Saturday, July 15, 2006

Old Right isolationism and the Israeli-Lebanese war

This column by Justin Raimondo is an excellent example of what's good and bad about Old Right isolationism:  Israel Crosses the Line: And you read it here first… Antiwar.com 07/14/06.

On the one hand, Raimondo clearly follows events in the Middle East and the domestic politics of foreign policy closely.  His observations are well-informed and often perceptive.

On the other hand, he is fairly obsessed with Israel and seems to think the nefariousness of its role in the world is pretty much limitless.  His columns don't read quite as off-the-tracks as the unnamed correspondents Josh Marshall refers to in his post of 07/15/06 when he says:

But there is out there a broad constituency of ignorant and malevolent hatred of Israel and, really, Israelis, that, I think, masks its malevolence even to itself through being awash its own self-righteousness.  I think I understand the Palestinians' rage.  In any case, I respect it.  For this trash from Americans who only seem able to see Jewish evil in the midst of this protracted conflict I can't have anything but contempt.  And it puts me on my guard.

Raimondo's work on the Middle East is certainly not "ignorant", and it's sophisticated enough that it would be hard to characterize it as "trash".  I couldn't say that it represents "malevolent hatred", either.

But he certainly manages to word things in a way that those to whom Marshall is referring would likely find it easy to adapt his work to their purposes.  And one of the problems of Old Right isolationism is that he tends to paint conflicts in black-and-white contrasts, much like the neoconservatives that Raimondo describes, not without reason, as "Trotskyites".  Some of the leading lights among the neocons actually are former Trotskyists, although going from Trotskyism to neocon militarism probably isn't such a big leap as conservative isolationists like Raimondo imagine.

Raimondo's use of buzzwords like Israel's "Amen Corner", the American "craven course of kowtowing to the Israelis", "Israel's fifth column in America", "the Democrats' complete subservience to the [Israel] Lobby", "American power and prestige are once again harnessed to Israeli interests" and "the War Party" (with caps), it all "puts me on my guard", as Marshall says.

More specifically, it reminds me that Old Right isolationists of today haven't freed themselves entirely from the legacy of the pre-Second World War America First crowd.  Like Charles Lindbergh, their most popular figure, who said in September 1941:

The three most important groups which have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration.

Or as Lindbergh said in a speech of October 30, 1941, less than six weeks before Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor:

There is no danger to this nation from without.  Our only danger lies from within.

Few among his fans doubted that he meant "the Jews" as the danger within.

Raimondo's columns on the Middle East would be much more effective if he could manage to worry a little less about what he calls "Israel's fifth column in America".  I've often written here and at The Blue Voice about the political pressures from rightwing Jewish organizations and from the Christian Right on American foreign policy without, I can say with some confidence, falling into such shallow and vague characterizations that have such a nasty history.

What I also want to call attention to, though, is Raimondo's more pragmatic points.  For one, he argues that Israel is "the chief (and only) beneficiary of the new regional balance of power" in the Mideast.

While it's undoubtedly true that Israel has benefitted strategically from the removal of the Baathist regime in Baghdad, at least in the short run, it's also blindingly obvious that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the Iraq War among the nations in the Middle East - including Iraq itself.  It a bit more of a fluid point to say that Israel is the main beneficiary of the "new regional balance of power".  But, at a minimum, it's very clear that Iran has also benefitted significantly.  And probably more than Israel.

And that's important for understanding the role of Hizbollah in the current conflict.  Because Iran is in more of a position to press its new advantages, it's entirely feasible that Iran has pushed Hizbollah to escalate the conflict with Israel.  But, given our experience with the nonexistent WMDs in Iraq, we should be very critical-minded about claims from Israel and the Bush-Cheney administrationabout Iran's role.

Raimondo argues that what we are seeing right now is the unfolding of the strategy laid out in the much-discussed "Clean Break" paper of June 1996 prepared by a number of leading US neoconservatives for the Israeli Likud Party.  As I said in my post here of 03/21/05 Bush's vision: The role of Israel and Christian Right apocalyptic views, it seems to me that many commentators on this paper have read more into it in terms of anticipating current American policies than is warranted.  Yes, it reflects an aggressive, neoconservative kind of thinking and it throws light on the Bush administration's general inclinations in the Middle East.  But it's not some long-term plan that is now being executed by the Bush administration - nor Israel, I would add.  Some Iraq War critics on the paleo-conservative right have taken this as a sign of a Jewish conspiracy.  Not that they need actual evidence or documents to come up with their anti-Semitic twist on things.

In his 07/14/06 article, Raimondo quotes selectively from this part of "Clean Break":

Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by:

* striking Syria’s drug-money and counterfeiting infrastructure in Lebanon, all of which focuses on Razi Qanan.

* paralleling Syria’s behavior by establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces.

* striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper.

If Israel is using "Clean Break" as a blueprint for their current actions, they are scarcely relying on a literal reading of it.  I don't see anything in that brief paper saying that Israel should first attacks civilian infrastructure in Gaza, then wait for a provocation from Hizbollah and use that as an excuse to devastate Lebanon's civilian infrastructure.

I think the importance of the "Clean Break" paper has been vastly overrated, and not only by Raimondo.  It is a guide to the thinking of American neocons in 1996.  And it does reflect the strong affinity many of them have for the Likud Party's hardline approach to foreign policy in the Middle East.  It also indicates their fixation on Iraq.  But it focuses its policy recommendations about Iraq on supporting Jordan's sponsorship of reinstalling the Hasemite monarchy in Iraq, not on persuading the United States to put a pro-Iranian Shi'a government in power in Baghdad, which is what has actually occurred.

"Clean Break" identifies Iraq, Syria and Iran as key strategic opponents of Israel and notes that Israel had a security problem from Hizbollah on its Lebanese border.  But did Israeli strategists need some American neocons to reveal all that to them in 1996?  Please.

Raimondo's 07/14/06 column also reminds us that even Old Right isolationists can make some practical points of value that not everyone does.  Like it or not, trust his motives or not, Raimondo makes a valid point when he writes of Israel's justification for the attack on Lebanon being the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbollah:

This is surely one of the most threadbare excuses for a war ever uttered. One wonders how Israel's spokesmen can say it with a straight face.  Soldiers in wartime are captured, not "kidnapped."  If Hezbollah has "kidnapped" those two Israeli soldiers, then how do we describe the jailing of thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children, on the basis of their alleged sympathy for Hamas – now the democratically elected government of Palestine?

And, though I find the "appeasement" label and the "kowtowing" comment annoying, he's also right about Bush and the "road map", although this is something that is more often discussed in the mainstream press:

The Bush administration is formally committed to the "road map," which entails the creation of a Palestinian state. Yet the Israelis have done everything possible to undermine Bush's plan, including obstructing elections.  The American response has been appeasement: as Israeli gunboats make short work of Gaza beach-goers, Washington's response is to demand the unconditional release of captured Israeli soldiers.  There is an undertone of disapproval, as Condoleezza Rice urges "restraint" by all parties and the president worries that the Lebanese government will be destabilized, yet none of thisis allowed to deflect U.S. policymakers from their craven course of kowtowing to the Israelis while they spend our money and earn us plenty more enemies among the world's billion-plus Muslims.

And he is also correct in arguing:

... we [the United States] (unlike the Israelis) have no interest fomenting a wider war - especially while our troops are stuck in the middle of it all [in Iraq], lined up like sitting ducks and increasingly on the defensive.

This following paragraph combines the good and the bad in one brief argument.  The risks he's identifying are real, though I'm not quite so pessimistic about the situation at this point.  But notice how he insists on painting the Democrats as even worse than the Republicans on Middle Eastern policy:

The regional conflict widely predicted as one of the more horrific consequences of the Iraq invasion is now breaking out.  The only rational response is to get out of the way before we are drawn in.  Like a summer fire in the American West, if it isn't contained, the flames of the rapidly spreading conflict will soon be licking at our door.  And we are bound to be choking, sooner rather than later, on the economic fallout – another factor that could embolden the Democrats to keep up their effort to outflank the GOP on the war question from the right.

Although, come to think of it, given where Raimondo is coming from politically, it's not entirely clear if he means it's a good or a bad thing for the Dems to try to outflank the Reps "from the right".

As I've said before, the Antiwar.com site, of which Justin Raimondo is the editorial director, is a valuable source for news and commentary on foreign policy issues.  It's just that a significant part of the commentary is from an Old Right isolationist perspective that most critics of the Iraq War and the Bush Doctrine from both the "realist" and "liberal internationalist" outlooks will find problematic in many ways.

Antiwar.com is currently featuring an article by Karen Kwiatowski coming from an Old Right isolationist perspective with a decidedly anti-Israel tone:  Israel Makes Its 'Clean Break' 07/15/06.  Kwiatowski is also a columnist at the neo-Confederate LewRockwell.com site.  Kwiatowski, as a former official in Rummy's Pentagon, has provided some useful historical observations about the planning for the Iraq War in the past.  But this particular column just uses regular old anti-Semitism, even if its a Christian variety.  Speaking of Israel's recent actions, she writes:

How Old Testament of them!

The so-called Christian and liberty-loving country of the United States has truly suffered little - so far - for Israel’s lack of neighborliness.

In the kind of Christianity favored by the LewRockwell.com crowd, the God of the Book of Jonah in the Old Testament (aka, the Hebrew Bible) is much more merciful and compassionate than the God of Revelations, the concluding book of the Christian Bible.

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