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OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 6/14/11

Neocons Trade Medicare for War

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Easing Out Obama

In other words, the Washington Post -- the capital's most powerful newspaper -- is rejecting any significant reductions in U.S. military spending even as vital domestic programs, such as Medicare, are under extreme pressure.

Already, the Republicans in Washington have caved to these neocon demands by sparing the Pentagon from any budget cuts as the GOP would replace Medicare with a privatized voucher system that would shift costs heavily onto the sick elderly.

As Reagan's budget director Stockman noted in another New York Times op-ed, congressional Republicans and their supposedly deficit-hawk budget chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan, backed away from challenging the neocons on military spending.

"Ingratiating himself with the neocons, Mr. Ryan has put the $700 billion defense and security budget off limits," Stockman wrote.

Ryan's surrender on military spending cuts, combined with the Right's insistence on further tax cuts for the rich, skewed the Republican budget plan toward far more severe domestic spending cuts, including ending Medicare as a government-run insurance program.

Still, between the continued high military spending and the new rounds of tax cuts, Ryan's budget would not project a balanced federal budget for nearly three decades -- and would achieve that primarily by shifting health-care costs onto seniors.

But Ryan's budget deal with the neocons is nothing new. It represents a cornerstone of the Right's alliance dating back to the late 1970s when the Republicans, the neocons and the Religious Right came together to push Ronald Reagan into the White House.

As Stockman noted then, what the neocons wanted was "skyward" military spending, which also fit with the desire of Israel's Likud leadership to take a harder line against Arab militants who then were seen as allied with the Soviet Union.

"Regime Change'

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the neocons began adjusting their strategies to focus more directly on Israel's foes in the Muslim world. A neocon theory emerged that "regime change" in places like Iraq, Syria and Iran would deprive Israel's closer-in enemies, such as Lebanon's Hezbollah and Palestine's Hamas, of financial and military support and thus enable Israel to dictate peace terms.

The early outlines of this concept for violently remaking the Middle East emerged in 1996 when a group of American neocons, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, went to work for Israeli Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu during his campaign for prime minister.

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.

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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at
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