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Israel and the Neocons, The Libby Affair and the
Internal War
By James Petras
12/27/05 "ICH" -- -- The national debate, which the indictment of
Irving Lewis Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice has
aroused in the mass media, has failed to address the most basic
questions concerning the deep structural context, which influenced
his felonious behavior. The most superficial explanation was that
Libby, by exposing Valerie Plame (a CIA employee), acted out of
revenge to punish her husband Wilson for exposing the lies put forth
by Bush about Iraq's "importation" of uranium from Niger. Other
journalists claim that Libby acted to cover up the fabrications to
go to war. The assertion however raises a deeper question -- who
were the fabricators of war propaganda, who was Libby protecting?
And not only the "fabricators of war", but the strategic planners,
speech-makers and architects of war who acted hand in hand with the
propagandists and the journalists who disseminated the propaganda?
What is the link between all these high- level functionaries,
propagandists and journalists?
Equally important given the positions of power which this cabal
occupied, and the influence they exercised in the mass media as well
as in designing strategic policy, what forces were engaged in
bringing criminal charges against a key operative of the cabal?
Libby's rise to power was part and parcel of the ascendancy of the
neo-conservatives to the summits of US policymaking. Libby was a
student, protégé, and collaborator with Paul Wolfowitz for over 25
years. Libby along with Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith,
Kagan, Cohen, Rubin, Pollack, Chertoff, Fleisher, Kristol, Marc
Grossman, Shumsky and a host of other political operators were long
term believers and aggressive proponents of a virulently
militaristic tendency of Zionism linked with the rightwing Likud
Party of Israel. Early in the 1980's, Wolfowitz and Feith were
charged with passing confidential documents to Israel, the latter
temporarily losing his security clearance.
The ideologues begin their "Long March" through the institutions of
the state. In some cases, advisers to rightwing pro-Israel
congressmen, others in the lower levels of the Pentagon and State
Department, in other cases as academics or leaders of conservative
think tanks in Washington during the Reagan and Bush senior regimes.
With the election of Bush in 2001, they moved into major strategic
positions in the government, and as the principal ideologues and
propagandists for a sequence of wars against Arab adversaries of the
Israeli State. Leading neocons, like Libby, drew up a war strategy
for the Likud government in 1996, and then recycled the document for
the US war against Iraq before and immediately after 9/11/01. Along
with their rise to the most influential positions of power in the
Bush administration, the neocons attracted new recruits, like New
York Times reporter Judith Miller.
What is striking about the operations of the 'cabal' is the very
open and direct way in which they operated: former Director of the
National Security Agency (under Reagan) Lt. General William Odom,
retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson
(former chief of staff of Powell), retired Air Force Lt. Colonel
Karen Kwiatkowski, National Security Adviser to President George
Bush (the First) Brent Scowcroft, and numerous disenchanted
officials, including veterans of the intelligence agencies, high
level observers, and former diplomats openly criticized the neocon
takeover of US policy and the close relationship between them and
Israeli officials.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Wolfowitz and Libby were the
architects of the military strategy for Rumsfeld and Cheney, their
bosses. Douglas Feith established the "Office of Special Planning"
to fabricate the lies to justify the war. Judith Miller, David Frum
and Ari Fleisher served to disseminate the lies and war propaganda
through articles, interviews, press conferences, and speechwriting
for President Bush.
The neocons pushed to manipulate and marginalize many of the key
institutions in the US imperial state. To circumvent intelligence
from the CIA that didn't promote the Israeli agenda of war with
Iraq, neocon Douglas Feith (number 3 in the Pentagon) established
the Office of Special Planning, which fabricated propaganda and
channeled it directly to the President's Office bypassing and
marginalizing any critical review from the CIA. Wolfowitz and
Rumsfeld marginalized the leading generals, promoting nondescript
"loyalists" and outsiders to the top positions, and discarding any
advice which opposed or conflicted with their plans for war with
Iraq. The Secretary of State referred to a speech prepared for him
by Libby as "bullshit" because of its falsehoods. His chief aide,
Colonel Wilkerson has written disparagingly of the cabal, which
marginalized the State Department including his boss Powell.
The prosecution of Libby however reveals the intense internal
struggle over the control of the US imperial state between the
neocons and the traditional leaders of its major institutions. Along
with the indictment of Libby by a grand jury at the request of the
special prosecutor, the FBI has arrested the two leading policy
makers of the most influential pro-Israeli lobby (AIPAC) for spying
for the State of Israel. These are not simply isolated actions by
individual officials or investigators. To have proceeded against
Libby and AIPAC leaders , they had to have powerful institutional
backing; otherwise the investigations would have been terminated
even before they began.
The CIA is deeply offended by the neocon usurpation of their
intelligence role, their direct channels to the President, their
loyalty to Israel. The military is extremely angry at their
exclusion from the councils of government over questions of war, the
disastrous war policy which have depleted the armed forces of
recruits, devastated troop morale, and the neocons' grotesque
ignorance of the costs of a colonial occupation. It is no wonder
that General Tommy Frank referred to Douglas Feith as "the stupidest
bastard I have ever met."
The current institutional war recalls an earlier conflict between
the rightwing Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Defense Department. At
the time during the mid 1950's, Senator McCarty was accumulating
power first by purging trade unions, Hollywood, the universities,
and promoting likeminded conservative officials. He successfully
extended his investigations and purges to the State Department and
finally tried to do the same to the military. It was here that
Senator McCarthy met his Waterloo, his attack backfired, the Army
stood its ground, refuted his accusations and discredited his
fabrications and grab for power.
In the meantime, the neocons are not at all daunted by the trials of
their colleagues in AIPAC and the Vice President's office: they are
pressing straight ahead for the US to attack Syria and Iran, via
economic sanctions and military bombing. On October 30, 2005 the
former head of the Israel Secret Police (Shin Bet) told AIPAC to
escalate their campaign to pressure in the US to attack Iran (Israel
National News.com). There was a near unanimous vote in the US
Congress in favor of economic sanctions against Syria. Despite mass
demonstrations, and because of a 'captured' congress, it appears
paradoxically that the only force capable of defeating the neocon
juggernaut, like the earlier Joe McCarthy, are powerful voices in
the state threatened by new disastrous wars not of their making.
-James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton
University, New York, owns a 50 year membership in the class
struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in brazil and
argentina and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed). His new
book with Henry Veltmeyer, Social Movements and the State: Brazil,
Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina, will be published in October 2005.
He can be reached at:
jpetras@binghamton.edu
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