Thread: Obama & The Neocon Middle East War Agenda

Obama & The Neocon Middle East War Agenda
By Stephen Sniegoski
12-7-8

Many Americans, in fact, many people in the world are under the impression that Obama's policies will be the antithesis of those of the Bush administration. But his recent appointees would tend to bring forth the opposite question: To what extent is Obama a neocon? Well, he is not a 100 percenter like McCain. But he is oriented in that direction, as illustrated by the people he has selected.

While only a very few neocons such as Ken Adelman backed Obama before the election, many neoconservatives are now elated by his picks. As neocon Max Boot writes: "I have to admit that I am gobsmacked by these appointments , most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain." Almost as euphoric is David Brooks: "Believe me, I'm trying not to join in the vast, heaving O-phoria now sweeping the coastal haute bourgeoisie. But the personnel decisions have been superb. The events of the past two weeks should be reassuring to anybody who feared that Obama would veer to the left or would suffer self-inflicted wounds because of his inexperience. He's off to a start that nearly justifies the hype." "I'm relieved," Richard Perle commented, "Contrary to expectations, I don't think we would see a lot of change." Neocon Mona Charen opines: "Superstition almost forbids me to comment on President-elect Obama's appointments thus far. The news has been so shockingly welcome that I'm almost afraid to remark on it for fear of breaking the spell."

Journalist Robert Dreyfuss observes that an Obama administration probably won't be like the neocons on Iraq-and will remove combat troops over time (well, maybe)---and will not spout the bellicose rhetoric of the Bush administration. And there will be more cooperation with the international community. However, the central issue of the neocons and Israel today is Iran. And, on Iran, there is a very hawkish tinge to his administration. Remember, how Hillary talked about destroying Iran if it attacked Israel. Dreyfuss writes: "When it comes to Iran, however, it's far too early to dismiss the hawks. To be sure, they are now plying their trade from outside the corridors of power, but they have more friends inside the Obama camp than most people realize.

Several top advisers to Obama Â* including Tony Lake, UN Ambassador-designate Susan Rice, Tom Daschle, and Dennis Ross, along with leading Democratic hawks like Richard Holbrooke, close to Vice-President-elect Joe Biden or Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton Â* have made common cause with war-minded think-tank hawks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and other hardline institutes." Dreyfuss shows that these individuals have continued to be close to the neocons. He writes "Organizations like WINEP, AIPAC, AEI, BPC, and UANI see it as their mission to push the United States toward a showdown with Iran. Don't sell them short. Those who believe that such a confrontation would be inconceivable under President Obama ought to ask Tony Lake, Susan Rice, Dennis Ross, Tom Daschle, and Richard Holbrooke whether they agree Â* and, if so, why they're still palling around with neoconservative hardliners."

I think that it is also the case that the neocons have successfully moved the mainstream in their direction, despite the fiasco of the Iraq war. Will Obama opt for war with Iran? Though not by any means a certainly, it is not out of the question either. The following is a possible scenario.

I would expect that initially the Obama administration will have to focus almost totally on the economy, with foreign policy put on the back burner. When all the business/financial bailouts and stimulus packages fail to rejuvenate the economy, then will be time to make use of the war card.

Continued poor economic conditions could provide the political incentive to divert attention away from the domestic arena to wars abroad. Obama, with the image of being a man of peace, would have greater credibility with the American people in pursuing a hardline policy toward Iran than either Bush or McCain, especially after he would pursue an effort at diplomacy, without offering any substantial quid pro quo to Iran.

And Obama would be pushed in this direction by the neocons outside his administration and the hawks within.

Once diplomacy broke down, tougher measures would be portrayed as the only alternative with an allegedly intransigent foe. Policies such as a naval blockade would likely lead to military confrontations and the justification for the US air attack on Iran. The Iranian response (such as an effort to block the shipping in the Persian Gulf) would cause a spiraling into a broader war.

I might add that I discussed Obama's foreign policy picks on Press TV. The show was "American Dream" and I was on a panel with an AEI person and a Democratic Party operative. Except for my physical appearance, I think I did fairly well in the discussion.

The program also mentioned my book, "The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel" http://www.amazon.com/Transparent-Cabal ... 1932528172

Press TV Interview Video

http://www.presstv.com/Programs/player/ ... x?id=76622

It was the Nov. 25 show. To view you must hit "windows media player"

PressTV is funded by the Iranian government but it has numerous Establishment participants, including neoconservatives, who are hostile toward Iran. The "American Dream" is an illustration. The host of the program, Elliott Francis, is an African-American television journalist.

Here is Wikipedia's description:

Elliott Francis is a Washington, D.C.-based television journalist

Elliott Francis brings more than 25 years of experience in news reporting to his role as co-anchor for ABC-7's Weekend News. An Emmy Award winning journalist, and former anchor and regional correspondent for The Fox News Channel, Elliott has sparked compelling and informative conversation with many top newsmakers and celebrities.

(Needless to say, I was not one of the aforementioned "top newsmakers and celebrities.")

http://www.rense.com/general84/obmm.htm

Pinch Me, Am I Dreaming?
By Mona Charen
TownHall.com
12-2-8

Superstition almost forbids me to comment on President-elect Obama's appointments thus far. The news has been so shockingly welcome that I'm almost afraid to remark on it for fear of breaking the spell.

Such reticence has not afflicted everyone on the right, though. Here's Max Boot, conservative editorialist, author, and military historian: "I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain..." Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, declared that the Obama administration was "off to a good start." And New York Times columnist David Brooks has acknowledged that he is "tremendously impressed."

If I were a left-winger, I'd be tearing out my hair about now.

The economic team of Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, and Christina Romer does not exactly send a "to the ramparts" message. Summers, treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, is known for his belief in free financial markets, free trade, and fiscal discipline. He got into terrific trouble as president of Harvard for implying that, on average, men are more mathematically talented than women (which is true but that is irrelevant in the Ivy League). They made him grovel for that one, and to his shame, he did. The whole scene at Harvard, I gather from Stephan Thernstrom, who was there, was like something out of China's Cultural Revolution where the mob makes the professor confess error and beg for punishment. Still, if you want a centrist, Summers is your man.

Geithner is a Summers protege. As president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank he has been knee-deep in bailouts over the past three months. But that datum doesn't distinguish him from the Bush administration or anyone else in the mainstream of America's economic elite.

Romer recently penned an article making the case that tax cuts can increase economic activity. Hmmm.

If the economic team is centrist, the foreign policy team (and I pinch myself as I say this) leans a little to the right. Did you notice that in introducing his choices, the President-elect used the term "defeat our enemies"?

Gen. James Jones, Obama's choice for national security adviser, is a four-star Marine general who was commandant of the Marine Corps and Supreme Allied Commander for Europe (SACEUR), among other posts. Response to his nomination among conservatives ranged from cautious optimism to outright enthusiasm. "He is a thoroughly decent man" one conservative foreign policy analyst told me. Though his political views are not known, he has received the "Keeper of the Flame" award from the hard-line Center for Security Policy. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracy's (and National Review's) Michael Ledeen, no coddler of wimps, calls him "almost unbearably delightful" in the two or three conversations they've had. Everyone seems to agree that he has high intelligence and deep patriotism. If there is a hesitation, it arises from the fact that he is, like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft, a political general, and those have not always worked out so well.

As for Hillary Clinton, well, she is no Jeane Kirkpatrick. While it's true that she declined to apologize for her vote in favor of the Iraq war, she did everything but. It was only last year that she told Gen. Petraeus that his report on progress in Iraq "require(ed) a willing suspension of disbelief." She opposed the surge of troops in Iraq but then -- this is chutzpah! -- attempted to take credit for its success. On Meet the Press in January 2008 she said "...The point of the surge was to quickly move the Iraqi government and Iraqi people. That is only now beginning to happen, and I believe in large measure because the Iraqi government, they watch us, they listen to us. I know very well that they follow everything that I say. And my commitment to begin withdrawing our troops in January of 2009 is a big factor, as it is with Sen. Obama, Sen. Edwards, those of us on the Democratic side. It is a big factor in pushing the Iraqi government to finally do what they should have been doing all along."

She has criticized what she calls the Bush administration's "obsessive" focus on "expensive and unproven missile defense technology." On trade, she has made protectionist noises. On the other hand, she is not Carl Levin or Dennis Kucinich or Anthony Lake or Samantha Power. And that, along with the other appointments, is enough to keep some of us smiling at a time when we were expecting to be in deep anguish.

http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaChar ... i_dreaming

http://www.rense.com/general84/obmm.htm

Is Iran Policy Still Up for Grabs?
By Robert Dreyfuss and Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch
12-3-8

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water

After all, that massive U.S. air attack on Iran that anti-imperial critics long expected to arrive, that Seymour Hersh wrote about, that so many feared, never happened and, with Barack Obama's election, should certainly have been put to rest in a deep grave for all eternity. But don't underestimate the neocons, or their ability to reconfigure themselves for a Democratic administration. Robert Dreyfuss, author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, who also produces "The Dreyfuss Report" for the Nation magazine's Web site, offers up some tantalizing clues to their possible future resurrection Â* and some altogether eerie connections between neocon Washington and the future Obama team.

To give Dreyfuss his creds, only the other day the Wall Street Journal actually began an editorial on the new Obama national security "team" by attacking an analysis Dreyfuss had done of it the previous week. ("The names floated for Barack Obama's national security team 'are drawn exclusively from conservative, centrist, and pro-military circles without even a single Â* yes, not one! Â* chosen to represent the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party.' In his plaintive post this week on the Nation magazine's Web site, Robert Dreyfuss indulges in the political left's wonderful talent for overstatement. But who are we to interfere with his despair?") Given their right-wing proclivities, the Journal's editorial writers then offer the equivalent of high praise for Obama's choices: "So far," they conclude, "on security, not bad." That should make just about anyone who voted for Obama to change American global policy in significant ways pause a moment for reflection.

And the Journal isn't alone. Other Republicans are, according to the Times of London, already "showering praise on these selections. Senator Lindsey Graham said that Mr. Gates, President Bush's defense secretary, had 'led us through difficult times in Iraq' and that Mrs. Clinton had a 'little harder line' than Mr. Obama on foreign policy." The dark prince of neocons Richard Perle commented, "I'm relieved Contrary to expectations, I don't think we would see a lot of change."

Give it a year and a little Iranian, American, and Israeli intransigence and who knows what scenarios might arise. In the meantime, keep your eyes on the neocons. Like vampires of legend, barring a stake through the heart, they arrive on the scene as soon as darkness sets in. Tom

http://www.rense.com/general84/obmm.htm

Still Preparing To Attack Iran

The Neoconservatives In The Obama Era
By Robert Dreyfuss

What, exactly, does Barack Obama's mild-mannered choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, former Sen. Tom Daschle, have to do with neocons who want to bomb Iran?

A familiar coalition of hawks, hardliners, and neoconservatives expects Barack Obama's proposed talks with Iran to fail Â* and they're already proposing an escalating set of measures instead. Some are meant to occur alongside any future talks. These include steps to enhance coordination with Israel, tougher sanctions against Iran, and a region-wide military buildup of U.S. strike forces, including the pre-positioning of military supplies within striking distance of that country.

Once the future negotiations break down, as they are convinced will happen, they propose that Washington quickly escalate to warlike measures, including a U.S. Navy-enforced embargo on Iranian fuel imports and a blockade of that country's oil exports. Finally, of course, comes the strategic military attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran that so many of them have wanted for so long.

It's tempting to dismiss the hawks now as twice-removed from power: first, figures like John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith were purged from top posts in the Bush administration after 2004; then the election of Barack Obama and the announcement Monday of his centrist, realist-minded team of establishment foreign policy gurus seemed to nail the doors to power shut for the neocons, who have bitterly criticized the president-elect's plans to talk with Iran, withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, and abandon the reckless Global War on Terrorism rhetoric of the Bush era.

"Kinetic Action" Against Iran

When it comes to Iran, however, it's far too early to dismiss the hawks. To be sure, they are now plying their trade from outside the corridors of power, but they have more friends inside the Obama camp than most people realize. Several top advisers to Obama Â* including Tony Lake, UN Ambassador-designate Susan Rice, Tom Daschle, and Dennis Ross, along with leading Democratic hawks like Richard Holbrooke, close to Vice-President-elect Joe Biden or Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton Â* have made common cause with war-minded think-tank hawks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and other hardline institutes.

Last spring, Tony Lake and Susan Rice, for example, took part in a WINEP "2008 Presidential Task Force" study which resulted in a report titled "Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen U.S.-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge." The Institute, part of the Washington-based Israel lobby, was founded in coordination with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and has been vigorously supporting a confrontation with Iran. The task force report, issued in June, was overseen by four WINEP heavyweights: Robert Satloff, WINEP's executive director, Patrick Clawson, its chief Iran analyst, David Makovsky, a senior fellow, and Dennis Ross, an adviser to Obama who is also a WINEP fellow.

Endorsed by both Lake and Rice, the report opted for an alarmist view of Iran's nuclear program and proposed that the next president set up a formal U.S.-Israeli mechanism for coordinating policy toward Iran (including any future need for "preventive military action"). It drew attention to Israeli fears that "the United States may be reconciling itself to the idea of 'living with an Iranian nuclear bomb,'" and it raised the spurious fear that Iran plans to arm terrorist groups with nuclear weapons.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with consultations between the United States and Israel. But the WINEP report is clearly predisposed to the idea that the United States ought to give undue weight to Israel's inflated concerns about Iran. And it ignores or dismisses a number of facts: that Iran has no nuclear weapon, that Iran has not enriched uranium to weapons grade, that Iran may not have the know-how to actually construct a weapon even if, sometime in the future, it does manage to acquire bomb-grade material, and that Iran has no known mechanism for delivering such a weapon.

WINEP is correct that the United States must communicate closely with Israel about Iran. Practically speaking, however, a U.S.-Israeli dialogue over Iran's "nuclear challenge" will have to focus on matters entirely different from those in WINEP's agenda. First, the United States must make it crystal clear to Israel that under no circumstances will it tolerate or support a unilateral Israeli attack against Iran. Second, Washington must make it clear that if Israel were indeed to carry out such an attack, the United States would condemn it, refuse to widen the war by coming to Israel's aid, and suspend all military aid to the Jewish state. And third, Israel must get the message that, even given the extreme and unlikely possibility that the United States deems it necessary to go to war with Iran, there would be no role for Israel.

Just as in the wars against Iraq in 1990-1991 and 2003-2008, the United States hardly needs Israeli aid, which would be both superfluous and inflammatory. Dennis Ross and others at WINEP, however, would strongly disagree that Israel is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Ross, who served as Middle East envoy for George H.W. Bush and then Bill Clinton, was also a key participant in a September 2008 task force chaired by two former senators, Daniel Coats (R.-Ind.) and Chuck Robb (D.-Va.), and led by Michael Makovsky, brother of WINEP's David Makovsky, who served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the heyday of the Pentagon neocons from 2002-2006. Robb, incidentally, had already served as the neocons' channel into the 2006 Iraq Study Group, chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton. According to Bob Woodward's latest book, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, it was Robb who insisted that the Baker-Hamilton task force include an option for a "surge" in Iraq.

The report of the Coats-Robb task force Â* "Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development" Â* went far beyond the WINEP task force report that Lake and Rice signed off on. It concluded that any negotiations with Iran were unlikely to succeed and should, in any case, be short-lived. As the report put the matter, "It must be clear that any U.S.-Iranian talks will not be open-ended, but will be limited to a predetermined time period so that Tehran does not try to 'run out the clock.'"

Anticipating the failure of the talks, the task force (including Ross) urged "pre-positioning military assets," coupled with a "show of force" in the region. This would be followed almost immediately by a blockade of Iranian gasoline imports and oil exports, meant to paralyze Iran's economy, followed by what they call, vaguely, "kinetic action."

That "kinetic action" Â* a U.S. assault on Iran Â* should, in fact, be massive, suggested the Coats-Robb report. Besides hitting dozens of sites alleged to be part of Iran's nuclear research program, the attacks would target Iranian air defense and missile sites, communications systems, Revolutionary Guard facilities, key parts of Iran's military-industrial complex, munitions storage facilities, airfields, aircraft facilities, and all of Iran's naval facilities. Eventually, they say, the United States would also have to attack Iran's ground forces, electric power plants and electrical grids, bridges, and "manufacturing plants, including steel, autos, buses, etc."

This is, of course, a hair-raising scenario. Such an attack on a country that had committed no act of war against the United States or any of its allies would cause countless casualties, virtually destroy Iran's economy and infrastructure, and wreak havoc throughout the region. That such a high-level group of luminaries should even propose steps like these Â* and mean it Â* can only be described as lunacy. That an important adviser to President-elect Obama would sign on to such a report should be shocking, though it has received next to no attention.

Palling Around With the Neocons

At a Nov. 6 forum at WINEP, Patrick Clawson, the erudite, neoconservative strategist who serves as the organization's deputy director for research, laid out the institute's view of how to talk to Iran in the Obama era. Doing so, he said, is critically important, but only to show the rest of the world that the United States has taken the last step for peace Â* before, of course, attacking. Then, and only then, will the United States have the legitimacy it needs to launch military action against Iran.

"What we've got to do is to show the world that we're making a big deal of engaging the Iranians," he said, tossing a bone to the new administration. "I'd throw everything, including the kitchen sink, into it." He advocates this approach only because he believes it won't work. "The principal target with these offers [to Iran] is not Iran," he adds. "The principal target of these offers is American public opinion and world public opinion."

The Coats-Robb report, "Meeting the Challenge," was written by one of the hardest of Washington's neoconservative hardliners, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. Rubin, who spent most of the years since 9/11 either working for AEI or, before and during the war in Iraq, for the Wolfowitz-Feith team at the Pentagon, recently penned a report for the Institute entitled: "Can A Nuclear Iran Be Deterred or Contained?" Not surprisingly, he believes the answer to be a resounding "no," although he does suggest that any effort to contain a nuclear Iran would certainly require permanent U.S. bases spread widely in the region, including in Iraq:

"If U.S. forces are to contain the Islamic Republic, they will require basing not only in GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, but also in Afghanistan, Iraq, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Without a sizable regional presence, the Pentagon will not be able to maintain the predeployed resources and equipment necessary to contain Iran, and Washington will signal its lack of commitment to every ally in the region. Because containment is as much psychological as physical, basing will be its backbone."

The Coats-Robb report was issued by a little-known group called the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). That organization, too, turns out to be interwoven with WINEP, not least because its foreign policy director is Michael Makovsky. Perhaps the most troubling participant in the Bipartisan Policy Center is Barack Obama's éminence grise and one of his most important advisers during the campaign, Tom Daschle, who is slated to be his secretary of health and human services. So far, Daschle has not repudiated BPC's provocative report.

Ross, along with Richard Holbrooke, recently made appearances amid another collection of superhawks who came together to found a new organization, United Against Nuclear Iran. UANI is led by Mark Wallace, the husband of Nicole Wallace, a key member of Sen. John McCain's campaign team. Among UANI's leadership team are Ross and Holbrooke, along with such hardliners as Jim Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Fouad Ajami, the Arab-American scholar who is a principal theorist on Middle East policy for the neoconservative movement.

UANI is primarily a propaganda outfit. Its mission, it says, is to "inform the public about the nature of the Iranian regime, including its desire and intent to possess nuclear weapons, as well as Iran's role as a state sponsor of global terrorism, and a major violator of human rights at home and abroad" and to "heighten awareness nationally and internationally about the danger that a nuclear-armed Iran poses to the region and the world."

Barack Obama has, of course, repeatedly declared his intention to embark on a different path by opening talks with Iran. He's insisted that diplomacy, not military action, will be at the core of his approach to Tehran. During the election campaign, however, he also stated no less repeatedly that he will not take the threat of military action "off the table."

Organizations like WINEP, AIPAC, AEI, BPC, and UANI see it as their mission to push the United States toward a showdown with Iran. Don't sell them short. Those who believe that such a confrontation would be inconceivable under President Obama ought to ask Tony Lake, Susan Rice, Dennis Ross, Tom Daschle, and Richard Holbrooke whether they agree Â* and, if so, why they're still palling around with neoconservative hardliners.

http://www.rense.com/general84/obmm.htm