In the second part of this two-part series, Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould explore how neo-conservatives, behind the scenes, took control of U.S. foreign policy. Part One can be found here.
By Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould
In the months and years following the Arab-Israeli war of October 1973, the issue of Israel and its security would become so enmeshed in American policy as to become one and the same. The lesson of October 1973 that détente had succeeded in securing American and Soviet interests, was anathema to the entire neoconservative agenda and revealed its true hand.
At the time a majority of American Jews were not necessarily against better U.S.-Soviet relations. But with the forceful hammering of influential right-wing neoconservative pundits like Ben Wattenberg and Irving Kristol and the explosive manifestation of the Evangelical Christian Zionist movement, many of Israel’s liberal American supporters were persuaded to turn against détente for the first time.
According to the distinguished State Department Soviet specialist Raymond Garthoff’s Détente and Confrontation; “Analytically and objectively the American-Soviet cooperation in defusing both the Israeli-Arab conflict, and their own involvement in a crisis confrontation, may be judged a successful application of crisis management under détente.” But as Garthoff acknowledges, this success threatened “Israel’s jealously guarded freedom of action to determine unilaterally its own security requirements,” and set off alarm bells in Tel Aviv and Washington.
With Richard Nixon on the ropes with Watergate and Vietnam dragging to a conclusion, American foreign policy was open to external pressure and within a year would fall permanently into the hands of a coalition of pro-Israel neoconservative and right-wing defense industry lobbying groups.
A Crusade to Control the Mideast
These groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the American Security Council and Committee on the Present Danger would set about to make American interests and their own personal crusade to control the greater Middle East, interchangeable.
Theodor Herzl on the balcony of the Hotel Les Trois Rois in Basel in1897.
The issue of U.S. support for Israel, its neoconservative backers and its dedicated anti-Russian bias has a long and complicated history dating back long before Theodor Herzl’s19th century Zionist Project. Zionism was not instilled in American thinking by Jews, but by 16th and 17th century British Puritans whose sacred mission was to reestablish an ancient Kingdom of Israel and fulfill what they believed to be biblical prophecy based on the King James Version of the bible.
Britain’s Anglo/Israel movement found common cause with the British Empire’s 19th and early 20th century political goals of controlling the Middle East through Jewish resettlement of Palestine which culminated in the Balfour declaration of 1917. This long term plan of the British Empire continues today through American policy and what has been dubbed the Zionist Project or the Yinon plan.
Add the 700 million strong worldwide Evangelical movement and its 70 million Christian Zionists in the United States, and American foreign policy towards the Middle East becomes an apocalyptic confluence of covert agendas, ethnic grudges and religious feuds locked in permanent crisis.
It has been argued that the neoconservative’s slavish adherence to Israel makes neoconservatism an exclusively Jewish creation. Numerous neoconservative writers like the New York Times’ David Brooks tar critics of Israel as anti-Semites by accusing them of substituting the term “neoconservative” for “Jew.” Others argue that “neoconservatism is indeed a Jewish intellectual and political movement” with “close ties to the most extreme nationalistic, aggressive, racialist and religiously fanatic elements within Israel.”
Although clearly acting as a political front for Israel’s interests and an engine for permanent war, neoconservatism would never have succeeded as a political movement without the support and cooperation of powerful non-Jewish elites.
New America Foundation co-founder Michael Lind writes in The Nation in 2004, “Along with other traditions that have emerged from the anti-Stalinist left, neoconservatism has appealed to many Jewish intellectuals and activists but it is not, for that reason, a Jewish movement. Like other schools on the left, neoconservatism recruited from diverse ‘farm teams’ including liberal Catholics… populists, socialists and New Deal liberals in the South and Southwest… With the exception of Middle East strategy… there is nothing particularly ‘Jewish’ about neoconservative views on foreign policy. While the example of Israel has inspired American neocons… the global strategy of today’s neocons is shaped chiefly by the heritage of cold war anti-Communism.”
Add to that the abiding influence of Britain’s Imperial policy-makers following World War II – the British creation of Pakistan in 1947 and Israel in 1948 – and the hidden hand of a global imperial strategy is revealed. Pakistan exists to keep the Russians out of Central Asia and Israel exists to keep the Russians out of the Middle East.
Whether American democracy could have survived the stresses put upon it by the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War and the ongoing frauds posed by neoconservatism now poses an answerable question. It couldn’t. Fletcher School international law professor Michael Glennon maintains that the creation of the national security state in 1947 as a second, double government effectively renders the question mute. He writes: “The public believes that the constitutionally-established institutions control national security policy, but that view is mistaken. Judicial review is negligible; congressional oversight is dysfunctional; and presidential control is nominal. Absent a more informed and engaged electorate, little possibility exists for restoring accountability in the formulation and execution of national security policy.”
The Reach of Jackson-Vanik
The motion to kill détente and hobble Henry Kissinger’s balance of power or “realist” foreign policy quickly followed the 1973 war in the form of the anti-Soviet amendment to the Trade Act known as Jackson-Vanik. Sponsored by Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington State and Representative Charles A. Vanik of Ohio, but engineered by Albert Wohlstetter acolyte Richard Perle, trade concessions and virtually anything regarding Moscow would be forever linked to the Zionist Project through Jewish emigration to Israel from the Soviet Union.
Henry Jackson and Charles Vanik.
Supported by organized labor, traditional conservatives, liberals and neoconservatives, Jackson-Vanik hobbled efforts by the Nixon/Ford administration to slow the arms race and move towards a permanent easing of tensions with the Soviet Union. It removed control of American foreign policy from the President and Secretary of State, while delivering it permanently into the hands of the old anti-Stalinist/Trotskyist neoconservatives.
Jackson-Vanik overcame liberal support for détente because of an intellectual dishonesty within the non-communist left that had been roiling America’s intelligentsia since the 1930s. That dishonesty had transformed left wing Trotskyists into the CIA’s very own anti-Soviet cultural Cold Warriors and aligned them with the goals of the West’s right-wing. By the1950s their cause was not about left or right, or even liberal anti-Communism versus Stalinism. It was about exchanging a value system of laws and checks and balances for a system alien to America.
As Frances Stoner Saunder’s describes in her book The Cultural Cold War, it was simply about grabbing power and keeping it. “‘It’s so corrupt, it doesn’t even know it,’ said [legendary Random House editor] Jason Epstein, in an uncompromising mood. ‘When these people talk about a ‘counter-intelligentsia,’ what they do is to set up a false and corrupt value system to support whatever ideology they’re committed to at the time. The only thing they’re really committed to is power, and the introduction of Tzarist-Stalinist strategies in American politics. They’re so corrupt they probably don’t even know it. They’re little, lying apparatchiks. People who don’t believe in anything, who are only against something, shouldn’t go on crusades or start revolutions.”
A New Nomenklatura
But neoconservatives did go on crusades and start revolutions and continued to corrupt the American political process until it was unrecognizable. In 1973 neoconservatives did not want the United States having better relations with Moscow and created Jackson-Vanik to obstruct it. But their ultimate goal as explained by Janine Wedel in her 2009 study the Shadow Elite, was the complete transfer of power from an elected government representing the American people to what she referred to as a “new nomenklatura,” or “guardians of the national interest,” free from the restraints imposed by the laws of the nation.
Wedel writes, “Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late senator from New York and onetime neoconservative, suggested that this kind of suspension of the rules and processes was what motivated him to part ways with the movement in the 1980s: ‘They wished for a military posture approaching mobilization; they would create or invent whatever crises were required to bring this about.’”
The synthesis of James Burnham’s Cold War ethos (established formally by Paul Nitze in his 1950 NSC-68) together with Trotskyism (espoused by the core neoconservatives), combined with this aggressive new support for Israel, empowered America’s neoconservatives with a cult-like political influence over American decision-making that would only grow stronger with time.
As envisaged by Burnham, the Cold War was a struggle for the world and would be fought with the kind of political subversion he’d learned to master as a leading member of Trotsky’s Fourth International. But joined to Israel by Burnham’s fellow Trotskyists and the underlying influence of British Israelism – it would enter an apocalyptic mythos and resist any and all efforts to bring it to an end.
Trotsky
John B. Judis, former editor of the New Republic relates in a 1995 Foreign Affairs book review of the Rise of Neoconservatism by John Ehrman: “In the framework of international communism, the Trotskyists were rabid internationalists rather than realists or nationalists… The neoconservatives who went through Trotskyist and socialist movements came to see foreign policy as a crusade, the goal of which was first global socialism, then social democracy, and finally democratic capitalism. They never saw foreign policy in terms of national interest or balance of power. Neoconservatism was a kind of inverted Trotskyism, which sought to ‘export democracy’ in [Joshua] Muravchik’s words, in the same way that Trotsky originally envisaged exporting socialism.”
Through the eyes of the State Department’s Raymond Garthoff, the moves against détente in 1973 are viewed from the narrow perspective of a professional American diplomat. But according to Judis in his article titled “Trotskyism to Anachronism: The Neoconservative Revolution,” the legacy of NSC-68 and Trotskyism contributed to a form of apocalyptic thinking that would slowly exclude the professional policy-making process from the realm of empirical observation and replace it with a politicized mechanism for creating endless conflict. “The constant reiteration and exaggeration of the Soviet threat was meant to dramatize and win converts, but it also reflected the doomsday revolutionary mentality that characterized the old left,” Judis wrote.
In the end, he argues that the neoconservative success at using self-fulfilling prophecies to kill détente actually made the Cold War far more dangerous by encouraging the Soviet Union to undertake a military buildup and expand its influence, which the neoconservatives then used as proof that their theories were correct. In effect, “Neoconservatism was a self-fulfilling prophecy. It helped precipitate the crisis in U.S.-Soviet relations that it then claimed to uncover and respond to.”
Writing in the summer of 1995 with the Cold War finally ended and the storm passed, Judis considered neoconservatism as the subject of ridicule, describing key neoconservatives as merely political anachronisms and not the thriving political dynamo described by John Ehrman in his book. But in the end Ehrman turned out to be right, the neoconservative crusade had not come to a close with the end of the Cold War but had only entered a new and more dangerous phase.
Copyright © 2018 Fitzgerald & Gould All rights reserved
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire and The Voice. Visit their websites at invisiblehistory and grailwerk.com
Brzezinski observed long ago that “terrorism is a tactic not an ideology.” It follows, as we have been seeing since 9/11, that the west can never win a war against terrorism.
So we are spending trillions on wars we cannot win! Why should that be?
I fear we have not thought about this. It might plausibly be explained by a neocon agenda with two aims –
Firstly, GWB said “you are either with us or against us,” and that was sufficient to cow the political leadership of almost every country into submission. Who wants the NED or USAID or some 3-letter agency stirring civil war in his backyard;
Secondly, perhaps more importantly, it elevates the arms industry and the stock exchange and improves the west’s declining grip on the global financial economy – war for fun and profit.
Well a complicated tale indeed unless you read “The Nameless War” 1952 and “the Iron Curtain Over America” 1951–written by reputable military and educational professionals who were in positions which allowed them to see the unfolding Zionist agenda as George Orwell also saw in 1948.
There are two kinds of people on the planets (some would say Neanderthal and CroMagnon) but in contemporary parlance let’s say: jews and Gentiles. The Jews follow a war manual known as the Talmud and their g-d of wrath—Yahweh. There is no life after planet— no redemption—just the here and now and everything that it is possible to exploit. These are dangerous creatures with a genetically fused death wish— and they will either dominant or take us all down.
I appreciate the work of the two journalists who presented the subject articles but they are to polically correct and do not fully understand the level of infiltration and intent of the so-called Zionist. As Bill Clinton might have said: “It’s the Jews stupid”!
Trolling.
I wouldn’t give you the time of day, but in this instance I’d like to express sympathy for the mods.
Excellent.
I think the author exaggerates the number of evangelical christians. I found the number to be 285 million…
https://www.thoughtco.com/christianity-statistics-700533
.;.;.;7
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Embarrassed to say that i’ve Long wondered about this nexus between neo-Conservatives and Trotskyism and never really pursued the issue. It is often remarked upon without any elucidation as if its implications are obvious… but never have been to me.
So here’s a thought experiment. One of the more bizarre features of the current discourse is this odd suspension of any requirement to make any practical concessions to – for shorthand – local issues.
That’s too abstract so let me make it concrete in one example:
– those pushing the “Assad is a butcher” line feel no obligation to answer the question: what on earth could replace him / the functioning government of that set-upon nation?
– this in the face of the fact that the nature of the opposition is all too apparent after ~ 8 years of horrifying crimes by the foreign sponsored “opposition”
– the fact that this contradiction can somehow remain non-obvious while these same regime-changers rely almost entirely on moral outrage to maintain the “Assad is a butcher” psy-ops asset is a curious and maddening key aspect of the present moment
– it almost feels as if the inversion of the truth has an ironic advantage of “proximity”
– in other words, simply lying about some petty fact isn’t to the point at all: the better demonstration of power is to completely invert aggressor and victim and then make an example of those who refuse the gas-lighting
Not sure about the “Trotskyist” element here but I suspect the obvious answer: having a cohort of untethered idealists with apparently socialist cred and no “skin in the game” is a mighty appealing psy-ops asset if you are in the foreign nation destroying business.
Thus we have the appalling display well described here: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2013/05/syria-the-feckless-left-.html
Fitzgerald and Gould reference the “long and complicated history dating back long before Theodor Herzl’s 19th century Zionist Project.”
The authors note that “Zionism was not instilled in American thinking by Jews, but by 16th and 17th century British Puritans whose sacred mission was to reestablish an ancient Kingdom of Israel and fulfill what they believed to be biblical prophecy based on the King James Version of the bible. Britain’s Anglo/Israel movement found common cause with the British Empire’s 19th and early 20th century political goals of controlling the Middle East through Jewish resettlement of Palestine”
To fully appreciate the distorted perceptions and contradictory views of Palestine that existed among Jewish colonization enthusiasts, and the inter-weavings of Jewish interests in Britain and Russia, additional historical notes are in order.
Israel Zangwill (1864-1926) was a close British associate of Zionist Organization founder Theodor Herzl (1860-1904).
Zangwill was born in London in 1864, in a family of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. His father, Moses Zangwill, was from what is now Latvia, and his mother, Ellen Hannah Marks Zangwill, was from what is now Poland.
Zangwill is known incorrectly for inventing the slogan “A land without a people for a people without a land” describing Zionist aspirations in the Biblical land of Israel.
Zangwill did not invent the phrase; he acknowledged borrowing it from the evangelical Anglican, Lord Shaftesbury (1801-1885).
In 1853, during the preparation for the Crimean War, Shaftesbury wrote to Foreign Minister Aberdeen that Greater Syria was “a country without a nation” in need of “a nation without a country… Is there such a thing? To be sure there is, the ancient and rightful lords of the soil, the Jews!” In his diary that year he wrote “these vast and fertile regions will soon be without a ruler, without a known and acknowledged power to claim dominion. The territory must be assigned to some one or other… There is a country without a nation; and God now in his wisdom and mercy, directs us to a nation without a country.”
Shaftesbury himself was echoing the sentiments of the Christian Restorationist minister Alexander Keith (1792–1880).
Zangwill presided over a meeting at the Maccabean Club in London, addressed by Herzl on 24 November 1895, and endorsing the main Palestine-oriented Zionist movement.
Herzl’s Der Judenstaat, a pamphlet published in 1896 in Leipzig and Vienna, argued for a Jewish state in either Palestine, “our ever-memorable historic home”, or Argentina, “one of the most fertile countries in the world”.
However, Herzl opposed the efforts already made by Zionist groups to settle Jews in Ottoman-controlled Palestine. In Der Judenstaat, Herzl argued that “important experiments in colonization have been made, though on the mistaken principle of a gradual infiltration of Jews. An infiltration is bound to end badly. It continues till the inevitable moment when the native population feels itself threatened, and forces the government to stop a further influx of Jews. Immigration is consequently futile unless we have the sovereign right to continue such immigration.”
For that reason, Herzl, both in Der Judenstaat and in his political activity on behalf of Zionism, concentrated his efforts on securing official legal sanction from the Ottoman authorities.
In 1901, in the periodical New Liberal Review, Zangwill wrote that “Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country”. On Herzl’s visits to London, he cooperated closely with Zangwill.
In a November 1901 debate, Zangwill stated: “Palestine has but a small population of Arabs and fellahin and wandering, lawless, blackmailing Bedouin tribes.” Then he declared in a dramatic voice, “restore the country without a people to the people without a country. (Hear, hear.) For we have something to give as well as to get. We can sweep away the blackmailer—be he Pasha or Bedouin—we can make the wilderness blossom as the rose, and build up in the heart of the world a civilization that may be a mediator and interpreter between the East and the West.”
In 1902 article titled “Providence, Palestine and the Rothschilds”, Zangwill wrote that Palestine “remains at this moment an almost uninhabited, forsaken and ruined Turkish territory”.
The April 1903 Kishinev Pogrom in Bessarabia, a Western province of the Russian Empire, influenced the Zionist efforts of Zangwill, Herzl, and others. The pogrom resulted in the deaths of over forty Jews, as well as the destruction and looting of hundreds of Jewish homes and businesses. Further rioting erupted in October 1905.
The Kishinev Pogrom moved Zangwill, Herzl and others to seek a place of Jewish refuge be it in Palestine or some other site. Commenting on the pogroms in a greeting to the Federation of American Zionists Zangwill stated:
“The Kishineff massacre has brought home to the blindest the need of a publicly and legally safeguarded home for our unhappy race. When you come to consider where this centralized home should be you will find no place as practicable as Palestine, or at least for a start, its neighborhood.”
British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain met with Herzl on 23 October 1902. Chamberlain expressed his sympathy to the Zionist cause. He was willing to consider their plan for settlement near el Arish and in the Sinai Peninsula but his support was conditional on the approval of the Cairo authorities. It became evident that these efforts were coming to naught.
Chamberlain also offered Herzl a territory in British East Africa. The proposal came to be known as the Uganda Plan (even though the territory in question was in Kenya).
The idea was initially rejected by Herzl. But Zangwill and British Jewish Journalist Lucien Wolf (1857- 1930), who then served on the Conjoint Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association, were interested in the proposal.
At the Sixth Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland in August 1903, Herzl introduced a controversial proposal to investigate Chamberlain’s offer as a temporary measure for Russian Jews in danger after the Kishinev pogrom.
Opposition to the British East Africa proposal was demonstrated by a walkout led by the Russian Jewish delegation to the Congress. However, there was strong support on the part of some members of the Zionist leadership, and a committee was established for investigation of the possibility.
By 1904, Zangwill had “become fully aware” of what he termed “the Arab peril”, telling a Jewish audience in New York in 1904 that “Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States” leaving Zionists the choice of driving the Arabs out or dealing with a “large alien population”.
Herzl died in Austria in July 1904. He was severely criticized for his willingness to seek a Jewish state outside of the Middle East. Zangwill claimed that such criticism contributed to Herzl’s heart failure. In a 1905 speech on the British East Africa proposal he exclaimed:
“Herzl is dead: he worked for his people as no man ever worked for them since Judas Maccabaeus. His people called him dreamer and demagogue, and towards the end men of his own party called him traitor and broke his heart. He worked for his people: they paid him his wages and he has gone home.”
Zanwill’s support to the British East Africa proposal led to his break with the mainstream Zionist movement and institutionalization of the Jewish Territorial Organisation (ITO) in 1905.
The Seventh Congress met in Basel in July 1905, on the first anniversary of Herzl’s funeral. The Zionist Organization formally rejected the British East Africa proposal and affirmed Jewish efforts aimed at “colonizing” Palestine.
In August 1905 Zangwill and Wolf met to discuss the British East Africa proposal. Wolf objected to any specifically “Jewish national homeland”, that is to say a state which ghettoized Jews, preserving Jewish customs and law as the basis for governance. Though Zangwill’s literary works suggest his nostalgia for the ghetto, he too recognized the need for a modern Jewish polity. Both concurred that a self-governing Jewish territory should be based on a preponderance of Jews in the region rather than British legislative fiat, and both concurred that the new government should be formed on a modern, democratic basis rather than some earlier biblical ideal or Eastern European Kehilla structure.
This basic agreement between Zangwill and Wolf led to the formation of the Jewish Territorial Organisation (ITO), an organisation dedicated to “obtaining a large tract of territory (preferably within the British Empire) wherein to found a Jewish Home of Refuge”. Territory suitable for Jewish settlement was sought in whatever possible part of the world land might be available. In addition to Africa, various parts of America, Asia, and Australia were considered.
In 1908, Zangwill told a London court that he had been naive when he made his 1901 speech and had since “realized what is the density of the Arab population”, namely twice that of the United States. In 1913 he criticized Zionists who insisted on repeating that Palestine was “empty and derelict” and who called him a traitor for reporting otherwise.
According to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Zangwill told him in 1916 that, “If you wish to give a country to a people without a country, it is utter foolishness to allow it to be the country of two peoples. This can only cause trouble. The Jews will suffer and so will their neighbours. One of the two: a different place must be found either for the Jews or for their neighbours”.
In 1917, Zangwill wrote “‘Give the country without a people,’ magnanimously pleaded Lord Shaftesbury, ‘to the people without a country.’ Alas, it was a misleading mistake. The country holds 600,000 Arabs.”
Following the Revolution in Russia and the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Greater Poland uprising of 1918, the Versailles Treaty partitions of 1919, and the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921, Zangwill was again pondering Jewish efforts aimed at “colonizing” Palestine.
In 1921, he wrote “If Lord Shaftesbury was literally inexact in describing Palestine as a country without a people, he was essentially correct, for there is no Arab people living in intimate fusion with the country, utilizing its resources and stamping it with a characteristic impress: there is at best an Arab encampment, the break-up of which would throw upon the Jews the actual manual labor of regeneration and prevent them from exploiting the fellahin, whose numbers and lower wages are moreover a considerable obstacle to the proposed immigration from Poland and other suffering centers”.
The distorted perceptions and ideological blinders persisted as Jewish “colonizing” of Palestine increased.
You might find this interesting Abe on the Sultan, Theodor Herzl, The Young Turks and Palestine. https://www.dailysabah.com/feature/2017/03/10/the-palestine-issue-that-cost-sultan-abdulhamid-ii-the-ottoman-throne
“No room for consent
Budapest native Theodor Herzl, the leader of the Zionist movement, requested an audience with Sultan Abdülhamid II. When this request was declined, he delivered his offer to the sultan through his close friend, Polish Phillip Newlinsky, in May, 1901. They offered to pay the Ottomans’ foreign debts and to provide propaganda for the Ottoman Sultan in Europe in exchange for opening Palestinian lands to Jewish settlement and transferring governance to the Jewish people.
The sultan declined this offer with the famous saying: “I won’t sell anything, not even an inch of this territory because this country does not belong to me but to all Ottomans. My people won these lands with their blood. We give what we have the way we got it in the first place.” Herzl repeated his offer once again the following year, but the answer was the same.
The Young Turks who dethroned Sultan Abdülhamid II in 1909 exiled the sultan to Thessaloniki and imprisoned him in the house of a Jewish banker called Allatini. All territories owned by the sultan were nationalized and Jews were allowed to settle in Palestine by the Young Turks. While they offended all Ottoman communities with their Turkification politics, they rubbed elbows with the Jews because they helped the Young Turks seize power.”
The Young Turks (CUP) of Armenian Genocide Infamy. I have recently learned about the connection between the CUP and Zionists. If you have any thoughts on the matter, I would greatly appreciate them.
Indeed Hertzl’s offer of running intereference and smokescreens for th Turk annihilation of her Christian subjects was embraced by the Young Turks(domne crypto jews) and they propagated the Armenian Genocide…which the Israeli government denies to this day and disgustingly uses their omnipotent US lonby to support that Turkish denial….
I would hope the very able writers might begin to scour the landscape for ideas or actions aimed at getting us out of the mess that everyone that writes about and reads already knows. Look for politicians or other leaders offering something hopeful and writing about them.
A fertile area to begin is election reform, compelling to millions but an anathema for those who are guiding our nation and the world. Taking great gobs of money out of the processes that determine who gets to run, who gets elected and who gets to be re-elected is something to discuss and to promote.
A good article among many good articles appearing on CN.
I’m wondering just what kind of action could get us out of this mess? As the article points out, it’s not just a problem with this country and its government, it has many foreign players involved with it.
We’ve seen how easy it was to get people to believe in Russia Gate. Foreign leaders are also pushing the propaganda which makes it a even bigger problem to dismantle. Russia Gate has only been going on for two years. This other issue is much more vast and there are so many more players involved with it.
One thing I know for sure is that we are not going to be able to vote our way out of it. Not when every member of congress is involved in it. This article states that the presidents have absolutely no say in how our foreign policies work. Nor does congress. They just sign the budgets to keep it going.
We see now why congress doesn’t even bother to hide their corruption and contempt from us. The tax bill and then the upcoming dismantling of our social safety net and programs are one of their last acts to make this country a third world one. I’m so disillusioned after reading this.
It’s not so difficult to get out of this international political mess. Step-1: Russia should return Crimea to Ukraine. Respect for borders is the basis. If this is not done, then we cannot proceed. Step-2: reinstall freedom of speech, freedom of press and get an honest election not a fake one. Step-3: make the right laws to fight corruption and dishonesty. Step-4: get a completely new police force and new judges. — that’s it folks. The rest will solve itself.
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould,
Manifold Thanks for the historical info you’ve provided and added gratitude for the many links in the article. You’ve gifted us with a full semester of informative data.
Again, I Thank Both of You.
Also the underlying reality of what is described on Siriusdiclosure.com, renders the Anglo/Israel thing irrelevant and in error; a falsehood. What is found on Siriusdisclosure.com rocks theological, scientific, and Oligarchical foundations to their cores. The actual Truth tends to do that, but It has Its own sublime beauty about It, and Truth is indeed a breath of fresh air in a land of illusion.
“But their ultimate goal… was a Trotskyist dream; the complete transfer of power from an elected government representing the American people to what she referred to as a “new nomenklatura,” or “guardians of the national interest,” free from the restraints imposed by the laws of the nation.”
Only someone with no knowledge of Trotskyism whatsoever could possibly write something this ignorant. Trotskyism is the perspective of World Socialist Revolution and unequivocally rejects any national orientation, so the association of Trotskyism with the cultivation of an elite clique as “guardians of the national interest” is frankly bizarre. Moreover, Trotskyism advocates the seizure and exercise of state power under the DEMOCRATIC control of the working class, not the transfer of power from elected representative bodies to an unelected bureaucracy.
It is also historically inaccurate to refer to anti-Marxist petty bourgeois renegades such as Burnham as “Trotskyists.” Trotsky and the early SWP waged an intractable struggle against these elements, which they correctly assessed were aligning themselves with US imperialism (one example: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/14-burnham.htm ). Burnham, Shachtman, and the like had in fact long since openly and publicly renounced Trotskyism and Marxism by the time they became involved in the Neoconservative movement.
These are but a couple of examples to illustrate the fact that this piece is slanderous, false, and completely ahistorical in its “analysis” of Trotskyism. The common misconceptions the authors dredge up from the bowels of historical falsification should have no place in a premier outlet for investigative journalism such as Consortium News.
Thank you Anon; you said it perfectly. This piece is another slander on Trotskyism that is nothing but a retread of rusty Stalinist propaganda. The question those who equate the Chicago School with Trotskyism can’t answer is that if their theory is correct, why was this alleged love-fest only in one direction? Trotsky and his movement roundly condemned the direction of these traitors to their cause. Those interested should read “In Defense of Marxism”, available from Pathfinder Press.
To equate the advocacy of spreading socialist revolution to spreading capitalist reaction exposes the writers as disingenuous in their arguments. Those who think this piece is so “excellent”, even if they are ignorant of the history of Trotskyism, should see through that one.
This also raises the proper question asked at the end by Anon: Why did Consortium run such a piece of Stalinist garbage? I’d like an answer from the editor, because this calls their judgment into question.
Neocons are a ‘Jewish Trotskyite Vanguard’ is a little hard to swallow on the flimsy evidence provided.
Especially when this new vanguard appears to ultimately want some highly elaborated form of capitalism. Or is really a form of ‘reverse-trotskyism’.
The twists in logic are so elaborate that the only thing this article really manages to instill is fear of a Jewish conspiracy.
I’m surprised nobody else feels the need to call this out.
in search of my original comment – which seems to’ve been lost in “Moderation” mode… .
signed,
Mild -ly -Facetious
ISRAEL RATCHETING UP OFFENSIVE AGAINST SYRIAN GOV’T AND PEOPLE
who/whom are the actual antagonists in this scheme to create “A New Middle East” ?
If we remove deceptive blinders from of ignorant eyes we’d recognize actual perpetrators… .
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Details of seismic Syria strike slow to emerge
Local media hints Israel behind attack; No one rushing to assign blame or take responsibility
Fire and explosions are seen in what purported to be the Mountain 47 region, countryside south of Hama city, Syria, April 29, 2018.
By ASIA TIMES STAFF APRIL 30, 2018
(excerpt)
After seismic shocks registered a 2.6 magnitude earthquake in Syria late Sunday into early Monday, Syrian media reported that “enemy” rocket attacks hit multiple military bases. London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reportedly found that 26 pro-Assad regime fighters were killed in the strikes, most of them Iranian.
While an “increasing number of media organizations associated with the Syrian regime and Hezbollah” are suggesting Israel may have been responsible for the strike, neither the attacked nor the attacker are providing clear answers.
That is, according to The Times of Israel, which played up the scale of the strike – going so far as to suggest this strike represents more than just a tip toe towards all-out war between Israel and Iran. This was a big step forward.
“First and foremost was the sheer power of the attack. The pictures and the sounds, and the large number of casualties, point to an incident of larger scale than those to which we have become accustomed. We are not talking here about just another strike on another Hezbollah convoy, but rather what would appear to be a new step in what is now the almost-open warfare being waged between Iran and Israel in recent weeks on Syrian territory.”
The report also noted that the strike came just after America’s newly-minted Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to the region. US President Donald Trump also spoke with his Israeli counterpart, according to reports late Sunday night.
Pompeo, along with Trump’s recently appointed national security advisor, John Bolton, are known for their hardline stance on Iran policy. Prior to his current role, Bolton – who was a cheerleader for the US invasion of Iraq – has consistently advocated for a policy of regime change in Iran.
Observers were already bracing for possible retaliation for a previous Israeli strike on a base located in Syria which killed seven Iranians. Russia outed Israel as the attacker in that case, prompting threats of retaliation from Iran should any further strike occur. Analysis from Haaretz on Monday said that while Israel waited for a response, war was not a foregone conclusion. It added that there may be a lull in flare-ups ahead of Lebanon’s May 6 election and Trump’s May 12 decision on the Iran nuclear deal. The author of the article, which was published on Monday, apparently didn’t get the memo Sunday night.
http://www.atimes.com/article/details-of-seismic-syria-strike-slow-to-emerge/
Hats off to Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, for their well detailed report. I wish that many more Americans could, or would, read this article. It goes without saying that what the American citizen lacks is real knowledge of today’s news events, and with this America is loss in the wilderness. Hopefully more Americans will learn of this Zionist take over, but with a press which is controlled by the very people I wish would be exposed, I don’t muster must faith for such a happening. Still one can hope.
Hatred of Russia is a vicious lie stoked by the oligarchs who control America. Once you understand that, you can see Russia as it is – a beautiful country with a wonderful population. Their heroic defeat of fascism in WWII will live as one of the shining achievements of all time. How easily we forget.
I concur with your assessment. We keep hearing how the West defeated the nazis but it was Russia who bore the brunt. If the American people wanted to forget this crucial history, it is a their own peril. I understood this long time ago and will not forget.
Stalin sacrificed the most Russian lives indeed. But I think that the Germans were defeated by the cold, not the Russian fighting (or strategically pulling back). And if some Germans got killed by a bullet the chances are high that it was coming from American weapons.
This attack on the Russian people by Patrick is a crock. The issue was never that “Stalin” defeated the nazis in eastern Europe; it was the Russian people and the Red Army. They did this at great sacrifice and that should not be diminished by references to American weapons.
The question if Stalin defeated the nazi’s or the Red Army defeated the nazi’s would depend on how the fighting was done. If by strict order from the top that just needed to be followed,…or by bravery and persistance of the soldiers. Based upon what I have read, the soldiers had to march forward with 1 gun for every 3 soldiers and if they dared to turn back, they were shot by their own officers. Well,..I wouldn’t call this bravery but rather ruthless sacrifices made by a leader who probably wouldn’t care if 1 million or 10 million Russians got killed. Now regardeless how many Russian citizens got killed, I cannot admire, approve or justify such actions. The way that Stalin handled this war and the way that the Red Army executed this war is just something that one should be ashamed about. The Russian people payed a huge price for this (too high), more than any other nation. They can be proud on the end-result but most of all they should be angry at the officers and political leaders for sacrificing so many lives. My mentioning of American weapons was not to diminish this sacrifice but to expose the poor skills of Stalin and his army officers. The figures to look at here are the following: amount of Russians killed (20M) amount of Germans killed at the eastern front (4M).
No American oligarch would be able to influence so many people worldwide. Rusophobia is created by Putin who thinks he can outsmart the west by using ussr tactics that were already proven to be inefficient and for sure don’t work anymore in the 21st century. Russia is a beautiful country if you leave out the mosquitos and the ticks. Russian people are friendly, nice, hospitable,…but proud and traumatized by the fall of the ussr. Russian people are intelligent and creative,.. but misguided by propaganda on all levels. Russian people are honest if they live in an honest environment. Russian people fight for survival if the society is corrupt and criminal and the justice system is not functioning anymore. Putin’s dictatorship, his limited intelligence and his nationwide corruption are the rotten foundation that the Russian society has to live with. This can only end if the Russian people stand up together and say: xwatet, tiper nam nada drugoi president!
Clearly, you are not a reader of Consortium News. I dont even know where to begin with the outpouring of ridiculousness you just put a lot of effort into typing out other than to suggest that you do, actually, start reading Consortum. The great Bob Parry left behind a fantastic archive of well-researched & balanced articles on Russia & Putin.
FYI: Crimea, the historic Russia, voted overwhelmingly to be annexed back to Russia. The Crimean people never wanted to be severed from Russia. They had been petitioning for reunification long before the US/EU engineered coup created the crisis by which Russia sent the exact number of troops to Crimea allowed by the Port Treaty to defend her assets & the Crimean people.
You don’t know where to begin with saying where I was wrong, so you avoid all topics I mentioned?! Funny. About the biggest political mistake of the 21st century: the annexation of Crimea, I would like to mention the following. Lets not go back 50,100, 200, 500, 1000 years in history because this leads to endless discussions,..there have been different rulers in Crimea and depending how far you go back you end up with other rulers. Let’s look at a timeframe (4 years ago) where all,…really all,…all countries in the world agreed that it was Ukrainian territory. Soviet communistic leaders gave it to Ukraine, published it on paper. Modern leaders, like Putin, signed papers acknowledging it to be Ukrainian. And… Last but not least leaders like Putin guaranteed, via the Budapest memorandum, that this should forever remain part of Ukraine. So starting from these facts…..what went wrong? Putin was irritated by the Ukrainian choice against a very very corrupt president and decided to ignore all of the above and take it with fake soldiers (lgm) and a fake referendum. Now the whole world (yes even China, even Belarus, even Kazakhstan) has recognized that this was wrong. So you can shout “Krim nash!” for decades, but it just means that sanctions haven’t kicked in yet hard enough. The world goes on, and Russia is sidelined until Putin starts to understand this or Russians start a revolution.
Israel is certainly ratcheting up its aggression against Iran in just the past 24 hrs. It launched a massive missile attack on Iranian forces within Syria, killing scores of troops and then threatening to strike Iran itself should that country attempt any reprisal against Israel. Today Netanyahoo is accusing Iran of still conducting a program to develop nuclear weapons in spite of the signed treaty and all of the onerous inspection protocols. These ploys are obviously meant to serve as casi belli for an imminent attack on the country and the start of a greater war involving Russia and the entire Middle East. This is what the neocons and end-timers have been prepping for all their lives. As if perfectly timed to coincide with the carnage, John McCain comes out with his self-described “final remarks” on a life vilely lived in the form of a book congratulating himself on his endless warmongering. Perhaps he fancies that this work will become part of whatever new scriptures the survivors of nuclear Armageddon adopt as part of their death cult. At this point in time, Netanyahoo reminds me more than anything of that frenzied demagogue promising a thousand year empire to his converted cultists eighty odd years ago, if only all those pesky enemies could be eliminated we righteous ones could live free! John McCain’s final view of himself is as the prophet who preceded the great Messiah feeling he can die peacefully before the coming great conflagration he helped set in motion. It’s incredible, the amount of death and destruction a couple of otherwise totally worthless creatures can perpetrate when fortuitously inserted into positions of great power and influence.
Kim Jong-Un had better wise up and look to Iran as a precedent if he thinks he can trust Washington to keep any promises it makes to him.
McCain is a scum of the scum. It gives me the creeps just to look at someone as evil as he is.
I agree, McCain is a bitter, twisted scumbag who never did anything except get captured & imprisoned in Vietnam, then took advantage of this humiliation by entering Politics & using this as a warped badge of honour to gain a undeserved poltical advantage through pity? He has a abiding hatred & contempt for Russia & the Russian people, particularly the former Soviet Union who was a former ally of the Vietcong, during that War whilst kissing Israel’s butt on every cheek? Then he suffered another humiliating defeat as a failed Presidential candidate, beaten by Obama? Then there’s his meddling in Ukraine & the part he played in that coup to overthrow the legitimate Govt. Can some one put this old coot out to pasture like a old horse past his use by date?
McCain is somebody who can analyze a situation very correctly. He is not an extremist but somebody that goes for compromise and practical results. Any country should be proud to have a politician like him.
Mike K is right: McCain is a pig, period.
Yes, Kim Jong-Un is not so foolish as to trust the US, knowing that it would keep subs near SK and strike forces in Japan; and that any withdrawn forces could return in weeks, whereas reconstructing NK nuclear defenses from scratch would take many years.
Let us hope that he seeks reconciliation with SK, but even apart from defense no one will trust the US due to its dozens of victims since WWII. The US would infiltrate any combined government and control it with money, but perhaps a friendly NK-SK with separate governments would work. If SK has persuaded him that it is more profitable to be a US buffer state against China that is friendly with China, the game may be worthwhile. China is likely very happy to help remove excuses for US missiles in SK.
NK could do well in nuclear proliferation to victims of the US with better economies, and might do the US itself a favor by chastening its warmongers. It is the US that prevents peace everywhere, and must be contained in the interests of humanity.
On EIR wesite: “Great day in history; India, China, NK, SK, launch the Asian Century” which will be a century of peace and cooperation among Nations for global development and space exploration. The Global Oligarchy is growing increasingly incoherent and dim-witted as we speak. No Worldly, materialistic explanation can account for this. I look elsewhere for that accounting, and am satisfied.
And, people used to laugh at me when I said the Neocons were Trotskyite Communists…
I never laughed, I always took you serious, but then you knew that.
You also educated me to Leo Strauss, and Carl Schmitt, and to what those fellows produced.
Anyway, it’s nice to see you writing comments once again F.G., so stay in touch. Otherwise I will become stupid. Joe
Others wonder where and why their original Comments seemed to be whisked off into gale-force winds of “the ether.”
Hi Joe, I’m glad you’re still there! I gave up commenting for a while – getting “moderated” makes me paranoid. I’ve already gotten hit twice since I came back. If I don’t answer, It’s nothing personal. Well, at least these loons haven’t gotten us blown up yet, but I’m not holding my breath. Ever since they let the “crazies” out of the basement, I guess anything’s on the table!
You are right about them letting the crazies out of the basement. I actually am starting to believe, that it’s all a scheme to animate Washington to the point that Mickey will run against Bugs as Saturday morning cartoons will have a whole new meaning. Just for the record I do believe Mickey is the Republican, and Bugs Bunny is the Democrat. Imagine Wile E. Coyote in charge of our Defense Departement. This will be an Administration to fuel your poetry prose no matter which candidate wins. So hang in there, and be like me, and don’t worry about the missing comments, because Clapper will lie about them anyway….trust me on this one. Joe & the Road Runner, sorry Goofy your just not fast enough.
Mr. Sanford I’m addressing my question to you since I gather you know a great deal about the whole neo-con situation which includes Israel and also Russia. My question is this:
Why have there been no coordinated or collective responses from the jewish community against the totally immoral, racist and facist behavior of the Netanyahu government? I have a number of shirttail relatives who are jewish and I know that they do not agree with Netanyahu’s leadership. I often read comments from various well known political reporters who are jewish and who are opposed to Israel’s behavior, and I know that there is a group in Israel who re opposed (apparently it’s not very large). Aside from the obvious right wing jewish oligarchs we have in this country, I assume that most jewish Americans are appalled by what is happening yet there has been no collective response. Why not??? We have a huge one for blacks, another huge one for latinos, and now a huge one for teachers etc. Everyone is doing it, why isn’t the jewish community? Is it that there is no liberal jewish group? Is that possible? I’ve heard of J Street and thought they were a liberal group, but now I see that they contributed $400,000 to support Netanyahu, so maybe not, but isn’t there ANY liberal group? And if so, why aren’t they speaking out nationally?
I realize this is not actually about Russia, but since this article is so much about Israel, I thought I would ask. Anyone and everyone please jump in, if you know the answer.
Thanks.
To shed some light on who is behind the curtain ….
“Putin said in an interview with NBC News that perhaps the people responsible for Russia’s interference in the election “are not even Russian. Maybe they’re Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews, just with Russian citizenship. Even that needs to be checked. Maybe they have dual citizenship. Or a Green Card.”
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/after-putin-says-jews-may-be-behind-meddling-lawmakers-urge-sanctions-1.5889309
I’m continually trying to figure out who is behind the curtain, and it always leads back to Zionist involvement, or sympathies, somewhere within the mix of characters.
I thought to help aid to your finding an answer to add this article, and Putin’s comment to NBC. If you haven’t read Phil Butler, I suggest you check him out, since he’s written a lot about the Russian Jewish Mafia.
Hope I added something here. Joe
I’ve had my share of disagreements with Trotskyists but surely someone needs to stick up for LT. The allegiance of a minority of future neocons to Trotskyism says more about utter intellectual cynicism than any attachment to the goals & methods of the workers movement. With Leftist ideas ascendant in their emigre mileu, it would have seemed a convenient place for ambitious miscreants to make a name for themselves. Isn’t it strange to think Zionists were considered fringe nutters on theJewish intellectual scene not so long ago? Neocons may be unrepentant class warriors but class war looks very different from above. Although it does allow them to manipulate nationalism & geopolitics in a more detached & cynical manner than some of their compatriots on the Right, whose allegiance to the former sometimes leads them beyond simple class interest. This makes them all the more dangerous. While there seems to be some convergence between Left & Right in pursuit of a ‘Multipolar World’, for Neocons this remains a terrifying development, threatening to capitalism & its chosen geopolitical vehicle ‘The West’. Whilst the tradition of Lenin & Trotsky has its militant minority, its overt goal is a covergence of diverse movements operating across an uneven geographical space (Lenin’s ‘Imperialism’ & Trotsky’s ‘Results & Prospects’ are great examples of this political vision) The Neocon cabal dreams of a ‘Flat World’, operating behind the scenes to achieve this ‘flattening’ through military & intellectual means. You won’t find much to aid in this endeavour in Lenin & Trotsky, but plenty in the history of US anticommunism. George Kennan’s famous advice about 6.3% of the world having 50% of the wealth & what is required to keep it sums up this approach nicely:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/07/the-united-states-as-destroyer-of-nations/
And besides, the Left has 50something years of Stalinist BS to attone for, surely the Right can help with the Neocons. Credit where credit is due.
Well, regardless if it is true or not,…you are still funny.
Hey Stanford: They were right. You’re an idiot.
Fitzgerald and Gould detail how American foreign policy “would fall permanently into the hands of a coalition of pro-Israel neoconservative and right-wing defense industry lobbying groups. These groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the American Security Council and Committee on the Present Danger would set about to make American interests and their own personal crusade to control the greater Middle East, interchangeable.”
The authors note that the “issue of U.S. support for Israel, its neoconservative backers and its dedicated anti-Russian bias has a long and complicated history”.
Fitzgerald and Gould’s account of America’s “global imperial strategy” through the mid 1990s accurately situates neoconservatism in the matrix of interests that comprise the pro-Israel Lobby: “Although clearly acting as a political front for Israel’s interests and an engine for permanent war, neoconservatism would never have succeeded as a political movement without the support and cooperation of powerful non-Jewish elites.”
Unfortunately, the two-part Turning on Russia series by Fitzgerald and Gould ends in 1995 with the Russian Federation under Yeltsin embroiled in the First Chechen War, and oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky cashing in from the contracting Russia’s economy.
Quite a lot has taken place in the “more dangerous phase” the world entered at the dawn of what was purported to be a “New American Century”.
The imperial project that emerged at the end of the 20th Century was anchored in a 1996 “New Strategy for Securing the Realm” for Israel. Fierce opposition to so-called “Russian meddling” remains its hallmark.
Another salient feature of the global imperial strategy is its embrace of the military doctrine of “unilateral pre-emption”.
Stephen J. Green, author of Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations With a Militant Israel, observed that “Sometime around 2002-2003, the U.S. adopted Israel’s security policy, and the rest of the world became the West Bank and Gaza. Iraq, it was decided, would be the first test case.”
The Road to Unilateral Pre-emption
By Stephen Green
https://www.counterpunch.org/2003/04/15/the-road-to-unilateral-pre-emption/
Green frankly observed:
“The State of Israel has practiced pre-emption in its most virulent form–unilateral pre-emption–for decades. If America does continue to apply this doctrine we will discover, as Israel has, that it is destructive of our most important foreign relations, and the international laws and institutions which support those relations. The Bush Administration has done this in the name of internal security and will find, as has Israel, that unilateral pre-emption is the antithesis of internal security….it is in fact the road to isolation.
“In the coming months, as the fighting and chaos continue in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld urgently make the case for carrying the war into Syria and Iran, Americans will be asking how, why and at whose urging we have taken this road. We will begin to have a public conversation about the individual faces of unilateral pre-emption–a number of senior aides in the Executive Branch, particularly in the Pentagon, White House and State Department. These individuals share a radical view of America’s role in world affairs and very close intellectual, emotional and financial ties to the right-wing Likud Party in Israel.
“Ironically, several of these individuals who have advanced the case for unilateral pre-emption in the name of U.S. national security, have themselves faced formal investigations for violation of U.S. national security laws, over the past three and a half decades. The foreign government involved in each instance was the State of Israel.”
Will have to reread this to digest it, certainly shows me i did not recognize the significance of Jackson-Vanik at the time. I actually think a third part is necessary, particularly focusing on the Policy for the New American Century (PNAC) of 1997 and the dangerous phase brought about since then of the stranglehold by neoconservatives on US foreign policy including folding neoliberals into their worldview. Thanks for the article, quite interesting.
Here is a link to a quick summary of the PNAC and its nefarious activities,
including the info that it morphed into the bland-sounding Foreign Policy
Initiative in about 2009 (which was, according to The Atlantic, disbanded
in late 2017). Bear in mind that Euromaidan Adventuress Victoria Nuland
is married to Robert Kagan . . .
https://original.antiwar.com/daniel-luban-jim-lobe/2009/03/26/neocons-launch-new-foreign-policy-group/
Here is an interesting look at how much U.S. taxpayers pay to support Israel:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.hk/2018/04/aid-to-israel-washington-pastime.html
The pro-Israel lobby has been very successful at getting Washington to see things its way. There is no doubt that the military aid given to Israel has tipped the delicate Middle East balance in Israel’s favour. It is also interesting to see how U.S. taxpayers’ generosity is, once again, funnelled directly into the pockets of the defense industry who no doubt play a key role in Washington’s unfettered beneficence towards Israel.