Although there is no formal agreement or treaty between the Israel lobby and the armaments lobby, there is a de facto institutional framework for the unholy alliance of these two militaristic interest groups: a web of closely knit think tanks that are both founded and financed primarily by the armaments lobby and the Israeli lobby. These include the American Enterprise Institute, the Project for the New American Century, the Center for Security Policy, the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Middle East Forum, the National Institute for Public Policy, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. These malicious institutes of war and militarism are staffed largely by the war-mongering Neoconservative chicken-hawks.
It is no longer a secret that the major plans of the Bush administration's jingoistic foreign policy were drawn up largely by these think tanks, often in collaboration, directly or indirectly, with the Pentagon, the arms lobby, and the Israeli lobby. Although no longer as noisy as during the heydays of the Bush administration, especially when they were cheerleading the invasion of Iraq, these belligerent think tanks are no less busy plotting another war of aggression in the region -- this time against Iran.
These think tanks and their (somewhat disguised but still active) Neo-conservative champions continue to serve as influence-peddling, corrupting, and, ultimately, subversive links between the armaments lobby, the Israel lobbies, the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Congress. What is truly amazing is that the debacles they have wrought in Iraq and Afghanistan have not deterred them from working just as hard, using the same scandalous tactics, to bring about a military strike against yet another Muslim country -- Iran.
Since the late 1940s, no US president has been able to seriously challenge the militaristic designs of the unholy alliance of the armaments lobby and the Israel lobby in the Middle East. President Obama does not seem to represent an exception to this pattern -- his feeble message of peace and hollow posturing about a "new beginning" with Iran, or his formalistic advocacy of the two-state solution in Palestine, notwithstanding.
The carrot-and-stick strategy of the alliance in corrupting and/or co-opting politicians is rather well known: the carrot is the money the alliance pays for their election while the stick is driving them out of office if the carrot proves ineffective. What is less known (but perhaps more dangerous) is the alliance's tendency to resort to pernicious patriotic-blackmailing tactics against politicians who may defy its policies and priorities.
Furthermore, when the alliance is unable to influence policy within the existing parameters or premises of international relations, it would not hesitate to change (or try to change) those parameters in order to bring about the desired change in policy.
This cynical strategy includes fabrication of evidence, provocation of terrorism (often in Muslim countries or communities), and instigation of war and political tensions. It is a strategy of manufacturing "external threats to our national security," or inventing new enemies, in order to justify war and military intervention, thereby coercing Presidents and other politicians who may otherwise resist the alliance's tendency to militarize US foreign policy.
For example, President Jimmy Carter went to the White House (1976) with a major agenda for international peace and stability. A key principle on that agenda was reducing tensions and seeking harmony with the Soviet Union. One of the main reasons for Carter's peace overtures with the Soviets was to downsize the US military colossus and cut the Pentagon spending in order to reduce the US budget deficit. Carter's discussion of "peace dividends" frightened beneficiaries of war dividends.
Terrified by Carter's proposals of tension reduction with the Soviet Union, these influential beneficiaries of military spending set out to challenge him mercilessly. Organizing around opposition to tension-reducing talks with the Soviet Union, they reconstituted the brazenly militaristic Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), which had been instrumental to President Truman's militarization policies of the early 1950s.
The CPD questioned the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)'s account of the Soviet military capabilities. It charged that the NIE's account of Soviet arms outlays was too low and that there should be an 'independent' analysis. Sounding the false alarms of the Soviet threat, it came up with an alternative estimate (known as the Team B Report) of the Soviet Union's military spending.
The Team B report 'discovered' a sizable error in previous NIE/CIA estimates of Soviet military outlays: the USSR was said to be spending 13, not 8, percent of its GNP on arms. Multiplying this 'error factor' by 10 (for the 10-year period 1970-80), it was concluded that by the end of the 1970s the USSR would have outspent the US by $300 billion. 8
Although years later it was acknowledged that the Team B Report was bogus, it was nonetheless effectively used at the time to divert the Carter administration from its tension-reducing negotiations with the Soviet Union. "By late 1977 or early 1978 President Carter had moved from his campaign pledge to reduce military spending every year to increasing it. . . . Pressured by the CPD. . . , Carter began a sustained buildup in military expenditures" that continued to the end of his term as President. 9
Evidence thus clearly indicates that, using "threats to our national security interests," along with subtle but unmistakable patriotic-blackmailing tactics, champions of war and militarism successfully highjacked President Carter's initially peaceful agenda soon after he arrived in the White House. His militaristic political opponents outmaneuvered and coerced him to abandon most of his campaign pledges. Not only was he not able to reduce the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War atmosphere, but, indeed, in the second half of his presidency Carter moved to revive the ephemerally-relaxed Cold War tensions of the early-to-late 1970s and, instead, embark on a confrontational course with the Soviet Union.
There are striking similarities between CPD's tactics of inventing "external threats to our national security" in order to heighten hostility with the Soviet Union in the late 1970s and the Neoconservatives' employment of similar tactics in the early 2000s in order to pave the way for the invasion of Iraq. Just as the CPD questioned and overrode the NIE/CIA estimates of the Soviet military capabilities during the Carter administration, so too in the immediate aftermath of the heinous 9/11 attacks the Neoconservative think tanks and their war-mongering operatives in and around the Bush administration overruled the official CIA assessments of Iraq's military capabilities under Saddam Hussein, thereby justifying the invasion of that country -- which drastically increased the fortunes of war profiteers.
The tried-and-true scheme of militarism, "external threats or enemies," to instigate wars and international tensions continues to this day. Just as during the Bush administration the Neoconservative champions of war and militarism fabricated intelligence in order to justify the occupation of Iraq, so too today their counterparts in and around the Obama administration are plotting to discredit the official CIA/NIE intelligence on Iran's nuclear plans and military capabilities in order to bring about a military assault against that country.
President Obama and his top policy makers on Iran may use a slightly tempered rhetoric, but they are not any less hawkish in terms of concrete policy measures against that country. While Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz are out; Hillary Clinton and Dennis Ross are in. In their attitudes and approaches toward Iran, neither Hillary Clinton is less hawkish than Donald Rumsfeld, nor is Dennis Ross than Paul Wolfowitz.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
