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Collapsing America

By Linh Dinh | September 9, 2010

All governments lie, kill and misuse public funds, but these calculated habits are amplified manifold during wars. We’re in two now, aiming for a third. Japan, whose land we’re still occupying 65 years after Hiroshima, has just announced sanctions against Iran beyond what the U.N. mandated. South Korea swiftly followed suit. It’s surprising to see these two countries so in sync, until one remembers that they have become American cheerleaders for decades. Rah, rah, bomb Tehran! A murderous chorus is rising, yet again. Countries that aren’t our client states can be counted with two hands, even those missing fingers from an exploding grenade.

Universal outrage has been drummed up over the case of an Iranian woman about to be stoned to death for adultery. She’s also implicated in the murder of her husband, for which she may be hanged. This second, more serious crime has been left out of many news stories. America also executes, but it doesn’t stone, especially for a bit of ticklish fun on the side. We inject, electrocute, gas, hang and shoot our condemned. We’re more humane that way. Forever bureaucratic, we pay attention to procedural niceties.

Our objection, then, is not to capital punishment, but to certain methods. Stoning is barbaric. We don’t stone, period, except during one of our serial wars, where we will stone entire communities back to the Stone Age. But that’s war, buddy. We also use phosphorous and cluster bombs, plant landmines that will last generations. To rectify and avenge the stoning of one woman, someone we don’t really care about, whose name we can’t even pronounce, we’ll flatten Iran, maybe by Thanksgiving.

The United States is concerned about women worldwide. It is touched and outraged by one Afghan woman, Aisha, whose nose was sliced off by her Taliban husband. To defend her honor, it has killed hundreds of thousands of her brothers and sisters. To protect her, it has destroyed her country. It’s the principle that matters. We care about the individual, at least those who are useful to our agendas. It’s the masses we don’t give a flying whoopee about. How can we not raise our voices, for example, when an imprisoned prostitute—hardly a criminal, really, even less so than adulterer—is left in a cage, to be baked to death for at least four hours in 107-degree heat? Her captors ignored her pleas for water. They wouldn’t even allow her to use the bathroom, so she soiled herself before passing out. She was still alive, however, when finally taken to the hospital, where doctors allowed her to die. Incredibly, no charges have been filed. Such barbarity and judicial callousness deserve our fullest condemnations, except that hardly anyone has heard of Marcia Powell, 48, who died in an Arizona prison in May of 2009. The mainstream media ignore her, because her abject death cannot be exploited for political purposes. We’re not trying to bomb Arizona.

Needing to kill, a government will lie before, during and after splattering blood. Eschewing subtlety, it prefers to speak in slogans and clipped, cartoonish sentences. They hate us for who we are. We must fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here. We’re trying to root out the bad guys. Adopting this lingo, many Americans are dubbing the community center and mosque near Ground Zero a “jihad mosque” or a “victory mosque.” In Lower Manhattan last week, I saw a man carrying a sign, “EVERYTHING I EVER NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT ISLAM I LEARNED ON 9/11.” Another displayed a caricature of “IMAM OBAMA.” There was an effigy of a tied up Palestinian, complete with keffiyeh, with this placard, “OBAMA: With a name like HUSSAIN we understand. Bloomberg: what the f@&k is your excuse?”

Totalitarianism always breeds idiocy. Lies that go unchallenged lead to more preposterous lies. Idiocy is also the manure from which totalitarianism rises. On September 11, 2001, the entire world saw America symbolically imploded, but our actual collapse is ongoing. It is relatively gradual, unlike the three, yes, three, World Trade Center buildings that tumbled onto their own foot prints. For the last nine years, we have endured an unending stream of lies and idiocy, none more grotesque than the official explanation to what happened that tragic day.

Despite being lied to repeatedly, almost daily, Americans are strangely gullible to incoherent, even ridiculous narratives dished up by their government. Brainwashed by the bromide that their nation is always a force for good, anywhere, worldwide, Americans can’t imagine that Washington could be complicit in the murder of its own citizens. Ignored is the fact that it has done so many times before, and since, 9/11. Using false pretexts to invade Iraq, our government has caused the death of over four thousand Americans, more than the number who perished on 9/11.

I don’t know what happened that day, but it makes no sense to me that World Trade Center #7 fell down without being hit by anything. It makes no sense to me that it collapsed exactly the same way as the twin towers, as if imploding. It makes no sense that the passport of Satam al Suqami, one of the alleged hijackers, could be found on the ground, when entire skyscrapers were being pulverized. I also don’t understand how no military jets could intercept any of the three planes that hit their targets that day. The first tower was struck at 8:46AM, the Pentagon at 9:40AM, nearly an hour later, with no effective response from our vaunted military. I used to take buses to and from the Pentagon Transit Center. I knew the building wasn’t very tall, so it struck me as weird how an airliner could hit it from the side. Why fly parallel to the ground, nearly shaving it, to strike such a low target? Why not just dive into it? There are red flags all over this incident, yet many sane, reasonable people will become completely unhinged at the slightest suggestion that the official version doesn’t add up. Our government lies all the time, but when it comes to this one incident, we shouldn’t question anything? Even National Review, of all places, pointed out visa irregularities among the alleged hijackers, how they could enter the U.S. without the proper paperwork.

After Martin Luther King was killed in 1968, his family refused to believe the official explanation. They fought and fought until an assassination conspiracy trial was scheduled in 1999. Presented with extensive evidences, a jury concluded that, yes, the federal, state and local governments all had a hand in Dr. King’s murder, and that James Earl Ray was not the shooter. The King family did what any sane, loving family would do. Coretta Scott King explained, “We had to get involved because the system did not work. Those who are responsible for the assassination were not held to account for their involvement […] It has been a difficult and painful experience to revisit this tragedy, but we felt we had an obligation to do everything in our power to seek the truth.”

On September 11, 2001, someone stabbed America. She’s being murdered right now. As Americans, we need to get to the heart of this, because this madness and deceit are perpetuating themselves. If we don’t have the courage and clarity to confront this evil, we won’t regain our sanity or move forward. We might as well be dead. We’re dying. As with the King murder and so much else, you cannot expect the system to convict itself. It will lie and lie until the truth hardly matters.

September 11, 2010 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | 8 Comments

Neocon Iran Policy Committee tied to disgraced Iraqi National Congress

By Ali Ghariband Eli Clifton | Lobe Log | September 10th, 2010

The Iran Policy Committee (IPC), the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), and the Iraqi National Congress (INC) are connected in more ways than just a neocon modus operandi of taking exile groups with little or no domestic legitimacy, using their (faulty) intelligence to build a case for war, and promoting them to spearhead regime change in Middle Eastern countries.

On the heels of claims by the MEK and its most staunch U.S. supporters of a covert Iranian nuclear facility, a LobeLog investigation has revealed a host of intimate ties between the IPC and the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the Iraqi exile opposition group headed by the now-disgraced dissident Ahmad Chalabi.

The INC was a cause célèbre among neoconservatives for more than a decade before the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. Once neoconservatives took positions of power in George W. Bush’s administration, much of the faulty intelligence they used to build a case for war with Iraq came from Chalabi and his group.

LobeLog has discovered that, through 2006, IPC shared an address, accountants, and some staff with multiple organizations that either fronted for or had direct ties to the INC, even sharing staff members with those groups. Some of those ties have continued through today. Many of the contacts revolve around former International Republican Institute and Freedom House director Bruce McColm, who serves as IPC “Empowerment Committee Chairman.”

Both the groups McColm runs, the International Decision Strategies and its non-profit arm, the Institute for Democratic Strategies, share offices and staff at a quaint, two-story, cream-colored building at 911 Duke St. in Arlington, Virginia.

A name plate by the door reads with the initials of both organizations: IDS.

The 911 Duke St. address also serves as the home of Bartel & Associates, the accountants for the IPC and who are listed as the “person who possesses the books of the organization” on every 990 filed since the hawkish group’s inception in 2005. Bartel & Associates founder, Margaret Bartel, also serves as a vice-president of McColm’s Institute for Democratic Strategies and started working in 2001 managing the accounts of the INC. According to Ken Silverstein and Walter Roche, Jr., in the Los Angeles Times, this included “funds for its prewar intelligence program on Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.”

The address for McColm and Bartel’s groups — 911 Duke St. — is the same address that housed IPC for at least its first year of operation. IPC is best known for its support for regime change in Iran. The group calls for a mix of U.S. military might and an opposition insurgency led by exiled Iranian dissidents. The exile Iranian group of choice is, of course, the MEK, which is listed by the U.S State Department as a “foreign terrorist organization” (and its political front, the National Council for Resistance in Iran, or NCRI).

Does this plan sound familiar? It should — it’s the same one employed after 9/11 in the run up to the Iraq war. The plan must have been easy to transfer from Iraq to Iran, especially considering how much of the INC’s business went down at the little house with blue trim at 911 Duke St.

In addition to Bruce McColm’s for profit group, International Decision Strategies, which lists the INC as a past client, the two-story house at 911 Duke St. also housed at least two groups with direct links to Ahmad Chalabi and the INC.

One is the Iraqui [sic] National Congress Support Foundation, which was registered and receiving mail in care of Chalabi at 911 Duke St. (The group appears to have made less than $25,000 per year, which meant it didn’t have to file tax forms required of tax exempt non-profits.)

The other group housed at 911 Duke St. from at least 2003 until 2005 was Boxwood Inc., a organization run by top Chalabi aide Francis Brooke, and where Margaret Bartel was director and later vice president. Boxwood, according to Silverstein and Roche, was a “firm set up to receive U.S. funds for the intelligence program of the Iraqi National Congress.” Boxwood’s corporate registration, which clearly shows the 911 Duke St. address, can be viewed here (PDF).

In the New Yorker, in 2004, Jane Mayer reported that Boxwood president Francis Brooke and his family lived for free in a “million-dollar brick row house in Georgetown… which is owned by Levantine Holdings, a Chalabi family corporation based in Luxembourg.” Only a week later, foreign policy reporter Laura Rozen confirmed ownership of the building, publishing documentation on her War and Piece blog.

It appears that many of the same people who misled the U.S. into a disastrous war with Iraq are now attempting to do the same in Iran. And they’re doing it with very much the same game plan, and even doing it from the same little town house at 911 Duke St. in Arlington, Virginia.

September 11, 2010 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | 1 Comment

Bin Laden is Dead; Long Live “Bin Laden”

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | My Catbird Seat | August 17, 2010
So, if bin Laden is as dead as Elvis, who’s been faking all those scary threats in his name?

Who’s keeping the terror myth alive?

Credit image: Sabbah Report

In the trigger-happy post-9/11 world, the favoured way to instigate a war is to demand that the designated “evildoer” prove a negative.

Iraq was invaded because it couldn’t prove that it didn’t have WMDs. Iran is under constant threat of attack unless it can demonstrate that it’s not seeking nuclear weapons. And now Pakistan is being chastised for allegedly harbouring Osama bin Laden—who in all probability has been dead and buried for eight years.

Questioning Pakistan’s willingness to pursue bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last year told a group of Pakistani editors, “I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to.” And in a recent interview with Fox News, Clinton charged that “elements” of the Pakistani government know where bin Laden is hiding.

But what if bin Laden is not hiding in Pakistan? What if he’s been dead since December 2001? How then does Islamabad prove that some of its government officials are not concealing his whereabouts?

While the mainstream media rarely if ever question the belief that bin Laden is still alive, some cracks have been appearing in the consensus. In a September 11, 2009 piece in Britain’s Daily Mail, Sue Reid wondered, “What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake—and that he is being kept ‘alive’ by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror?”

An even more prominent sceptic is UPI Editor at Large Arnaud de Borchgrave whose July 26, 2010 commentary titled “Elvis bin Laden” may herald a new consensus. Sifting much the same evidence as Reid, the “legendary journalist” stated that “some key intelligence officials are taking bin Laden’s reported demise seriously.”

Both articles cited experts who have studied the post-December 2001 audios and videos and concluded they are fakes.

In 2007, Switzerland’s Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which does computer voice recognition for bank security, found that the voices on recordings after mid-December 2001 differed clearly from earlier recordings of bin Laden.

Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University’s religious studies’ department and the foremost bin Laden expert, noted in a 2007 book the inconsistency between the increasingly secular language of the audios and videos and bin Laden’s earlier distinctive religious speech.

Assessing the evidence, Angelo M. Codevilla, a former U.S. intelligence officer who studied Soviet disinformation techniques during the Cold War and a professor of international relations at Boston University, wryly concluded that “Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama bin Laden.”

So, if bin Laden is as dead as Elvis, who’s been faking all those scary threats in his name?

According to U.S. and British intelligence officials, al-Qaeda’s media wing, As-Sahab Foundation for Islamic Media Publication, has been run since 2001 by Adam Gadahn, a California-born convert to radical Islam who now goes by the name Azzam al-Amriki.

Gadahn found his way to the Islamic Society of Orange County while living with his grandfather, Carl Pearlman, a board member of the Anti-Defamation League. Ostensibly a civil rights organization set up to fight anti-Semitism, the ADL is “little more than a de facto adjunct of the Israeli government” which has even been caught spying on American critics of Israel.

Adam’s parents changed their surnames to Gadahn in the mid-1970s. The name refers to the Biblical warrior Gideon who, with the aid of trumpets and clay jars, defeated Israel’s enemies.

As Antiwar.com editor Justin Raimondo put it, Adam Gadahn is “an awfully odd figure, whose sudden evolution from a nice Jewish boy into Osama bin Laden’s Goebbels is just a little hard to take.”

Equally hard to take is the means by which the public learns of bin Laden’s latest pronouncements

“Almost every statement by Osama bin Laden published on the Internet…is first made public by SITE and IntelCenter,” according to a Spiegel Online profile of Rita Katz, Josh Devon and Ben Venzke, who founded the two companies that supposedly track al-Qaeda online.

SITE co-founder Rita Katz is an Iraqi-born Jew, whose father was publicly hanged in Iraq after the 1967 War as an Israeli spy. Katz, who served in the Israeli Defense Forces, tries to downplay the significance of her background but is not always successful. “When you grow up in a place like Iraq,” she told Spiegel, “you understand maybe a little bit about how Arabs think, and also what they are capable of.”

When Neal Krawetz, a researcher and computer security consultant, analysed a 2006 al-Qaeda video of Ayman al-Zawahiri for alterations and enhancements, he discovered that the As-Sahab and IntelCenter logos had been added at the same time.

Attempting to make light of the understandable suspicions that the “terror trackers” are working for Israeli intelligence, the Spiegel article jokes: “And the conspiracy theories pontificating that SITE and IntelCenter shoot the bin Laden videos themselves will continue to exist in the future. And Katz, Venzke and Devon will continue to see the humor in such theories: Yep, this is Mossad Headquarters. Exactly!”

But with the hunt for the elusive bin Laden having already cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, perhaps Americans should demand conclusive proof that Israel hasn’t conned them into fighting a phoney “war on terror.”

Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan. To read more of his writing, go to Maidhc Ó Cathail: Writing and Analysis.

September 11, 2010 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | 2 Comments

Iftar with the army: a Hebron story

11 September 2010 | ISM Media

At about 17.00 on the 9th September 2010, right before Atta Jaber and his family were about to sit down to break the fast on the last day of Ramadan, eight soldiers appeared on the doorstep.

One of them said that they wanted to come into the house, in the Baqa’a Valley, east of Hebron, to “have a look”. Atta Jaber opened the door, and did not ask for further explanation, as over the years he has become accustomed to soldiers turning up in this way. His four kids, aged 10 to 17 have all grown up with daily harassment by soldiers and settlers. Still, they seemed anxious and stressed as eight armed soldiers made their way through the hallway and into the living room, most armed with M-16s, one with a machine gun. A couple of soldiers asked for Atta’s son’s name, and shook the 13 year old boy’s hand, before searching the house. The boy replied to the greetings politely.

The soldiers walked through the house, looked around all the rooms, opening closets. One soldier remarked, while looking out from the window over to the neighbor’s house – which has been occupied by the army for one week – that they just want to see what the Jaber family can see from their house. He then told the international that was asking him questions about their presence that the soldiers wanted to maintain the army base for an unknown amount of time, since the junction leading to Harsina settlement is a vulnerable place for the settlers. He said that they aim to protect the settlers from further attacks. The family then had to hand over their IDs, and the soldiers wrote down their information.

The Jaber family gathered in the living room to break the fast with the post-sunset meal known as Iftar. After fasting the whole day, they had to eat and drink in the presence of the army. It was a quiet meal. Normally the family would talk, laugh and share stories while eating, but this time everybody was looking down at the table, eating slowly. Some family members didn’t eat at all. While some of the soldiers were walking around the house, locking themselves into the rooms and taking notes, one soldier was standing next to the table, staring at the family with his machinegun in his arms. As one of the internationals looked back at him, the soldier told her to “back off!” in an aggressive manner. The same soldier also ordered Jaber and two of his children, who were sitting close to the window, to move closer to where he himself was standing. The family was not allowed to move freely around their own home, and they were not even told why the soldiers were there.  The soldiers walked around the house, with their fingers resting on their gun triggers, speaking in Hebrew and laughing to each other.

After going through all the rooms in the house several times, writing down ID-information for the family members and the two internationals, one soldier gave Atta Jaber a piece of paper with English and Hebrew writing on it. He then read out loud that Jaber will have to meet with the Israeli intelligence, Shebak, on Thursday next week. The reason given was that his daughter had been filming the Israeli soldiers when they were taking over parts of their neighbor’s house on September 4th. The camera in question belongs to the human rights group B’tselem, and is lent to the Jaber family so that they can document human rights violations committed by soldiers and settlers – and there is never a shortage of incidents to document. Now Jaber has been summoned for interrogation because his family has tried to document the illegal activities of the Israeli army. It’s important to note that the Harsina settlement is illegal, and that this is what the army wants to protect by converting the neighbouring Palestinian house into a military base. The soldiers left the Jabers’ house after nearly two hours.

Atta Jabr and his family have lived in the area for more than three generations. Their house has been demolished twice. They have been attacked and harassed numerous times in the past, by both settlers and soldiers. Just over a week ago the family were trapped in their house when over 100 settlers started constructing a new outpost and soldiers took over the roof of the family’s house for several hours. Just two weeks before that Atta and his pre-teen daughter were attacked by six settlers.

September 11, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Nine Years Later – 9/11 And The Shift in Consciousness

By Bernhard Guenther | Sott.net | September 2010

It’s been nine years since 9/11. Millions of people, civilians and soldiers have died world wide in the following war on terror. The American people have lost basic rights due to the Patriot Act. In Europe and other countries, similar “security measures” have been implemented. Anyone who has been on an international flight has experienced some of it first hand. Trillions of Dollars are spent on the war on terror, while millions of people have lost their jobs and homes as the economy is disintegrating worldwide. The emperor is naked and there is an elephant in the living room, but to this day the official story of 9/11 has not been significantly challenged publicly.

I find it interesting how people in this day and age talk about a “shift in consciousness” or “awakening” into a “New Age” while after 9 years the biggest lie is still in place. Especially Liberals and people who believe themselves to be “aware” and “conscious”, yet they vote for Obama and dare not to question 9/11 or man-made “Global Warming”. I think most people simply don’t want the truth, for the truth is a tricky thing. It’s a can of worms most people are not willing to open, as it will challenge their beliefs and ideals on a core level. Hence, they would rather defend/ignore the lie and the lies they tell themselves.

The furthest most people go in regards to 9/11 is that “Bush let it happen” à la Michael Moore, but to realize, by looking into it deeper, that it was actually an Inside Job leading to Israel and not “Islamic Extremists” is still too far out for most people. It’s a touchy subject, because it’ll require them to question much of what they ever thought to be true about this country and the world in general.

Then of course some people don’t care much about the world “out there”, but believe that just by doing yoga, eating raw foods, recycling, planting veggies, focusing on the Self and having a “positive” attitude all will be well and we “create our reality” that way as we enter the “Golden Age”. Obviously we do need to take care of our health, the earth and ourselves, but a true “Shift in Consciousness” and “Awakening” entails much more. A big part of it is to make the “darkness” conscious within AND without, striving for objective truth, even if it doesn’t fit our current beliefs and worldview.

A “shift in consciousness” and “awakening” implies a higher state of awareness, which means to become more aware of it all, which implies again to see the world and oneself more objectively, without blinders on. This doesn’t happen by itself, but requires sincere effort and work to separate truth from lies, within and without. This is not a walk in the park, but it is the work required during this “Time of Transition”. The more we do this together and network, the better for all of us and the “easier” it’ll essentially be through the created synergy. In other words, the more people SEE the world as it IS, the more likely we will create a reality based on Truth and Love.

But ignoring it and hiding in our bubble isn’t going to get rid of this huge elephant in the middle of the living room. Nor will it happen by thinking “positive” thoughts, “meditating” on peace or “visualizing” it away. Just like with honest and sincere self-work, where we need to look at the lies we’re telling ourselves, we also need to confront the lies and pathologies in the world if we truly want to become better people and live in a better world.

As far as I see it, humanity hasn’t even graduated Kindergarten yet, although many people believe themselves to be adults already, dreaming to be awake, yet still asleep. However, we can change the world in a blink of an eye if we’d get out of our comfort zone and sincerely seek truth, network and deprogram ourselves from the lies of “Official Culture”.

The 9th anniversary of 9/11 is here, a lie that has shaped the world in ways that affect EVERYONE. Being silent about it at this point is equivalent of complicity in one of the biggest crimes in history.

What will you do?

We all are responsible of the outcome in this “Time of Transition” and 9/11 is a collective lesson that can’t be ignored much longer. If we truly want to bring peace and love to this world, then we need to start by looking at the world as it IS, not as we like, assume or hope it to be. Building community and striving for self-sustainable solutions are steps in the right direction, but if we don’t pay attention to what is happening around us and stand up for truth, it’ll all backfire eventually, simply because everything IS connected. No matter how well-meaning our intention is, as long as we support lies by mistaking them for truth or by not speaking out against them, we’ll keep feeding entropy and the suffering in the world. During this “Time of Transition” we don’t get to move on until the lessons are learned. This is an opportunity and it’s all up to each one of us. Let’s not miss it.

In the end, we return to the question, just how much do you love truth? Do you really love truth or are you just curious? Do you love it enough to rebuild your understanding to conform to a reality that doesn’t fit your current beliefs, and doesn’t feel 120% happy? Do you love truth enough to continue seeking even when it hurts, when it reveals aspects of yourself (or human society, or the universe) that are shocking, complex and disturbing, or humbling, glorious and amazing – or even, when truth is far beyond human mind itself? Just how much do we love truth? It’s a good question to ask ourselves, I think.

– Scott Mandeleker

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

– Carl G. Jung

Here’s a good start:

Left-Leaning Despisers of the 9/11 Truth Movement: Do You Really Believe in Miracles?

September 11, 2010 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Source of America’s Wars – Kristol Clear

By Maidhc Ó Cathail – My Catbird Seat September 11, 2010

Americans feeling let down by Barack Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan should take careful note of those who welcomed yet another “surge.” It might help them to identify the source of their seemingly endless wars.

Top Irving Kristol (father). Bottom left William Kristol (son) middle Robert Kagan and right Charles Krauthammer

For instance, in a recent Washington Post opinion piece, William Kristol described Obama’s West Point speech as “encouraging.” It was “a good thing,” he said, that Obama was finally speaking as “a war president.”

But if the comments on the Post website are anything to go by, few ordinary Americans take Kristol’s armchair warmongering seriously anymore. After all, as one poster quizzically asked, “A column by William Kristol the neocon that was wrong about everything from 2000-2008?”

Although Kristol, like the rest of the neocons, “erred” about Iraq’s WMDs and Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda and 9/11, it would be a fatal error indeed to dismiss him as a fool.

In order to understand what motivates Bill Kristol’s professed hyper-patriotism, with its consistently disastrous prescriptions, it’s worth recalling how his father, Irving Kristol, reacted to Vietnam War critic Senator George McGovern. The presidential contender’s proposed cut in U.S. military expenditure would, according to the “godfather” of neoconservatism, “drive a knife in the heart of Israel.”

“Jews don’t like big military budgets,” the elder Kristol explained in a Jewish publication in 1973. “But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States … American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”

American Greatness

Following his father’s advice, William Kristol has been a fervent supporter of massive U.S. military spending. In 1996, he co-authored with Robert Kagan an influential neocon manifesto titled “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy.” It recommended that “America should pursue a vision of benevolent hegemony as bold as Reagan’s in the 1970s and wield its authority unabashedly.

“The defense budget should be increased dramatically, citizens should be educated to appreciate the military’s vital work abroad, and moral clarity should direct a foreign policy that puts the heat on dictators and authoritarian regimes.”

In response, another influential opinion-maker, Charles Krauthammer, hailed Kristol and Kagan as “the main proponents of what you might call the American greatness school.” It is hardly a coincidence, however, that all three advocates of “American greatness” care passionately about what Irving Kristol euphemistically referred to as “the survival of the state of Israel.” Or that many of those “dictators and authoritarian regimes” just happened to stand in the way of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

The following year, Kristol and Kagan co-founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a pressure group which sought to advance their “neo-Reaganite” vision. In the late 1990s, they did this mainly by writing letters to Bill Clinton, urging him to oust Saddam Hussein.

In September 2000, PNAC published “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” in which they famously acknowledged that “the process of transformation … is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.”

One year later, they got their wished for “new Pearl Harbor” on September 11. The mass murder of almost 3,000 Americans was, as Benjamin Netanyahu indelicately put it, “very good” for Israel.

Kristol’s War

Immediately, Kristol’s Weekly Standard began linking Iraq to the attacks. Writing in The American Conservative, Scott McConnell explained the strategy: “Their rhetoric — which laid down a line from which the magazine would not waver over the next 18 months — was to link Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in virtually every paragraph, to join them at the hip in the minds of readers.”

The “Saddam must go” campaign, begun in a Kristol and Kagan editorial as far back as 1997, became so relentless that Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen dubbed it “Kristol’s War.”

The Iraq War has, of course, also been called “Wolfowitz’s War.” But it could just as aptly have been named after Perle, Feith, Libby, Zelikow, Lieberman, or any of the other pro-Israeli insiders who took America to war by way of deception.

In “Irving Kristol RIP,” Antiwar.com editor Justin Raimondo described Kristol’s legacy as “war, war, and yet more war, as far as the eye can see.”

Unless Americans soon realize that they’ve been deceived by those for whom “American greatness” is merely a means to advance “the survival of the state of Israel,” that legacy promises to be an enduring one.

Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan. To read more of his writing, go to Maidhc Ó Cathail: Writing and Analysis.

September 11, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment