Israel's Looming Catastrophe

Another key neocon -- and Iraq policy architect -- was Richard Perle, an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan. Perle’s former counsel was Douglas Feith, who returned as under secretary of defense for policy under George W. Bush and strongly promoted the invasion of Iraq.

Besides bringing intellectual firepower to the Reagan-Bush team, the neocons tapped into a powerful right-wing media apparatus that began to take shape in the late 1970s and pushed propaganda that advocated a more aggressive U.S. approach toward Israel’s “terrorist” adversaries in the Middle East.

Over the ensuing three decades, the neocons – and their right-wing Republican allies – came to dominate the Washington news media, especially on Middle East policy. Critics of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians were routinely denounced as “anti-Semites” and found little space on the major editorial pages to argue their positions.

Once the neocons returned to power under George W. Bush (and especially after the 9/11 attacks), the space for any debate shrank further, with anyone who questioned hard-line policies toward Iraq or Israel’s other Muslim enemies called “soft on terror.”

With debate suppressed, the neocons pushed for the invasion of Iraq almost without opposition. Though the war was pitched as necessary to protect the American people from Iraq’s supposed stockpiles of WMD, the invasion was viewed by many neocons as necessary to protect Israel’s long-term security.

The idea was that by transforming Iraq into a permanent base for the American military, U.S. power could be projected throughout the Middle East, forcing “regime change” in Iran and Syria and undermining other groups threatening Israel, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.

The neocons saw the U.S. military in Iraq as the guarantors against any long-range assault on Israel. In other words, if Israel couldn’t reach some of those distant threats, the United States could.

The neocons also assumed that their tough-talking ways – especially President Bush’s then-popular swagger – would keep the American people in line with Washington’s Israel-is-always-right consensus.

Strategic Defeat

President Bush’s strategic defeat in Iraq – defined by the new “status-of-forces agreement” that prohibits permanent U.S. bases and insists on a full U.S. withdrawal by the end of 2011 – marks a major turning point in the Middle East.

Plus, the American neocons have been severely damaged domestically by their overreach in Iraq. Though they remain influential – especially inside the national press corps with control of the Washington Post’s editorial pages and other influential media outlets – the neocons are increasingly despised by the broad American public.

One of their chief advocates, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, went down to decisive defeat on Nov. 4, 2008, to a political newcomer in Barack Obama, despite right-wing and neocon smear campaigns emphasizing his middle name “Hussein” and claiming that he is a secret Muslim who would be sworn in using a Koran.

Though Obama has given the neocons some hope by handing the State Department to the staunchly pro-Israel Hillary Clinton and by keeping on Bush’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the neocons will probably never reclaim the kind of sweeping influence they had during George W. Bush's presidency.

These new facts-on-the-ground – both in the Middle East and in Washington – add to the imperative for the Israeli people to reassess the three-decade strategy of balking at reconciliation with their Arab neighbors and counting on the neocon dominance of the U.S. political debates.

Israeli leaders might want to do whatever they can to turn back the clock to the late 1970s when Jimmy Carter showed a possible route to long-term security for Israel – by making respectful peace deals with its Arab neighbors.

Rather than trying to bomb and kill their way to security, Israeli leaders might want to consider a new strategy that steps away from endless confrontation with Arab enemies and instead seeks to integrate Israel into the economic life of the Middle East, as a center of science, technology, industry and finance.

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