Exclusive: After the Persian Gulf War in 1991, America’s neocons thought no country could stand up to the high-tech U.S. military, and they realized the Soviet Union was no longer around to limit U.S. actions. So, the “regime change” strategy was born and many have died, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
Former Washington insider and four-star General Wesley Clark spilled the beans several years ago on how Paul Wolfowitz and his neoconservative co-conspirators implemented their sweeping plan to destabilize key Middle Eastern countries once it became clear that post-Soviet Russia “won’t stop us.”
As I recently reviewed a YouTube eight-minute clip of General Clark’s October 2007 speech, what leaped out at me was that the neocons had been enabled by their assessment that after the collapse of the Soviet Union Russia had become neutralized and posed no deterrent to U.S. military action in the Middle East.
Former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a leading neocon and proponent of the Iraq War. (Defense Department photo)
While Clark’s public exposé largely escaped attention in the neocon-friendly “mainstream media” (surprise, surprise!), he recounted being told by a senior general at the Pentagon shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 about the Donald Rumsfeld/Paul Wolfowitz-led plan for “regime change” in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.
This was startling enough, I grant you, since officially the United States presents itself as a nation that respects international law, frowns upon other powerful nations overthrowing the governments of weaker states, and in the aftermath of World War II condemned past aggressions by Nazi Germany and decried Soviet “subversion” of pro-U.S. nations.
But what caught my eye this time was the significance of Clark’s depiction of Wolfowitz in 1992 gloating over what he judged to be a major lesson learned from the Desert Storm attack on Iraq in 1991; namely, “the Soviets won’t stop us.”
That remark directly addresses a question that has troubled me since March 2003 when George W. Bush attacked Iraq. Would the neocons widely known as “the crazies” at least among the remaining sane people of Washington have been crazy enough to opt for war to re-arrange the Middle East if the Soviet Union had not fallen apart in 1991?
The question is not an idle one. Despite the debacle in Iraq and elsewhere, the neocon “crazies” still exercise huge influence in Establishment Washington. Thus, the question now becomes whether, with Russia far more stable and much stronger, the “crazies” are prepared to risk military escalation with Russia over Ukraine, what retired U.S. diplomat William R. Polk deemed a potentially dangerous nuclear confrontation, a “Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse.”
Putin’s Comment
The geopolitical vacuum that enabled the neocons to try out their “regime change” scheme in the Middle East may have been what Russian President Vladimir Putin was referring to in his state-of-the-nation address on April 25, 2005, when he called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [past] century.” Putin’s comment has been a favorite meme of those who seek to demonize Putin by portraying him as lusting to re-establish a powerful USSR through aggression in Europe.
But, commenting two years after the Iraq invasion, Putin seemed correct at least in how the neocons exploited the absence of the Russian counterweight to over-extend American power in ways that were harmful to the world, devastating to the people at the receiving end of the neocon interventions, and even detrimental to the United States.
If one takes a step back and attempts an unbiased look at the spread of violence in the Middle East over the past quarter-century, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Putin’s comment was on the mark. With Russia a much-weakened military power in the 1990s and early 2000s, there was nothing to deter U.S. policymakers from the kind of adventurism at Russia’s soft underbelly that, in earlier years, would have carried considerable risk of armed U.S.-USSR confrontation.
I lived in the USSR during the 1970s and would not wish that kind of restrictive regime on anyone. Until it fell apart, though, it was militarily strong enough to deter Wolfowitz-style adventurism. And I will say that for the millions of people now dead, injured or displaced by U.S. military action in the Middle East over the past dozen years the collapse of the Soviet Union as a deterrent to U.S. war-making was not only a “geopolitical catastrophe” but an unmitigated disaster.
Visiting Wolfowitz
In his 2007 speech, General Clark related how in early 1991 he dropped in on Paul Wolfowitz, then Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (and later, from 2001 to 2005, Deputy Secretary of Defense). It was just after a major Shia uprising in Iraq in March 1991. President George H.W. Bush’s administration had provoked it, but then did nothing to rescue the Shia from brutal retaliation by Saddam Hussein, who had just survived his Persian Gulf defeat.
According to Clark, Wolfowitz said: “We should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein. The truth is, one thing we did learn is that we can use our military in the Middle East and the Soviets won’t stop us. We’ve got about five or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes Syria, Iran (sic), Iraq before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.”
It’s now been more than 10 years, of course. But do not be deceived into thinking Wolfowitz and his neocon colleagues believe they have failed in any major way. The unrest they initiated keeps mounting in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Lebanon not to mention fresh violence now in full swing in Yemen and the crisis in Ukraine. Yet, the Teflon coating painted on the neocons continues to cover and protect them in the “mainstream media.”
True, one neocon disappointment is Iran. It is more stable and less isolated than before; it is playing a sophisticated role in Iraq; and it is on the verge of concluding a major nuclear agreement with the West barring the throwing of a neocon/Israeli monkey wrench into the works to thwart it, as has been done in the past.
An earlier setback for the neocons came at the end of August 2013 when President Barack Obama decided not to let himself be mouse-trapped by the neocons into ordering U.S. forces to attack Syria. Wolfowitz et al. were on the threshold of having the U.S. formally join the war against Bashar al-Assad’s government of Syria when there was the proverbial slip between cup and lip. With the aid of the neocons’ new devil-incarnate Vladimir Putin, Obama faced them down and avoided war.
A week after it became clear that the neocons were not going to get their war in Syria, I found myself at the main CNN studio in Washington together with Paul Wolfowitz and former Sen. Joe Lieberman, another important neocon. As I reported in “How War on Syria Lost Its Way,” the scene was surreal funereal, even, with both Wolfowitz and Lieberman very much down-in-the-mouth, behaving as though they had just watched their favorite team lose the Super Bowl.
Israeli/Neocon Preferences
But the neocons are nothing if not resilient. Despite their grotesque disasters, like the Iraq War, and their disappointments, like not getting their war on Syria, they neither learn lessons nor change goals. They just readjust their aim, shooting now at Putin over Ukraine as a way to clear the path again for “regime change” in Syria and Iran. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Why Neocons Seek to Destabilize Russia.”]
The neocons also can take some solace from their “success” at enflaming the Middle East with Shia and Sunni now at each other’s throats — a bad thing for many people of the world and certainly for the many innocent victims in the region, but not so bad for the neocons. After all, it is the view of Israeli leaders and their neocon bedfellows (and women) that the internecine wars among Muslims provide at least some short-term advantages for Israel as it consolidates control over the Palestinian West Bank.
In a Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity memorandum for President Obama on Sept. 6, 2013, we called attention to an uncommonly candid report about Israeli/neocon motivation, written by none other than the Israel-friendly New York Times Bureau Chief in Jerusalem Jodi Rudoren on Sept. 2, 2013, just two days after Obama took advantage of Putin’s success in persuading the Syrians to allow their chemical weapons to be destroyed and called off the planned attack on Syria, causing consternation among neocons in Washington.
Rudoren can perhaps be excused for her naive lack of “political correctness.” She had been barely a year on the job, had very little prior experience with reporting on the Middle East, and in the excitement about the almost-attack on Syria she apparently forgot the strictures normally imposed on the Times’ reporting from Jerusalem. In any case, Israel’s priorities became crystal clear in what Rudoren wrote.
In her article, entitled “Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria,” Rudoren noted that the Israelis were arguing, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria’s (then) 2 ½-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, was no outcome:
“For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad’s government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.
“‘This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win, we’ll settle for a tie,’ said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. ‘Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.’”
Clear enough? If this is the way Israel’s leaders continue to regard the situation in Syria, then they look on deeper U.S. involvement overt or covert as likely to ensure that there is no early resolution of the conflict there. The longer Sunni and Shia are killing each other, not only in Syria but also across the region as a whole, the safer Tel Aviv’s leaders calculate Israel is.
Favoring Jihadis
But Israeli leaders have also made clear that if one side must win, they would prefer the Sunni side, despite its bloody extremists from Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. In September 2013, shortly after Rudoren’s article, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad.
“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” Oren said in an interview. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” He said this was the case even if the “bad guys” were affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
In June 2014, Oren then speaking as a former ambassador said Israel would even prefer a victory by the Islamic State, which was massacring captured Iraqi soldiers and beheading Westerners, than the continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. “From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail,” Oren said.
Netanyahu sounded a similar theme in his March 3, 2015 speech to the U.S. Congress in which he trivialized the threat from the Islamic State with its “butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube” when compared to Iran, which he accused of “gobbling up the nations” of the Middle East.
That Syria’s main ally is Iran with which it has a mutual defense treaty plays a role in Israeli calculations. Accordingly, while some Western leaders would like to achieve a realistic if imperfect settlement of the Syrian civil war, others who enjoy considerable influence in Washington would just as soon see the Assad government and the entire region bleed out.
As cynical and cruel as this strategy is, it isn’t all that hard to understand. Yet, it seems to be one of those complicated, politically charged situations well above the pay-grade of the sophomores advising President Obama who, sad to say, are no match for the neocons in the Washington Establishment. Not to mention the Netanyahu-mesmerized Congress.
Corker Uncorked
Speaking of Congress, a year after Rudoren’s report, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, who now chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, divulged some details about the military attack that had been planned against Syria, while lamenting that it was canceled.
In doing so, Corker called Obama’s abrupt change on Aug. 31, 2013, in opting for negotiations over open war on Syria, “the worst moment in U.S. foreign policy since I’ve been here.” Following the neocon script, Corker blasted the deal (since fully implemented) with Putin and the Syrians to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.
Corker complained, “In essence I’m sorry to be slightly rhetorical we jumped into Putin’s lap.” A big No-No, of course especially in Congress to “jump into Putin’s lap” even though Obama was able to achieve the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons without the United States jumping into another Middle East war.
It would have been nice, of course, if General Clark had thought to share his inside-Pentagon information earlier with the rest of us. In no way should he be seen as a whistleblower.
At the time of his September 2007 speech, he was deep into his quixotic attempt to win the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. In other words, Clark broke the omerta code of silence observed by virtually all U.S. generals, even post-retirement, merely to put some distance between himself and the debacle in Iraq and win some favor among anti-war Democrats. It didn’t work, so he endorsed Hillary Clinton; that didn’t work, so he endorsed Barack Obama.
Wolfowitz, typically, has landed on his feet. He is now presidential hopeful Jeb Bush’s foreign policy/defense adviser, no doubt outlining his preferred approach to the Middle East chessboard to his new boss. Does anyone know the plural of “bedlam?”
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served for a total of 30 years as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and CIA analyst and is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Blowback is the tactical pivot, more war is the strategic pivot, lower wages are the prize.
Israel declined an offer to become the 51st state upon learning that the number of seats they’d control in the US senate would be reduced to 2.
Dear Mr Mcgovern,
I would like to thank you for your two superb recent posts for consortium news…their analysis and insight into the “chaos” abroad and the” chaos” at home are timely ,incisive, and a “must read” for anyone seeking to get a toehold of understanding into our “current ” situation and the underlining narratives that brought us here !
You have correctly argued the “Nuremberg trials” iteration on “wars of aggression”…..that it ..”is essentially an EVIL thing…to initiate a war of aggression… is not only an international crime, it is the SUPREME international crime, differing only from all other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
That this iteration is unqualifiedly universal in its recognition by all the nations of the world and their citizenry should point us to a long overdue and unaddressed query into the” real “nature of “terrorism” both at home and abroad !
One has to move beyond the “docile ” claims of “misinformation’ and “cherry- picking” in the run up to the “catastrophic” Iraq war and understand this( is and ) was an uncontested “war of aggression” ….that there was , in fact , a preexisting and crystal clear plan to “initiate” it !
That all the american people (myself included) were, in fact, “defrauded ” into WAR !
And if…”initiating a “war of aggression” is the SUPREME international crime.”..,,,then “defrauding us” into it, has to be understood (has to be !)as
“the supreme act of terrorism”….
I don’t intend this argument as a “coup de grace” for all those seeking justice in the world (although it is a long overdue for those that deserve it ! )…but as a natural and rational unfolding of the narrative towards its own unyielding conclusion !
Whether the President will” act” upon it, and if he is sufficiently”unsullied” to do so, depends …I suppose …. on.all of us !
Sometimes I read about General Clark saying sensible, intelligent things. And then I remember how he was lumped in with the “perfumed generals” of Pentagon Praetorians, disconnected from the soldiers on the front line and unconcerned with political ramifications. And I also remember how he tried very hard in 1999 to provoke a shooting clash with Soviets in Yugoslavia (during the climax of the Kosovo crisis) and was only stymied by the good sense and stubborn refusal of a local British commander on the ground who declined to take actions that might have sparked World War III.
So I guess I don’t much trust Wesley Clark’s observations, even when he might be right.
I doubt I’ll get the prize behind door #2, but off-hand, I’d say the plural of bedlam is ‘nut-houses’. What matters more is that the inmates are restless. Paul “Renfield” Wolfowitz looks like he could already be eating spiders. I’ve sort of been watching for the ‘canary in the coal mine’, and I was a little worried when those two B-47’s showed up in Abu Dhabi. But perhaps even scarier is the news that they’re moving sophisticated communications gear back into the DUMB (Deep Underground Military Base) facilities like Cheyenne Mountain. Yep, they’re re-fitting the old ‘bat-caves’. So, no matter what, Woofie Wolfowitz will have a place to call home if ‘Continuity of Government’ is activated. Rumor has it that US aircraft carriers have been ordered to ports to minimize their vulnerability to the latest deep water countermeasures. That story about the Russian Su-24 equipped with total blackout electronics jamming does sound plausible. But hey, how good can it be? Stealth doesn’t mean squat once you’ve got a ‘visual’. The DC nut-house is a pretty big tent, so it didn’t surprise me when I heard about Hillary being the “Disclosure Candidate”. It seems John Podesta’s Twitter wisecrack about UFO’s and aliens was taken seriously by about 40 million ‘enlightened’ voters. They’re now readier than ever for Hillary and “Full Disclosure”. Some thought Elizabeth Warren might step up to save us. I know very little about synthetic derivatives and fractional reserves, but I’m sure she’s an expert. It’s just that she strikes me as a white-lady version of Aunt Jemima. I’m sure she could make a better pancake, but she’s not the type to fight about the recipe. Bernie is a great old guy, and he knows exactly what’s wrong on the home front. But he’s totally in the “Israel has a right to defend itself” corner and all the baggage that entails. And, did I mention, he’s old? Jebbalito Arbusto marked “Hispanic” on his voter registration card…which actually makes me feel better. Maybe he won’t be in a hurry to piss off the Pope by committing national suicide. Now, when we start talking Scott Walker and Ted Cruz, that’s a whole new level of derangement. I’ve thought about getting one of those 1950’s copies of Popular Mechanics with the do-it-yourself atomic bomb shelter plans, but those were designed for Kiloton bombs. Today, we’re up to Megatons, and those are on multiple warhead reentry vehicles. Woofie will do just fine. Cockroaches are a highly radiation resistant species, so snack food won’t be a problem. Besides, after reading Popular Mechanics’ steel frame building article, I’m pretty sure you can’t trust their bomb shelters, either. So, what the hell. I’m thinking Vlad probably has an entire team of psychiatrists doing ‘cold couch’ readings on these loons, and depending on which one we pick, they’ll decide whether or not preemptive first strike is the appropriate therapeutic option. I suspect the Hillary prognosis is ‘guarded’ at best.
Here they are , the usual suspects instead of being found guilty at the Hague and sent to prison for war crimes are still in control of a warmongering USA and pundits on FOX TV.
http://www.lostscribemedia.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/neocons11.jpg
‘OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!” –Lewis Caroll
Ray McGovern’s article is often instructive but as Hillary’s comment implies, its starting
points are where our society has been taught again and again to begin.
I am nearly certain that an honest discussion between me and a “jihadi: would be unpleasant. I cannot question the basic right of of the oppressed to respond. I can question its wisdom, timing etc.
It may be strangely comforting to talk about “dialogue” etc. with an armed criminal who
continues to murder, rape and destroy every day. To paraphrase Queen Victoria of the UK inappropriately, “I am not amused.” A criminal is not equal to a victim,
(I do not give “credit” to Obama for anything: Quite the reverse, Obama is one of a long, long line of US Administrations who have supported Zionists in their crimes, never the
victims. Gaza has not been visited by Obama, its Parliament never addressed, its schools,
hospitals, residents not toured, its people never spoken to, its leaders of ALL kinds never met with EQUAL RESPECT not in an address with oratorical flourish but face to face….)
Including not only a pledge to seek justice but a pledge in dollars to work for
reconstruction together with the United Nations.
(NOTE: A meeting or other exchange with the oppressor is not called for!)
—-Peter Loeb, Boston, MA USA
It’s neocolonials (NeoColons, for short), abroad; and neoconfederates in the Heimland; including $lick Willary as NeoLieberal Collaborators!
Not to be neglected among the motives for “chaos promotion in the Mideast” is the good old-fashioned profit motive.
http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com
For people with scruples, blackmail may be helpful.
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/04/06/the-iran-deals-big-upside/#comment-192893
In the summer of 2000, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative think tank riddled with soon to be Bush administration officials and advisers, issued a document calling for the radical restructuring of U.S. government and military policies. It advocated the massive expansion of defense spending, the re-invasion of Iraq, the military and economic securing of Afghanistan and Central Asia, increased centralized power and funds for the CIA, FBI, and NSA, among a slew of other policies that would, in the near future, be enacted upon their ascension to power. In the same document, they cite a potential problem with their plan. Referring to the goals of transforming the U.S. and global power structure, the paper states that because of the American public’s slant toward ideas of democracy and freedom, “this process of transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
It’s so easy to draw parallels between Germany’s Franz Von Papen to those similar political power brokers here in the USA. Paul Wolfowitz et al, reminds me of a pervasive, hidden powers-that-be, bankers and industrialists, who throughout history and with dazzling regularity, promote some kind of political and or military neo-con element. The financier-bankers then manipulate and scheme until the wrong person(s) are put into High Office…resulting in, at first internal chaos (riot) then all out foreign war. The strong and disturbing undertow is this; Our nation has endured a thirty year long joint effort by a War-Pig Congress and well funded War-Pig lobbyists. Their pick-pocketing thumbs have reached deep into the Social Security Fund coffers and should by now, demonstrate to all CONSORTIUMNEWS readers that these guys are just Thieves. At the same time they do not share in our collective fear of retaliation for many a foreign “kinetic military action”. The neo-con’s have drawn important lessons from recent history. As a consequence our Justice Department has been intentionally and thoroughly disabled by the continued renewal of both NDA and Patriot Acts. Since Vietnam, we have undergone a wholly new political and economic direction. This suggests a deviant metanoia has been gradually unpacked by the Wolfowitz clique. Groping travelers, unrestrained internet spying, corrupt banking practices, overseas corporate tax dogging and again, never intending to replenish Social Security Funds diverted for wars…the list is ever expanding. This clique boldly assumes that their passports, personal properties or person(s) will never be monitored or seized. In calculated anticipation of possibly of finding themselves “in harms way” these dogs-of-war somehow must have invented a humdinger get-a-way plan. With seeming confidence, precautions to escape future Nuremberg trials, Neo-Nazi hunters and international court orders, have been taken?! In short, neo-cons have managed to convince themselves that a feasible exit plan from the entire world community does indeed exist. When poop-hits the-fan…when “so called” terrorist A-bombs start going off in the United States, even perhaps simultaneously in Northern Europe, the War-Pigs got a rock to hide under? Recently, Dick Cheney gave a veiled threat to America, something to the effect that 911 was nothing in comparison to what may still await us. All this theorizing begs the question, just exactly where do the War-Pigs plan to run? the South Pole? one way Mars expedition? where do you run to when a few billion people want the whole blood letting cabal in chains? I now hum the Black Sabbath tune, the lyrics -surely a good chant for the next presidential election, War Pigs!
I like that “deviant metanoia”.
since the brother of israels infamous “useful idiot” george w bush came into the limelite as an israeli, oops i mean US presidential contender i’ve not heard one commentator in the real world mention how jeb was an original signer of israel’s project for a new american century which planned for the US military to systematically destroy all of israel’s mideast enemies so as to make it easier for israel to expand in these lands so as to achieve their ultimate goal of greater israel
” …israel’s project for a new american century which planned for the US military to systematically destroy all of israel’s mideast enemies”
Which was based on an earlier proposal called ‘clean break’ by netanyahu’s advisers Feith, Perle and the Wurmsers who after 9/11 were ‘parachuted’ into prominent positions in the US government. The objective of Israel dominated US foreign policy since that time was to use US firepower and cannon fodder to destroy Israel’s enemies leaving the way clear for the establishment of greater Israel AND a bankrupt America. They are well on the way to achieving both objectives and when one considers the adulation by Netanyahu and the majority of Israelis for a former Chief Rabbi, Osavid Yosef, who stated “… goyim’s purpose is to serve the people of Israel” the future looks decidedly bleak!
“Big Everything and Israel, …”
I prefer: ” Big Everything, including Big Zion.”
It’s so easy to draw parallels between Germany’s Franz Von Papen and similar financial power brokers here in the USA. Paul Wolfowitz et al, reminds me of those pervasive historical, hidden powers-that-be, bankers and industrialists, who throughout history and with dazzling regularity, promote some kind of political and or military neo-con element. The financier-bankers then manipulate and scheme until the wrong person(s) are put into power…resulting in, at first internal chaos then all out foreign war. The strong and disturbing undertow is this; Our nation has endured a joint effort by a War-Pig congress and well funded War-Pig lobbyists. Their pick-pocketing thumbs have reached deep into the Social Security Fund coffers and should by now, demonstrate to all CONSORTIUMNEWS readers that these guys are just Thieves. At the same time they do not share in our collective fear of retaliation for many a foreign “kinetic military action”. The neo-con’s have drawn important lessons from recent history. As a consequence, our Justice Department has been intentionally and thoroughly disabled (NDA and Patriot Acts). The USA has undergone a wholly new political and economic direction. This suggests a deviant metanoia has been gradually unpacked by the Wolfowitz clique. Groping travelers, unrestrained internet spying, corrupt banking practices, never intending to replenish Social Security Funds diverted for war-the list is ever expanding…They boldly assume that their passports, personal properties or person(s) will never be seized. In calculated anticipation of a remote possibility of finding themselves “in harms way” these dogs-of-war must have invented a humdinger get-a-way plan. With every confidence, precautions to escape future Nuremberg trials, Neo-Nazi hunters and international court orders, have been taken?! In short, neo-cons have managed to convince themselves that a feasible exit plan from the entire world community does indeed exist. When poop-hits the-fan…when “so called” terrorist A-bombs start going off across the United States, even perhaps simultaneously in Europe, the War-Pigs got a rock to hide under? Recently, Dick Cheney gave a veiled threat to America, something to the effect that 911 was nothing in comparison to what may still await us. All this theorizing begs the question, just exactly where do the War-Pigs plan to run? the South Pole? one way Mars expedition? where do you run when a few billion people want your entire blood letting cabal in chains? I now hum the Black Sabbath tune, the lyrics -a good chant for the next presidential election!
I’ve no fault with Mr. McGovern’s essay except for it being seriously incomplete. Wolfowitz is only one among several of John Ellis Bush’s (JEB) neocon advisers.
xxxx://whotv.com/2015/02/19/new-bush-advisers-key-to-old-bush-mistake/
And the neglect of Hillary was quite amazing. Jeb is a wannabee necon, but HRC has a long and proven track record. She was so determined her vote for invading Iraq was the right one she defended it for years, even to the point of being willing to lose to Obama in the 2008 Democratic primaries.
Hillary remains very proud of her role in destroying Libya. Considering how Victoria Nuland was hired into Hillary’s State Department, a person has to assume HRC was fully on board with the attack on Russia via the Ukraine. Even if it meant the Ukraine was destroyed as a functioning nation – which in fact it has.
Hillary has staked out a strong neocon (and pro-Israel) position on Syria, mocking BHO for not smashing that nation as well.
xxxx//www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/hillary-clinton-failure-to-help-syrian-rebels-led-to-the-rise-of-isis/375832/?single_page=true
Conclusion: if Hillary becomes President, she’ll put George W Bush to shame. For any remaining wars Israel wants fought, Hillary will do her very best to please the crappy little apartheid nation. After all, she was fully on board with Netanyahu’s recent murder spree in Gaza.
President Hillary will represent Big Everything and Israel, and not necessarily in that order.
At best Bush and Cheney were asleep at the switch on 9/11. At worst they were in on the attacks. But give them credit; they did get the wars they so badly wanted going.
I whole-heartedly agree.
If al Qaeda is an enemy of the US, and Israel is a friend of al Qaeda, what is the relationship between the U.S. and Israel?
I ask that as one who would rather keep the relationship between the U.S. and Israel intact , albeit with major changes over Palestine. It seems as if Israel wants to destroy the alliance. Certainly if the American public knew they were treating jihadis and sending them back to the battlefield, the alliance would be badly strained.
Israel is playing the fear game just like the rest of humanity. You cant tell me you see synergy and communion only domination in all forms in all part of the world. Israel could release innovations in green energy and bring great change. But they don’t do that because Al Qaeda might get their hands on it, they do that to protect the global petro dollar currency. All oil around the world is traded in dollars rather than in any other currency. Without the dollar backed by oil there is insolvency. The victims of the great petro dollar imperial war could stop killing each other in the middle east. No longer would Israel have an excuse andbring the peace that they so greatly hold. Algae bio diesel, solar thermal concentration and so many more. But America too has great innovation to bring prosperity. They don’t release it either for the same reasons. I loved this article. But it did not convince me that neo cons have that much power to keep creativity at bay. This is a paralyses deep within greatness of America. The revolution goes way past rebellion.