To:  My Fellow Americans
From:  Mark Bruzonsky
Re:  Time To Stop The Madness and Restore Our Values and Principles



Let's right at the start dispense with all the evasions, distortions, and cover-ups nearly always involved in this super sensitive discussion. 

Any fair-minded person who simply takes an honest look at where nearly all of the massive pressure and propaganda is coming from for attacking Iran will find the following interconnected three-part answer:  The Government of Israel, the associated Jewish Zionist Neocons in Washington, and the Israeli-connected and inspired Zionist Evangelicals primarily in the Bible-belt.
 
There is an overall context to what has already happened in the Middle East, and to what is now being planned for the Middle East.   It is urgently important to understand this context.  And it is vitally important not to let those who have already caused so much bloodshed and hatred to in fact greatly escalate their rampage, one which has already taken on the characteristics of a modern-day crusade.

EMOTIONAL AND POLITICAL QUICKSAND:

Those who have been involved in this historic debate for ideas and influence know very well that this whole subject and many of the individual words and phrases are a kind of verbal dynamite.   All-too-often attempting to sensibly discuss these issues in our society ignites tensions between people and groups.  There's a kind of political quicksand out there when subjects critical of Israel, Jews, and Zionists are raised -- however justified. 

The dynamite is always threatening to explode even if gently and responsibly handled.  The quicksand is always threatening to devour those who try to speak up -- no matter how qualified and how dispassionate -- as well as the entire discussion itself.

While many foreign policy professionals in and out of government are aghast at what has already happened with our essentially hi-jacked foreign policy, few are in a position to speak out forcefully and directly, even fewer are willing and able to do so. 

Those in power fear if they do they won't be for long.   Since the days when two Chairmen of the Foreign Relations Committee floundered trying to reasonably adjust our Middle East policies -- William Fulbright and Chuck Percy -- big time intimidation has been felt by all.

Those aspiring to power in the think-tanks, academia, and journalism are also well aware of the rules of the Washington road when dealing with these most major of 'third rail' issues.  No matter how critically important these issues are to the future of our country, and indeed to our world, touching them is known to be dangerous to one's personal well-being and future.

Even those out of power -- either by design or retirement -- nevertheless fear the torrent of abuse and ostracism, oftentimes from friends and family, that all too often results from an honest attempt to grapple with these complex yet vital issues; especially when doing so sometimes puts one uncomfortably in the company of incompatible and undesireable others who have their own very different reasoning and motivations.

Like all societies we in the U.S. have our norms, our sensitivities, our margins of "acceptable" views and actions.  And on these issues for a long time now the margins have been excessively narrow, the sensitivities quite extreme, and hence the debate rarely truly honest and open.  The result, many of us have concluded, has been serious harm in multiple ways to our country and a great deal of death and bloodshed in the Middle East.

And like all ethnic and religious subgroups we who are Jewish know better than others in fact what a political and personal minefield discussion of the 'Israeli Lobby' and 'the Zionists' has proven to be.  In the now distant past it wasn't always this way.  But since the days of the Holocaust and the creation of the 'Jewish State' of Israel that followed from it, and especially since the days of the 1967 and 1973 Wars, the verbal dynamite and the political quicksand have become ever-present and oh-so-dangerous realities.

TIMES A CHANGING?

And yet, as a result of what has happened in recent years in the failed 'Middle East Peace Process', then in the aftermath of 9/11, and especially now with the Iraq debacle, there are rays of at least more open debate finally seaping out from the verboten and censored discussion darkness, a void which still to a large extent envelopes us all on these particular issues.

One let's call it "event" this year has helped to begin to change the climate.  In fact a writer in The Nation Magazine recently termed it the most important single article written in 2006 -- but it has morphed far beyond being just an article into a kind of code-word.

"The Israel Lobby" article was in fact commissioned some years ago by The Atlantic Magazine.  But then, true to the extraordinarily sensitive nature of the subjects at issue, it was rejected for publication and a lid clamped on even discussion about just what happened and why.

At the heart of this matter are two of the countries most distinguished foreign policy academic experts -- one the former academic dean at the JFK School at Harvard the other a most seasoned and respected foreign policy expert at the University of Chicago. 

And yet, even persons of such intellectual stature and professional standing found they could not get their major study on the causes of the Iraq war and the tremendous influence and unsavory methods of 'The Israel Lobby' published in their own country!

And so the two Professors turned overseas to The London Review of Books -- and unlike what would have been in the past, in this age of email and the Internet "The Israeli Lobby" literally spread like wildfire.

Before getting back to the heart of the matter, to the interconnected three-part answer about Iran, just abit more about what is happening in Washington these days as a result of insiders wanting to block what they fear could happen, even if they have to do so very cautiously under-the-table and behind-the-scenes. 

More than ever people in-the-know in the Pentagon, the CIA, the Department of State, and associated agencies, are "leaking", even though doing so has become more dangerous to do than ever.  

They are "leaking" not so much because of the past and the desire to set the record straight -- though that's part of it.   Rather they are "leaking" because of unprecedented worries about the future and about what the Israeli Government, the Jewish Zionist Neocons, and the far-out Evangelicals are trying so hard to bring about. 

And at the center of everything now is the heavy push to bring about war with Iran and in the process to fuel the already ignited Clash of Civilizations to the point that it cannot be extinquished for some time to come.  The potential, indeed the likely, catastrophic repercussions that might well result are now propelling at least some to speak up, to write in ominous tones, to leak 'classified' information...and to loudly warn all whom they can reach. 

IRAN AND THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS:

In short...there is growing and quite unprecedented opposition to what the U.S. and Israel are now planning in the Middle East not only around the world but right in the heart of Washington itself.  And this opposition now centers on the all-but-started and not-as-yet declared war with Iran.  This opposition literally now oozes out of the crevices of Washington in a variety of ways:

*  Insiders in the military and the CIA keep leaking to journalists like Seymour Hersh information about how our policies are dangerously ideologically driven rather than fact based.

*  Pentagon officials at senior levels have themselves leaked plans they themselves strongly oppose to prepare to use tactical, i.e. "useable", nuclear weapons.

*  Retired senior Generals, still unable to reveal and discuss classified information, instead come forward to loudly proclaim that after a life-time voting Republican they decided to urge everyone to vote Democratic in the critical November election. 

*  Old-timers like Daniel Elsberg have come forward in the pages of Harper's Magazine and online to vehemently call out for people now in government to take greater risks to inform the Congress and the media what is really going on and how dangerous the historical moment really is.

*  Major establishment journalists like Chris Hedges, six years the New York Times bureau chief in the Middle East, are coming forward with the most ominous warnings about what Bush/Cheney and the Neocon/Evangelicals are really planning -- but nearly always only online where they can actually state their real views unedited and uncensored by the traditional corporate big media barons.

There are actually many inside-Washington examples of what has just been briefly outlined.  Here's just one from Chris Hedges writing last month for the new online magazine, Truthdig.com, with the headline "Bush's Nuclear Apocalypse": 

"An attack on Iran will ignite the Middle East.  The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia, the Shiite majority in Iraq and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey will turn in rage on us and our dwindling allies.  We will see a combination of increased terrorist attacks, including on American soil...  Iraq, as bad as it looks now, will become a death pit for American troops...  lThe Israelis aptly call their nuclear program 'the Samson option.' The Biblical Samson ripped down the pillars of the temple and killed everyone around him, along with himself.   If you are sure you will be raptured into heaven, your clothes left behind with the nonbelievers, then this news should cheer you up.  If you are rational, however, these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life."

THE JEWISH-ISRAELI LOBBY:

And this in a sense brings us full circle back to the realities of how Washington actually works when it comes to our Middle East policies, how power and influence are really wielded, how the major media is continually manipulated, co-opted, and cowered. 

For there is essentially a vast combined lobbying and propaganda machine made up of many pieces and players that exploits the institutions of our democracy, the public opinion of our citizenry, and the policy options our elected leaders feel they must choose between, right or wrong.   This is the reason our foreign policy got hijacked.  And that's why, for instance, Professors Meirsheimer and Walt rightly conclude that:

"Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical...  The war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure.  According to Philip Zelikow, a former member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to Condeollzza Rice, the 'real threat' from Iraq was not a threat to the United States.  The 'unstated threat' was the 'threat against Israel', Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002.  'The American government,' he added, 'doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, becuase it is not a popular sell.'

These realities should be a major warning to all of us Americans at this critical time in our own history.   Said simply:  We do not want to allow this same kind of thing to happen again, this time with far worse consequences with regard to Iran and the whole Muslim and Arab worlds. 

And furthermore we do want to get back to honestly attempting to reposition our country as truly determined to the pursuit of justice, human rights, and real democracy throughout the Middle East. 

At the top of our list -- in view of all of our commitments and promises and mistakes in the past -- is the urgency to finally bring about a real Palestinian State in accordance with so many decades of U.N. resolutions and so many verbal American undertakings.

And here is where this interconnected three-part lobbying and propaganda machine comes it.  Said simply:  It continually acks as a blocking force skewing in an Israeli Zionist direction the entire range of U.S. foreign policy dealing with the Middle East and impacting on the Jewish State. 

In short, the Government of Israel working in tandem with the small but powerful Jewish Zionist Neocon 'cabal' and the much larger and multi-facted Israel Lobby -- as well as with the increasingly powerful Christian Zionist Evangelical Movement -- keeps pushing, intimidating, threatening, and bribing to gets its way.

FROM FAILED 'PEACE PROCESS TO IRAQ TO LEBANON TO PALESTINE:

Those in the know will recognize this triumvirate as the same coalition of ideological warriors who are primarily responsible for the horrible debacle in Iraq -- even as they now try desperately to deflect blame onto the "terribly incompetent" Administration they served and championed. 

This is also the same triumvirate that pushed hard to bring about the more recent but also horrendous war in Lebanon -- one which is clearly not over and may well have even more disastrous results ahead.

And this is also the same triumvirate that in years past worked so feverishly and so successfully to undermine the frail Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" with their 'clean break' strategy. 

Guilty of exploitation of what happened on 9/11 to suit their own pre-existing war plans is another verdict we can now hand down to this triumpherate of political/lobbying forces all of which have allegiance to the philosophy of hard-line 'Revisionist Zionism' in common.

Overall -- each for their own reasons and with their own think-tank, publications, organizations and churches/synagogues -- this triumvirate has pushed our country to the forefront of a 'clash of civilizations' that need not be, that should not be.   All denials aside what has been brought about is in fact akin to a modern-day crusade pitting the Christian-Judeo West against the Arab and Muslim worlds -- exactly what it seems the neocons, Evangelicals, and Israeli government desire..

REVERSING THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE

But it is not too late to reverse course and bring a new coaliton of the 'realists' and what I will call the 'reasonables' to power in our country.  For yes it is in the end about political power and that flows from a combination that includes, money, media, think-tanks, public opinion, and determination to pursue a coherent plan of action.

And that is why it is time these fanatical warriors that make up this triumverate be exposed for whom and what they are, for whom they are aligned with, and to whom they bear allegiance.

"President Bush will need to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before leaving office," Joshua Muravchik declares in his FP Memo address to his fellow neocons in the last issue of FOREIGN POLICY. 

He did so even though nearly the entire expert intelligence community keeps leaking that Iran is at minimum many years away from any even primative nuclear bombs while the Israelis even now have a vast arsenal of more than 500 sophisticated nuclear devices including high-accurate missiles and German-supplied submarines to deliver them.

"We" -- that is Muravchik addressing his fellow Neocons via the "FP Memo" -- "need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes."  That message in fact seems the primary message Muravchik wants to deliver far and wide.

It is a message the rest of us should take seriously.  For the rest of us Americans -- not fanatics, not ideological, not part of the propaganda and lobbying machine -- we should carefully read the warnings coming from the most respected of Middle East experts such as Robert Fisk, Patrick Seale, David Hirst, and Chris Hedges. 

We've got to shake ourselves up, realize that we are indeed the 'rational' and reasonable ones among us and make sure that Hedges cry of desperation that
"these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life"  does not come to pass.

There can be no doubt that is why Hedges wrote what he did.  And like Professors Mearsheimer and Walt before him he found that he couldn't get it published in any of the big corporate media, including his own New York Times...but rather had to turn to the Internet to cry out and raise the battle cry loud and clear for all of us.