MORE WAR DRUMS BY NEO-CONS FOR WAR WITH IRAN

Think Progress alerted me to statements today made on Sunday TV shows by those neo-cons Bill Kristol and John Bolton to the likelihood that George Bush will attack Iran before the end of this year.

Both of them mention the greater probability of a Bush attack if it is clear that Barack Obama will win the presidency.

Bush and his group are dangerous madmen. They would just as soon start a perpetual war in the Middle East with Iran than ever use negotiation and diplomacy to resolve disputes.

KRISTOL IN NYT MAKES ISRAEL BLAMELESS IN PALESTINE

The arch-conservative and Bush supporter Bill Kristol has a column in today's The New York Times on statements by Obama, Clinton and McCain commemorating this year's Passover. Apparently only McCain passes Kristol's muster because neither Obama nor Clinton apply the Passover of old to today's Israel fighting against Palestinian insurgents.

Writes Kristol:

"McCain’s statement is also the only one to mention current assaults on Jews. He asks us to reflect on three young Israelis — Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser — who were kidnapped in the summer of 2006 by Hamas and Hezbollah, and “who will celebrate this occasion, once again, in captivity.” McCain recalls his meetings with the families of two of these men in December 2006, reiterates his commitment to seek their swift release, and urges others to do the same.


"So if Clinton’s Passover message is liberal, and Obama’s is multicultural, one might call McCain’s Zionist. There’s a clear choice of worldviews here — and not just for Jews, but for all Americans."


The reader is left to pick the right choice, meaning the one favored by Kristol. But wait! We know that the families of the three Israeli soldiers kidnapped are going through agony, and everyone wants them to be released.

But how about the Palestinians? Specifically, how about the families of those two dead boys harmlessly riding their bicycle last week when they were cruelly killed by steel darts from an exploding tank shell fired by Israeli soldiers? How about that Palestinian photographer killed in the same attack. Why does Kristol omit the atrocities suffered on the other side?



Palestinians have done horrible things to Israelis, such as firing missiles indiscriminately into neighboring Israeli towns. But the Israelis have responded in kind. Shelling Palestinian homes, killing Palestinian children, shooting innocent civilians.

If Kristol is going to apply the lessons of Exodus, he should take into account that in today's world, Israel is not without Palestinian blood on its hands. It is not fair to quote Exodus and apply it to today's Israeli government in a way that makes today's conflict a story about Israel's righteousness versus Palestinians' darkness.

But this is what Kristol seems to do:

"Sacrifices for the sake of freedom, the triumph of good over evil — if John McCain was at a Seder this past weekend, he surely would have liked this passage: “In all ages they rise up against us to destroy us; and the Holy One, blessed be He, rescues us from their hands.”"

The Palestinians could, if they wished, take the same passage and use it to justify their own insurgency.

NEO-CONS: KILL MUSLIMS AND BOMB IRAN

Steve Clemons in The Washington Note writes on the dark and dangerous mentality of neo-cons, especially when it comes to the War in Iraq, our attitude to Muslims, and our relations with Iran. As evidence of the neo-cons' delusions, Clemons discusses the article by Bill Kristol in The Washington Post on last Sunday, Arianna Huffington's comments on overhearing Kristol's cell phone conversation on a train from D.C. to NYC, and an article by Johann Hari in The Independent on the people he met on a recent cruise sponsored by The National Review.

As I noted in my critique here on July15, 2007, Kristol claims without any basis or evidence that the War in Iraq is a success because it stopped efforts by Saddam Hussein to affiliate with bin Laden's Al Qaeda. Kristol claims that Saddam was surely going to re-start his program to develop nuclear weapons and other WMD, again without any proof or evidence. It seems that this is a cardinal belief of Bush and Cheney and therefore of all their supporters that Saddam was involved up to his eyeballs in 9/11. And that Saddam had nuclear weapons but disposed of them by sending them to Syria before Bush's invasion of March 2003.

Another core belief of neo-cons is that Iran is THE ENEMY. The only way to stop Iran (from doing God-knows-what) is to send American missiles and bombs raining down upon Iranian cities. More generally, neo-cons believe that the United States not only can dominate the rest of the world with its military power, its tanks, its warplanes, its bombs. But that the U.S. should do so to maintain its sole hegemony of the world. This is why they vote for Republicans and not Democrats. I know this sounds fantastic and incredible, but listen to some of the people Johann Hari talked to on the cruise:

"Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan's one-time nominee to the Supreme Court, mumbles from beneath low-hanging jowls: "The coverage of this war is unbelievable. Even Fox News is unbelievable. You'd think we're the only ones dying. Enemy casualties aren't covered. We're doing an excellent job killing them." . . . "

"The ageing historian Bernard Lewis – who was deputed to stiffen Dick Cheney's spine in the run-up to the war – declares, "The election in the US is being seen by [the bin Ladenists] as a victory on a par with the collapse of the Soviet Union. We should be prepared for whatever comes next." This is why the guests paid up to $6,000. This is what they came for. They give him a wheezing, stooping ovation and break for coffee. "

And how about the neo-cons' racism shown in their anti-Mexican bias as the cruise ship stops in Puerto Vallarta, especially that of Dinesh D'Souza:

"The Reviewers confine their Mexican jaunt to covered markets and walled-off private fortresses like the private Nikki Beach. Here, as ever, they want Mexico to be a dispenser of cheap consumer goods and lush sands – not a place populated by (uck) Mexicans. Dinesh D'Souza announced as we entered Mexican seas what he calls "D'Souza's law of immigration" -The quality of an immigrant is inversely proportional to the distance travelled to get to the United States."


"In other words: Latinos suck."

BUSH WILL BE A "WINNER," BILL KRISTOL CLAIMS

William Kristol has an article in today's The Washington Post that exposes the leading Republican theorist to serious charges that he is delusional and not quite with reality. Kristol admits as much but claims it would be only "harmless ridicule." Here's the gist of his article. Bush will emerge as a politically victorious president because 1) he will "win" in Iraq; 2) he has created a "strong" economy; 3) he has appointed "impressive" judges (Alito and Roberts) to the Supreme Court; 4) there have been no terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 9/11; 5) Saddam Hussein has been overthrown (and hanged), and thus an enemy of America who had nuclear weapons ambitions and "ties" to Al Qaeda is no longer; and 6) the U.S. will elect a Republican successor to Bush in 2008.

Kristol's arguments turn out to be more wishful than predictive. For example, the notion that Bush will "win" in Iraq because he has his Ulysses S. Grant in General David Petraeus is simply pie in the sky. Neither Petraeus nor Bush has any solution whatsoever to the internecine hatred between the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds. Fighting will continue between these groups at every point that they intersect, and no U.S. propaganda or spin that the "real enemy" is Qaeda in Iraq will stop the killing.

Secondly, any connection between Bush and a strong economy is purely accidental. It is Bush who turned a Clinton surplus of 300 billion into a yearly deficit of more than 200 billion. It is Bush who refuses to list the true annual costs of the stupid war in Iraq in his annual budget. Imagine how much better the economy would do if the 100 billion or more Bush has wasted on Iraq every year was invested in infrastructure and job creation here in the U.S.

Thirdly, Alito and Roberts are far from "impressive." They have consistently voted for big business over the interests of the little guy. They say in law school that between 1875 and 1950, in any case between a railroad and the little guy, the railroad always won. With Alito and Roberts, we have turned back the clock to those days. And Kristol thinks that these conservative hacks are "impressive"?

Fourthly, the fact that there have been no terrorist attacks in the U.S. just goes to show that proper police action, not full scale military war, has been effective in monitoring and preventing criminal action. Furthermore, it may be that the radical Islamists have no desire to mount another criminal action in the U.S. for whatever reason of their own. In other words, they accomplished their mission on 9/11 more than they could have imagined, because they provoked Bush and Cheney to waste innumerable resources of the United States, lives, money, religious hatred, world turmoil, in invading and occupying an Arab country for specious reasons.

Fifth, Kristol claims if Bush had not invaded Iraq, Saddam "might well have restarted his nuclear program, and his connections with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups would be intact or revived and even strengthened." Here Kristol is really blowing smoke. What ties with Al Qaeda? Saddam had no ties with bin Laden's Qaeda. The two were enemies. Saddam was a secular Baathist. Bin Laden, as we all know, believes in a worldwide Sunni caliphate where the law of the world would be sharia. Yet Kristol cannot let go of the Republican fiction that there is a connection between Qaeda of 9/11 and Saddam Hussein.

And Kristol even goes on to add "other terrorist groups." Please Mr. Kristol, what are you talking about? Specify the groups you mean. Name those other terrorist groups. If you do not or cannot, then you should not say or claim things for which you have absolutely no evidence or basis.

Finally, Kristol opines the citizenry will elect a Republican successor to Bush in 2008. This guy is simply delusional. The whole country has had its fill of Bush and his Republican militarists. Good luck to people like Kristol who believe that if they say it enough, it will come true.

BUSH OFFERS BLAIR WAR PLANES TO SOLVE IRANIAN PROBLEM

Think Progress reports on Bill Kristol's comments on Fox News that the United States came closer this past week to war with Iran. Kristol is one of the leading intellectual proponents of world war with Iran, no doubt as a way for the U.S. to maintain its hegemony over the rest of the world.

The Guardian of London says that the U.S. offered Tony Blair the use of U.S. war planes as help in obtaining the release of the 15 British sailors/marines held by Iran.

"In the first few days after the captives were seized and British diplomats were getting no news from Tehran on their whereabouts, Pentagon officials asked their British counterparts: what do you want us to do? They offered a series of military options, a list which remains top secret given the mounting risk of war between the US and Iran. But one of the options was for US combat aircraft to mount aggressive patrols over Iranian Revolutionary Guard bases in Iran, to underline the seriousness of the situation."

Thanks to the gods that Tony Blair and the British military rejected this reckless and foolish U.S. offer. The United States might actually find itself in a world war this week with Iran, as Kristol, Bush, Cheney and all the other war-mongering neo-cons, want so much.