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 Posted by Aron on May 23 2008 (Friday) : 05:33 PMUnlike many who opposed the Iraq war, I don't blame the neo-cons for the war on Iraq. Nor do I believe that the U.S. foreign policy is dictated by Israel, as many others contend. These opinions are mostly found in socialist left wing and libertarian circles. If you read the comments sections on various political news sites and blogs these positions are loudly vented. Usually, as on libertarian-leaning sites like Digg, they are given thumbs up by the "audience." [One reason I don't allow comments on this blog is to avoid the infantile verbiage such sections usually contain]. There is often an undertone of anti-Jewish feelings in the many diatribes which espouse these positions. Basically, the underlying argument goes: the Jews rule the world to the detriment of others. McCain is often seen as another tool of the neo-cons. His close relation to Joe Lieberman gives this argument credence. My opinon on all this is obviously quite different. I am firmly in the war is a racket camp. The nearly 8 years of Bush & Co is probably a time when this racket has been played out more openly and brazenly than in any other period in US history. The neo-cons and the evangelical right are just ideological fronts, part of the fear factor used to justify pillage and plunder, and to get voters to support candidates and policies which are highly detrimental to their own personal interests. Read Machiavelli. He lays this all out in clear language. Before turning to McCain, let's focus more closely on Bush. None of us are inside the head of the man (thank gods!) so we don't really know what, if anything, is going on in there. Based on the evidence at hand, my personal guess is that Bush is really pretty dumb in general, though extremely shrewd politically (no contradiction here). He genuinely believes in the neo-con/extreme right agenda and is a devout evangelical Christian. So when he makes ridiculous speeches like the one about appeasement, he really means it. This is why he was so useful to the racketeers. For a very long time the US public trusted Bush because he wasn't lying. That is, while every word that comes out of his mouth is untrue, Bush sincerely believes what he says. And for some bizarre reason, while Americans are extremely distrustful of "big government," they love to trust their Presidents. Bush's sincerity convinced most Americans that the policy he espoused, no matter how foolish or harmful, were really the right thing to do. By contrast, if Cheney or Rumsfeld were President we would never have gone to war in Iraq, because people trust them as much as they do used car salesmen. Appealing to "support for Israel" is another useful tool of the racketeers. The importance of Jews in the electorate is highly exaggerated. Perhaps at one point in the past, when Jews were highly concentrated in big cities and had higher turnout at the polls than most demographics, the "Jewish vote" seemed crucial in swing states. Also rich Jews are large political donors. From these factors, the myth about the importance of the Jewish vote took hold. Over the past twenty years as Jews moved out of the cities and dispersed into suburbs all over the country, the Jewish vote has become far less important than nearly every other demographic. In any case, appealing to "support for Israel" seems to be ineffective in changing how Jews vote. Jews continue to have the highest percentage of any demographic for the Democratic Presidential candidate. In the last two elections this percentage was 75%. This obviously was of no help to either Gore or Kerry. My guess is, that despite Obama being viewed as a shvartza/Muslim/Hamas-loving/hoodlum by some Jewish old ladies in Florida, and McCain having Joe Lieberman constantly whispering sweet nothings in his ear, Jews will still go 75-25 for the Democrats this year as well (maybe 70-30% if McCain is lucky). "Support for Israel" in Bush/Republican terms means support for the most right-wing elements in Israeli politics, as I noted in my comments in Bush's appeasement speech. While this approach does appeal to say 25-30% of American Jews, the target audience is NOT American Jews, but evangelical Christians who have the same viewpoints as the neo-cons and the Israeli far-right, and who have a far larger demographic impact in national elections. Bush & Rove's strategy for ensuring Republican dominance forever, is to do and say anything that would keep the evangelical base inside the Republican fold. "Support for Israel" is one tactic in that strategy, and has nothing to do with Jewish or Israeli dominance over US foreign policy. Proof of this came just yesterday. In all the articles about Israel's renewed negotiations with Syria (about time!) it noted that Bush & Co opposed these talks and tried to pressure Israel not to engage in them! After all this would be "appeasement" giving the Syrians a "reward" despite their "bad behavior." If, as leftists or libertarians argue, Israel dictates US policy, then Bush & Co should be lining up joyfully to back Israel on this. The reality is that once again we see the convergence of real Bush & Co interests - let's keep the war plot boiling, since any move towards diplomacy and stability threatens our profits. Let's justify it by appealing to our evangelical base and the broader audience that responds to fear and xenophobia. Fortunately, in a rare show of independence (and perhaps with the belief that Bush & Co may be on the way out) Israel ignored the US and pursued its own interests, not the corporate interests of its American patron. How this all plays out with McCain becomes clear when one looks at the McCain-Lieberman-Hagee triangle. One of the very earliest pieces I had on this blog was about the truly scary anti-Jewish feelings of the evangelicals. The fact that the Israeli and Jewish right, and in particular Orthodox Jews ally themselves with these Jew-haters is bizarre beyond belief. Not so bizarre for a man like Lieberman, Lieberman has learned the Bush/Rove playbook. Firstly he is a total corporate tool. This played to his advantage when he lost the Democratic primary and managed to get the funding (surprise!) to run as an independent. All those years of selling his vote to corporate interests sure paid off. He also plays to the same fear demographic as the Republican right. In every way he is indistinguishable from anyone else in Bush & Co. Hence when he compared the Jew-hater Hagee to Moses and praised him to the sky (cf. the Huffington post article) there is nothing the least bit surprising in his actions. The fact that McCain pursued Hagee for an endorsement is no worse than Obama's relationship to Wright. Both are totally meaningless in the big picture. The real issue with McCain, the true indicator of who really owns him, is his extremely close relationship with Lieberman. Lieberman is to McCain what Cheney is to Bush. McCain strikes me as slightly more intelligent than Bush, but he is still just another front for the same interests that dominate Bush & Co. He, too, appeals to the fear demographic, he, too, spouts the neo-con line, and probably believes it. The only difference between him and Bush is that he is not an evangelical and so is on less intimate and good terms with them. But if he is elected President, it will mean nothing will change. Bush & Co will now become McCain & Co and the racketeers will still rule this country. The only time in my life I didn't vote in an election was in 2000 when Sharon was running against Barak. My thinking was as follows: if Barak wins he will pursue an even more brutal agenda than Sharon against the Palestinians, to prove his hawkish nature. But if he attempts any sort of diplomatic reconciliation with the Palestinians, the right will hound him as an appeaser and block his every effort. I knew Sharon would deal with the Palestinians brutally. But I also believed that eventually reality would force him to turn to diplomacy. His militarist credentials would mean the Israeli public would accept his actions on this front, no matter what the extreme right said. I could never pull the lever for Sharon, so I didn't vote. Sharon won. Sadly, I was correct. Sadly, because so many people died on both sides. Yet Sharon, before his illness, caused a monumental shift in Israeli politics. There is little if any change in the political split of the Israeli public. But the Israeli political class has shifted drastically in both its rhetoric and actions. What once were considered "extreme left" positions have now become mainstream. The two state solution is a given. Negotiations with Hamas (via Egypt) are ongoing. The negotiations with Syria are just one more step in the same direction. Israel has withdrawn from Gaza and despite all the problems shows no signs of going back in. Even if Olmert goes, even if Netanyahu comes to power, these policies will continue. At this moment, the biggest change in the Israel/Palestine conflict will come as a result of the US elections, not the Israeli political scene. For decades, it was the US and US Presidents who dragged Israel and the Arabs to the negotiating table. Bush & Co's war mongering policies turned things on their head. For the first time ever, Israel is proceeding with negotiations while the US is being reluctantly dragged along. Whether Hillary or Obama win the election, the dynamic will revert to its original pattern and there will be a real chance for a positive change in the Israel/Palestine conflict, the first chance in eight years. US policies towards this conflict are not the main reason for American citizen to vote one way or another. But they are emblematic of the huge difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. The latter also pander to corporate interests and are far to the right of "conservative" parties in Europe. They participate in the racket too. But the Republicans ARE the racket. In 1934, a bunch of rich US industrialists, who admired Hitler and Mussolini, plotted to overthrow FDR. The person the plotters turned to in their coup attempt on FDR was Smedley Butler. Butler turned them down, of course, and exposed their activities to a Congressional hearing. The attempt never got off the ground. Their are some who believe Prescott Bush may have been involved in this. Whether he was or not, there is no doubt he admired fascism and indirectly supported Hitler. Bush the grandson has done his best to fulfill all his grandfather's wishes and dreams for a fascist state. McCain means more of the same. < Fools Defend Hagee's Words | George Bush, Appeaser >
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  Cost of the War in Iraq
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"Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz -- Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace" -Benito Juárez
"It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it." -Eleanor Roosevelt "Let them call me a rebel and welcome. I feel no concern from it. But should I suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul" -Thomas Paine | |
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McCain - Jewish Tool?
