Antiwar.com Blog

Raed gets it right

An explosion happened while US soldiers accompanied with WMD inspectors were trying to break into a chemical store.

WMD inspectors?!
freedom democracy freedom democracy WMD whooaaaaaaaaaa

WMD. You gotta love their persistence.

Two points from today’s War Street Journal opinion section. First, this editorial, “The Fallujah Stakes,” urges precisely the type of overreaction I counsel against in today’s column. Small wonder. But in the middle of their kill-’em-all routine, the editors insert a little nugget I’m hearing more and more these days: “They can’t be bargained with, they can’t be reasoned with, because for them a peaceful transition to Iraqi control after June 30 means defeat.”

What does this even mean? If the neocons can’t churn out better propaganda than this, why are we supposed to believe they can run the planet? Why does a peaceful transition mean defeat for the insurgents? They could just wait until after such a transition to raise hell. Wouldn’t that be easier, assuming that that’s all they have in mind? The neocons are trying to hide–and the insurgents are fighting against–the reality that there won’t be any transfer of power on June 30.

The second item is a (subscribers only) piece by Jose Maria Aznar called “Appeasement Never Works,” in which the former Spanish PM takes a whizz on his country and its current government. You’ll recall how American “conservatives” shriek every time a politician or other celebrity criticizes Dubya, and how the pitch and decibels soar when the critic is on foreign soil at the time (Dixie Chicks, anyone?). So what to make of this sore loser bashing his country in a foreign newspaper in a foreign language?

No news in the case of the Marine who allegedly humiliated some Iraqi kids, but the following story is part of why I’m already tired of the former.

Marines get suspended sentences for assault

Two Marines stationed at Iwakuni Marine Corps Air Station received suspended prison sentences Friday after pleading guilty to assaulting two Japanese women.

Cpl. Joseph P. Benoit received a 14-month prison term suspended for three years, and Lance Cpl. Nathan J. Schuermann’s sentence of one year in prison was suspended for three years, according to a Yamaguchi District Court official.

Benoit and Schuermann, of Marine Wing Support Squadron 171, pleaded guilty Feb. 6 to bodily assault for attacking two 22-year-old Hiroshima women visiting in Iwakuni city on April 12, 2003.

According to the prosecutor’s indictment, Benoit, 22, punched one of the women in the head, knocking her to the ground; he then climbed on top of her and grabbed her neck. Schuermann, 22, knocked the other woman to the ground, grabbed her hair and twice smashed her head into the ground.

Decisions about their future as U.S. Marines have yet to be made, Capt. Stewart Upton, a base spokesman, said late Friday afternoon.

Well, don’t keep the poor things waiting! Continue reading “LCpl. Boudreaux Non-Update”

In his April-25, Antiwar.com blog post, Mr. Epstein does his utmost to misrepresent my argument in "Blame Bush, Not the Jews, For Iraq." (Note that I say "Jews," not "Neoconservatives.") Readers should read the said column and The Jewish Connection . Even if they disagree with me, those with the necessary intellectual honesty will see Mr. Epstein’s caricature-like misrepresentation of my thinking on the issue for what it is.

He claims that I claim that, "No Jews, Israelis, or neoconservatives had anything whatsoever to do with our war in Iraq." Why the distortion, I wonder?

First I do not say that neoconservatives had nothing to do with the war. This is an Epstein concoction. I’ve written enough about the administration’s ideological bent to refute Mr. Epstein’s silly fib. The administration is neoconservative.

I question the significance Epstein and his ilk impute to the ethnic identity of members of the administration. It is the conspiracy component—the kind Epstein and his sort belabor—that I dispute (The evidence is on my side.) Conspiracy theories have their origins not in fact or systematic thinking. Rather, figments are woven by irrational minds into a theory that comports with the biases and pre-existing precepts of their holders, not with reality.

Contra the conspiracy theorists a la Epstein, there is no proof that 1) the administration and the president were converted by Jews to neoconservatism 2) that those Jews who allegedly did the converting are working for the Likud or that 3) the Likud government and its agents are behind the war. In fact, if one is searching for the main ancillary agitators, then the evidence overwhelmingly points toward the Iraqi dissidents. The dissident community was behind the faulty intelligence and was most active in inciting for war. Still, what I termed the "will to war" seems to come from the top: George Bush. (Who’s the Boss, Israel or the U.S. also injects some sanity into the mythical thinking about the Jewish-Israeli control of the American Empire.)

Yet comments from the Epstein crowd about, "A war for Israel and for the Likud; A war to make the Middle East safe for Israel" are tossed about with idiotic abandon. Clearly, Mr. Epstein doesn’t deal in fact. But then a devotion to conspiracy is inimical to fact or reality.

Sincerely
Ilana Mercer

Ilana Mercer often defends Israel, which is fine, but she has also hammered neoconservatism and its proponents. Nothing contradictory about that, since we have pointed out time and again that “neoconservative” does not mean “Jewish.” Why, then, does she now imply just that? Why write “President Bush doesn’t readily consult or even take directions from his Cabinet, much less from his neoconservative minions“? I fully agree that Bush is ultimately responsible for everything his administration does. But why is she suddenly lending credence to the charges of David Brooks and co.?

Marcus Epstein calls our attention to the latest Ilana Mercer word salad. In addition to the point Marcus makes about the way Mercer excuses all neocons and Jews for the war, it seems to me she should be taken to task for her own anti-semitic views.

Mercer: President Bush doesn’t readily consult or even take directions from his Cabinet, much less from his neoconservative minions.

This is Ilana’s thesis for this article. By proving that Bush went to war all by himself she will prove this conclusion:

Mercer: “Plan of Attack” proves Iraq was Bush’s attack and Bush’s plan. After Woodward, only the tinfoil-hat crowd can blame the Jews for it.

In order to convince us of this argument, Ilana has to equate “neocons” with The Jews^TM, because inconveniently, Woodward doesn’t make anything like the point that Ilana wants to make. So we start off with neocon, neocon, neocon, and then suddenly, the neocons turn into….Jews and Israelis!

Those who saw “Jewish machinations” – where there were only officials who happened to be Jewish – accused these Jews of taking Americans to war to “build [a] greater Zion” in the Middle East. In the wonderfully apposite words of Canadian commentator Rex Murphy: “Some of those who most see themselves as critics of the Israeli side of this conflict … seem to think they have some extra warrant or righteousness in how far they can go to express their detestation of Israel’s policies, its government, and then by extension of Jews.” These critics tarred as traitors Jewish neoconservatives in and around the administration for a policy directed by the commander in chief with unidirectional, God-inspired gusto.

Woodward does make Bush out to be less of a puppet than he is often considered to be. Ilana highlights everything Woodward says that gives Bush a forceful character or shows him acting at all and uses it to get the neocons , and by extension the Jews and Israelis, off the hook for the invasion. According to neocons like Joel Mowbray, this makes you an antisemite.

Mowbray’s angle is that antisemites equate “neocon” with The Jews^TM and then slyly use the word “neocon” as a code word to attack Jews. This approach requires one to ignore all evidence that the neocons are a diverse lot and smear anyone who uses the word “neocon” as an “antisemite.” Neocon=Jew is practically a canard now, as the neocons beat it to death until it’s failure to convince became obvious even to them.

Here’s Mowbray, smearing General Anthony Zinni:

Discussing the Iraq war with the Washington Post last week, former General Anthony Zinni took the path chosen by so many anti-Semites: he blamed it on the Jews.

Neither President Bush nor Vice-President Cheney—nor for that matter Zinni’s old friend, Secretary of State Colin Powell—was to blame. It was the Jews. They “captured” both Bush and Cheney, and Powell was merely being a “good soldier.”

Technically, the former head of the Central Command in the Middle East didn’t say “Jews.” He instead used a term that has become a new favorite for anti-Semites: “neoconservatives.” As the name implies, “neoconservative” was originally meant to denote someone who is a newcomer to the right. In the 90’s, many people self-identified themselves as “neocons,” but today that term has become synonymous with “Jews.”

Mowbray’s idiotic smearing has been ably refuted by AntiWar.com’s Justin Raimondo here: Smearing General Zinni: Joel Mowbray, total as*hole.

Here’s part of what Zinni told the Washington post in the interview for which Mowbray smears him:

“The more he listened to [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz and other administration officials talk about Iraq, the more Zinni became convinced that interventionist ‘neoconservative’ ideologues were plunging the nation into a war in a part of the world they didn’t understand. ‘The more I saw, the more I thought that this was the product of the neocons who didn’t understand the region and were going to create havoc there. These were dilettantes from Washington think tanks who never had an idea that worked on the ground.'”

“…The goal of transforming the Middle East by imposing democracy by force reminds him of the ‘domino theory’ in the 1960s that the United States had to win in Vietnam to prevent the rest of Southeast Asia from falling into communist hands. And that brings him back to Wolfowitz and his neoconservative allies as the root of the problem. ‘I don’t know where the neocons came from – that wasn’t the platform they ran on,’ he says. ‘Somehow, the neocons captured the president. They captured the vice president.'”

So, did the neocons capture the top two people in the executive branch or not? Let’s see what Woodward actually says about the influence of some rather prominent neocons:

Woodward, in the Washington Post, describing the Fall of Baghdad party at Cheney’s place:

Vice President Cheney phoned Adelman, who was in Paris with his wife, Carol. What a clever column [referring to Adelmam’s “Cakewalk” column], the vice president said. You really demolished them. He said he and his wife, Lynne, were having a small private dinner Sunday night, April 13, to talk and celebrate. The only other guests would be his chief adviser, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and Wolfowitz, now deputy secretary of defense. Adelman realized it was Cheney’s way of saying thank you, and he and his wife came back from Paris a day early to attend the dinner.

When Adelman walked into the vice president’s residence that Sunday night, he was so happy he broke into tears. He hugged Cheney for the first time in the 30 years he had known him. There had been reports in recent days of mass graves and abundant, graphic evidence of torture by Saddam Hussein’s government, so there was a feeling that they had been part of a greater good, liberating 25 million people.

“We’re all together. There should be no protocol; let’s just talk,” Cheney said when they sat down to dinner.
[…]
“Hold it! Hold it!” Adelman interjected. “Let’s talk about this Gulf war. It’s so wonderful to celebrate.” He said he was just an outside adviser, someone who turned up the pressure in the public forum. “It’s so easy for me to write an article saying, ‘Do this.’ It’s much tougher for Paul to advocate it. Paul and Scooter, you give advice inside and the president listens. Dick, your advice is the most important, the Cadillac. It’s much more serious for you to advocate it. But in the end, all of what we said was still only advice. The president is the one who had to decide. I have been blown away by how determined he is.” The war has been awesome, Adelman said. “So I just want to make a toast, without getting too cheesy. To the president of the United States.”

They all raised their glasses. Hear! Hear!

Mercer: The 41st president of the United States was hardly the only worthy whose opinion Bush the son failed to solicit. According to Bob Woodward’s new book, “Plan of Attack,” Bush wanted to invade and that was that. He didn’t much discuss the war or its possible aftermath with anybody, with one exception: the holy ghost, Dick Cheney.

The charitable conclusion would be that Mercer didn’t read Woodward’s book. More likely, she just saw what she wanted to see and wrote this inane column out of her zeal to clear the neocons (and thus the Jews, because remember, Ilana is an antisemite, or more precisely, a “self-hater”, according to the Mowbraynian antisemite detection kit) of any involvement with the Iraqi quagmire by pinning it all on the Chimp in Chief, which is ludicrous as any real libertarian would instantly recognize. In launching any government project, a convergence of interests is necessary and the bigger the quagmire or boondoggle, the more likely it is that multitudes of deals have been struck, pressures brought to bear, and chips cashed in. Mercer even acknowledges this (and ruins her argument further) with her bulleted “cast of characters” which carefully avoids mentioning any neocons and illogically pins blame on various Arabs and Muslims, some of them so obscure that I’ve never heard of them. One bullet is “The “Rock Stars,” members of an Iraqi-based Muslim sect hired by the CIA to help topple Saddam.” The rock stars? Who is this? I googled several combinations of these terms and come up with nothing. Although I haven’t read Woodward’s book, I’ve read practically every thing written about Iraq since the neocons and Bushies started beating the war drums after 9/11 and I’ve never heard of these “rock stars.” Now, Perle, Frum, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Abrams, Adelman, Bolton, Shulsky and the OSP, Feith, Wurmser, Rice, Libby, Chalabi,etc., etc., were clearly part of the converging interests that dragged the American people into the Iraqi war, no matter how much smoke Ilana tries to blow. Oh, and let’s not even mention the secret intelligence group run out of Ariel Sharon’s office that pumped bogus intelligence to the OSP.