There are, of course, additional factors or forces behind the drive to attack Iran. For example, President Bush and the neoconservative handlers of his administration hope that, by accusing Iran of arming the Iraqi insurgents, they can blame their disastrous failure in Iraq on Iran. They also hope that by expanding the war to Iran they can stifle or preempt calls for accountability and/or impeachment of those responsible for the illegal war on Iraq.
Another driving force behind the plan to attack Iran is the armaments lobby and the powerful Pentagon contractors who view the extension of war to Iran as an unmistakable expansion of their economic fortunes. President Bush’s neoconservative policies of war and militarism have been a boon for the arms industry and related businesses of war profiteering.
It is obvious, then, that the major forces behind the war juggernaut against Iran are driven not by the interests of the American people or “national interests,” as the champions of war and militarism claim, but by some powerful special interests that converge on war and political convulsion in the Middle East: the economic interests of the armaments lobby and the geopolitical interests of the pro-Israel lobby.
Since the interests of these two highly influential forces converge on war and international conflicts in the Middle East, they often play into each others hand in their pursuit of war and militarism in the region. More importantly, however, they also coordinate their politics and/or policy agendas to influence U.S. foreign in the area.[4]
Although there is no formal alliance between these two powerful forces, their collaboration can often be seen through their identical views of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Institutionally, this de facto collaboration is carried out through a number of militaristic think tanks such as Project for the New American Century, the American Enterprise Institute, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Center for Security Policy, Middle East Media Research Institute, Middle East Forum, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and National Institute for Public Policy.
A closer look at the records of these militaristic think tanks shows that they are set up to essentially serve as institutional fronts to camouflage the dubious relationship between the Pentagon, its major contractors, and the Israeli lobby, on the one hand, and the war-mongering neoconservative politicians, on the other. Major components of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, including the war on Iraq and the plans to strike Iran, have been designed largely at the drawing boards of these think thanks.[5]
It is ironic—indeed, tragic—that hardline Zionist leaders, who constantly (and rightly so) remind us to not forget the atrocities of fascism, so callously distort the socio-economic and historical characteristics of fascism in order to use it in the service of their short-sighted and misguided agenda for the Middle East. They hope—in vain—that they can permanently keep the occupation of the Palestinian land by force, and that by destroying Iran and/or other opponents of occupation the Palestinian question would somehow go away. Yet, as the late Albert Einstein put it, peace can be achieved only by understanding, not force.
Calling Ahmadinejad and/or Iran fascist is even more ironic (it is, in fact, a perfect case of chutzpah) in light of the fact that the expansionist policies of unilateral aggression promoted by the leading figures of Neoconservatism are more akin to Hitler’s policies of unprovoked invasion of other countries than is Iran’s foreign policy, which respects the sovereignty of its neighbors and harbors no territorial ambition or military aggression against any country.
Neoconservative champions of war and militarism often use terms and adjectives such as fascist or Hitler to characterize opponents of US-Israeli policies in the Middle East in order to justify their agenda of “regime change” in the region. Such wanton or opportunistic use of political rhetoric for nefarious political purposes represents a gross misreading of social structures and historical developments.
Fascism cannot be defined or characterized capriciously; it is a specific historical category that evolves out of particular socio-economic circumstances or structures. It cannot be haphazardly applied to any socio-economic system or political leader that is at odds with the neoconservative agenda of regime change in the Middle East.
Nor can fascism be reduced to the “sins” of political personas and individual leaders of Nazi Germany, or the pathological problems of Hitler’s mind. While simplistic or obfuscationist judgments of this sort may succeed in dressing in the uniform of Adolf Hitler the horrific acts that the capitalist system can occasionally perform, such reductionist judgments would not be very useful for the purposes of averting social conditions that may lead to the recurrence of fascism.
Hitler was not any more responsible for the rise of fascism in Europe than is President George W. Bush for the rise of neoconservative militarists in the United States, or for the control of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East by the representatives of the military-industrial-Likud interests.
Some friendly critics attribute the aggressive militaristic policies of militant Zionism to the traumatic memories of fascism and the attendant brutalities that were committed against Jewish people. Thus, political commentator Jim Lobe writes, for example, “the horrific experience of European Jewry in the twentieth century, culminating as it did with the Nazi Holocaust, is critical to understanding the neoconservative mindset.”[6]
While this may explain radical Zionists’ “mindset” and their policies of unilateral militarism, it does not justify their plans of war and “regime change” in the Middle East. Palestinians and other Arab/Muslim people had nothing to do with the Nazi Holocaust. That these peoples have been subjected to horrendous punishment for the crimes committed by others simply defies logic—let alone any sense of justice.
Hard-line Zionist ideologues like Lieberman, Podhoretz, Netanyahu and their cohorts in the misguided pro-Israel lobby, who sloppily coin terminologies such as Hitler or fascism in reference to the opponents of their policies of aggression, are misrepresenting fascism, drawing wrong lessons from it, and punishing the wrong people for its crimes. With friends like these fanatical Zionists, the Jewish people need no enemies!
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