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March 12, 2003
ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny: Now more than ever!
Probably today's most significant essay was penned by
Patrick Buchanan for the American Conservative's upcoming issue. I subscribe
to this publication and am recommending it gladly to the readers of this
list. It is a joy to read!
[START]
Whose War?
A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a
series of wars that are not in America's interest.
by Patrick J. Buchanan
The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also
gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and
associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment
in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle:
"Can you assure American viewers ... that we're in this situation
against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And
what would be the link in terms of Israel?"
Suddenly, the Israeli connection is on the table, and the
War Party is not amused. Finding themselves in an unanticipated firefight,
our neoconservative friends are doing what comes naturally, seeking student
deferments from political combat by claiming the status of a persecuted
minority group. People who claim to be writing the foreign policy of the
world superpower, one would think, would be a little more manly in the
schoolyard of politics. Not so.
Former Wall Street Journal editor Max Boot kicked off the
campaign. When these "Buchananites toss around 'neoconservative'-and
cite names like Wolfowitz and Cohen-it sometimes sounds as if what they
really mean is 'Jewish conservative.'" Yet Boot readily concedes that a
passionate attachment to Israel is a "key tenet of neoconservatism."
He also claims that the National Security Strategy of President Bush
"sounds as if it could have come straight out from the pages of
Commentary magazine, the neocon bible." (For the uninitiated,
Commentary, the bible in which Boot seeks divine guidance, is the monthly of
the American Jewish Committee.)
David Brooks of the Weekly Standard wails that attacks based
on the Israel tie have put him through personal hell: "Now I get a
steady stream of anti-Semitic screeds in my e-mail, my voicemail and in my
mailbox. ... Anti-Semitism is alive and thriving. It's just that its
epicenter is no longer on the Buchananite Right, but on the peace-movement
left."
Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan endures his own
purgatory abroad: "In London ... one finds Britain's finest minds
propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the
conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the 'neoconservative' (read:
Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy."
Lawrence Kaplan of the New Republic charges that our little
magazine "has been transformed into a forum for those who contend that
President Bush has become a client of ... Ariel Sharon and the
'neoconservative war party.'"
Referencing Charles Lindbergh, he accuses Paul Schroeder,
Chris Matthews, Robert Novak, Georgie Anne Geyer, Jason Vest of the Nation,
and Gary Hart of implying that "members of the Bush team have been
doing Israel's bidding and, by extension, exhibiting 'dual loyalties.'"
Kaplan thunders:
The real problem with such claims is not just that they are
untrue. The problem is that they are toxic. Invoking the specter of dual
loyalty to mute criticism and debate amounts to more than the everyday
pollution of public discourse. It is the nullification of public discourse,
for how can one refute accusations grounded in ethnicity? The charges are,
ipso facto, impossible to disprove. And so they are meant to be.
What is going on here? Slate's Mickey Kaus nails it in the
headline of his retort: "Lawrence Kaplan Plays the Anti-Semitic
Card."
What Kaplan, Brooks, Boot, and Kagan are doing is what the
Rev. Jesse Jackson does when caught with some mammoth contribution from a
Fortune 500 company he has lately accused of discriminating. He plays the
race card. So, too, the neoconservatives are trying to fend off critics by
assassinating their character and impugning their motives.
Indeed, it is the charge of "anti-Semitism" itself
that is toxic. For this venerable slander is designed to nullify public
discourse by smearing and intimidating foes and censoring and blacklisting
them and any who would publish them. Neocons say we attack them because they
are Jewish. We do not. We attack them because their warmongering threatens
our country, even as it finds a reliable echo in Ariel Sharon.
And this time the boys have cried "wolf" once too
often. It is not working. As Kaus notes, Kaplan's own New Republic carries
Harvard professor Stanley Hoffman. In writing of the four power centers in
this capital that are clamoring for war, Hoffman himself describes the
fourth thus:
And, finally, there is a loose collection of friends of
Israel, who believe in the identity of interests between the Jewish state
and the United States. These analysts look on foreign policy through the
lens of one dominant concern: Is it good or bad for Israel? Since that
nation's founding in 1948, these thinkers have never been in very good odor
at the State Department, but now they are well ensconced in the Pentagon,
around such strategists as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.
"If Stanley Hoffman can say this," asks Kaus,
"why can't Chris Matthews?" Kaus also notes that Kaplan somehow
failed to mention the most devastating piece tying the neoconservatives to
Sharon and his Likud Party.
In a Feb. 9 front-page article in the Washington Post,
Robert Kaiser quotes a senior U.S. official as saying, "The Likudniks
are really in charge now." Kaiser names Perle, Wolfowitz, and Feith as
members of a pro-Israel network inside the administration and adds David
Wurmser of the Defense Department and Elliott Abrams of the National
Security Council. (Abrams is the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz, editor
emeritus of Commentary, whose magazine has for decades branded critics of
Israel as anti-Semites.)
Noting that Sharon repeatedly claims a "special
closeness" to the Bushites, Kaiser writes, "For the first time a
U.S. administration and a Likud government are pursuing nearly identical
policies." And a valid question is: how did this come to be, and while
it is surely in Sharon's interest, is it in America's interest?
This is a time for truth. For America is about to make a
momentous decision: whether to launch a series of wars in the Middle East
that could ignite the Clash of Civilizations against which Harvard professor
Samuel Huntington has warned, a war we believe would be a tragedy and a
disaster for this Republic. To avert this war, to answer the neocon smears,
we ask that our readers review their agenda as stated in their words.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. As Al Smith used to say, "Nothing
un-American can live in the sunlight."
We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials
seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's
interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars
and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S.
relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports
the Palestinian people's right to a homeland of their own. We charge that
they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western
world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity.
Not in our lifetimes has America been so isolated from old
friends. Far worse, President Bush is being lured into a trap baited for him
by these neocons that could cost him his office and cause America to forfeit
years of peace won for us by the sacrifices of two generations in the Cold
War.
They charge us with anti-Semitism-i.e., a hatred of Jews for
their faith, heritage, or ancestry. False. The truth is, those hurling these
charges harbor a "passionate attachment" to a nation not our own
that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to
act on an assumption that, somehow, what's good for Israel is good for
America.
[END]
(The entire article is available at bookstores.)
( Source: http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/print/coverprint.html
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