The neocon strategy paper, called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," advanced the idea that only regime change in hostile Muslim countries could achieve the necessary "clean break" from the diplomatic standoffs that had followed inconclusive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
Under the "clean break," Israel would no longer seek peace through mutual understanding and compromise, but rather through confrontation, including the violent removal of leaders such as Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
The plan called Hussein's ouster "an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right," but also one that would destabilize the Assad dynasty in Syria and thus topple the power dominoes into Lebanon, where Hezbollah might soon find itself without its key Syrian ally. Iran also could find itself in the cross-hairs of "regime change."
But what the "clean break" needed was the military might of the United States, since some of the targets like Iraq were too far away and too powerful to be defeated even by Israel's highly efficient military. The cost in Israeli lives and to Israel's economy from such overreach would have been staggering.
In 1998, the U.S. neocon brain trust pushed the "clean break" plan another step forward with the creation of the Project for the New American Century, which urged President Bill Clinton to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
However, Clinton would only go so far, maintaining a harsh embargo on Iraq and enforcing a "no-fly zone" which involved U.S. aircraft conducting periodic bombing raids. Still, with Clinton or his heir apparent, Al Gore, in the White House, a full-scale invasion of Iraq appeared out of the question.
The first key political obstacle was removed when the neocons helped engineer George W. Bush's ascension to the presidency in Election 2000. However, the path was not fully cleared until al-Qaeda terrorists attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, leaving behind a political climate across America for war and revenge.
Of course, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 had other motives besides Israeli security -- from Bush's personal animus toward Saddam Hussein to controlling Iraq's oil resources -- but a principal goal of the neocons was the projection of American power deep into the Muslim world, to strike at enemy states beyond Israel's military reach.
In the heady days of 2002-2003, when the high-tech capabilities of the U.S. military were viewed as strategic game-changers, neocons were fond of joking about which way to go next, into Iran or Syria, with the punch-line, "real men go to Tehran." However, the Iraqi resistance to the U.S. conquest dashed those hopes. "Real men" had to postpone their trips to Tehran or Damascus.
These grandiose geopolitical ambitions were rarely mentioned publicly. Instead, the American people were scared with falsehoods about Iraq's WMDs and Hussein's ties to al-Qaeda.
Gingrich's War
But the Iraq debacle, now given a stamp of finality by Obama's removal of the last U.S. combat troops, threatens to solidify among many Americans a recognition that they were "had" by the neocons, that the Iraq War was a terrible mistake that shouldn't be repeated again.
So, the neocons must move quickly to change that perception, by asserting that the war had actually been "won" by Bush but that Obama "lost" it. That way, Americans won't close the door on the next neocon adventure, a war with Iran.
Besides stepping up attacks on Obama, the neocons have regrouped inside the campaigns of several Republican presidential contenders, including Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. In particular, former House Speaker Gingrich is selling himself as the one who would not just bomb Iran but would invade the country with the determination to force "regime change."
Earlier this week, Gingrich told an audience in New Hampshire that he views the threat from Iran and its alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapon much as the U.S. government worried about the Soviet Union during the early Cold War. A nuclear Iran, Gingrich said, threatened not only Israel but -- if a weapon were shared with terrorists -- the United States, too.
"We are not going to tolerate an Iranian nuclear weapon," Gingrich assured his listeners. But he added that bombing Iran would not be enough, that "regime change" brought by the force of U.S. arms was the only answer. Gingrich played out a scenario of an Israeli prime minister asking a U.S. president for help in a conventional military invasion of Iran, and Gingrich made clear that he, as president, would join the war effort.
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