War on Iraq - Conceived In Israel
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No 1, 2003
Stephen J. Sniegoski (*), USA
In a lengthy article in The American Conservative criticizing the rationale for the projected U.S. attack on Iraq, the veteran diplomatic historian Paul W. Schroeder only noted in passing 'what is possibly the unacknowledged real reason and motive behind the policy - security for Israel.' If Israel's security were the real American motive for war, Schroeder went on: '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.'1 Is there any evidence that Israel and its supporters have managed to get the U.S. to fight for its interests?
The 9/11 attack used
In coming up with the real motives for the projected war on Iraq, one must ask the critical question: How did the 9/11 terrorist attack lead to the planned war on Iraq, for which there is no real evidence that it was involved in the 9/11 terrorism? It can be observed that from that from the time of the 9/11 attack, neoconservatives, of primarily (though not exclusively) Jewish ethnicity and right-wing Zionist persuasion, tried to make use of the 9/11 attack to achieve a broad war against Islamic terrorism, which coincided with the enemies of Israel.
The neoconservatives and Israel
Although the term neoconservative is in common usage, a brief description of the group might be helpful. Many of the first generation neoconservatives were originally liberal Democrats, or even socialists and Marxists, often Trotskyites. They drifted to the right in the 1960s and 1970s as the Democratic Party moved to the anti-war McGovernite left. And concern for Israel loomed large in their change. As political scientist, Benjamin Ginsberg puts it: 'One major factor that drew them inexorably to the right was their attachment to Israel and their growing frustration during the 1960s with a Democratic party that was becoming increasingly opposed to American military preparedness and increasingly enamored of Third World causes [e.g., Palestinian rights]. In the Reaganite right's hard-line anti-communism, commitment to American military strength, and willingness to intervene politically and militarily in the affairs of other nations to promote democratic values (and American interests), neocons found a political movement that would guarantee Israel's security.'2
War against Iraq at Israel's behest?
Neoconservatives had for some time prior to September 11, 2001 publicly advocated an American war on Iraq. The 9/11 atrocities essentially provided the pretext for carrying out such an activity. The idea that neoconservatives are the motivating force behind the United States movement for war has been broached by a number of commentators. For instance, Joshua Micah Marshall authored an article in The Washington Monthly entitled: 'Bomb Saddam?: How the obsession of a few neocon hawks became the central goal of U.S. foreign policy.' And Kathleen and Bill Christison wrote in the leftist e-journal CounterPunch: 'The suggestion that the war with Iraq is being planned at Israel's behest, or at the instigation of policymakers whose main motivation is trying to create a secure environment for Israel, is strong. Many Israeli analysts believe this. The Israeli commentator Akiva Eldar recently observed frankly in a Ha'aretz column that Perle, Feith, and their fellow strategists 'are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments and Israeli interests.' The suggestion of dual loyalties is not a verboten subject in the Israeli press, as it is in the United States. Peace activist Uri Avnery, who knows Israeli Prime Minister Sharon well, has written that Sharon has long planned grandiose schemes for restructuring the Middle East and that 'the winds blowing now in Washington remind me of Sharon. I have absolutely no proof that the Bushies got their ideas from him . But the style is the same.' 3
In the following essay an effort has been made to flesh out this thesis and to show the linkage between the war position of the neoconservatives and what has been long-time strategy of the Israeli right, if not of the Israeli mainstream itself. Essentially, the idea of a Middle East war had been bandied about in Israel for many years as a means of enhancing Israeli security, which revolves around an ultimate solution to the Palestinian problem.
Deportation of Palestinians: 'What is inconceivable in normal times is possible in revolutionary times'
To understand why Israeli leaders would want a Middle East war, it is first necessary to take a brief look at the history of Zionist movement and its goals. Despite public rhetoric to the contrary, the idea of expelling the indigenous Palestinian population (euphemistically referred to as a 'transfer') was an integral part of the Zionist effort to found a Jewish national state in Palestine. 'The idea of transfer had accompanied the Zionist movement from its very beginnings, first appearing in Theodore Herzl's diary,' historian Tom Segev observes. 'In practice, the Zionistists began executing a mini-transfer from the time they began purchasing the land and evacuating the Arab tenants ... ''Disappearing'' the Arabs lay at the heart of the Zionist dream, and was also a necessary condition of its existence ... With few exceptions, none of the Zionists disputed the desirability of forced transfer - or its morality.' However, the Zionist leaders learned not to publicly proclaim their mass expulsion intent because 'this would cause the Zionists to lose the world's sympathy.'4 The key issue was to find an opportune time to initiate the mass expulsion process that would not incur the world's condemnation. In the late 1930s, Ben-Gurion would write: 'What is inconceivable in normal times is possible in revolutionary times; and if at this time the opportunity is missed and what is possible in such great hours is not carried out - a whole world is lost.'5 The 'revolutionary times' would come with the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, when the Zionists were able to expel 750,000 Palestinians (more than 80 percent of the indigenous population), and thus achieve an overwhelmingly Jewish state, though the area did not include the entirety of Palestine, or the 'Land of Israel', which Zionist leaders thought necessary for a viable state. The opportunity to grab additional land took place as a result of the 1967 war; however, the occupation of the additional territory brought the problem of a large Palestinian population. World opinion was now totally opposed to forced population transfers, equating such an activity with the unspeakable horror of Nazism. The landmark Fourth Geneva Convention, ratified in 1949, had 'unequivocally prohibited deportation' of civilians under occupation.6 Since the 1967 war, the major issue in Israeli politics has been what to do with that territory and its Palestinian population.
It was during the 1980s, with the coming to power of the rightwing Likud government, that the idea of expulsion publicly resurfaced. And this time it was directly tied to a larger war, with destabilization of the Middle East seen as a precondition for Palestinian expulsion. Such a proposal, including Palestinian population removal, was outlined in an article by Oded Yinon, entitled 'A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s,' which appeared in the World Zionist Organization's periodical Kivunim in February 1982. Oded Yinon, had been attached to the Foreign Ministry and his article undoubtedly reflected high-level thinking in the Israeli military and intelligence establishment. The article called for Israel to bring about the dissolution and fragmentation of the Arab states into a mosaic of ethnic groupings. Thinking along these lines, Ariel Sharon stated on March 24, 1988 that if the Palestinian uprising continued, Israel would have to make war on its Arab neighbors. The war, he stated, would provide 'the circumstances' for the removal of the entire Palestinian population from the West Bank and Gaza and even from inside Israel proper.7
Israeli foreign policy expert Yehoshafat Harkabi critiqued the war/expulsion scenario - 'Israeli intentions to impose a Pax Israelica on the Middle East, to dominate the Arab countries and treat them harshly' - in his very significant work, Israel's Fateful Hour, published in 1988. Writing from a realist perspective, Harkabi believed that Israel did not have the power to achieve this goal, given the strength of the Arab states, the large Palestinian population involved, and the vehement opposition of world opinion. Harkabi hoped that 'the failed Israeli attempt to impose a new order in the weakest Arab state - Lebanon - will disabuse people of similar ambitions in other territories.'8 Left unconsidered by Harkabi was the possibility that the United States would act as Israel's proxy to achieve this goal.
Securing oil supply
In the 1970s and 1980s, the US Middle Eastern policy, although sympathetic to Israel, was not identical to that of Israel. The fundamental goal of United States policy was to promote stable governments in the Middle East that would allow the oil to flow to the Western industrial nations To allow the oil flow, it was not necessary for these governments to befriend Israel - in fact they could openly oppose the Jewish state. The United States worked for peace between Israel and the Arab states but a peace that would accommodate the demands of the Arab nations - most crucially involving the Palestinians.
US support for the Iraq in its war against Iran
In its policy of ensuring the security of Middle East oil supplies, the U.S. by the mid-1980s was heavily supporting Iraq in its war against Iran, although for awhile the United States also had provided some aid to Iran (the Iran-Contra scandal). Ironically, Donald Rumsfeld served as the U.S. envoy who paved the way for the restoration of relations with Iraq in 1983, which had been severed in 1967. The U.S. along with other western nations looked upon Iraq as a bulwark against the radical Islamism of the Ayatollah's Iran, which threatened western oil interests. U.S. support for Iraq included intelligence information, military equipment, and agricultural credits. And the U.S. deployed the largest naval force since the Vietnam War in the Gulf, ostensibly for the purpose of protecting oil tankers, but which engaged in serious attacks on Iran's navy. It should be added that it was during this period of U.S. support that Iraq used poisonous gas against the Iranians and the Kurds, which the U.S. government and its media supporters now describe as so horrendous. In fact, United States intelligence information facilitated the Iraqi use of poison gas against the Iranians. In addition, the United States eased up on its own technology export restrictions to Iraq, which allowed the Iraqis to import supercomputers, machine tools, poisonous chemicals, and even strains of anthrax and bubonic plague. In short, the United States helped arm Iraq with the very horrific weaponry that administration officials are now trumpeting as justification for Saddam's forcible removal from power.9
When the Iran/Iraq war ended in 1988, the United States continued its support for Iraq, showering it with military hardware, advanced technology, and agricultural credits. The United States apparently looked to Saddam to maintain stability in the Gulf. With Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, American policy would swiftly change. And neoconservatives were hawkish in generating support for a U.S. war against Iraq. The Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, headed by Richard Perle, was set up to promote the war.10 And neoconservative war hawks such as Frank Gaffney, Jr., Richard Perle, A. M. Rosenthal, William Safire, and The Wall Street Journal held that America's war objective should not simply be driving Iraq out of Kuweit but also destroying Iraq's military potential, especially its capacity to develop nuclear weapons. The Bush administration embraced this position.11 More than this, the neoconservatives hoped that the war would lead to the removal of Saddam Hussein and the American occupation of Iraq. However, despite the urging of then Defense Secretary Richard Cheney and Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to adopt a military plan to invade Iraq, this was never done because of the opposition from General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Norman Schwarzkopf, the field commander.12 Moreover, the U.S. had a UN mandate to liberate Kuwait, not to remove Saddam. To attempt the latter would have caused the warring coalition to fall apart. America's coalition partners in the region, especially Turkey and Saudi Arabia, feared that the elimination of Saddam's government would cause Iraq to fragment into warring ethnic and religious groups. This could have involved a Kurdish rebellion in Iraq that would have spread to Turkey's own restive Kurdish population and the Iraq Shi'ites falling under the influence of Iran that would have increased the threat of Islamic radicalism in the region.
Not only did the Bush administration dash neoconservative hopes by leaving Saddam in place, but its proposed 'New World Order,' as implemented by Secretary of State James Baker, conflicted with neoconservative/Israeli goals, being oriented toward placating the Arab coalition that supported the war. This entailed an effort to curb Israeli control of its occupied territories. The Bush administration demanded that Israel halt constructing new settlements in the occupied territories as a condition to receive $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees for the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Although Bush would cave in to American pro-Zionist pressure just prior to the November 1992 election, his resistance disaffected many neoconservatives, causing some such as William Safire to back Bill Clinton in the election of 1992.13
During the Clinton administration neoconservatives promoted their views from a strong interlocking network of think tanks - such as the American Enterpise Institute (AEI), Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri), Hudson Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Middle East Forum, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), Center for Security Policy (CSP) - which have had great influence in the media and staff Republican administrations. Some of these organizations were originally set up by mainline conservatives and taken over by neoconservatives;14 others were established by neoconservatives, with some of them having a direct Israeli connection. For example, Colonel Yigal Carmon, formerly of Israeli military intelligence was a co-founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri). And these various organizations have been closely connected. For example, the other co-founder of Memri, Meyrav Wurmser, was a member of the Hudson Institute, while her husband, David Wurmser, headed the Middle East studies department of AEI. Richard Perle was both a 'resident fellow' at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a trustee of the Hudson Institute.15
The power of influential individuals
A recent article by Jason Vest in the The Nation discusses the immense power of individuals from two major neoconservative research organizations, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP), in the current Bush Administration. Vest details the close links between these organizations, right-wing politicians, arms merchants, military men, Jewish multi-millionaires/billionaires, and Republican administrations.16
Regarding JINSA, Vest writes: