Neocons Rise From Mideast Ashes: By Robert Dreyfuss

[kpete]

Neocons Rise From Mideast Ashes
Robert Dreyfuss
July 17, 2006

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The key question: Is the Israeli offensive designed as a calculated effort to catapult the hard-right, neoconservative ideologues back to power in Washington?

The terrorist attacks of 9/11, the 21st century’s Pearl Harbor, allowed Vice President Dick Cheney—along with Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, John Bolton, et al.—to steer President George W. Bush and the U.S. government toward a global war, including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq; the endless “war on terrorism” and the militarization of American foreign policy. Since then, and especially as the adventure in Iraq bogged down, the less adventurous realists in the American foreign policy establishment have begun to eclipse the previously hegemonic neoconservatives. For the past year or so, the Pollyannas amid the chattering classes have told us that the neoconservatives’ moment has passed, and that the adults are back in control in the nation’s capital. What they forgot—and what Israel’s criminal attacks on Gaza and Lebanon have reminded us—is that the neoconservative war party is global, not domestic. Outflanked, temporarily, in the United States, the neocons are now flexing their muscle outside the United States in a way that can give them added new leverage at home.

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Make no mistake: Until last week, before Israel went to war, the neoconservatives were losing across the board. They watched in horror as the war in Iraq faltered, and they were appalled by President Bush’s Condi-led opening to Iran. Indeed, to many it seemed as if the entire post-9/11 project to remake the Middle East and build American hegemony on that cornerstone was in jeopardy.

Speaking at a forum at the American Enterprise Institute last week, Frederick Kagan warned that the United States is in “danger of losing everything” because the war in Iraq is not being pursued aggressively enough. “All of this success can and will be undone … if we do not get the security situation under control, and fast,” he said, accurately enough. Now that Israel is at war, they have the chance once again to go on the offensive, against Iran, in Iraq, against Syria, and against the mythical Terrorist International that they warn about so regularly. You can imagine what Cheney and his allies are whispering to the president: Be resolute, be strong—and bring ‘em on!

more at:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/07/17/neocons_rise_from_mideast_ashes.php

[sui generis]

1. they will underscore this now

with repeated warnings to your cellphones, PDA's and pagers about terror activity and heroic anti-terror deeds; you can run but now you can't hide from the inanity as long as your cell phone is on and in range.

Keep the mob in a state of panic and then present yourself as their savior - that's the strategy. They know that when push comes to shove, fear rules best.

The problem is, we're facing a major economic catastrophe if we keep dumping brazillions of dollars into endless war planned and executed by amateurs and corporate opportunists.

[enough]

2. Dead-on analysis by Dreyfuss

snip>

Third, by invading and bombing Lebanon and acting brutally to crush the Palestinian Authority, Israel has created a unified field theory of the Middle East’s crises, uniting the escalating world showdown with Iran, the unraveling civil war in Iraq, the crisis over Syria’s role in Lebanon, and the Arab-Israeli conflict itself into one big tangle. To be sure, all of those conflicts were always linked. But now they are as one. And in each case, the United States now faces a huge dilemma.

A sane U.S. policy would (1) exert backbreaking pressure on Israel to halt its attacks; (2) open a dialogue with Iran and Syria about containing Hezbollah and Hamas; (3) take drastic steps to stop the Iraqi civil war by making across-the-board concessions to Iraq’s Sunnis and forcing the Shiites to swallow it, while starting a phased U.S. withdrawal; and (4) getting the White House directly involved in the Israel-Palestine peace process as if their lives depended on it.

But Israel, and its neoconservative allies, are counting on none of that to happen. Instead, they’ve gambled that in each case President Bush will fall back under the spell of Dick Cheney and the neocons, and do precisely the opposite: continue to give Israel the green light, throw rhetorical bombs at Damascus and Teheran, escalate the counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, and take Israel’s side in its wall-building, settlement-defending, no-talks-with-Hamas unilateralism.

snip>

[kenny blankenship]

3. Never blink : the ONLY limit on their willingness to use mass slaughter

is the revulsion felt by the rest of us. Never shut your eyes around them, never think they've given up because they've failed so badly to deliver the promised benefits of their policies. A world of naked domination and slaughter is their only policy and the only promise they can keep.

[BOSSHOG]

4. "The War in Iraq is not being pursed aggressively enough!!"

Predictable bullshit from the AMI. There is no war in Iraq that the United States is involved in. The war ended three years ago, those who live in Iraq are in the middle of a Civil War; our kids are just targets. Kill, kill, kill is the message from conservatives in America as long as it is not their blood being shed.