy paper would generally be of little interest. Politicians in any country in the world have the right to consider any policies they want, and thinkers have the right to propose them. But it is of interest today because the leader of the "prominent opinion-makers" who wrote the paper was Richard Perle, and only a few of the other writers were Douglas Feith and John Bolton, all of whom are now in pivotal positions in the Bush administration and in crucial positions in urging a war against Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney has also been involved with this group. In fact, as has been reported by Newsweek and in a recent "Frontline" TV show, only a day after 9/11, in high-level meetings of President Bush and his inner circle, when nobody else was thinking about Iraq at all, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the president that now was the time to add taking out Saddam Hussein to the war against terrorism. Secretary Wolfowitz is also closely involved with the group that wrote the paper. It would be simple to say that this is the policy of the right wing in Israel and, in fact, to some degree it is -- the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Zalman Shoval, confirmed to me on a trip here recently that it was Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policy to overthrow Saddam Hussein and thus use that pressure against Yasser Arafat and the P.L.O. -- but that is in truth only part of the picture. .... Most of the "Get Iraq!" grouping here are zealous former anti-Cold War fighters. They are not at all cautious, traditional conservatives but rather "neoconservatives" -- former liberal Democrats who broke with the party over communism in the 1970s and '80s. They errantly believe that, through their positions in the Reagan administration, it was they and not the decades-long policy of containment and deterrence that "won the Cold War," and they see Iraq as the next target in the long struggle against totalitarianism. The right wing in Israel fits in nicely.