ZGram - 3/12/2003 - "Buchanan: 'J'Accuse'"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

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.

=46ormer 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. =8A 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. =8A

[END]

(The entire article is available at bookstores.)

( Source:  http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/print/coverprint.html )