About the only thing the Defense of Democracies’ founder does not love about war is fighting it himself, writes Daniel McAdams.
By Daniel McAdams
Ron Paul Institute
To say that Clifford May, founder of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, loves war would be an understatement. He loves almost everything about war and he thinks the U.S. should be in a lot more of them. He thinks that the U.S. should never go home, should never withdraw troops, should forever be searching for “bad guys” to fight, lest they come find us and fight us here. Because the rest of the world is exclusively focused on how to invade and destroy the United States.
Cliff May. (Defense of Democracies)
He likes to invoke Sun Tzu and Clausewitz and Plato to make his case for endless wars. Neocons love to do that because it makes them sound erudite and grounded in history — when in fact they are neither.
About the only thing Clifford May does not love about war is fighting it himself.
While others of May’s generation were being blown to bits in that lost cause called “Vietnam,” May was drinking brewskis at Sarah Lawrence College and then Columbia University. His experience of war consists of covering it as a pampered correspondent of the shining lights of the mainstream U.S. media like Newsweek and The New York Times.
Not only does May disdain the idea of soiling his dainty hands with the real blood and guts of war, he actually disdains those unlucky young Americans who find themselves churned up in the endless killing machine called “U.S. empire.”
In a recent Washington Times editorial, tellingly titled, “Why endless wars can’t be ended,” May argues that members of the U.S. military should be constantly in battle. Not a moment’s rest from the killing and being killed. After all…“the men and women volunteering to serve in America’s armed forces are not doing so in order to hang around the house drinking brewskies.”
(The Washington Times)
May’s is a rare look into the utter contempt the neoconservatives feel for members of the United States military. Veteran suicides are an epidemic in the United States and are in fact the second leading cause of death in the U.S. military. Veterans make up 18 percent of all U.S. suicides while representing only 8.5 percent of the population.
Why are veterans killing themselves at a rate of 20 per day? A recent study found that the risk of military suicide rises with rapidly repeating deployments — just the kind of constant warfare that Cliff May calls for in his Washington Times article this week.
After all, what the hell else would these kids be doing if they weren’t driving themselves to suicide from endless wars… “hanging around the house drinking brewskis?” Right, Cliff?
Participant in a 2017 veterans’ “ruck march” honoring other veterans who suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or have committed suicide. (U.S. Army/ Michel Sauret)
In The Washington Times piece, May argues passionately against President Donald Trump’s stated goal of removing U.S. troops from their positions occupying parts of Syria. U.S. troops in Syria are, in his telling, “both preventing a revival of the Islamic State, and helping contain the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
This above sentence is key to understanding May’s constant push for more U.S. involvement in the Middle East. Hint: It’s not really about America.
May’s Foundation for the Defense of Democracies is lavishly funded by single-issue billionaires who believe they are helping Israel by sending U.S. troops to the Middle East to constantly provoke and kill those they believe are Israel’s enemies. Thus far it has not brought peace any closer to either Israel or its rivals in the region. In fact, the opposite. But the money keeps flowing so May keeps blowing. And American troops (along with millions of innocents in the target countries) keep on dying.
Just as the neocons like it.
Daniel McAdams is executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
This article is from the Ron Paul Institute.
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The power of money has never been so evident and real. No country has figured out how to deal with it yet.
I am shocked that I am going to disagree here but I am. I lived in Washington state, so spent a lot of time near families that had long histories with the military. They were good people but, like most of this country the have been fed a non stop birth to death load of rah rah about the military. for lower middle class it is a job. Just go to a football game any level and see the madness of military rah rah. When you talk about the higher ranking officers it all comes down to money. I had a good friend and by the way she came from an amazing family, she is brilliant she used the military to get several higher degrees all the while moving up in rank. She is making more then my other half at 20 years younger. she gets paid well , free healthcare, housing allowance and food allowance , on top of transportation . The last time I spoke to her I told her that I was working on gutting the military budget. we have not and my guess will not speak again. Like climate their are a lot of good people out there that work for the MIC, big oil, and the other huge carbon companies. they maybe choosing not to see, or are afraid of walking away from a dirty job. the trick as I see it is not to condemn them or their families but to help them see. these two issues are very much linked as the Military is the largest polluter in the world. They will kill us one way or another if we do not stop funding them.
Nikki Haley, then serving as Trump’s US Ambassador to the United Nations, projectile vomited pro-Israel Lobby propaganda at the FDD “National Security Summit” in August 2018.
Mark Dubowitz, CEO of FDD, presented Haley with a “Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Award” for her “statesmanship” in having “courageously defending Israel” at the UN.
Haley then sat down for a chat with FDD president Clifford D. May where she obligingly declared “Iran is a problem”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGTxuSyXqLg
Haley’s remarks to Cliff May were by no means her first problematic performance.
Haley’s rabid pro-Israel speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in March 2018 garnered numerous standing ovations.
“Some people accuse us of favoritism towards Israel,” Haley bleated at AIPAC. “There’s nothing wrong with showing favoritism towards an ally; that’s what being an ally is all about.”
May and Dubowitz at FDD were no doubt dismayed when Haley announced on October 9, 2018 that she would be stepping down as Trump’s UN Ambassador.
Lots of “people” from pro-Israel Lobby groups stampeded to applaud her stewardship of the Trump administration’s unabashed favoritism toward Israel.
Trump praised Haley as a “fantastic person” who has “done a fantastic job and we’ve done a fantastic job together. We’ve solved a lot of problems and we’re in the process of solving a lot of problems”. Trump obviously understands his primary business to be solving problems for Israel, not the United States
Christian Zionist pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), viewed as the largest pro-Israel Lobby group, hailed Haley as “an example of a shining city on a hill for the nations of the world to follow” and praised “her unwavering support of the U.S.-Israel relationship”.
Michael Makovsky, president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) said that he ”deeply regrets” her resignation. Makovsky said Haley “quickly became a rock star, strongly advocating for U.S. positions on all matters in the U.N., including championing Israel and consistently defending it”.
Former JINSA director Shoshana Bryen, now the senior director of the right wing Jewish Policy Center, said she was “saddened by the resignation”, noting that Haley had been an advocate “not only our ally Israel, but most particularly Israel.”
But JINSA and Israel have no regrets that national security adviser John Bolton, perhaps JINSA’s most infamous alumnus, remains to advance Trump’s pro-Israel foreign policy in cahoots with Christian Zionist secretary of state Mike Pompeo.
AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann praised Haley’s “strong leadership” for “consistently standing up for American interests and our democratic ally Israel”, as if the interests of the two nations were identical.
Like the ongoing services of Bolton and Pompeo, Haley’s tenure as UN Ambassador was decidedly more about Israeli interests than those of the United States.
During her time at the UN, pro-Israel Lobby “rock star” Haley presided over the US pullout of UNESCO and the Human Rights Council, citing “bias against Israel” as the reason.
Additionally, the United States also announced that it would end funding to UNRWA, the UN agency that handles Palestinian refugees, accusing the organization of “perpetuating” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Notorious for her penchant for goodies from “donors”, Haley announced her resignation amid report that she accepted seven free flights for herself and her husband on luxury private aircraft from three South Carolina businessmen who had previously supported her political campaigns. The total cost of these flights was estimated at around $24,000.
The press release by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) concerning Haley stated: “By the standards of the Trump administration, this may not be a huge amount, but for a senior administration official to be accepting flights in private planes from former political supporters does not pass the smell test and should at least be investigated to ensure that it did not violate ethics guidelines.”
Whatever Haley’s transgressions with those generous good ole boys in South Carolina, there appear to be no ethics guidelines, limitations, or problems whatsoever when it comes to pro-Israel Lobby influence and warmongering in the Trump administration.
Trump wanted to work with Russia and Russiagate forced him into the arms of the neocons.Gen Flynn was against Libya and Syria and wanted to work with Russia too ,he had to go and was persecuted by the neocon Mueller and FBI.Remember when Trump wanted to pull out of Syria and Afghanistan?
How many of these wars are proxy wars with Russia?
Notice how the media are smearing Iraq vet and peace candidate Tulsi Gabbard with smears ?Now she is a Russia agent and Assad apologist too?
Agree
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Wanna know why so many believe “war pays”?
Then check out the few, short videos of ClassWarFilms.
http://www.youtube.com/classwarfilms
If you do, start with “Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine”
American history like you haven’t seen it since Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the U.S.”
God, I think I despise Chickenhawks more than any other in this country. What a first class COWARD!
FYI You folks should know that sometimes if I get lazy at dragging my mouse into the comment box I get certain suspicious looking text come up in that box. Today first thing it was a small ten or less characters punctuation and letters referring to Java “script” Always short, it has happened maybe a half a dozen times. But it then disappears.
I’m clueless about it!
It is refreshing to see that many who comment here have a firm understanding of Israels use of American money and blood. So now it needs to stop!
Thanks for calling out someone who makes his living spewing hate… and drinking a few brewskies. With a name like “The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies” the organization sounds benign… But is really. Just more bullpucky for the media to print and for less of us to read. There is getting to be less and less news in the daily “newspaper” each day. sad…
Right.
Israel wants US money. Israel wants American bodies. Israel wants American corpses.
All for what?
For Israel.
I have quite mixed feeling about my Viet Nam service. It was my intro to the great koint stock company of humanity. The Kitty Hawk Mutiny and the Marcos Coup inbthr Philippines were the beginning of mybpolitical education. But overall, the war eas very evil. I knew evrn atvthe time that I was helping kill people. But I still have great contempt for people like May.
In democratic Athens, everyone had to do military service, no exceptions. In modern Israel, everyone serves, men and women alike, into their 60s. Even trucks and busses are drafted. Certainly dipshits like May have to serve. I once met Israel Shakak, notorious anti-Zionist. He told he’d had fight in 6 wars. May and friends are unbelievable.
Not everyone servers in Israel. Model Bar Refaeli did not serve in the IDF. People can get a religious exemption. Thus, not everyone serves.
True, but the great najority serve. Exemption for the religious minirity is quite controversial.
There’s nothing admirable about Israel’s draft of people into its massive military machine. “A standing army is like a standing member. It’s an excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.”
Elbridge Gerry
How many of the pro-war billionaires are Dispensationalists, eager for Armageddon, fhe Rapture, salvation for themselves abd no one else?
In addition to multiple warmongering “think tanks” like May’s FDD and Jewish Zionist organizations backed by billionaires, the pro-Israel Lobby marshals Christian Zionist radical groups urging war on Iran:
“The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the more vocal part of the Israel lobby, is far better known for advancing Israeli interests in Washington. But in recent years, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the evangelical lobbying group spearheaded by Texas preacher John Hagee, has surpassed AIPAC as the largest pro-Israel organization in the U.S. And so Christian Zionists—those who believe that only a strong Jewish state will bring the son of the Christian god back to the holy city, to mete out justice—have moved to the center of U.S. Middle East policy.
“Their coming-out party was May 14, at the dedication of the newly relocated U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. ‘Let the name of the Lord be glorified today,’ the Rev. Hagee proclaimed in his benediction, facing the assembled strange bedfellows of right-wing rabbis, U.S. senators and congressmen, settlement bankroller Sheldon Adelson, Israeli Likudniks and fellow Christian Zionists. […]
“The core beliefs of these evangelical preachers and their tens of millions of followers in the U.S. deserve a much closer look now that they’re riding shotgun alongside President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman, who is America’s ambassador to Israel and a supporter of Israel’s settlements.
“Christian Zionists embrace a chilling, apocalyptic vision of vengeance upon the many and salvation for the few. […]
“The basic tenet of Christian Zionism? Global Armageddon will soon be at hand. […]
“For Hagee and other evangelicals, God has been bringing about the end of days, one step at a time. Even the Holocaust, Hagee once claimed, was part of God’s plan to drive surviving Jews out of Europe toward Palestine. (The remarks led Arizona Sen. John McCain to reject Hagee’s 2008 presidential endorsement.) Yet Hagee’s Holocaust remarks were part of a larger Christian Zionist worldview that sees modern Israel as part of divine destiny. In this belief, God’s will made Israel, and Christians now must protect that covenant and keep Jerusalem ‘united’ under Israel’s control, in order for Jesus to return to earth. In his book ‘Jerusalem Countdown,’ which sold more than 700,000 copies, Hagee also pushed for a confrontation with Iran to hasten global conflagration and Christ’s return.”
Rapture-Ready: How U.S. Policy Meshes With Armageddon
By Sandy Tolan
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/rapture-ready-how-u-s-policy-meshes-with-armageddon/
NB: Christian Zionist future history includes killing all Jews save 144, 000, who become Christians.
Yes Zhu, apocalyptic resignation and American exceptionalism are the myths leading to the impending collapse. The whole system is a failure. Thanx.
“FDD pushes for military confrontation with Iran and has received funding from some of Trump and the GOP’s biggest campaign megadonors. While simultaneously denying their support for a war with Iran, FDD’s scholars have repeatedly urged U.S. military action against the Islamic Republic.
“In 2011, FDD CEO Mark Dubowitz revealed that regime change in Tehran was his organization’s real mission. […]
“FDD would be a natural choice of partners for the Trump State Department. In 2017, FDD received $3.63 million from billionaire Bernard Marcus, which constituted over a quarter of FDD’s contributions that year. Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, is outspoken about his hatred of Iran, which he characterized as ‘the devil’ in a 2015 Fox Business interview. Marcus is Trump’s second biggest campaign supporter, contributing $7 million to pro-Trump super PACs before the 2016 election.
“Marcus, who sits on FDD’s board, is also a supporter of Trump’s hawkish national security adviser, John Bolton. He contributed $530,000 to Bolton’s super PAC over its lifetime.
“And by the end of the 2011 tax year, Sheldon Adelson, who went on to become Trump’s single biggest campaign funder, the GOP’s biggest funder in the 2018 midterms, and personal advocate for Trump to take Bolton as his national security adviser, was FDD’s third biggest donor, contributing at least $1.5 million. (Dubowitz says Adelson no longer contributes to FDD.) In 2013, Adelson publicly proposed the U.S. launch a preventive nuclear attack on Iran, targeting the desert, and threaten to launch a second nuclear weapon at Tehran if Iran didn’t abandon its nuclear program. […]
“Trump and FDD’s overlapping billionaire donor base is a strong indication that the White House and FDD and are working towards a shared goal. Marcus and Adelson publicly endorse a militarist posture towards Iran and aren’t shy about writing big checks to politicians and organizations that share that mission. With Adelson and Marcus’s preferred national security adviser, John Bolton, evidently pushing the U.S. towards a military confrontation with Iran, it’s no wonder that FDD, possibly (until Friday) with the support of U.S.-taxpayer funding, is engaged in a public-diplomacy campaign against critics of Trump and Bolton’s Iran policy.”
FDD Aligned with State Department to Attack Supporters of Iran Diplomacy
By Eli Clifton
https://lobelog.com/fdd-aligned-with-state-department-to-attack-supporters-of-iran-diplomacy/
Trump’s warmongering national security adviser, John Bolton, hired Foundation for Defense of Democracy senior adviser Richard Goldberg as his assistant in January 2019.
More about FDD and those “single-issue billionaires” who lavishly fund the pro-Israel Lobby (and bankroll Trump’s political campaigns):
“FDD’s chief funders have been drawn almost entirely from American Jews who have a long history of funding pro-Israel organizations. They include Bernard Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, whiskey heirs Samuel and Edgar Bronfman, gambling mogul Sheldon Adelson, heiress Lynn Schusterman, Wall Street speculators Michael Steinhardt and Paul Singer, and Leonard Abramson, founder of U.S. Healthcare. As Eli Clifton has documented, from 2008 to 2011, the largest contributors were Abramson, Marcus, Adelson, and Singer, and businessman Newton Becker. Some of FDD’s donors, particularly in the organization’s early years, gave to a wide range of groups that back Israel, but some of them, including Marcus, Adelson, Becker, and their foundations, have also contributed to groups like the Zionist Organization of America and Christians United for Israel that are aligned with Israeli right-wing nationalists who favor a ‘greater Israel’ […]
“Much of FDD’s key staff was drawn from people who have focused their work on defending Israel from its critics. May’s second in command in FDD’s early years was the Israeli Nir Boms, who had worked for the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Toby Dershowitz, who spent 14 years as AIPAC’s communications head, has handled communications for FDD. Dershowitz’s public relations organization, the Dershowitz Group, is housed in the same downtown M Street location as FDD, and Dershowitz is now listed as the group’s vice president for government relations and strategy. Jonathan Schanzer, FDD’s vice president for research, worked earlier at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which was spun off from AIPAC decades ago as a research organization not subject to the tax restrictions on groups that lobby. […]
“May doesn’t go out of his way to highlight FDD’s origin as a promoter of Israel and its connections to Washington’s pro-Israel lobby.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/08/foundation_for_the_defense_of_democracies_inside_the_small_pro_israel_think.html
Vote for Tulsi 2020!
The real shame is that someone actually hires Cliff May and gives him employment. Great awakening piece, Daniel. Keep it up!
I would be so stingy as to deny the post of Uber driver, although a job in an Amazon warehouse could be even better. Defenders of democracy should have some experience as “common people”.
Democracy is on the cliff edge ready to jump to its doom or we wait a little longer until it just literally crumbles away either way the war heads will eat their own gun butts and wash it down with the blood of Mary and her children PEACE WILL SAVE US
It’s interesting. Bill Maudlin, WWII vet and famed cartoonist of Willie and Joe, wrote in his book “Up Front” that you could tell who had actually been fighting and who hadn’t behind the lines. Those who’d actually seen combat could usually be found in some quiet corner getting drunk but the guys who were only behind the lines were the aggressive ones.
I could have gone all day or even all year without learning about this creep.
About the second or third year of W Cheney’s war on Iraq I wrote a long and impassioned letter to my then US Rep. Ted Strickland. I thought I would be clever and rather than expound upon the illegality, the treacherous deceit, the senseless destruction of a functioning state, the killing of thousands of innocents and the displacement of a million more, that I would instead focus on all of the injustices being heaped upon our faithful military personnel. The multiple deployments (remember “stop-loss”?,) the inadequate equipment, the impossible promise of honor and glory while prosecuting an illegal and immoral policy.
I actually got a personal response, not just some boiler-plate auto-letter. The good Mr. Strickland (D, liberal cum progressive)informed me that he could not and would not, at that time, do anything that would jeopardize the safety of our troops and the success of their mission. That’s what I was writing you about, you moron. Though not in the same class as this May creep, he served the same purpose.
I am so sick and damn tired of these organizations with innocuous or benign sounding names — Soros and other NGOs are notorious at this propaganda game — that then proceed to go about the globe serving big finance capital, Washington militarism or Zionist bloodletting.
Great to see Daniel, a genuine advocate for peace, posting here on CN.
Exactly what I was thinking TomG, thanks. Welcome Daniel McAdams.
Cliff is a sadist and a coward.
Cliff, there is still time for you to enlist, even though you somehow missed that opportunity the first time! I’m sure you could get any waiver you need to sign up. If all else fails, one of your military contractor buddies could sign you up for front line duty. That’d be pretty cool!
I was at a talk in “liberal” Ann Arbor where a woman said she didn’t mind the wars because she knew other people’s children would be fighting them, not her kids. I can’t express how depraved that statement was. Apparently, a whole lot of people, often very rich people and very highly “educated” people love a war as long as they don’t have to bear the consequences.
In part, I see a complete lack of class awareness by these people. But I also think they are sociopaths. Other people are completely expendable to them. This culture is raising up way too many people who simply do not care about the welfare of others outside their own small circle. It’s system wide and I see it in our culture’s art and music. There is a weird fascination with cut up bodies (as happens in a war) but the war surrounding us is ignored and the cut up bodies are “trendy”. I did get to hear the spirit cooker herself and she is truly into causing pain. Her audience considered this quite “transgressive” of her. That is ridiculous. Causing pain to others is a fundamental basis of this culture. How can it be transgressive to repeat the giving of pain when people at the top of this society do nothing but cause pain?
Being trasgressive would be caring about the well being of this planet and other people. I suppose Cliff is worshiped for his desire to cause other’s pain as well. These types of people should be called out and causing others pain needs to be rejected in our life.
Jill you wrote..
“Apparently, a whole lot of people, often very rich people and very highly “educated” people love a war as long as they don’t have to bear the consequences.”
I have nothing but contempt for people like that too, but what I will never understand is how families can have generations joining the military and being proud of when they are killed in battle. I see lots of people say that even though their kids have died in wars that at least they died doing what they loved. Or that freedom is never free.
Not one war in my lifetime has been to defend my freedoms including WWII. This war would never have happened at the scale it did if Prescott Bush, Henry Ford and others hadn’t funded it and Hitler’s armies. And after our grandfathers defeated the Nazis this country brought the worst of the worst here to help us with the wars going forward. And in 2015 Obama overthrew Ukraine’s government and installed neo Nazis into the government. The same ones that were aligned with Hitler. Go figure.
Abby,
I have some experiences with this. A lot of kids grow up with sadistic parents. I don’t think we have come to terms with that as a society. Some sadistic parents are just glad to get rid of their kids by putting them in the army. The army collects over 1000 data points on each child and their parents starting in grade school. This data is turned over to recruiters who use it in their pitch to children.
There is a truly horrific group of parents who want their children to go over there and kill somebody. These are parents who believe like Cliff that killing and dying is what young people are for. Of course, this will to kill varies by class. Cliff believes that the “lower orders” should do this, not him or his kids. But I have spoken with actual parents who made their child feel like a loser, even for choosing to be a medic.
There is a whole group of people who think they are serving their nation. There is another group who is economically desperate and the military is the only way out. If those parent’s kids die, it is unbearable to them. I believe they use lies to deal with their extreme grief.
Veterans for Peace tries to go into the schools and explain what it really means to be in combat. It is very difficult for them to counter the mounds of well funded propaganda by the government and its minions in the “entertainment industry who glorify war.
And yes, I agree. We are the 4th Reich. But that information isn’t exactly well known to a whole lot of people in our culture. People like Cliff are despicable and their lack of caring about other people’s lives should be a source of shame to them. They should atone for that sin by keeping as many children out of harm’s way as possible and work hard to prevent war with every means at their disposal. Instead, he uses his position to advocate killing and being killed. I don’t know what happened to Cliff but it must have been bad. Nevertheless, he is an adult and he should no longer perpetuate the cruelty which I believe, must have been visited upon him as a child.
I live in Maine which has a very high rate of military veterans, and every time I watch the local news the militaristic propaganda is endless and sickening. I have begun to think that parents of children who go into the military suffer some form of Munchausen’s — they get attention and kudos if their child comes home in a coffin or maimed beyond belief. Having known a woman whose two sons went into the military — their father abandoned them and the woman’s lesbian partner abused them — it’s quite clear that those who join the military do not come from loving families.