Full-page ad in New York Times
Posted August 5, 2010
This advertisement ran in the New York Times in April.
The sponsors listed in the ad indicate who is pushing for attacks against Iran. The same groups also pushed for war against Iraq, despite the fact that Iraq had no “weapons of mass destruction” and was uninvolved in 9-11.
Intelligence professionals warn that Israel may attack Iran this month – authors to be on CNI call-in radio program today
Posted
High level former U.S. intelligence officers, including CNI Executive Director Philip Giraldi, have just published an analysis warning that Israel may plan to attack Iran as early as this month (full length article below).
They detail the evidence for this possibility and warn that such an action would quite likely drag the U.S. into yet another tragic, needless, and disastrous war.
2. Also, please contact the White House and your Congressional representatives to tell them that you do not want another costly and profoundly tragic war. Explain that you desire that the U.S. issue a clear demand that Israel NOT attack Iran and instead allow the various excellent diplomatic initiatives to defuse the situation to move forward.
The call-in radio program “CNI: Jerusalem Calling” today at noon eastern time will discuss this topic. Alison Weir (If Americans Knew executive director and president of The Council for the National Interest – CNI) will be the host with two members of the group, Philip Giraldi and Raymond McGovern, as guests.
Raymond McGovern, the author of the article, served as an intelligence officer in the CIA for almost thirty years and prepared the President’s Daily Brief during both the Reagan administration and the first Bush administration. He has also published a number of articles and is one of the founding members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group of former and current officials in the intelligence community that got together in 2003 to protest the use of faulty intelligence leading up to the Iraq War.
Philip Giraldi, one of the signatories, is a former CIA intelligence officer and army veteran who spent twenty years in Europe and the Middle East engaged in counterterrorism. He holds a PhD in European history from the University of London, speaks four languages, and has been providing commentary and analysis on US foreign and security policy for the past six years. He broke the story of the Dick Cheney plan to consider the use of nuclear weapons against Iran and also was the first American to write about the widespread corruption in Iraq reconstruction efforts. In 2008, he wrote a featured expose regarding Israeli spying against the United States. He was recently named executive director of the Council for the National Interest (CNI).
go to the show’s homepage and click on the “Listen Live” button for Studio A, at the top left.
To Call in:
with your questions and comments during the second half of the show by calling 877-474-3302, toll-free
International users can call 858-678-8958 or Skypename: WSRADIOSTUDIO.
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: War With Iran
We write to alert you to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war. Israel’s leaders would calculate that once the battle is joined, it will be politically untenable for you to give anything less than unstinting support to Israel, no matter how the war started, and that U.S. troops and weaponry would flow freely. Wider war could eventually result in destruction of the state of Israel. This can be stopped, but only if you move quickly to preempt an Israeli attack by publicly condemning such a move before it happens.
We believe that comments by senior American officials, you included, reflect misplaced trust in Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Actually, the phrasing itself can be revealing, as when CIA Director Panetta implied cavalierly that Washington leaves it up to the Israelis to decide whether and when to attack Iran, and how much “room” to give to the diplomatic effort. On June 27, Panetta casually told ABC’s Jake Tapper, “I think they are willing to give us the room to be able to try to change Iran diplomatically … as opposed to changing them militarily.”
Similarly, the tone you struck referring to Netanyahu and yourself in your July 7 interview with Israeli TV was distinctly out of tune with decades of unfortunate history with Israeli leaders. “Neither of us try to surprise each other,” you said, “and that approach is one that I think Prime Minister Netanyahu is committed to.” You may wish to ask Vice President Biden to remind you of the kind of surprises he has encountered in Israel.
Blindsiding has long been an arrow in Israel’s quiver. During the emerging Middle East crisis in the spring of 1967, some of us witnessed closely a flood of Israeli surprises and deception, as Netanyahu’s predecessors feigned fear of an imminent Arab attack as justification for starting a war to seize and occupy Arab territories. We had long since concluded that Israel had been exaggerating the Arab “threat”- well before 1982 when former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin publicly confessed:
“In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President] Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
Israel had, in fact, prepared well militarily and also mounted provocations against its neighbors, in order to provoke a response that could be used to justify expansion of its borders.
Given this record, one would be well advised to greet with appropriate skepticism any private assurances Netanyahu may have given you that Israel would not surprise you with an attack on Iran.
Netanyahu’s Calculations
Netanyahu believes he holds the high cards, largely because of the strong support he enjoys in our Congress and our strongly pro-Israel media. He reads your reluctance even to mention in controversial bilateral issues publicly during his recent visit as affirmation that he is in the catbird seat in the relationship. During election years in the U.S. (including mid-terms), Israeli leaders are particularly confident of the power they and the Likud Lobby enjoy on the American political scene.
This prime minister learned well from Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon.Netanyahu’s attitude comes through in a video taped nine years ago and shown on Israeli TV, in which he bragged about how he deceived President Clinton into believing he (Netanyahu) was helping implement the Oslo accords when he was actually destroying them. The tape displays a contemptuous attitude toward – and wonderment at – an America so easily influenced by Israel. Netanyahu says:
“America is something that can be easily moved. Moved in the right direction. … They won’t get in our way. … Eighty percent of the Americans support us. It’s absurd.”
Israeli columnist Gideon Levy wrote that the video shows Netanyahu to be “a con artist … who thinks that Washington is in his pocket and that he can pull the wool over its eyes,” adding that such behavior “does not change over the years.” As mentioned above, Netanyahu has had instructive role models. None other than Gen. Brent Scowcroft told the Financial Times that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had George W. Bush “mesmerized,” that “Sharon just has him “wrapped around his little finger.” (Scowcroft was promptly relieved of his duties as chair of the prestigious President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and told never again to darken the White House doorstep.)
If further proof of American political support for Netanyahu were needed, it was manifest when Senators McCain, Lieberman, and Graham visited Israel during the second week of July. Lieberman asserted that there is wide support in Congress for using all means to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power, including “through military actions if we must.” Graham was equally explicit: “The Congress has Israel’s back,” he said. More recently, 47 House Republicans have signed onto H.R. 1553 declaring “support for Israel’s right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran … including the use of military force.”
The power of the Likud Lobby, especially in an election year, facilitates Netanyahu’s attempts to convince those few of his colleagues who need convincing that there may never be a more auspicious time to bring about “regime change” in Tehran. And, as we hope your advisers have told you, regime change, not Iranian nuclear weapons, is Israel’s primary concern.
If Israel’s professed fear that one or two nuclear weapons in Iran’s arsenal would be a game changer, one would have expected Israeli leaders to jump with up and down with glee at the possibility of seeing half of Iran’s low enriched uranium shipped abroad. Instead, they dismissed as a “trick” the tripartite deal, brokered by Turkey and Brazil with your personal encouragement, that would ship half of Iran’s low enriched uranium outside Tehran’s control.
The National Intelligence Estimate
The Israelis have been looking on intently as the U.S. intelligence community attempts to update, in a “Memorandum to Holders” of the NIE of November 2007 on Iran’s nuclear program. It is worth recalling a couple of that Estimate’s key judgments:
“We judge with high confidence that in fall of 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program. … We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its nuclear program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons….”
Earlier this year, public congressional testimony by former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair (February 1 and 2) and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Ronald Burgess with Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. James Cartwright (April 14) did not alter those key judgments. Blair and others continued to underscore the intelligence community’s agnosticism on one key point: as Blair put it earlier this year, “We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build a nuclear weapon.”
The media have reported off-the-cuff comments by Panetta and by you, with a darker appraisal – with you telling Israeli TV, “all indicators are that they [the Iranians] are in fact pursuing a nuclear weapon,” and Panetta telling ABC, “I think they continue to work on designs in that area [of weaponization].” Panetta hastened to add, though, that in Tehran, “There is a continuing debate right now as to whether or not they ought to proceed with the bomb.”
Israel probably believes it must give more weight to the official testimony of Blair, Burgess, and Cartwright, which dovetail with the earlier NIE, and the Israelis are afraid that the long-delayed Memorandum to Holders of the 2007 NIE will essentially affirm that Estimate’s key judgments. Our sources tell us that an honest Memorandum to Holders is likely to do precisely that, and that they suspect that the several-months-long delay means intelligence judgments are being “fixed” around the policy – as was the case before the attack on Iraq.
One War Prevented
The key judgments of the November 2007 NIE shoved an iron rod into the wheel spokes of the Dick Cheney-led juggernaut rolling toward war on Iran. The NIE infuriated Israel leaders eager to attack before President Bush and Cheney left office. This time, Netanyahu fears that issuance of an honest Memorandum might have a similar effect.
Bottom line: more incentive for Israel to preempt such an Estimate by striking Iran sooner rather than later.
Last week’s announcement that U.S. officials will meet next month with Iranian counterparts to resume talks on ways to arrange higher enrichment of Iranian low-enriched uranium (LEU) for Tehran’s medical research reactor was welcome news to all but the Israeli leaders. In addition, Iran reportedly has said it would be prepared to halt enrichment to 20 percent (the level needed for the medical research reactor) and has made it clear that it looks forward to the resumption of talks.
Again, an agreement that would send a large portion of Iran’s LEU abroad would, at a minimum, hinder progress toward nuclear weapons, should Iran decide to develop them. But it would also greatly weaken Israel’s scariest rationale for an attack on Iran. Bottom line: with the talks on what Israel’s leaders earlier labeled a “trick” now scheduled to resume in September, incentive builds in Tel Aviv for the Israelis to attack before any such agreement can be reached. We’ll say it again: the objective is regime change. Creating synthetic fear of Iranian nuclear weapons is simply the best way to “justify” bringing about regime change. Worked well for Iraq, no?
Another War in Need of Prevention
A strong public statement by you, personally warning Israel not to attack Iran, would most probably head off such an Israeli move. Follow-up might include dispatching Adm. Mullen to Tel Aviv with military-to-military instructions to Israel: Don’t even think of it.
While in Israel, Mullen insisted publicly that an attack on Iran would be “a big, big, big problem for all of us, and I worry a great deal about the unintended consequences.”
Other Steps
In 2008, after Mullen read the Israelis the riot act, they put their preemptive plans for Iran aside. With that mission accomplished, Mullen gave serious thought to ways to prevent any unintended (or, for that matter, deliberately provoked) incidents in the crowded Persian Gulf that could lead to wider hostilities.
Mullen sent up an interesting trial balloon at a July 2, 2008, press conference, when he indicated that military-to-military dialogue could “add to a better understanding” between the U.S. and Iran. But nothing more was heard of this overture, probably because Cheney ordered him to drop it.
It was a good idea – still is. The danger of a U.S.-Iranian confrontation in the crowded Persian Gulf has not been addressed, and should be. Establishment of a direct communications link between top military officials in Washington and Tehran would reduce the danger of an accident, miscalculation, or covert, false-flag attack.
In our view, that should be done immediately – particularly since recently introduced sanctions assert a right to inspect Iranian ships. The naval commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards reportedly has threatened “a response in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz” if anyone tries to inspect Iranian ships in international waters.
Another safety valve would result from successful negotiation of the kind of bilateral “incidents-at-sea” protocol that was concluded with the Russians in 1972 during a period of relatively high tension.
With only interim nobodies at the helm of the intelligence community, you may wish to consider knocking some heads together yourself and insisting that it finish an honest Memorandum to Holders of the 2007 NIE by mid-August – recording any dissents, as necessary. Sadly, our former colleagues tell us that politicization of intelligence analysis did not end with the departure of Bush and Cheney… and that the problem is acute even at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which in the past has done some of the best professional, objective, tell-it-like-it-is analysis.
Pundits, Think-Tanks: Missing the Point
As you may have noticed, most of page one of Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook section was given to an article titled, “A Nuclear Iran: Would America Strike to Prevent It? - Imagining Obama’s Response to an Iranian Missile Crisis.” Page five was dominated by the rest of the article, under the title “Who will blink first when Iran is on the brink?” A page-wide photo of a missile rolling past Iranian dignitaries on a reviewing stand (reminiscent of the familiar parades on Red Square) is aimed at the centerfold of the Outlook section, as if poised to blow it to smithereens.
Typically, the authors address the Iranian “threat” as though it endangers the U.S., even though Secretary Clinton has stated publicly that this is not the case. They write that one option for the U.S. is “the lonely, unpopular path of taking military action lacking allied consensus.” O Tempora, O Mores! In less than a decade, wars of aggression have become nothing more than lonely, unpopular paths.
What is perhaps most remarkable, though, is that the word Israel is nowhere to be found in this very long article. Similar think pieces, including some from relatively progressive think-tanks, also address these issues as though they were simply bilateral U.S.-Iranian problems, with little or no attention to Israel.
Guns of August?
The stakes could hardly be higher. Letting slip the dogs of war would have immense repercussions. Again, we hope that Adm. Mullen and others have given you comprehensive briefings on them. Netanyahu would be taking a fateful gamble by attacking Iran, with high risk to everyone involved. The worst, but conceivable case, has Netanyahu playing – unintentionally – Dr. Kevorkian to the state of Israel.
Even if the U.S. were to be sucked into a war provoked by Israel, there is absolutely no guarantee that the war would come out well. Were the U.S. to suffer significant casualties, and were Americans to become aware that such losses came about because of exaggerated Israeli claims of a nuclear threat from Iran, Israel could lose much of its high standing in the United States.There could even be a surge in anti-Semitism, as Americans conclude that officials with dual loyalties in Congress and the executive branch threw our troops into a war provoked, on false pretenses, by Likudniks for their own narrow purposes. We do not have a sense that major players in Tel Aviv or in Washington are sufficiently sensitive to these critical factors.
You are in position to prevent this unfortunate but likely chain reaction. We allow for the possibility that Israeli military action might not lead to a major regional war, but we consider the chances of that much less than even.
Footnote: VIPS Experience
We VIPS have found ourselves in this position before. We prepared our first Memorandum for the President on the afternoon of Feb. 5, 2003, after Colin Powell’s speech at the UN. We had been watching how our profession was being corrupted into serving up faux intelligence that was later criticized (correctly) as “uncorroborated, contradicted, and nonexistent” – adjectives used by former Senate Intelligence Committee chair Jay Rockefeller after a five-year investigation by his committee. As Powell spoke, we decided collectively that the responsible thing to do was to try to warn the president before he acted on misguided advice to attack Iraq. Unlike Powell, we did not claim that our analysis was “irrefutable and undeniable.” We did conclude with this warning [.pdf]:
We take no satisfaction at having gotten it right on Iraq. Others with claim to more immediate expertise on Iraq were issuing similar warnings. But we were kept well away from the wagons circled by Bush and Cheney.
Sadly, your own vice president, who was then chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, was among the most assiduous in blocking opportunities for dissenting voices to be heard. This is part of what brought on the worst foreign policy disaster in our nation’s history.
We now believe that we may also be right on (and right on the cusp of) another impending catastrophe of even wider scope – Iran – on which another president, you, are not getting good advice from your closed circle of advisers.
They are probably telling you that, since you have privately counseled Prime Minister Netanyahu against attacking Iran, he will not do it. This could simply be the familiar syndrome of telling the president what they believe he wants to hear. Quiz them; tell them others believe them to be dead wrong on Netanyahu. The only positive here is that you – only you – can prevent an Israeli attack on Iran.
Phil Giraldi, directorate of operations, CIA (20 years)
Larry Johnson, directorate of intelligence, CIA; Department of State, Department of Defense consultant (24 years)
W. Patrick Lang, colonel, USA, Special Forces (ret.); Senior Executive Service: defense intelligence officer for Middle East/South Asia; director of HUMINT Collection, Defense Intelligence Agency (30 years)
Ray McGovern, U.S. Army intelligence officer; directorate of intelligence, CIA (30 years)
Coleen Rowley, special agent and Minneapolis division counsel, FBI (24 years)
Ann Wright, colonel, U.S. Army Reserve (ret.), (29 years); Foreign Service officer, Department of State (16 years)
[Background information on efforts to push the U.S. into attacking Iran]
Chas Freeman: Israel is an extreme liabililty for the U.S. financially, strategically, politically
Posted July 30, 2010
Ambassador Chas Freeman – prepared remarks, Nixon Center debate, “Israel; Asset or Liability?
[Ambassador Freeman was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1993-94, earning the highest public service awards of the Department of Defense. Full bio]
Is Israel a strategic asset or liability for the United States? Interesting question. We must thank the Nixon Center for asking it. In my view, there are many reasons for Americans to wish the Jewish state well. Under current circumstances, strategic advantage for the United States is not one of them. If we were to reverse the question, however, and to ask whether the United States is a strategic asset or liability for Israel, there would be no doubt about the answer.
American taxpayers fund between 20 and 25 percent of Israel’s defense budget (depending on how you calculate this). Twenty-six percent of the $3 billion in military aid we grant to the Jewish state each year is spent in Israel on Israeli defense products. Uniquely, Israeli companies are treated like American companies for purposes of U.S. defense procurement. Thanks to congressional earmarks, we also often pay half the costs of special Israeli research and development projects, even when – as in the case of defense against very short-range unguided missiles — the technology being developed is essentially irrelevant to our own military requirements.
In short, in many ways, American taxpayers fund jobs in Israel’s military industries that could have gone to our own workers and companies. Meanwhile, Israel gets pretty much whatever it wants in terms of our top-of-the-line weapons systems, and we pick up the tab.
Identifiable U.S. government subsidies to Israel total over $140 billion since 1949. This makes Israel by far the largest recipient of American giveaways since World War II. The total would be much higher if aid to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and support for Palestinians in refugee camps and the occupied territories were included. These programs have complex purposes but are justified in large measure in terms of their contribution to the security of the Jewish state.
Per capita income in Israel is now about $37,000 — on a par with the UK. Israel is nonetheless the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, accounting for well over a fifth of it. Annual U.S. government transfers run at well over $500 per Israeli, not counting the costs of tax breaks for private donations and loans that aren’t available to any other foreign country.
These military and economic benefits are not the end of the story. The American government also works hard to shield Israel from the international political and legal consequences of its policies and actions in the occupied territories, against its neighbors, or – most recently – on the high seas. The nearly 40 vetoes the United States has cast to protect Israel in the UN Security Council are the tip of iceberg. We have blocked a vastly larger number of potentially damaging reactions to Israeli behavior by the international community. The political costs to the United States internationally of having to spend our political capital in this way are huge.
Where Israel has no diplomatic relations, U.S. diplomats routinely make its case for it. As I know from personal experience (having been thanked by the then Government of Israel for my successful efforts on Israel’s behalf in Africa), the U.S. government has been a consistent promoter and often the funder of various forms of Israeli programs of cooperation with other countries. It matters also that America – along with a very few other countries – has remained morally committed to the Jewish experiment with a state in the Middle East. Many more Jews live in America than in Israel. Resolute American support should be an important offset to the disquiet about current trends that has led over 20 percent of Israelis to emigrate, many of them to the United States, where Jews enjoy unprecedented security and prosperity.
Clearly, Israel gets a great deal from us. Yet it’s pretty much taboo in the United States to ask what’s in it for Americans. I can’t imagine why. Still, the question I’ve been asked to address today is just that: what’s in it — and not in it — for us to do all these things for Israel.
We need to begin by recognizing that our relationship with Israel has never been driven by strategic reasoning. It began with President Truman overruling his strategic and military advisers in deference to personal sentiment and political expediency. We had an arms embargo on Israel until Lyndon Johnson dropped it in 1964 in explicit return for Jewish financial support for his campaign against Barry Goldwater. In 1973, for reasons peculiar to the Cold War, we had to come to the rescue of Israel as it battled Egypt. The resulting Arab oil embargo cost us dearly. And then there’s all the time we’ve put into the perpetually ineffectual and now long defunct “peace process.”
Still the US-Israel relationship has had strategic consequences. There is no reason to doubt the consistent testimony of the architects of major acts of anti-American terrorism about what motivates them to attack us. In the words of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is credited with masterminding the 9/11 attacks, their purpose was to focus “the American people … on the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel against the Palestinian people ….” As Osama Bin Laden, purporting to speak for the world’s Muslims, has said again and again: “we have . . . stated many times, for more than two-and-a-half-decades, that the cause of ourdisagreement with you is your support to your Israeli allies who occupy our land of Palestine ….”
Some substantial portion of the many lives and the trillions of dollars we have so far expended in our escalating conflict with the Islamic world must be apportioned to the costs of our relationship with Israel.
It’s useful to recall what we generally expect allies and strategic partners to do for us. In Europe, Asia, and elsewhere in the Middle East, they provide bases and support the projection of American power beyond their borders. They join us on the battlefield in places like Kuwait and Afghanistan or underwrite the costs of our military operations. They help recruit others to our coalitions. They coordinate their foreign aid with ours. Many defray the costs of our use of their facilities with “host nation support” that reduces the costs of our military operations from and through their territory. They store weapons for our troops’, rather than their own troops’ use. They pay cash for the weapons we transfer to them.
Israel does none of these things and shows no interest in doing them. Perhaps it can’t. It is so estranged from everyone else in the Middle East that no neighboring country will accept flight plans that originate in or transit it. Israel is therefore useless in terms of support for American power projection. It has no allies other than us. It has developed no friends. Israeli participation in our military operations would preclude the cooperation of many others. Meanwhile, Israel has become accustomed to living on the American military dole. The notion that Israeli taxpayers might help defray the expense of U.S. military or foreign assistance operations, even those undertaken at Israel’s behest, would be greeted with astonishment in Israel and incredulity on Capitol Hill.
Military aid to Israel is sometimes justified by the notion of Israel as a test bed for new weapons systems and operational concepts. But no one can identify a program of military R & D in Israel that was initially proposed by our men and women in uniform. All originated with Israel or members of Congress acting on its behalf. Moreover, what Israel makes it sells not just to the United States but to China, India, and other major arms markets. It feels no obligation to take U.S. interests into account when it transfers weapons and technology to third countries and does so only under duress.
Meanwhile, it’s been decades since Israel’s air force faced another in the air. It has come to specialize in bombing civilian infrastructure and militias with no air defenses. There is not much for the U.S. Air Force to learn from that. Similarly, the Israeli navy confronts no real naval threat. Its experience in interdicting infiltrators, fishermen, and humanitarian aid flotillas is not a model for the U.S. Navy to study. Israel’s army, however, has had lessons to impart. Now in its fifth decade of occupation duty, it has developed techniques of pacification, interrogation, assassination, and drone attack that inspired U.S. operations in Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, Somalia, Yemen, and Waziristan. Recently, Israel has begun to deploy various forms of remote-controlled robotic guns. These enable operatives at far-away video screens summarily to execute anyone they view as suspicious. Such risk-free means of culling hostile populations could conceivably come in handy in some future American military operation, but I hope not. I have a lot of trouble squaring the philosophy they embody with the values Americans traditionally aspired to exemplify.
It is sometimes said that, to its credit, Israel does not ask the United States to fight its battles for it; it just wants the money and weapons to fight them on its own. Leave aside the question of whether Israel’s battles are or should also be America’s. It is no longer true that Israel does not ask us to fight for it. The fact that prominent American apologists for Israel were the most energetic promoters of the U.S. invasion of Iraq does not, of course, prove that Israel was the instigator of that grievous misadventure. But the very same people are now urging an American military assault on Iran explicitly to protect Israel and to preserve its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Their advocacy is fully coordinated with the Government of Israel. No one in the region wants a nuclear-armed Iran, but Israel is the only country pressing Americans to go to war over this.
Finally, the need to protect Israel from mounting international indignation about its behavior continues to do grave damage to our global and regional standing. It has severely impaired our ties with the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. These costs to our international influence, credibility, and leadership are, I think, far more serious than the economic and other burdens of the relationship.
Against this background, it’s remarkable that something as fatuous as the notion of Israel as a strategic asset could have become the unchallengeable conventional wisdom in the United States. Perhaps it’s just that as someone once said: “people … will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one.” Be that as it may, the United States and Israel have a lot invested in our relationship. Basing our cooperation on a thesis and narratives that will not withstand scrutiny is dangerous. It is especially risky in the context of current fiscal pressures in the United States. These seem certain soon to force major revisions of both current levels of American defense spending and global strategy, in the Middle East as well as elsewhere. They also place federally-funded programs in Israel in direct competition with similar programs here at home. To flourish over the long term, Israel’s relations with the United States need to be grounded in reality, not myth, and in peace, not war.
Who Voted for War With Iran, Mr. Obama?
Posted
By Philip Giraldi, CNI Executive Director
House of Representatives resolution 1553, introduced by Congressional Republicans, and currently working its way through the system will endorse an Israeli attack on Iran, which would be going to war by proxy as the US would almost immediately be drawn into the conflict when Tehran retaliates. The resolution provides explicit US backing for Israel to bomb Iran, stating that Congress supports Israel’s use of “all means necessary…including the use of military force”.
House of Representatives resolution 1553, introduced by Congressional Republicans, and currently working its way through the system will endorse an Israeli attack on Iran, which would be going to war by proxy as the US would almost immediately be drawn into the conflict when Tehran retaliates. The resolution provides explicit US backing for Israel to bomb Iran, stating that Congress supports Israel’s use of “all means necessary…including the use of military force”.
The resolution is non-binding, but it is dazzling in its disregard for the possible negative consequences that would ensue for the hundreds of thousands of US military and diplomatic personnel currently serving in the Near East region. Even the Pentagon opposes any Israeli action against Iran, knowing that it would mean instant retaliation against US forces in Iraq and also in Afghanistan. The resolution has appeared, not coincidentally, at the same time as major articles by leading neoconservatives Reuel Marc Gerecht and Bill Kristol calling for military action. AIPAC thinks it is wonderful.
Ironically, the push against Iran comes at a time when the National Intelligence Estimate on the country is being finished. It might come out as soon as August, but it will be secret and its conclusions will either be leaked or released in summary. My sources inside the intelligence community insist that it will support the 2007 NIE that concluded that Iran no longer has a weapons program. The White House has delayed the process seeking harder language to justify a range of options against Iran, including a military strike, but the analysts are reported to be resisting. So we spend $100 billion on intelligence annually and then ignore the best judgments on what is taking place. Might as well use a Ouija board.
Published in American Conservative
Who Owns General Petraeus?
Posted
By Philip Giraldi, CNI Executive Director
Anyone who has ever served in the military would confirm that to become a general in the armed forces of the United States requires highly developed political skills. One must be politically astute to guide large military forces while at the same time answering to largely ignorant constituencies in Congress, the White House, and the media. Many generals tire of the exercise after a certain point and retire to well paid sinecures on the boards of defense contractors. Others stage their own forms of rebellion, speaking the truth and walking the plank as a reward. Admiral William Fallon insisted in 2008 that there would be no war with Iran on his watch. He was forced to retire soon after. More recently, General Stanley McChrystal voiced his displeasure with the White House’s management of the Afghan war to a journalist and likewise was forced into early retirement.
Some generals, however, like the give and take of politics and harbor their own ambitions to hold high office. General Douglas MacArthur challenged President Harry Truman and was spoken of as a possible Republican candidate while General Dwight D. Eisenhower rode his own military fame to the presidency in 1952 and 1956. It is widely believed in the media that the current top general David Petraeus harbors similar ambitions. Eisenhower won the election virtually without campaigning, but Petraeus understands that he must satisfy some key constituencies before he throws his hat in the ring.
The tradition that general officers should provide disinterested advice to policymakers based on their best judgments and the most current available intelligence has long since passed. Modern generals first test the wind before they offer an opinion and then carefully tailor their comments to support the prevailing policy. Petraeus, who is regarded as an intellectual and even somewhat of an iconoclast, is no different. His counterinsurgency strategy, far from a new development, is a replay of similar thinking during the Vietnam war and a repudiation of the Powell Doctrine, which asserted that wars should be in the national interest, with attainable objectives, fought using overwhelming force, and incorporating a clear exit strategy. In short, Petraeus is the architect of the counterinsurgency long war combined with nation building strategy that has been embraced by both Presidents Bush and Obama.
Petraeus’ apparent close relationship with the neoconservatives and the Israel Lobby is a matter of concern, particularly if he does aspire to be president. Some have plausibly identified him as the neocon candidate for 2012 though others note appreciatively that he initiated a long overdue national debate with his Senate testimony in March 2010, observing as he did that the failure to achieve peace in Israel-Palestine has endangered United States soldiers in the region. To be sure, Petraeus quickly did damage control for the statement in the Senate, helping in the orchestration of an article that described him as a friend to Israel who did not view the conflict with the Palestinians as a matter of great concern. In May 2010 Petraeus received the Irving Kristol award from the American Enterprise Institute, indicating clearly that the Israel Lobby and the neocon establishment regard him as a favorite son.
Petraeus’ personal link to the neocons is through Max Boot and the two Kagans, Kimberly and Fred. All three have advised the general and have been cheerleaders for his “surge” policies. Kimberly Kagan has written a book featuring Petraeus entitled The Surge: A Military History. A series of emails to Boot that appears to have been inadvertently revealed to Israel Lobby critic James Morris suggests that Petraeus’ ambitions led him to seek expert advice on how to mend fences with the Jewish community after his Senate testimony faux pas. He asked Boot “Does it help if folks know that I hosted Elie Wiesel and his wife at our quarters last Sun night? And that I will be the speaker at the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps in mid-Apr at the Capitol Dome…,” exceptional pandering by a four star general and also a comment that suggests a certain naïveté on the subject. Petraeus even weasel worded about his actual testimony before the Senate, telling Boot “As you know I didn’t say that. It’s in a written submission for the record…” He also collaborated with Boot on the preparation of an article entitled “A Lie: David Petraeus, Anti-Israel” that appeared on March 18, 2010, appropriately enough, in Commentary magazine, a publication founded by the American Jewish Committee.
But maybe the neocons should think twice about their captive general. Many who harbor political ambitions rightly fear the power of the Israel Lobby, but fear is a far remove from affection. Many Congressmen held hostage by the Lobby resent it and long for the time when they would be able to support genuine American interests relating to the Middle East. Petraeus surely understands that no one can get nominated by a major party to run for president of the United States if the Israel Lobby and its media supporters say no.
If he wants to get elected, he has to watch what he says and bend his knee, but he might not like it just as President Barack Obama clearly did not enjoy the battering he took from the Lobby in the fight for the Democratic nomination. Israel and its friends just might wind up selecting a strong leader with some very definite views that ultimately could lead to Washington distancing itself from Israel in a very decisive fashion. As a war hero with no particular political baggage, he would be a formidable opponent for any foreign Lobby, including that of Israel. And as a former general who has led troops in the field, he might become a president who actually believes the needless waste of his soldiers is unacceptable.
Petraeus’ report to the Senate Armed Services Committee was groundbreaking, a fact that was recognized at the time. It came after a team of staff officers conducted a series of off-the-record meetings with Arab allies in the Middle East in December 2009. All America’s friends emphasized that it had become increasingly difficult to generate popular support for US policies in light of the Israeli repression of the Palestinians. The responses were so alarming that Petraeus arranged a briefing for Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a month later. Mullen also was shocked by the depth of the antipathy towards the United States caused by Israeli policies and the report to the Senate was the result.
It is important to go back to the original statement to the Senate that started the furor about Petraeus’ views. Do not for a second think that the assessment of Israel and Palestine was something that made it into the 56 page Central Command posture statement by accident or because Petraeus did not notice it. The report was prepared by Petraeus’ staff and it is absolutely certain that he read every line of it and endorsed it before he appeared before the Senate committee. The report’s full title is “Statement of General David H. Petraeus, US Army Commander, US Central Command before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Posture of US Central Command, 16 Mar 2010.” This is what it says:
- “The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests… Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiments, due to perception of US favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of US partnerships with governments and peoples in the region and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.”
Though carefully expressed, there is no ambiguity to the statement and no doubt that it represents General Petraeus’ thinking. It means what it says, basically that Israel’s behavior weakens Arab regimes friendly to the US, makes it impossible to develop popular support for Washington’s programs, and strengthens terrorism. The result is that American soldiers and diplomats in the Middle East and Central Asia are threatened by irresponsible and unsustainable Israeli policies.
This means that the genie is out of the bottle no matter what Max Boot does to try to coax it back in or spin it into meaninglessness. It is also important to bear in mind that the Petraeus’ statement was not an isolated incident, a sign of what might amount to a new awareness in Washington that Israel represents a strategic liability. In March, Joe Biden reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops…” And Admiral Mike Mullen has warned his counterpart General Gabi Ashkenazi that Israeli actions are hurting the US posture throughout the Mideast region.
So who owns General Petraeus? At this point, maybe no one. If he does have political ambitions he is certainly smart enough to know that crossing the neocons and the Lobby would be suicidal as he would be subjected to a devastating media assault. But he is a smart man who understands that the relationship with Israel is a liability. If he were to become president would his better angel come to the fore? We can only hope.F
