Weekend Edition

September 20 / 21, 2008

A New and Revealing Study of the Influence of the Neocons

The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies

By BILL and KATHLEEN CHRISTISON

Stephen J. Sniegoski, The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative
Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, Enigma
Editions, Norfolk, Virginia, 2008

Not a few honest political analysts have long recognized the tight
relationship between the Israel-U.S. partnership and the disastrous Bush
administration adventures throughout the Middle East, including its backing
for Israel’s systematic oppression of the Palestinians. Stephen Sniegoski
has had the persistence to ferret out mountains of impossible-to-challenge
evidence that this Israel-U.S. connection is the driving force behind
virtually all Middle East decisionmaking over the last eight years, as well
as the political courage to write a book about it.

Sniegoski’s new book demonstrates clearly how U.S. and Israeli
policies and actions with respect to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria,
Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the other Gulf states, and even most recently
Georgia are all tied together in a bundle of interrelated linkages, each of
which affects all the others. The right wing of Israeli politics, the
neoconservatives in the U.S. who strongly support Israel, and the aging
Israel lobby in the United States all have worked together, and are still
doing so, to bring about more wars, regime changes, and instability,
specifically the fragmentation of any Middle Eastern states that might ever
conceivably threaten Israel.

In addition, one purpose of such wars and other changes is
explicitly to intensify the discouragement of Palestinians as the latter’s
potential allies are knocked off one by one, making it easier for Israel,
over time, to finish off the Palestinians. That’s the theory. Those who
believe it is vital to improve the human rights situation and the political
outlook for the Palestinians must not only work to reverse present Israeli
policies, but it is probably more important that we in the United States
work even harder to reverse U.S. policies.

This is a long but quite splendid book. After a foreword by
ex-Congressman Paul Findley and an introduction by Professor of Humanities
Paul Gottfried, Ph.D., the text itself has 382 pages covering the entire
history of the neoconservatives from the 1960s to 2008. The author has
clearly spent untold hours reading all the writings he could find by not
only the top few neocons but also numerous others who are far less well
known but still important figures in the movement.

The neocons, by the way, are by and large not conspiratorial. They
prefer to write voluminously and act openly with respect to their
philosophies and actions. The word “transparent” in the title of the book
emphasizes this very point. On the other hand, the neocons are also very
skilled propagandists and are more than willing to spin “facts” in many
situations in ways that often do not leave readers with an honest,
unvarnished version of “truth.”

Sniegoski states his own main argument as follows:

“This book has maintained that the origins of the American war
on Iraq revolve around the United States’ adoption of a war agenda whose
basic format was conceived in Israel to advance Israeli interests and was
ardently pushed by the influential pro-Israeli American neoconservatives,
both inside and outside the Bush administration. Voluminous evidence, much
of it derived from a lengthy neoconservative paper trail, has been marshaled
to substantiate these contentions.” [Page 351]

The author then points out that

“… what was an unnecessary, deleterious war from the standpoint
of [“realists” in] the United States, did advance many Israeli interests, as
those interests were envisioned by the Israeli right. America came to
identify more closely with the position of Israel toward the Palestinians as
it began to equate resistance to Israeli occupation with ‘terrorism.’ …
Israel took advantage of the new American ‘anti-terrorist’ position. The
‘security wall’ built by the Sharon government on Palestinian land isolated
the Palestinians and made their existence on the West Bank less viable than
ever. For the first time, an American president put the United States on
record as supporting Israel’s eventual annexation of parts of the West Bank.
Obviously, Israel benefited for the very reason that the United States had
become the belligerent enemy of Israel’s enemies. As such, America seriously
weakened Israel’s foes at no cost to Israel. The war and occupation
basically eliminated Iraq as a potential power. Instead of having a unified
democratic government, as the Bush administration had predicted, Iraq was
fragmenting into warring sectarian groups, in line with the original
Likudnik goal.” [Pages 356-357]

And yet one more quote is in order here:

“Since one is dealing with a topic of utmost sensitivity, it
should be reiterated that the reference to Israel and the neoconservatives
doesn’t imply that all or even most American Jews supported the war on Iraq
and the overall neocon war agenda. … A Gallup poll conducted in February
2007 found that 77 percent of [American] Jews believed that the war on Iraq
had been a mistake, while only 21 percent held otherwise. This contrasted
with the overall American population in which the war was viewed as a
mistake by a 52 percent to 46 percent margin. … [Nevertheless,] evidence for
the neoconservative and Israeli connection to the United States war is
overwhelming and publicly available. There was no dark, hidden ‘conspiracy,’
a term of derision often used by detractors of the idea of a neocon
connection to the war. … It should be hoped that … Americans should not fear
to honestly discuss the background and motivation for the war in Iraq and
the overall United States policy in the Middle East. Only by understanding
the truth can the United States possibly take the proper corrective action
in the Middle East; without such an understanding, catastrophe looms.”
[Pages 371-372]

The reader will note that the above excerpts all come from near the
end of Sniegoski’s book. Before reaching this point in the book, you will be
treated to informative and well-written chapters on the origins of the
neoconservative movement, the Israeli origins of the United States’ Middle
East war agenda, and neocon planning against Iran, as well as chapters
entitled “World War IV” (a very important chapter), and “Democracy for the
Middle East.” A particularly important chapter on “Oil and Other Arguments
for the War” argues that oil was not as important a reason for the 2003 U.S.
invasion of Iraq as was Israel.

This book is a veritable bible on the neocons -- and a frightening
one. Anyone who thought that neocon thinking and policymaking had become
passé with the political eclipse of the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard
Perle, and Douglas Feith will be disquieted to find that these individuals
were only the tip of the iceberg and that on all issues having to do with
Israel neocon thinking lives on in policymaking councils and is about to be
passed on to the next administration, whether it be Democratic or
Republican.

Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a
National Intelligence officer and as director of the CIA's Office of
Regional and Political Analysis.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst. She is the
author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession. They can
be reached at kb.christison-AT-earthlink.net.