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Friday, April 26, 2013

How the Israel lobby and its partisans are quietly manipulating the U.S. into yet another major Mideast war, in four easy steps

(By Chris Moore) -- Americans are fed up with endless Mideast wars. The recent ten year anniversary of the Iraq war affirmed the exhausted American public's anti-war stance in a big way:
Ten years after U.S. airstrikes on Baghdad punctuated the start of the Iraq war, nearly six in 10 Americans say the war was not worth fighting – a judgment shared by majorities steadily since initial success gave way to years of continued conflict.

Nearly as many in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say the same about the war in Afghanistan. And while criticisms of both wars are down from their peaks, the intensity of sentiment remains high, with strong critics far outweighing strong supporters.
Similarly, as Voice of America reports
After more than a decade of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, opinion polls suggest the American public is increasingly reluctant to support military intervention overseas...

A recent Washington Post / ABC News poll found only 17 percent of those asked believe the United States should get involved in the Syrian conflict, while 73 percent opposed the idea.
So what's a warmongering foreign lobby desperate to get the U.S. military to fight yet another war for Israeli and Zionist geopolitical interests, this time against Iran, to do?

Well, if Americans are unwilling to start another war, how about coercing their political "leaders" into joining one?

That's exactly the plan hatched by Israel, its lobby, and the Diaspora Zionist fifth column that does Israel's bidding in the halls of Congress.

The plan swung into motion with Senate Resolution 65, an Israel lobby-backed, joint resolution approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, declaring that
if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide, in accordance with United States law and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force, diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence.
M.J. Rosenberg, a former executive with Israel super-lobby AIPAC turned dissident, spells out how this resolution could easily result in the U.S. being manipulated into yet another major Mideast war against its own best interests, all in four easy steps:
The resolution begins with five clauses of standard rhetoric, noting that “since its establishment nearly 65 years ago, the modern State of Israel has… forged a new and dynamic democratic society including “freedom of speech, association, and religion; a vigorously free press; free, fair, and open elections; the rule of law; a fully independent judiciary; and other democratic principles and practices….” The usual fare.

Then, with no transition, it segues into 14 clauses condemning Iran with citations of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s ugly language about Israel, his repeated Holocaust denials, the Islamic Republic’s human rights violations and then the threat ostensibly posed by its nuclear program.

That is followed by 13 clauses citing President Obama’s repeated promises not to permit Iran to attain a nuclear weapon, along with Congress’ own, which are even more aggressive.

These 32 clauses are just the windup for the pitch which says that if Israel goes to war with Iran, the United States should join the fight. 
Paul Pillar of The National Interest seconds Rosenberg's conclusion, and notes how the slow and steady ratcheting of Congressional resolutions and face-saving policies is exactly how Americans and their inept and corrupt political leaders have been manipulated into major wars in the past -- wars that have done inestimable damage to both U.S interests and to the American psyche:

The resolution is an open invitation to Israel to start a war with Iran and to drag the United States into that war. The resolution may accurately be referred to as either the “Backdoor-to-War Resolution” or the “Green Light Resolution.”

Once passed by both houses of Congress—which, if Congress stays true to form, it surely will be—the resolution will repeatedly be cited by proponents of a war as policy and as a commitment. It will be exploited the way such statements have been exploited in the past. Neocon defenders of the Iraq War repeatedly cite the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998—which Bill Clinton had no use for but signed when he was mired in the Lewinsky scandal and on the eve of getting impeached—as indicating that overthrowing the Iraqi regime had broad bipartisan support and was not just a neocon project.

The resolution will be described as a “commitment” alongside Barack Obama's boxing-himself-in declarations that an Iranian nuclear weapon would be unacceptable. In a somewhat heated debate I got involved in at a private dinner earlier this week, a prominent neoconservative commentator argued that the United States must never back down from Obama's “commitment” because to do so would severely damage U.S. credibility. I pointed out, without getting a response, that exactly the same argument about protecting U.S. credibility was the main reason for the U.S. decision to go in big in Vietnam in the 1960s (when the argument wasn't any more valid than it is now).
And another Vietnam War scenario, with America caught in protracted conflict that slowly tears the nation apart, is no exaggeration. In a 2011 article titled What Would War with Iran Look Like? Jeffrey White of The American Interest envisioned just such an outcome.

Short of inflicting a total defeat on Iran, an outcome that seems scarcely conceivable, exiting the war could be challenging if Iran chooses to fight on in some form of asymmetric conflict. We might then have to compel Iran to quit, and that could potentially require the application of force well beyond what was originally agreed upon within the United States or with coalition partners. Even then, if the Iranian regime survives at all, it is likely to declare victory, and many of its supporters would believe it. How or when a war with Iran would actually end is therefore no easy topic to nail down. Any attack on Iran of sufficient scale to significantly damage its nuclear program would have rolling consequences both in the short and long term. After the last bomb falls there will be a new reality in the region and beyond.

In the short term, there would be consequences in the military, diplomatic, economic and social domains. The intensity and locus of these consequences would depend on the outcome of the attack and conflict, but there would be “battle damage” in all domains. Short-term consequences would likely include a tense and unstable military situation (unless the conflict ended cleanly) that would require the commitment of forces for monitoring and reacting to emergent threats; and also a potential political crisis in the region propelled by instability and uncertainty about the future, including residual Iranian capabilities to retaliate directly or indirectly.16 The oil market would remain in shock for some time after an attack. Naval mines, wartime damage to facilities and irregular attacks on facilities or tankers would see to that. Social turmoil would be likely as various population groups react to the attack and subsequent conflict. In short, there would be no bright line ending the war in the economic, diplomatic and social realms.

To turn to the long-term consequences, Iran would almost certainly remain a major player in its region. Its adjustment to the war and its outcome would have a major role in shaping regional realities. A beaten, humiliated but still defiant Iran with essentially the same political system and approach to the region and the world would be a long-term, growing danger similar to Iraq after the First Gulf War (or Germany after World War I). This would extend beyond the military to include dangers in the other domains.
Hence, the terrorist attacks in Boston, apparently carried out by Islamic immigrants aggrieved over warlike U.S. foreign policy, would be just the tip of the iceberg. America would face decades of conflict with the Islamic world not only within Islamic civilization, but on American soil as well. 

And all with a genesis of a corrupt, Israel-first agenda, the latest ploy of which lays out a scenario wherein Israel starts a war and the U.S. quickly takes over the heavy lifting, no doubt as the Israelis withdraw behind the walls of their bunker state, and the U.S. soldiers do all of the fighting and dying.

And who do Americans have to thank for this? Israel, it's lobby, its Diaspora Zionist fifth column, and a corrupt, Israel-first, neolib-neocon Beltway political class that is selling out the best interests of the nation and of the American people it purports to represent, all for a handful of Zionist silver.

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