Time magazine’s last issue featured a writer who asked his colleagues if they were taking longer showers. He commented that he was now taking longer showers because “that’s the last bastion where I can think.” He went on to say that a disproportionate amount of his thoughts come to him in the shower commenting that he is not hounded by his Blackberry, cell phone or the 24/7 news on TV while in the shower. I had one of those revealing thoughts in the shower the other day myself.
My son and I had seen the new highly acclaimed documentary, “Why We Fight” the previous evening. We both noted that the movie was encyclopedic in its documentation of all the reasons the United States had gone to battle in Iraq and it placed blame on the administration, big business and various other alleged culprits in its assessment of the mistakes made. However, something was missing. Then, the next morning, it hit me in the shower. The missing piece was the 10,000-pound elephant in the room that nobody seems to want to see. Israel is that 10,000-pound elephant.
Almost two years ago to the day, this Arab News columnist wrote an article entitled, “The 10,000-Pound Elephant in the Room” which focused on former US government official, Richard Clarke and his then new book, “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror”, which was touted as an insider’s expose of the mistakes of the current administration which led the US into battle in Iraq. What was glaringly missing from Clarke’s analysis in his book was the case that Israel and Israel’s interests might have played a role in driving the United States to do battle in Iraq. The article pointed out that Clarke had very close connections to Israel and Israel’s friends in the United States throughout his government career and that he even lost one of his positions in US government service because he allegedly looked the other way when Israel was found to be in possible violation of US laws.
“Why We Fight” has won numerous film awards including the best documentary prize at last year’s Sundance Festival. It was produced by a renowned American filmmaker, Eugene Jarecki. He produced another controversial but successful documentary a few years ago entitled, “The Trials of Henry Kissinger.” How could such a seemingly seriously researched film like “Why We Fight”, produced by a seasoned documentary maker, miss the 10,000-pound elephant in the room?
After a little research, a recent article highlighting Jarecki and his film from the Jewish Exponent of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania popped up. The article stated, “What’s to be expected of Jarecki — whose documentary danced off with the grand jury prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival — is a style that suggests no punches pulled and continued jabbing at social jawbones. But then, it is a family tradition, he says of his Jewish upbringing rooted in rooting for the underdog when justified. (He has not far to look for inspiration — and the encroachment of controversy; Eugene’s brother, Andrew, captured an Oscar nomination as well, for his controversial documentary on “Capturing the Friedmans,” about a family’s internecine battles, in 2003.)”
The article continued, “What is the Y factor of ‘Why We Fight’”? It should never be interpreted as Israel, the concerned Jew in him contends. “The worst thing that can be done is to equate the interests of the US and Israel with the Iraq war; that will create backlash”, Jarecki stated. “Indeed, the two nations together have taken their licks and lashings in the past.” There you have it. Jarecki decided the 10,000-pound elephant should remain invisible.
Two other publications, however, stand out in making a case for pointing a finger at Israel and Israel’s American friends in relation to America’s involvement in Iraq. James Bamford, the author of two previous respected books on American intelligence, wrote an expose on the US involvement in Iraq. His book titled “A Pretext for War” states that a primary motivation for the invasion of Iraq was to secure the realm for Israel in accordance with the plans of various American security advisors who are close friends of Israel.
According to Michiko Kakutani, a New York Times reviewer, Bamford focuses on the role that Israel has played in shaping American policy. Bamford contends that “the blueprint for the new Bush policy” on the Middle East “had actually been drawn up five years earlier by three of his top national security advisers” (Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser) for the Israeli prime minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu, in a plan called “A Clean Break”. Netanyahu allegedly rejected the plan.
When Perle, Feith and Wurmser entered office in January 2001, all these hawks needed was “a pretext” for war against Iraq. Citing a report from the British newspaper The Guardian, Bamford adds that the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon unit set up by Feith, “forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence unit within Ariel Sharon’s office in Israel,” which “was designed to go around the country’s own intelligence organization, Mossad.” Supporters of Israel in the United States have tried to make Bamford a near heretic for making these claims.
Another recently released report has claimed even greater involvement by Israel and Israel’s American friends in the Iraq crisis. Two of America’s top scholars, Prof. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, author of “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics” and Prof. Stephen Walt of Harvard’s Kennedy School, and author of “Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy, leading figures American in academic life” have published a blazing attack on the power of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. They published a report titled, “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy”, in the London Review of Books.
This report begins with an explosive statement, “The US national interest should be the primary object of American foreign policy. For the past several decades, however, and especially since the Six Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle East policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering US support for Israel and the related effort to spread democracy throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized US security. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the United States been willing to set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of another state.”
The Mearsheimer and Walt report goes on to state that America went into Iraq in 2003 because of Israel and in particular, at the direction of Israel’s Likud party and Ariel Sharon and his friends in the American neoconservative movement. So at least a few recognized American authorities like Bamford, Mersheimer and Walt have tried to make the 10,000-pound elephant visible even though the Israeli lobby and people like Jarecki want to keep it in dark shadows.
America and American politicians must wake up to the threat of any foreign entity gaining the power and influence that Israel asserts in the United States. Hopefully views of people like Bamford, Mersheimer and Walt will triumph. If their views don’t prevail, we are likely to have a situation, like a wise friend stated to me recently, “Not only is America, Israel’s only friend in the world today, but Israel is fast becoming America’s only friend also.”
