The editorial director of the Antiwar.com site is harshing on Hillary over Iraq, Iran - and Israel:
Hillary Clinton, War Goddess: She wants permanent bases in Iraq – and threatens war with Iran by Justin Raimondo 01/23/06.
As I've discussed before, as in my post of 11/13/05, much of what Raimundo writes is valuable and sensible. And he seems in many ways to be a careful researcher. But he's clearly not immune to the pull of some of the Old Right's prejudices, particularly when his fixation on Israel starts sounding like old-fashioned Jewish conspiracy theories.
He doesn't entirely avoid the latter in this column, although here it takes the form of references to "Israel's amen corner in the U.S." and "the War Party" (in caps). Both are nudge-nudge wink-wink terms which those familiar with far-right terminology will understand as references to a grand Jewish conspiracy. (It's for that reason I have generally avoided using the term "war party" even in lower-case in discussing the Middle East, although it's a perfectly good term that is commonly used to describe those pressing for war in a given situation.)
So why bother discusssing a column that could be brushed off as anti-Semitic? Because it's a reminder of how the Democratic Party could blow an historic chance to push forward a significant realignment in American politics around foreign policy issues.
The Iraq War has brought to the forefront what is essentially an irreconcilable contradiction in the US position. One the one hand, US policy since the end of the Cold War has been predicated on the assumption that the US is and must remain the overwhelmingly dominant superpower in the world. And that has translated into an increasingly heavy reliance on military force as the primary instrument of foreign policy. This was true in the Bush 1 and Clinton administrations. But the current Bush administration has taken it to a whole new level.
Yet at the same time the US spends half or more of the military budgets of the entire planet, our ability to get our way with saber-rattling has been seriously compromised. In the Vietnam War, the United States fielded over 500,000 troops in Vietnam while maintaining extensive commitments in Europe and elsewhere. In the Iraq War, the US is unable to suppress an insurgency while maintaining around 135,000 troops in the country for nearly three years is severely damaged the National Guard and reserve structures and created major problems for the regular Army and Marine Corps themselves.
But at the same time, both the Democratic and (especially) the Republican Party are firmly committed to a policy of comforting the comfortable. So while the Republicans howl about the dangers confronting the US and smear critics of Dear Leader Bush's war in Iraq as traitors, instituting a draft to supply personnel for the war is the second-to-last thing we can expect them to do. The last thing would be to require the wealthiest Americans, the ones enjoying the greatest material benefits from the American economy, to forgo any of their massive tax cuts to support their country and our massive military commitments.
It's a time of real opportunity for the Democrats to seize on the dissatisfaction with a militarized foreign policy to build a consensus for a less aggressive policy that focuses much more sensibly on actual defense, such as "homeland security" measures to defend against terrorism.
But if the Democrats follow the lead of Joes Biden and Lieberman and also Hillary Clinton, they will only offer an alternative of a belligerent foreign policy that will maybe be more competently executed than Bush's. But playing "we're more warlike than the Republicans" over Middle East foreign policy will strangle off the development of meaningful alternatives. And the US seriously needs the latter right now.
Raimondo's criticisms of Hillary
He criticizes her for her hawkish position on Iraq and Iran, criticisms which I share. (See my Blue Voice post of ... for instance and the comments.) But he also focuses in particular on her mentions of Israel in her speech of 01/18/06 at Princeton that got so much attention. In that speech, she said:
I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations. I don't believe you face threats like Iran or North Korea by outsourcing it to others and standing on the sidelines. But let's be clear about the threat we face now: A nuclear Iran is a danger to Israel, to its neighbors and beyond. The regime's pro-terrorist, anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric only underscores the urgency of the threat it poses. U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal. We cannot and should not - must not - permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. In order to prevent that from occurring, we must have more support vigorously and publicly expressed by China and Russia, and we must move as quickly as feasible for sanctions in the United Nations. And we cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to the current leadership of Iran - that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons. (my emphasis)
And also:
The security and freedom of Israel must be decisive and remain at the core of any American approach to the Middle East. This has been a hallmark of American foreign policy for more than 50 years and we must not - dare not - waver from this commitment. As President Truman first recognized, this commitment was forged by the horrors of the Holocaust, but it has endured because of the strength of the unique relationship between the American and Israeli peoples. A relationship based on shared values that predate either of our nations, values that are rooted in the Judeo-Christian ethic, values that respect the dignity and rights of human beings. ...
When the history of this period is written, I believe Prime Minister Sharon will be remembered for his life-long commitment to Israel's security and his own remarkable journey that led him to the conclusion that Israel would be best served by creating the unilateral disengagement from Gaza and the separation of the Israelis from the Palestinians. But we will also remember and admire the strength and stability of the state of Israel and its people at such a challenging time.
I doubt very much that Ariel Sharon will be much remembered for any constructive achievements for Middle East peace. His unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and his reinforcing the settlements in the West Bank have moved the possibilities for a peaceful permanent settlement farther into the future.
Raimondo focused in particular on the passages from her speech that I have highlighted above. For instance, he writes:
"A nuclear Iran," she avers, "is a danger to Israel, to its neighbors and beyond" – an interesting order of priorities, to say the least. She doesn't bother making any explicit connection between the pursuit of American interests and this relentless campaign to demonize the Iranians: it is enough that Tehran poses a potential threat to Israel. For Clinton, that alone is reason enough to go to war.
This phrase caught my eye when I say the reports of the speech, as well. In the passage I just quoted, Raimondo is making a valid point, and he's not pulling her sentence out of context. The fact that Iran is hostile to Israel is a practical concern for US policy. It's not any justification for launching preventive war against Iran and increase the dangers for American troops in Iraq.
On the second highlighted comment, Raimondo writes:
While Israel is an American ally, so are Saudi Arabia and Jordan. And don't forget the newly installed "democratic" and supposedly pro-American government of Iraq. Israel "at the core" of U.S. policy in the Middle East? I don't think so. Such an Israelicentric viewpoint, while not out of place in an Israeli politician, seems just a mite strange coming from an American - even if she is a senator from New York. It ought to go without saying that the foundations of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East - or anywhere else - have to be predicated on purely American interests, and that the "core" of that policy has to be our own economic well-being, which is inextricably linked to the stability of the region.
Here we see the deep-rooted kinship of Old Right isolationists with the Republicans, when he says that "our own economic well-being" has to be the core of our Middle East policy. The national security of the United States involves a lot of things, including economics. But our physical security from military attacks and terrorism are not synonomous with the profits of oil corporations or cheap gas at the pump. Comforting the comfortable is the basis of the policies Old Right "liberatarians" like Raimondo favor.
But he also has a valid point in that regard. Israeli interests are not identical with American interests. And it's perfectly legitimate and necessary to ask whether American foreign policy in any area should bepredicated on having the national interests of another country be "decisive and remain at the core of any American approach".
It's important to understand this in the context of historic American policy toward Israel, which has never (prior to the Bush administration) been as one-sided as Clinton's speech seems to advocate and that Raimondo seems to assume.
(On the other issue in his article's title, it's not at all clear to me that Hillary's speech was such a clear-cut endorsement of permanent US bases in Iraq, which is how he reads it. It seems much more likely to me that she was suggested some sort of redeployment to secured bases for some period of time as a part of an exit strategy from Iraq.)
The politics of supporting Israel
The United States has recognized Israel and supported it as an ally since its founding with the authorization of the United Nations in 1948. From the Truman administration through the Clinton administration, US policy always supported Israel with critical reservations. Eisenhower pressured Israel, Britain and France to withdraw from the Suez after their joint military operation to seize it. After the Six-Day War of 1967, the US took the position that Israel must have secure and defensible borders while also maintaining that the occupied territories could not be unilaterally annexed to Israel.
The cooperation between the US and Israel is based on a number of things. Israel is in many ways a European country placed in the Middle East, and has such has been an important bridge for the US to understand the area. In the most practical sense, Israel's intelligence services have provided valuable information for the US - although Israeli intelligence proved just as wrong about Saddam's WMDs as the official Bush administration version did. Despite their near-legendary status among many Americans, Israeli intelligence has its own flaws.
Part of the US support for Israel is also based on the voting clout of Jewish Americans. This in itself is neither secret nor sinister. On the contrary, it's very common for American foreign policy to be influenced in significant ways by domestic ethnic/national groups. US policy towards Poland, Ireland, Vietnam and China have been influenced by domestic groupswith ancestral ties to those countries. Cuban-American voters are still largely concentrated in one state, Florida, but they have nevertheless had a huge influence on American policy toward Cuba.
In the case of Cuban-Americans, their influence has generally supported intransigent, hard-right policies toward Cuba. However, Jewish voters in America are much more in favor of a negotiated settlement for the Israel-Palestine problem than Israelis themselves. The major pro-Israel lobby groups, AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations are much more oriented toward the Likud Party's aggressive policies toward seizing Palestinian land. (For more on this, see Deal Breakers by Michael Massing American Prospect 03/11/02, which I also referenced and quoted in this post of 08/28/04).
When Israel struck the Osirik reactor in Iraq in June 1981, the Reagan administration joined in the unanamous UN Security Council Resolution of 06/19/81 condemning the Osirik bombing. It's worth quoting six of the seven points in that resolution:
Considering that, under the terms of Article 2, paragraph 4, of the Charter of the United Nations: "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations",
1. Strongly condemns the military attack by Israel in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct;
2. Calls upon Israel to refrain in the future from any such acts or threats thereof;
3. Further considers that the said attack constitutes a serious threat to the entire IAEA safeguards regime which is the foundation of the non-proliferation Treaty;
4. Fully recognises the inalienable sovereign right of Iraq, and allother States, especially the developing countries, to establish programmes of technological and nuclear development to develop their economy and industry for peaceful purposes in accordance with their present and future needs and consistent with the internationally accepted objectives of preventing nuclear-weapons proliferation;
5. Calls upon Israel urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards;
6. Considers that Iraq is entitled to appropriate redress for the destruction it has suffered, responsibility for which has been acknowledged by Israel ...
The George W. Bush administration is the first American administration to essentially give Israel a free rein in its policies in the occupied territories and with other policies. And yet the Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry won an overwhelming majority of the Jewish vote.
The Christian Right, on the other hand, are superficially more pro-Israel than American Jews. This is in part based on the currently-prevailing "eschatological" views (ideas about the end of the world), which invision a massive military confrontation in which most of the Jews of the world are killed as part of the events preceding the Second Coming of Christ. They hope by encouraging aggressive Isreali policies to hasten the death of those events, which presumably don't sound so appeal to Jews as they do to Christian Right true believers. And part of the Christian Right's support for hardline Israeli policies stems from an admiration for what they see as tough white people kicking the A-rabs arounds.
The Christian Right's position has been far more important in shaping the Bush administration's policies than those of Jewish voters.
The political dilemma this creates is real. Because "support for Israel" is a powerful emotional issue for these two important blocs of voters, politicians understandably want to tread carefully in dealing with the issue. And there are two distinct levels of the policy question. One is the preservation of Israel within internationally-recognized and defensible borders. There is widespread consensus in the US over that policy. And that has been the bedrock position of the US toward Israel since 1948.
The other policy level has to do with the occupied territories. The Christian Right supports Israeli annexation of that land and supports the settler movement trying to bring that about. Sometimes the support is in concrete financial terms, helping to finance illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. But there is no general consensus in the US for supporting the Likud hardliners' maximum program of absorbing the West Bank and Gaza, and even wider territories that are taken to have been part of the kingdom of David and Solomon.
US policies for the future
The invasion of Iraq has made American policy toward Israel more urgent. We're part of the Middle East neighborhood now, in a way that the US has never been before. That means that Israeli actions in the occupied territories, or towards Iran or other countries in the area, can have an immediate - and deadly - effect on US troops in Iraq.
Whether Americans understand or sympathize with the feeling, there is strong sentiment in the Muslim world for a settlement of the Palestinian question and the status of Jerusalem. A practical settlement of those two issues would do more toward improving America's image among Muslims than just about anything else, with the possible exception of exiting Iraq. It would also give Israel and Palestine a much more secure existence. Although at this stage, it's hard to imagine a settlement that would mean an immediate end to all anti-Israeli terrorism.
Such a state is not desirable for Israeli expansionists, the settler movement or the Christian Right. They all picture Israel's state for the foreseeable future as being one of more-or-less continuous war. That may satsify their religious and/or other needs. But it's not in the interest of the United States for such a permanent-war situation to continue in Israeli-Palestine.
That's why it's important for American politicians, including the Hillary Clintons and Joe Liebermans, to develop a way of articulating American differences with the Likud hardliners - and that especially involves opposing the settler movement - while conveying to voters that they support an American commitment to Israel within defensible borders.
And one of the domestic consequences of failing to do so will be that the "highbrow" anti-Semites will gain more credibility than they should have with their criticisms of Israel. A successful "liberal internationalist" foreign policy in the Middle East depends on getting American troops out of Iraq and achieving a solid, practical settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Those goals, especially the latter, will not be achieved if the United States defines our own interests as synonomous with that of whatever ruling party is in power in Israel - or, even worse, with the Likud hardliners even when they are not inpower. Until the current Bush administration, the US never defined our international interests as being identical with those of Israel. Neither Democratic nor Republican administrations should continue Bush's policy in that regard.
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