Neocon Treason

Having experienced the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, do
Americans wish they had elected Patrick J. Buchanan president? Was
Buchanan America's last chance to put a true patriot in the Oval Office?

America was meant to cultivate its own garden, to steer clear of
foreign entanglements and permanent alliances, and to serve as an example to
others. Instead, the U.S. has become a "democratic imperialist."

In a new book dedicated to Ronald Reagan, Where the Right Went Wrong:
How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the
Bush Presidency, Buchanan rues the rise of Jacobin America. A
neoconservative cabal allied with Israel's right-wing Likud Party has captured our
government and initiated a new crusade against Islam.

In a chapter that is must reading for every American who thinks
President Bush should be reelected, Buchanan asks: "Who are they, the
neoconservatives?"

When you find out, you will want nothing further to do with the
president who sponsored them and gave them unbridled power to launch America
into permanent war in the Middle East.

The neocons have declared America at war with 1 billion Muslims who
have done us no harm. Simultaneously, the neocons destroyed our
traditional alliances. Instead of isolating a terrorist enemy, neocons have
isolated America.

Al-Qaeda is not a state or a country. It is a non-governmental
organization that rejects America's decadent culture and opposes the
U.S.-Israeli alliance that brutally oppresses Palestinians to the shame of all
Muslims.

It is impossible to fight al-Qaeda by invading and occupying Muslim
countries. Bush's invasion of Iraq has achieved nothing for the U.S. but
death and expense. For al-Qaeda it has radicalized the Muslim world and
created recruits.

"The neoconservatives," writes Buchanan, "are marinated in conceit, and
their hubris may yet prove their undoing. And ours as well."

The failure of the U.S. occupation in Iraq has certainly demonstrated
the limits to U.S. hegemony. Despite limited armed opposition, U.S.
military forces do not seem able to control a single Iraqi city. If
rebellion were to become general or if Iraqis had effective weapons against
tanks and air power, the U.S. would have to withdraw its army.

Buchanan explains how the neocons used the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on
the World Trade Center to put into operation their preconceived plan,
drafted years prior to Sept. 11, to invade Iraq.

In 1996, neoconservatives currently serving in the Bush administration
wrote a policy paper for Israeli right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu. In the policy paper, Douglas Feith (currently undersecretary of
defense), David Wurmser (VP Cheney's staff) and Richard Perle (Defense
Review Board) called for "removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq ¨C
an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right."

Today the entire world, with the exception of the propagandized
American public, knows that Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the Sept.
11 attack on the U.S. But for "Washington's Likudniks," that was beside
the point. It was Israel's interests that they had in mind, not
America's. Osama bin Laden got away while the U.S. was diverted into invading
Iraq.

In 1997 Feith wrote in his "Strategy for Israel" that the U.S. and
Israel should conquer Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Moreover, Israel should
reoccupy "the areas under Palestinian Authority control," though "the price
in blood would be high."

We are now watching this neocon strategy unfold. Iraq has been invaded.
Israel's Likud Party, with U.S. complicity, is grabbing more of the
Palestinian West Bank. Last week, neocon Undersecretary of State John
Bolton began beating the war drums against Iran for allegedly possessing
weapons of mass destruction that "pose grave threats to international
society."

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, neocon Max Boot defined support for
Israel as a "key tenet of neoconservatism." What, asks Buchanan, about
support for America? America's interest should be the focus of the Bush
administration. When did America's interests become subsumed in the
interests of Israel's right-wing Likud Party?

If Americans don't want a generation of sons dying in Middle Eastern
deserts, they had best take Buchanan's question to heart.

Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=3436