Antiwar.com Blog

Michael Scheuer, lately of the CIA, now a bestselling author, on the tail wagging the dog:

“Pro-Israel lobbyists have run an enviable ‘covert action’ in the United States, a former top CIA analyst said. Michael Scheuer, who wrote a best-selling book criticizing the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies last summer, while he still worked for the CIA, said the U.S.-Israel relationship was a case of the tail wagging the dog. ‘I just think it does America tremendous harm in the Islamic world for us to be so obviously the dog that’s led around by the tail,’ Scheuer said Thursday at a Middle East Policy Council briefing in Washington. He suggested that the United States should reconsider its aid to Israel, but that such a debate was impossible. ‘I think the Israelis have done a marvelous job in terms of being able to control the nature of debate in this country over our policies toward Israel,’ he said. ‘Whether it’s people sending out from AIPAC a list of rules on how to review my books or, you know, the fact that if you criticize Israel you’re an anti-Semite, it’s a tremendous covert action. I wish our intelligence community could have done the same over the course of the past 30 years anywhere.'”

The pro-Israel lobby and “covert action” — do you think he means this, or this — or maybe even this?

Via Yoshie at Critical Montages, a quote from Iraqi doctor Ali Fadhil:

The US military destroyed Falluja, but simply spread the fighters out around the country. They also increased the chance of civil war in Iraq by using their new national guard of Shias to suppress Sunnis. Once, when a foreign journalist, an Irish guy, asked me whether I was Shia or Sunni — the way the Irish do because they have that thing about the IRA — I said I was Sushi. My father is Sunni and my mother is Shia. I never cared about these things. Now, after Falluja, it matters. (Fadhil, “City of Ghosts,” January 11, 2005)

This (realplayer)clip is from Dr Ali Fadhil’s special report on his return to Fallujah, produced by Guardian Films:

Falluja: The Fall and Fall Out (January 10, 2005)

What are they putting in the water cooler over at the Cato Institute, once a bastion of reliably anti-interventionist scholarship and an invaluable resource for antiwar activists? I was reading Christopher Preble’s op ed on “How to Exit Iraq,” and everything was going along swimmingly –“there is only one rational option: a prompt military withdrawal” — and then came this:

“If Iraqis wish to retain their sovereignty and independence, they must ensure that al-Qaeda and other anti-American terrorist groups do not establish a safe haven in their country. Accordingly, the withdrawal of U.S. forces must be coupled with a clear and unequivocal message to the new government of Iraq: do not threaten us or allow foreign terrorists in your country to threaten us. If you do, we will be back.”

In other words, Iraqi “sovereignty” is entirely dependent on whether or not some Chalabi-esque character comes up with “intelligence” that links Iraq to “weapons of mass destruction.” And how, pray tell, could a fourth-rate power with a fifth-rate military possibly pose a “threat” to the mighty hyperpower?

Déjà vu, anyone? Oddly, for a supposed libertarian, Preble seems to have set out to prove the old Marxist aphorism that history repeats itself “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

What must even the most pro-American Iraqis feel as they are told that we’ll be back if Al Qaeda sets foot on Iraqi soil — when the terrorist incursion was made possible by the American invasion? Who turned Iraq into a ‘terrorist haven”?

That we are going to have to leave Iraq in worse shape than it was before the invasion is a given: war, after all, is mass death and destruction, and these conditions inevitably breed political extremism. Yet every moment we delay getting out swells Al Qaeda’s ranks. Gulf War II was a war of choice — and it was a bad choice. Just how bad is beginning to dawn even on those who gave Bush the benefit of a doubt.

Gil Guillory, who has been to Iraq, takes on yet another Cato bigwig, Tom Palmer, who argues that we can’t leave Iraq until the insurgents are “destroyed” and a functioning “democracy” is set up. Recalling the unanimity of his Iraqi contacts in favor of a swift U.S. withdrawal, Guillory writes:

“Their reasoning was that the longer the US military stayed, the more lasting would be US control of the Iraqi government, and the lesser chance for eventual political independence. If my colleagues’ opinions were representative of Iraqi opinion at large, and their opinions have not changed, then holders of the Palmer doctrine of withdrawal have a choice: either we let the Iraqis have a skinny freedom or impose a fat paternalism.”

What kind of a world are we living in when Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski are more anti-interventionist than the libertarian Cato Institute?

The more conditions we put on an American withdrawal, the deeper we sink into the Iraqi quagmire. Unconditional and immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq is the only practical course — and the only moral one as well.

The perfect retort to yet another 25,000-word tirade from Norman Podhoretz.

At a time when Iraqi expats all over the world are registering to vote in the forthcoming election, here’s a related situation, explored by James Bowen in the Irish Times, to ponder:

The elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about is the disenfranchisement of the Palestinian refugees in the diaspora outside the borders of pre-1948 Palestine. These people, who constitute the majority of the Palestinians, were not allowed to vote in Sunday’s election.

According to PASSIA, a well-respected independent Palestinian research institution in East Jerusalem, the worldwide Palestinian population in mid-2001 was 8.8 million. Of these, one million werePalestinian citizens of Israel, 3.3 million were living in the WestBank and Gaza and 4.5 million were refugees in the diaspora.

Since the Palestinian population has one of the highest growth rates in the world, 4.5 per cent per annum, the corresponding figures inJanuary 2005 are higher but it is reasonable to assume that therelative proportions are similar.

Of the millions of Palestinians who are not Israeli citizens, 58 percent are in the diaspora and only 42 per cent live in the West Bank and Gaza. However, only the latter were allowed to vote on Sunday. While nobody should complain about these people electing someone whowill administer their local taxes and services, the problem is that the Palestinian Authority is actually expected to negotiate a treaty which will determine the future of the disenfranchised refugees.

The Israelis want the PA to sign an agreement abdicating the right of the refugees to return to the homes from which they were ethnically cleansed by Israeli troops in 1948.

Posted by Howard Lenow (guest blogging for Andrew Schamess) Read the rest here.

What reason is there for facilitating the participation of the Iraqi diaspora in the Iraqi elections that doesn’t apply to the displaced Palestinians voting in the Palestinian election as well?

Glasnost, Iranian-style.