When A Map Is Worth a Thousand Words

Or maybe even 674 pages, the length of Douglas Feith’s recent opus, War and Decision.

As you can imagine, Israel does not figure prominently in Feith’s book, and you would never guess from reading it that, as early as 1996, Feith — along with David Wurmser and their common mentor, Richard Perle — was already thinking that the ouster of Saddam Hussein was the key to transforming the regional balance of power decisively in favor of Israel, thus permitting a Likud-led Israel to make a “clean break” from the Oslo peace process and “secure the realm” of the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, as well as its pre-1967 borders.

I don’t intend to review of the book, at least now. But the map that appears next to Feith’s “Introduction” depicting Iraq and its neighbors as of 2003 offers some insight into his worldview and Israel’s rightful place — or, more precisely, its size — within it:

Not much space for a Palestinian state, is there? Good strategic depth around Jerusalem. Looks like the Golan isn’t supposed to revert to Syria, either. No suggestion of occupation. It’s all Israeli.

Incidentally, In his book, Feith claims that it was Fred Ikle that got him the undersecretary for policy job, but I have it on excellent authority that it was Perle, the only man who Rumsfeld (who himself referred to the West Bank and Gaza as “so-called occupied territories”) believes is his intellectual equal, whose recommendation was decisive. And it’s good to know that the Washington Post still considers Perle credible enough to give him space on its op-ed page to warn against the perils of multilateralism in dealing with Iran, as it did today.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

Author: Jim Lobe

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service's Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

5 thoughts on “When A Map Is Worth a Thousand Words”

    1. Try to find the West Bank and Gaza Strip on that map. Try to find the Occupied Golan Heights on that map. Try to find the Occupied Shebaa Farms on that map.

      Get it now?

    2. The West Bank and Gaza are shown as parts of Israel. Part of Golan,too.

      Zhu Bajie

  5. Watching these video clips brings to mind how many Muslims and Arabs were rounded up and held for months, some to this day, on the flimsiest of made up charges while these people were let go. And how about these revelations:

    Assistance to URBAN MOVING SYSTEMS INC in NJ.
    (FY 2001)

    Summary

    Fiscal Year: 2001
    Federal dollars: $498,750
    Total number of recipients: 1
    Total number of transactions: 1

    http://www.fedspending.org/faads/faads.php?reptype=r&detail=-1&datype=T&sortby=t&database=faads&recip_id=903577&fiscal_year=2001&record_num=f500

    Bogus Israeli Moving Co –
    Israeli Intel – Back In US?
    By Wayne Madsen

    http://www.rense.com/general67/intel.htm

  6. I am hereby putting Douglas Feith on public notice that if I get to within 10 meters of his person I will anally rape him.

    Mr. Feith, you are on notice.

  7. God has blessed the Americans with Bush & Co wisdom may God extend his blessing and help BushCain to the White house It should be called the fourth Reich.

    The Fall of the last Tsar of Russia was due to one man. Rasputin who appeared so innocent he only was a horny man. in retrospect Bush appear to be horny for wars.

    Iran is so willing to have a go with USA but the attack has to come from USA first.
    I hope BushCain wins and the world will have more fun watching USA fighting war after war.
    War with Iran will create a chain of events Sharp recession oil will surpass $200 a barrel, the destruction of Ras Tanora the largest oil refinery on the planet and Saudis Kuwait Syria Lebanon and Israel Iraq Afghanistan Pakistan all joining the fun each will have their own reasons and eahc have an absolute right to defend their borders while USA is right in the middle…..isn’t that fun BushCain will have a ball while the working and middle class USA take the brunt, Not Bush and the politicians ……hope you enjoy it.

    1. A US attack on Iran, or collusion with an Israeli attack, could mean oil at $400 per barrel.

      A few are even pointing to the possibility of $600 per barrel spikes.

      It is economic suicide.

      1. If you believe in the Rapture, economic suicide may not matter to you.

        Lester Ness

      2. The military-indestrial corporations and the oil companies dominate the American economy.Both need constant wras to make huge profits.Crude prices will,in the future,will come down but the prices people pay for refined oil products will stay high because they have aleardy conditioned to accepet those high prices.That’s what the secert meeting between Cheny and the oil companies excutaives was all about.Destroying Israel’s enemy is also part of the grand stratgy.The ne-cons have both their hands in both of these industries.

        1. Nor to Zionists either–at least not the economic suicide of the United States.

          Then, of course, there are the multinational corporate fascists like Halliburton, which just moved its HQ to the Gulf.

          If someone offers you a bag, in the guise of “patriotism” or anything else, including “free markets” or “centralized planning” (neither of which exist in any absolute terms), be sure not to reach out a hand. You may be left holding it for a generation or more, and your children and grandchildren too.

  8. Prowar.com?

    Doug Bandow’s last column was apalling. Does he want more soldiers to Afghanistan? I thought the antiinterventionist position on Afghanistan was quit clear, as in other wars: To get back home as fast as possible. Just as antiwar people in Europe sympathize with the American people’s struggle to get their troops out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and of course from places were there aren’t wars too, like in Germany), I would expect the same sympathy for people in other countries struggeling to get their troops home.

    By the way, France spends 47 % more per capita on the military than the UK does (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-countries-have-the-highest-military-expenditures.htm). I can’t understand why anyone would want them to spend more. They certainly has a big enough military (including nuclear weapons) to defend their country. That should be a sufficient size for any military.

    1. This is a recurring problem here. Most of the sites they link to everyday are overtly or obliquely prowar, so they end up with massive amounts of propaganda disguised as antiwar journalism. Last week Ivan Eland called for the ethnic cleansing of the entire non-Kurdish population of Iraq into homogeneous religious ghettos! Whether this is due to cynical opportunism or just callous stupidity is open to debate.

      1. It’s not worth debating. Some of it is opportunism, some ignorance or stupidity, some both, and some neither.

        Some of it may also be, as in the case of Ron Paul, what the old Soviet Communists called “controlled opposition”.

        Recall–an important segment of the Neo-Cons were at one time full-fledged Trotskyites, weren’t they?

        The Born Again Zionists are considerably more naive, and, as these things go,are, with Bush himself, therefore looking more and more to be the prime candidate for scapegoat.

        One saw the drift very early oneself–when Perle jumped ship.

        Should be fun to watch.

  9. Thank you so much for trying to alert my fellow countryman to the deceitfulness and murderous intentions of Israel, which country is also killing us as commentators show. But we wise people have our hands full because the last Gallop pollsters are saying that the opinions of the majority of the inhabitants of the USA toward Israel vs Palestinians is gaining in favorability toward Israel. Truthfully, I am about ready to denounce my government to the degree that I give up my citizenship.

    Re Norway, some think Norwegians are strong enough to withstand Zionist acquisitiveness. Maybe they will allow me to immigrate to there.

  10. “In 1895 Theodor Herzl, Zionism’s chief prophet, confided in his diary that he did not favour sharing Palestine with the natives. Better, he wrote, to “try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by denying it any employment in our own country … Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”

    He was proposing a programme of Palestinian emigration enforced through a policy of strict separation between Jewish immigrants and the indigenous population. In simple terms, he hoped that, once Zionist organisations had bought up large areas of Palestine and owned the main sectors of the economy, Palestinians could be made to leave by denying them rights to work the land or labour in the Jewish-run economy. His vision was one of transfer, or ethnic cleansing, through ethnic separation.”

    http://www.counterpunch.org/cook06272008.html

  11. “last Gallop pollsters are saying that the opinions of the majority of the inhabitants of the USA toward Israel vs Palestinians is gaining in favorability toward Israel”

    That’s what you get from a population that has been constantly brained washed for over 60 yaers or more.Garbbage in Garbbage out!

  12. Folks, you gotta get past this Zionist stuff.
    It ain’t about Zionism. It’s about money, FED money.
    Do you think the FED has allowed trillions in loans
    without the security of collateral? Think again.
    Zionism is only a catalyst; jingoism for both sides to foment war.
    Read up on Ron Paul and his camp. They know where to
    point the finger, and it’s not at any particular ethnic group or movement.
    As always, it’s the nameless, fatherless state.
    The Constitution is on our side.
    While it has been ignored and spat upon it hasn’t been defaced.
    It’s still there, waiting.

    1. McCain takes his advice from John Hagee, and (worse) Rod Parsley.

      Lester Ness

      1. McCain Meets With Billy Graham And Son

        SIDOTI, AP Jun 29, 2008

        MONTREAT, N.C. – John McCain met Sunday with evangelist Billy Graham and his son, Franklin, at the family’s mountaintop retreat.

        The Republican presidential candidate, who is actively courting religious voters and trying to reassure skeptical conservatives, visited privately with the Grahams on the grounds of Little Piney Cove in the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina….”

        1. So McCain has decided to do like all other presidents of the last 50 years and suck up to Billy Graham? I don’t know what Billy thinks of the war, but son Franklin was real enthusiastic about the invasion of Iraq before it happened. He had plans to send all surviving Iraqis CARE packages which included tracts, telling them all about the love of Jesus. BBC actually interviewed him about this, had him debate with an Iraqi MD working in Britain. I don’t think Franklin G. was actually allowed to do anything so provocative. I do know he hates Islam, if not quite in the same way Rod Parsley does.

          Lester Ness
          Kunming
          China

  14. Re Will Blalock’s comment above, and who is, who is in charge of, the FED? I am still trying to sort all this out.

    1. Who controls the FED?
      The corporate Superbeings, of course.
      “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood”

  15. The map is a visual equivalent of a Freudian slip of the tongue. The Palestinians basically do not exist in his mind and other neoconservatives, they are annoying insects to be squashed.

    1. No, it is not a “Freudian slip”. It is done consciously and deliberately, as propaganda and subliminal suggestion.

      Have you read Mann’s Felix Krull? It is not the case here, but just as Krull learned to control his retina to deceive, others have learned to feign “Freudian slips” as well.

  16. It’s not just Feith, it’s the country where his allegiance lies.

    I possess a map issued by the Israeli Tourism Ministry in 1986. It shows the whole of the West Bank, the Negev, Gaza, Golan Heights, the entire post-Six Day War shebang as “Israel” pure and simple.

    The difference between neocons and Likudniks on the one hand, and “left wing” Zionists on the other? One lot colonizes, fences and oppresses Palestine with a whoop of nuclear-armed triumph. The other sheds buckets of crocodile tears over the cruel necessity: “this hurts me more than it does you, why oh why do you make us act this way?”.

  17. The divided map of Iraq reminded me of this: Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. &

    Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north.

    Contrary to the ‘sectarian civil war’ nonsense that is peddled here everyday, the Iraqis aren’t blowing up their own mosques, markets, and infrastructure in a desperate attempt to turn their country in Gaza. It’s the occupation attempting to end the guerrilla war by deracinating the Iraqis.

  18. So appreciate Costa’s mention re George Gallup and the rhetoric of scientific democracy, and feel somewhat comforted that maybe Americans are not as ignorant about the reality of the Israel question. I have not read the questions he/they used upon which it based its findings about the US populace attitudes toward Israel and Palestine.

    1. Absolutely on target–polls are meaningless unless one can read all the questions, and analyse their phrasing, their order, and the circumstances under which they are asked.

      That is not the same as saying that they are valueless.

      But this always in addition to questions about the sampling, etc.,–the medium in which the poll was taken, even the time of day and place.

      In the BBC documentary, “The Century of Self”, there is also an interesting segment on a method developed by Edward Bernays, in which the interviewers were trained to ask the same question, sometimes in slightly different form, over and over again, while seeming to listen raptly and taking notes to all earlier answers.

      The clip of this interview form in that “documentary” is worth its weight in gold.

      One don’t(sic) say Gallup does that. Their problem from the beginning is thinking they had anything “scientific” to offer politicians or anyone else.

    2. Probably many think “Israelis = Cowboys, Palestinians = Indians”. Christian Zionists often think the Palestinians = Philistines or even Canaanites, expelled/exterminated by divine decree. My favorite mad evangelist, Brother Stair (www.overcoministry.org), explicitly equates Palestinians with Philistines or Canaanites. In reality, of course, Philistines and Canaanites were active 3000 years ago (if you think the Bible historical at all). After 3000 years, everyone now alive is descended from everyone alive then.

      Lester Ness

  19. Are the map critics equally upset by the hundreds and thousands of maps in the Arab world, including the PA, that show Israel as not existing?

    I thought not.

    1. My dear Elder, do you happen to know if the Israelis use the Turkish cartographers’ map of the area that used to be Armenia by any chance? You remember Armenia, right?

      Ah, so seldom get a chance to use my spiffy new tu quoque[tu quoque] brackets these days.

  20. Antiwar is blocking my comments?
    I’m sorry, anti-Zionism just doesn’t
    do the thing for me. I prefer tomatoe
    paste with my red herring.

  21. RE:anti-neocon

    “who controls the FED?”

    The FED is controled by a race of Superbeings called “corporations.”
    “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood”

    1. Ah yes, what’s the word, “quasi-public”, but used in a way that Corporate Fascists don’t shout, “Socialism!”, “Communism!”,”Welfare!”, rather than, private banks helping themselves to a Federally enforced monopoly power and prerogatives.

      Okay, JP Morgan, for example, is a member of the Federal Reserve. Bears Stearns goes down the tubes and is rescued by the Federal government, including Bear Stearns selling itself to JP Morgan for $2 per share initially. One British investor loses a cool billion. It is so crooked the price is raised. Some point out that Bear Stearns’ real estate holdings are worth a bundle. The price is raised. And the Federal government guarantees that the buyer, JP Morgan, will not lose on the proposition.

      That’s called “insurance”. And you, citizens, just paid for it.

      Capitalism as corporate welfare is a grand idea, isn’t?

      1. Yes.
        Our corporate “citizens” are running the show.
        We need corporations. Collective bargaining is
        an inalienable right, but when the Supreme Court
        decided to breathe life into them they became something else.
        They now own the earth and everything in it; PERPETUALLY.
        The bride of Leviathan is endowed with a seemly dowry.
        Read Hegel (if you can.)

        1. Hard to “own” the earth making products that don’t sell, printing currency that is not worth the paper it is printed on, and provoking endless wars which one loses.

          What’s left increasingly is the table of organization and increasingly theoretical concepts like “ownership”, meaning what the elite thinks they own and the rest don’t.

          My first acquaintance with Paul was in relation to the Second Amendment. No complaints on that score–“no” is not “some”.

          On other fronts, however, increasingly he looks like a Judas Goat. Trotting out Locke and declaring everyone “self-owned” is logically and philosophically inept, and socially and economically retrogressive.

        2. Are persons entitled to private property?
          In the case of corporations, can private property own itself?
          In the case of persons, can persons own themselves?

          In a world of give and take, is there any value in “being?”
          If so, how do you protect it?
          The Declaration of Independence appeals to the highest
          conceptual authority in placing the individual above property.
          The Second Amendment appeals to the lowest common denominator
          to protect that individual.
          Our Constitution declares the self as sovereign, and backs it
          up with teeth.

          How is the idea of “self” inept? Retrogressive?
          How has Paul betrayed this?

          Do you dismiss the classical liberal concept of inalienable
          human rights? Is there nothing the state cannot take from us?
          Rightfully?

        3. Yours are sophisticated questions, but many of the assumptions behind them are naive.

          Simple yes or no responses may be given but the they will likely not make much sense without context or will be very misleading. Giving a detailed answer to all of them, even in cursory fashion, would make a small volume.

          Consider the following in answer to your first question, for example:

          Are persons entitled to private property?

          No.

          Both legal personhood and private property must be recognized before a person can be considered entitled to it, let alone even capable of “ownership”

          The US Constitution, it happens, recognizes both private and public property, but in regard to what or whom is a complex problem.

          In Roman law slaves, who were owned as property, could also own property of their own, and all slaves in later times had a peculium, a minimum property attached to them. Did the owner of the slave own the property owned by the slave? Yes, but not in a simple straightforward way.

          The US Constitution also recognized slavery, in which human beings were considered property.

          American slavery, however, was peculiar exactly in not recognizing the peculium, for example, and accordingly the slave had no rights at all in law, because not a legal “person”.

          Does this really clarify anything? It may not seem so. But one could might out, for example, that the Roman paterfamilias owned the children of the family in exactly the same way as he owned slaves (in fact “familia” included slaves).

          Would it surprise you to know, therefore, that in most US States minors have less rights when they have legal parents, than Roman slaves had in regard to their owners?

          It certainly surprised me when I first learned of it.

          Does in fact the US Constitution recognize all human beings as “persons” entitled to own property privately.

          Not at all. For one thing, not only slaves, but children are excluded and have, in most states, no entitlement to own property at all, or even to participate in the ownership of public property.

          Are therefore minors not legal persons or persons without standing?

          In fact, American law, both state and Federal, is very inconsistent on this question and has never been regularized.

          A child with no parents, for example, who inherits property as a minor does have some clear claim to the property, but still has no standing in law, and can exercise “ownership” of the property only though a guardian.

          This is only scratching the surface.

          When you say “person”–who qualifies?

          Similarly in regard to “property” and “ownership”. What is considered “property” and what “ownership”.

          Does any “person” on the planet have private property rights to the sea or ocean bottom?

          If not, why not? What would “fishing rights” by treaty be then?

          Do “states”, on the other hand, have such property rights in regard to sea and sea bottom?

          If so, again why?

        4. So in short you are saying persons
          are not entitled to private property.
          All property is then held communally?
          Who determines its use?
          Do I, can I, plant corn or wheat on
          this plot of land?

  22. “All property is then held communally”.

    That is where you jump to conclusions with an unstated “either/or”–to wit, all property is either private or (aut) public.

    That does not hold save as convention and fiat, and very inconsistently.

    Also, even were it so, under the rubric “communal”, as as under “private”, all sorts of different concepts and schemes are conflated.

    “…can I, plant corn or wheat on this plot of land?”

    Given only that, how would I know? A Navajo might answer, perfectly sensibly, have you asked the land?

    1. The riddle may be the “either-or” got from doctrinaire but very naive thinkers like Locke, whose main contribution to philosophy and logic was the blatant inconsistencies he promulgated.

      British law is also idiosyncratic because of the Norman Conquest, in which William claimed to own the whole island (actually islands) and everything and everybody in it.

      At any rate, there is in Locke an undertone that everything and everybody must be owned, so that to be “free” must be to be “self-owned”.

      The real crudity of Paul is in saying, “You are self-owned”, rather than “I don’t own you”, as if it were some vastly useful, vastly enlightening gift.

      It is the reflexive part that plays the role of Judas Goat. Are we now to acknowledge some naive and logically crude idea of “property”, “ownership”, and “law” because Paul tells us it applies to “ourselves”?

  24. Pingback: Multistaged division agenda

Comments are closed.

viewpoint highlights
breaking news
© 2024 Antiwar.com. All rights reserved.
Antiwar.com Blog Stock Photos provided by our partner Depositphotos