Documents Put Americans on Notice:

 Iraq Is Just the Beginning

by Gary Potter

WASHINGTON, D.C.: When the lines now before the reader were written in real time, at the end of May, certain Administration officials and others who promote what is referred to in their circles here in the nation’s capital as “President Bush’s freedom agenda,” were speaking with increasing frequency of the United States being engaged in “the Long War” instead of a “war on terror” — the term to which Americans have become accustomed since 9/11 as describing (and justifying) U.S. military and intelligence activities, including the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq and legally questionable domestic spying programs at home.

The BBC’s website recently featured a story reporting the new language as also being in use among military officers at Middle East Central Command in Florida.

In our age of “spin,” a shift in language like this is significant and it will be interesting to see if the new terminology continues in usage, replacing the old not simply in leadership circles but among the public. More to the point, and even if it does not soon become general, does it portend a widening of activities on both the military and intelligence fronts and even their transformation into something that for all intents and purposes will be permanent — like the old Cold War, the difference being that the Cold War only occasionally became hot whereas in this one some number of Americans will always be fighting somewhere, and “collateral damage” continue to be done, indefinitely?

Indeed, have our leaders, or those who do our leaders’ thinking for them, always meant it to be permanent? Does the new language amount to a kind of acknowledgment of that?

Two important documents published in March suggest the answer to these questions is yes. Indeed, one of the documents virtually declares the war will be permanent, or at least that it is intended to be. The other goes a long way toward explaining why.

That their nation may enter into a state of permanent war, or already has done, should be of great concern to Catholics and all other Americans who know their own freedom can suffer if the U.S. persists in trying by force of arms to spread American-style liberal democracy into parts of the world where such government does not now exist. These are Americans with enough historical memory, or who are simply sufficiently aware of what is going on in their own country today, to understand that when war is waged by modern states the safeguards of genuine, individual freedom tend to be eroded. In fact, at such a time greater power always becomes concentrated in the hands of government leaders — power to interfere in the lives of ordinary citizens.

That this concentration of power results from conditions of modern warfare makes it extremely regrettable that the great majority of Americans seem to know little of the two documents published in March, if they have heard of them at all. If they have not, it is largely the fault of mainstream news media that have come to see it as less their mission to convey important information to the public than to serve as yet another source of entertainment.

Of course editors and television news directors would also know in the instance of the one document that they could wind up looking for jobs in another line of work if they publicized it. Indeed, the editors of the magazine (The Atlantic Monthly) that originally commissioned it in the form of an article decided against publication as soon as they had a look at the finished product. It had to be published in England.

The document in question — the one that was the basis of the article that had to be published overseas and that helps explain why the “war on terror” may become “the Long War” — was actually an academic study. Thus it is no surprise that it was published by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Rather, it would be no surprise except for its subject. The title of the study: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Its authors: John J. Mearsheimer, professor of political science and co-director of the Program on Inter-national Security Policy at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, academic dean of the Kennedy School.

Many have written in the past about the Israel Lobby and Israel’s “amen corner” and their influence on the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, but an academic study of the subject written by authors with such impeccably correct credentials as Mearsheimer and Walt and published under the auspices of so august a body as the Kennedy School is virtually without precedent.

Earlier writings by individuals could fairly easily be branded as anti-Semitic, especially since they were usually published by the writers themselves or entities seen as other than liberal, and on the grounds tacitly agreed to by most mainstream commentators that merely to speak of pro-Israel influence constituted evidence of anti-Semitism. That is harder to do with an academic study published by the Kennedy School, though the attempt has been made. For instance, critics of the study have seized on former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke’s voiced approval as proof that it is anti-Semitic.

If this guilt-by-association attempt to render the study unworthy of serious attention has so far been unsuccessful, at least among persons who actually read it, publication of the document has had repercussions. Most notably, it was announced a few days after the study appeared in article-form (in the London Review of Books) that Professor Walt was stepping down as academic dean of the Kennedy School. Soon afterward the School also removed its logo from the first page of the study and unusual prominence was given to the boilerplate statement standard on all academic papers that the School did not necessarily endorse any of the views expressed in this one.

According to a report in the New York Sun, Walt’s resignation followed a phone call to the Kennedy School from a former Enron director, Robert Belfer. He had endowed Walt’s professorship with a gift of $7.5 million in 1997.

We shall return to the Mearsheimer/Walt/Ken-nedy School study in a few minutes. For now, let it suffice to quote the study’s first paragraph. It will provide a sense of the entire document and also suggest why someone like the former Enron director would express, as a source for the Sun’s report put it, “deep concerns” about the study:

“The U.S. 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 U.S. Middle East policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering U.S. support for Israel and the related effort to spread democracy throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S. security. The 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 short answer to that question, as shown by the study: on account of the power of the Israel Lobby. However, we said we would return to the study in a few minutes. Right now we want to consider the other important document published in March.

Technically a report to Congress, it was an official document of the Bush Administration, a new declaration of “national security strategy”. Although it is required by law that such a document be issued annually, this has been ignored by the Bush Administration since 2002.

The National Security Strategy document of that year is the one that announced the so-called Bush Doctrine under which the United States arrogates to itself a supposed right to wage “preventive war,” also called “anticipatory self-defense,” against anyone it deems “a sufficient threat to our national security.” That would be, according to the 2002 NSS, not simply somebody like Saddam Hussein with all his alleged weapons of mass destruction, but any country daring to “pursue a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.”

As with the study published by the Kennedy School, the thrust of this year’s declaration of National Security Strategy is captured by its first paragraph:

“It is the policy of the United States to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. In the world today, the fundamental character of regimes matters as much as the distribution of power among them. The goal of our statecraft is to help create a world of democratic, well-governed states that can meet the needs of their citizens and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system. This is the best way to provide enduring security for the American people.” (emphasis added)

If the goal of ending tyranny throughout the world would seem, at least to some, as grandiose or just plain impossible ever to achieve, it is fully consonant with a great deal that has been heard from the Bush Administration ever since 9/11, as when, three days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the President himself declared in a televised speech at Washing-ton’s National Cathedral: “Our responsibility to history is clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.” (emphasis added)

Whether it is defined as ridding the world of evil or simply ending tyranny everywhere, it obviously will take some time for the U.S. to meet this “responsibility to history”. The new National Security Strategy document, grandiose as it is, does recognize that reality, and this is where it virtually declares a state of more or less permanent war:

“Achieving this goal is the work of generations. The United States is in the early years of a long struggle, similar to what our country faced in the early years of the Cold War. The 20th Century witnessed the triumph of freedom over the threats of fascism and communism. Yet a new totalitarian ideology now threatens, an ideology grounded not in secular philosophy but in the perversion of a proud religion. Its content may be different from the ideologies of the last century, but its means are similar: intolerance, murder, terror, enslavement, and repression.” (emphasis added)

Catholics still clinging to the Faith should be especially struck by the coming “long struggle” being cast in terms of “the perversion of a proud religion” versus the purely “secular philosophy” presumably represented by the U.S. and the rest of the formerly Christian West. Under these terms, our sons (and nowadays our daughters) may well be summoned for years to come to defend a philosophy that makes possible abortion on demand, same-sex “civil unions,” a fifty-percent divorce rate, public behavior of a sort that has not been seen on so wide a scale since ancient Rome in its decadence, and a “freedom of religion” that prevents the Ten Commandments from being displayed in court houses but allows tax-exempt status for a “church” dedicated to the worship of Satan.

But what connection may be seen between the Administration’s virtual declaration of permanent war, which is to speak of what is actually going on today and soon may militarily, and the Mearsheimer/ Walt/Kennedy School study on the power of the Israel Lobby?

The chief concern of the present article is to consider what the two documents suggest regarding the near future — to what may happen soon. However, the likelihood of the near future unfolding as those planning it intend is best grasped by the success of their most recent major accomplishment: the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. Accordingly, it will be useful to examine what the Mearsheimer/Walt/Ken-nedy School study shows concerning how activities of the Lobby led to the invasion, even if space prevents our doing it in anything approaching the amount of detail offered by the study.

(Of course success of the Lobby in the near future will also depend on whether or not American public opinion again proves as pliable — some might say, gullible — as three years ago. That is to say, will Americans, if they do not want additional war, do anything to stop it?)

The first thing to grasp is that the Israel Lobby is not a single centrally-controlled operation or entity. As Mearsheimer and Walt state: “We use ‘the Lobby’ as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.”

It is almost as important to realize that not everyone who carries water for the Lobby is Jewish. A key role is played by such leading Christian Evangelicals as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robert-son, Gary Bauer, Ralph Reed, and Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, former Republican leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives, “all of whom believe Israel’s rebirth is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and support its expansionist agenda.” Also involved in the Lobby are Gentile neo-conservatives like John Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, William Bennett, former Secretary of Education, the columnist George Will, and others.

Another pillar of the Lobby’s effectiveness is its influence in Congress, “where Israel is virtually immune from criticism.” The influence is due not simply to the money and votes the Lobby can generate for politicians, or their opponents. Hill staffers — those who do the work for members of Congress — also learn to depend on Lobby sources for information on the Middle East and other foreign-policy questions.

Further, “the Lobby also has significant leverage over the executive branch.” That is especially true at election time. “The Washington Post once estimated that Democratic presidential candidates ‘depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 percent of the money.’”

Then there are the think tanks that do so much to shape public debate as well as actual government policy in modern America. “Over the past 25 years, pro-Israel forces have established a commanding presence at the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute” and other similar entities. “These think tanks employ few, if any, critics of U.S. support for Israel.”

All these and other sources of the Lobby’s power were brought into force to instigate and direct developments leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Al-though much was done to prepare the way for war against Iraq from virtually as soon as the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washing-ton took place, Mearsheimer and Walt date the “kick off of the campaign” for it with the speech Vice President Dick Cheney delivered to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on August 27, 2002. Not surprisingly, eleven days before the speech the Washington Post reported: “Israel is urging U.S. officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.” By that time, “Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq’s WMD programs.”

In September 2002, Shimon Peres told re-porters, “The campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must,” and influential U.S. newspapers opened their columns to other Israeli leaders. Ehud Barak had an op-ed piece in the New York Times warning that “the greatest risk now lies in inaction” and Benjamin Netanyahu wrote of Saddam in the Wall Street Journal: “Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do.”

Significant as were such writings signed by top Israelis, “their allies in America told them to damp down their rhetoric, or it would look as if the war would be fought on Israel’s behalf.”

That it really would be was one thing. Having it look like it would be was something else. In any case, “within the U.S., the main driving force behind the war was a small band of neo-conservatives, many with links to Likud.”

Long before the war was launched, informed Ameri-cans knew the names of some of the leading neo-cons: Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Elliot Abrams and others. Some important neo-cons, including key members of Vice President Cheney’s staff like Eric Edelman, John Hannah and Scooter Libby (Cheney’s now-indicted chief of staff and “one of the most powerful individuals in the Administration”), were unknown to most of the public outside the nation’s capital. Even less known to ordinary Americans were certain scholars.

“We don’t have the full story yet, but scholars like Bernard Lewis of Princeton and Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins reportedly played important roles in persuading Cheney that war was the best option, though neo-conservatives on his staff also played their part. By early 2002 Cheney had persuaded Bush; and with Bush and Cheney on board, war was inevitable.”

Making it actual meant more work for the Lobby. Mearsheimer and Walt show what was done (for instance, “Outside the Administration, neo-conservative pundits lost no time in making the case that invading Iraq was essential to winning the war on terrorism”), but we have already said that space prevents our doing it with the same amount of detail. What we now must do is turn to our main concern. We want to look at what the latest declaration of U.S. National Security Strategy (with the Mearsheimer/ Walt/Kennedy School study as background) suggests about the near future. Bearing in mind that nearly all the key players of three years ago still occupy positions of power and influence, what we shall see, in effect, is that Americans — at least those bothering to pay attention — have been put on notice that the war in Iraq is just a beginning.

To be as brief as possible, the National Security Strategy document names seven countries — Zimbabwe, Cuba, Burma, Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Iran — as having “despotic systems” against which “all necessary measures” are justified, and then it says, “We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran.” Indeed, it speaks of a “confrontation” that can only be “avoided” if Iran stops its current development of nuclear power.

Why is Iran’s development of nuclear power, and therefore — years from now, according to the CIA — the capacity to build nuclear weapons, so intolerable? For the same reason that Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of WMD was not to be tolerated. But what is that reason?

Neither document published in March and discussed here spells it out, but the entire world knows, even if no Israeli government has ever officially admitted it, that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, possibly hundreds of them. What is not to be tolerated is any other nation in the Middle East challenging Israel’s monopoly of such weapons. Israel would then no longer be able to practice nuclear blackmail against neighboring countries. In other words, “the Long War,” if that is what it is to be called, can be seen as nothing less than an outcome of the willingness of the U.S. to set aside its own interests in order to assure that Israel remains the dominant power in the Middle East.

Another outcome: The Administration’s National Security Strategy document may say that the U.S. will support democracy everywhere, but Administration reaction to the recent completely free and democratic election by the Palestinian people of a Hamas government shows the U.S. is going to be highly selective in deciding exactly to whom support will be lent. We cut off financial aid to the Palestinians. i.e.: oppose Israel’s rule over lands that do not belong to it and it does not matter how democratic you are.

If such bald facts never quite get said that way even in a document like the Mearsheimer/Walt/Ken-nedy School study, the study does explain some reasons why these matters are not discussed, anymore than that the power of the Israel Lobby is ever seriously debated. For instance:

“No discussion of how the Lobby operates would be complete without examining one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-Semitism. Anyone who criticizes Israel’s actions or says that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over U.S. Middle East policy stand a good chance of getting labeled an anti-Semite. In fact, anyone who says that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism, even though the Israeli media themselves refer to America’s ‘Jewish Lobby.’ In effect, the Lobby boasts of its own power and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it.”

That Professor Walt was obliged to resign after publication of the article based on the study he co-authored, and the fact The Atlantic Monthly’s editors decided not to publish the article when they saw it, constitute proof that the charge of anti-Semitism, and fear of it, is indeed a powerful weapon. However, the real source of the Lobby’s power, in the present commentator’s view, lies elsewhere: ourselves.

Early in the 20th Century the great G.K. Chesterton wrote: “I reject Bolshevism not because its action is violent but because its thought is materialistic and mean. If true of Bolshevism, it is ten times truer of Zionism.”

As Christians have come to live less and less according to the teachings of the Faith and more and more according to the values of a purely secular philosophy, have they not also become more materialistic and mean? Does not their so becoming amount to a kind of surrender, a spiritual surrender, to the Zionism of which Chesterton wrote? It is this surrender to a spirit that is profoundly anti-Christian which accords to its purveyors their present power, whether the purveyors be actual hirelings of the Israel Lobby or those who do our leaders’ thinking for them, the neo-cons, both the ones who are Jewish and those who call themselves Christian. We have all become too much like them.

One supposes America does not necessarily have to become Christian, or Christian again, in order to shake off the Zionist power. Germany in the 1930s did not. It turned Nazi, but Nazi Germany also ultimately failed. Remaining Catholics still clinging to the Faith understand why. Sooner or later, living according to the values of a secular philosophy — fascism, Communism or liberal democracy — instead of the will of God will produce disaster. That is, Christ makes a better leader than any Fuhrer, or democratic President reading speeches written by neo-cons and constantly invoking freedom, possibly can. Follow-ing Him is the course Americans need to take to avoid permanent war and be truly free, as well as find life everlasting.

If they do not do that tomorrow, it is yet possible that with the grace of God they may do it someday, and before the pursuit of any utopian scheme like ending evil in the world leads to disasters as bad or worse than those which marked the 20th Century, like its two world wars and the martyrdom of countless more Christians than died in all of history’s earlier persecutions. In real history, after all, entire nations have converted, and it has never taken very long, not when the men truly ready to do God’s will — not simply to die for it but live it — were finally at hand.

For now, Catholics wishing to understand for themselves why events in the Middle East are moving in their present direction ought to read the documents discussed here. They are available on the Web. The Mearsheimer/Walt study is downloadable as a .pdf file from the Kennedy School’s website, but 40 of its 82 pages are notes. It is easier to access and read the work in its edited article-form as published in the March 23 issue of The London Review of Books: www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06 The National Security Strategy document can be found at: www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/ nss/2006/

In addition to the documents discussed here, readers interested specifically in the war in Iraq cannot do better than obtain Neo-Conned, a two-volume, 1,304-page collection of es-says analyzing its many dimensions — theological, military, moral, social and political. The work is published by IHS Press at $45 for both volumes. The Web address: www.neoconned. com

The application of Church teaching to political and social questions is the special interest of author and veteran Catholic journalist Gary Potter.

Reprinted from the July 2006 edition of
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