ZGram - 11/30/2001 - "Who wants this war and why"

irimland@zundelsite.org irimland@zundelsite.org
Fri, 30 Nov 2001 09:28:07 -0800


Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

November 30, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Gilbert Blythe is the pen name of a Washington-area journalist.  The  essay
below is posted on The Last Ditch web site:
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch  The title of this very fine, beautifully
crafted and argued piece of writing is:

WHO WANTS THIS WAR AND WHY

[START]

 In the October 29 issue of The Weekly Standard, a leading neoconservative
magazine, William Kristol and Robert Kagan write that "when all is said and
done, the conflict in Afghanistan will be to the war on terrorism what the
North Africa campaign was to World War II: an essential beginning on the
path to victory." After what they call "but an opening battle," they
predict a war that will "spread and engulf a number of countries" and that
"could well require the use of American military power in multiple places
simultaneously."

 In the turmoil that would follow, Kristol and Kagan think it likely that
Israel could reoccupy the West Bank and depose Yasser Arafat; that several
moderate Arab governments could be overthrown; and that America's war
against terrorism could "resemble the clash of civilizations that everyone
has hoped to avoid." They add that in a conflict of such scale, some
countries might use biological or chemical weapons. Though they do not say
so explicitly, they are telling us to prepare for World War III.

 What is most remarkable about the essay is its unruffled tone. The authors
could be offering advice on brands of toothpaste rather than urging us into
a war that could cause incalculable destruction. How many people do they
think we should be prepared to kill? Five thousand? Five hundred thousand?
A million?

 Not even small wars end predictably. War on the scale Kristol and Kagan
envision, in an age of weapons of mass destruction, could have catastrophic
consequences, but they tell us that such a war is necessary in defense of
"the West."

 They are hardly alone in calling for all-out war. Charles Krauthammer,
Norman Podhoretz, William Safire, Morton Kondracke, Don Feder, Ben
Wattenberg, and Mona Charen have all done so as well. In the Bush
administration, Paul Wolfowitz is the most prominent advocate of a
multi-front war.

 Let us state it plainly: All these people are Jewish. Not all Jews are as
eager as these are to shed Muslim blood, and a few non-Jews are equally
eager, but Jews have unquestionably distinguished themselves in their ardor
for war.

 Why is it necessary to point this out? In any passionate conflict, there
is a difference between neutral observers and partisans. Participants in
any fight -- as well as their relatives -- can seldom be objective about
who is wrong or right. That is why we would not expect to hear the whole
truth about the Indo-Pakistani conflict if we asked only Indians or only
Pakistanis.

 When it comes to the events of September 11, Jews are not neutral
observers; they are partisans. That is because Israel, and our relations
with the Jewish state, are central both to the terror attacks themselves
and to the way in which we should respond to them. It is no secret that
American Jews have a passionate commitment to Israel, so it would be
foolish not to evaluate what they say in light of that commitment. On
issues related to Israel, many Jews have understandably strong interests
that are different from those of non-Jews, but the country as a whole
should be careful not to be swept up in such partisan passions. Excessive
concern for narrowly Jewish interests could damage broader American
interests.

 Jews with access to the official media have taken a virtually unanimous
view of the events of September 11 in insisting, first of all, that
American support for Israel has nothing to do with why so many Arabs hate
us, or why 19 fanatics were willing to die trying to kill as many of us
possible. They prefer to divorce the deaths of nearly 5,000 Americans from
our alliance with Israel because they worry -- with good reason -- that
gentiles might rethink that alliance if large numbers of Americans should
begin to die because of it.

 Most Jews have instead argued that Arabs attacked the United States not
because of anything America has done but because it is a symbol of freedom
and democracy. David Harris of the American Jewish Committee is entirely
typical when he says, "From the moment that the World Trade Center toppled,
I think Americans understood that this was an attack on all of us. If
Israel didn't exist, it still would have happened." Norman Podhoretz even
wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Arabs dislike Israel only because
Israel is friendly with the United States, and not the other way around!

 Shortly after the attacks, Elie Wiesel was reported as saying, "What
happened had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with Israel, and America
knows that." Such a categorical -- even defensive -- statement suggests
that Wiesel may not be entirely convinced of his position. And, indeed, a
Zogby poll taken about the same time as his remarks showed that 73 percent
of Americans thought the attacks were inspired, at least to some degree, by
U.S. policy in the Mideast. Widespread though this view obviously is, it
almost never appears in print, and it certainly has not led to public
discussion about the connection between terrorism and our support for
Israel, or the wisdom of that support.

 Jewish spokesmen have promoted the view that terrorists attacked the
United States because it is a beacon of freedom. For example, Roberta
Goldstein, who will be the next national chairman of Israel Bonds, says
that "we are dealing with lunatics who are opposed to a free society."

 There is no evidence for that argument, and that fact only highlights its
partisan quality. No bin Laden spokesman or known terrorist has ever said
he hated America because it is "free" or democratic. Bin Laden has a list
of specific grievances against the United States, one of which is American
support for Israel. In his statement immediately after the United States
began bombing Afghanistan, he gave that reason special prominence, warning
that Americans would not live in security until Palestinians lived in
security.

 But even that blunt statement had little effect on most Jewish
commentators, some of whom simply claimed bin Laden was lying. However, a
terrorist generally has no reason to lie about his motives, because if he
has a purpose in resorting to terror, that purpose cannot be achieved if he
keeps it a secret.

 If Arab hatred for America really did have nothing to do with our support
for Israel, and the terrorists really had launched an attack against
freedom and democracy -- if Arabs had, in effect, already begun the "clash
of civilizations" Kristol and Kagan say they want to avoid -- then there
might be some justification for the multi-front war The Weekly Standard
wants us to fight. But al Qaeda is not at war with "the West." It has
announced no quarrel with Europe, which epitomizes "the West" and was for
centuries the traditional enemy of Islam. Al Qaeda has shown itself to be a
practical organization that thinks it can use criminal violence to change
certain policies in the Middle East. It is we who will set alight a
civilizational conflagration if we do the bidding of many Jews and expand
the war.

 Another common Jewish argument -- Kagan and Kristol make it in The Weekly
Standard-- is that Yasser Arafat and Osama bin Ladin are perfect parallels,
and that Israel is no less justified in killing Arafat than America is in
killing bin Laden. That is a remarkable non sequitur, coming, as it usually
does, from people who have just told us Arabs hate America, not for
anything we have done but because of the ideals we stand for. One cannot
possibly believe that and then claim Arafat and bin Laden are moral
equivalents.

 Jews and Arabs have not been fighting for 50 years because of metaphysical
disagreements about "freedom" or "democracy." The bloodshed is over a very
concrete question: =Who owns the land?= Every single death can be traced
back to that entirely ordinary but intractable disagreement. But if, as
Jewish commentators would have us believe, the United States was quietly
promoting domestic tranquillity only to be suddenly attacked by crazed
Arabs, there is no parallel between Yasser Arafat and Osama bin Laden.
Palestinian violence has a well-recognized origin and cause, whereas the
nearly unanimous Jewish view is that al Qaeda's violence against America is
utterly unprovoked. That spurious parallel has the purpose of portraying
Palestinian violence as pure, unprovoked evil that justifies the harshest
forms of suppression.

 And where will this Americo-Israeli fight against pure evil lead? Kristol
and Kagan calmly predict that an inevitably broader war against terrorism
could unseat the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Jordan, with their
possible replacement by radical Islamic regimes. The implications for
America would be "enormous," they explain (of course, it is the
implications for Israel that would be "enormous," but this they leave
unsaid); and they add that "American intervention in some form would be a
near certainty." American intervention? We don't know how to organize a
plausible successor to the Taliban, a band of outcasts and eccentrics that
had diplomatic relations with only two countries. And yet The Weekly
Standard expects us to march into Cairo, the heart of the Arab world, and
impose a government on the Egyptians! It is folly even to imagine such a
thing.

 The struggle of good against evil that many American Jews are promoting
just happens to be a war against Israel's enemies. Kristol and Kagan want
us to destroy the military capacity of Iraq, Syria, and perhaps Iran, and
forcibly install pliant governments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan.
They want us to fight a major, multi-front war that would root out
conservative Islam and smash every nation that has ever threatened Israel.
Maybe that would be good for Israel, but what about us? A long,
bloodthirsty campaign on that scale, even if it appeared successful for a
time, would cost the lives of countless Americans and ensure for us the
everlasting hatred of the world's Muslims. It would raise up a dozen new
Osama bin Ladens, who would think of ever more clever and sickening ways to
seek revenge. America would become a constant battleground.

 This view of the conflict -- in which our support for Israel plays no
role, in which al Qaeda's objectives are metaphysical rather than
practical, and which requires years of bloodshed that would have the effect
of making the Middle East safe for Israel -- is very damaging to American
interests. But it greatly advances a certain view of Israeli interests,
which is why it is important to examine the motives of those who are
promoting it.

 If China and India were to go to war, as they have done in the past, no
one would expect Chinese-Americans or Indian-Americans to take an objective
view that reflected strictly American interests. They would do everything
they could to make us pick sides and back their old homeland, even if it
were not in our interest. They would also try to convince us that choosing
sides =was= in our interest, and that staying out of the fight would be a
betrayal of American values. That is natural and to be expected.

 What Jewish-Americans are doing is also natural and to be expected. They
are dressing up a narrowly partisan interest in red, white, and blue, and
some non-Jews will mistake it for an American flag. But those of us who are
not Jews or Arabs, who are not partisans in their decades-long fight, must
realize that cousins of combatants are not neutral observers. Jews have
much more influence in this country than Arabs and have skewed the debate
about how to respond to terrorism in a direction that serves Jewish and
Israeli interests more than American interests.

 It is legitimate and necessary to point that out. Jews have every right to
try to encourage the use of American military might in ways that suit them,
just as every other group has, but we should not be blind to their motives.
Unless the rest of us understand those motives, we could find ourselves
mired in an unwinnable war against all of Islam, and under constant attack
at home from Arabs whom we have given every reason to hate us.

 It is vitally important that we understand what has caused this war. The
longer it goes on and the more countries it involves, the more it will take
on a life of its own and the more obscure its origins will become. In every
war, as casualties mount, revenge and blood lust are increasingly what
drive the killing, and what may have been strictly political disagreements
that prompted the conflict recede into irrelevance. The more Muslims we
kill, the more likely it is that other Muslims will see the war as an
assault on all of Islam, whether we mean it that way or not. And as Muslims
manage to kill more of us in return, Americans will increasingly see the
conflict in the same religious and civilizational terms.

 What response to the terror of September 11 would be in American
interests? We cannot let murderers go unpunished, so we must take action
against them. However, it is folly to pretend that Palestinian grievances
have nothing to do with the rejoicing that swept the Muslim world when the
twin towers collapsed. Virtually every nation in the world -- except for
the United States and Israel -- believes that peace and justice require
that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders. Instead, in violation of
repeated Security Council resolutions, Israel continues to build
settlements on conquered land. The United States is the only country that
finances, arms, and backs that process, which, to Arabs, is a campaign of
perpetual aggression.

 The United States is the only power that can persuade Israel to accept a
settlement that appears just in the eyes not only of the Palestinians but
of the entire world. If Israel returns the land it conquered in 1967,
Palestinians and other Arabs will lose their greatest reason to hate us,
and peace may finally come to a region that badly needs it. We could have
cordial relations with all nations in the region.

 A few senior members of the Bush administration understand this, and that
is why they oppose a multi-front war, and emphasize the need for a
Palestinian state. And that is why some of them, Colin Powell in
particular, have been the targets of bitter criticism from Jews.

 If we do not bring about a solution that is acceptable to the majority of
Muslims, the war on terrorism will never end and we will never win, no
matter how long and hard we fight. We cannot root out Islamic terror unless
we root out its causes. We will never even recognize its causes if we fail
to understand the motives of those who obscure those causes, and who no
doubt believe they speak for America but whose counsels are not in our best
interests.

 A broad, enormously destructive conflict can be avoided only if we
carefully limit our military targets. Al Qaeda and its direct supporters
cannot be permitted to plot further violence against us, and it may [be]
necessary -- with the support of the international community -- to take
further measures to prevent Iraq from developing nuclear weapons. However,
we must make all decisions of that kind with a strict eye to what is good
for the United States.

 President Bush tells us that this is a war against terrorism. Whether he
realizes it or not, Arab terrorism will stop only when the Palestinians
have a satisfactory state. American Jews will use their considerable
influence to direct American policies to other ends, but our leaders must
recognize that in this conflict, satisfying Jewish interests will endanger
American interests and cost the lives of many Americans.

[END]

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(Source:  http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch)

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Thought for the Day:

"Theirs was a giant race, before the flood."

(John Dryden)