by Shmuel Rosner, chief US correspondent for Haaretz
There’s been a lot of talk lately about John McCain’s problem with the more conservative (and religious) right wing of the Republican Party. In Super Tuesday McCain won among self-identified conservatives in only three of the nine states that were covered by the exit polls I looked at. His real strength is among moderates.
The dominant narrative for the rest of the Republican race could be McCain’s uneasy relationship with the right, writes Michael Grunwald in Time. The candidate is making an effort to win over this important constituency: “I promise you,” McCain assured conservatives in his victory speech, “if I am so fortunate to win your nomination, I will work hard to ensure that the conservative philosophy and principles of our great party … will again win the votes of a majority of the American people.”
The problem he has is clear: How does one win over the more radical wing of his party without alienating the more centrist voters on which one relies to help him win not just the nomination but also the general election. McCain is using a couple of tools as to try and achieve this goal. One of them, and not a marginal one, is the State of Israel.
Senator Joe Lieberman is playing a role here. The staunchest Jewish supporter McCain has, Lieberman can promise both Jews and Evangelical voters that McCain is the candidate who will not abandon Israel (no wonder some people still think Lieberman is McCain’s top pick for Vice President).
Lieberman also says that McCain understands how significant the establishment of the state of Israel was. He is an avid reader of history and also has “a sense of history.” He is familiar with the story of the country. He will not do anything that will “compromise Israel’s security.” Lieberman has real confidence in McCain, a “total comfort level” because “I know this man.”
“In his potential outreach to evangelical Christians, Lieberman could trade on a relationship rooted in a shared concern for the safety of Israel, as well the respect many evangelicals have for Lieberman’s Orthodox Jewish background and for his activism on values issues like violence in the media”, wrote Jennifer Siegel of the Forward, and rightly so.
But who needs Lieberman when it is so clear that the candidate himself is using the Israel tool with his most problematic constituency? Two weeks ago I reported that “it is not only the Jews who McCain is courting” with gestures and statements concerning Israel:
Asked about his chances of winning the Republican nomination despite his poor relations with evangelical Christians, he noted that an influential segment of this community is very committed to Israel, and “obviously I have been a very strong proponent to the State of Israel.”
And here is a statement he made earlier, in the summer: “The State of Israel has never needed your support and your hopes and your prayers they way they need it today,” McCain said. “And God bless you for your commitment.” The occasion: the annual Christians United for Israel Summit in Washington.
McCain’s speech Thursday, at the Conservative Political Action Conference here in Washington, was designed to hammer this point home in an even more forceful way: “Those [Democratic] senators won’t recognize and seriously address the threat posed by an Iran with nuclear ambitions to our ally Israel in the region”, McCain said. Meaning: If you conservatives really care about Israel as you often say you do – I’m you’re man. Here?s some more: “I intend to make unmistakably clear to Iran we will not permit a government that espouses the destruction of the State of Israel as its fondest wish and pledges undying enmity to the United States to possess the weapons to advance their malevolent ambitions”.
His speech, wrote Stephen Hayes “was surprisingly well-received”. After the speech, Hayes reports:
[Tom] DeLay told a few reporters that a speech at CPAC could not make up for McCain’s record, but he would not rule out voting for him. That might not seem like a big deal unless we recall that DeLay had previously said that McCain “has done more to hurt the Republican Party than any elected official I know of.” And he’d still consider voting for him?
DeLay is definitely one of those people to which a positive message concerning Israel is of great importance, and might help McCain do the trick.
That’s a pretty good review, but I disagree with Shmuel Rosner’s assessment that “conservatives” are the ones demanding loyalty to Israel. I think “neoconservatives” might be a more apt description as conservatives like Pat Buchanan, Paul Craig Roberts, and Ron Paul have strenuously objected to generous and uncritical support of Israel.
For anyone seeking to better understand Israel’s influence in shaping US policy and the influence its supporters have over the only two political parties that have any power I would recommend perusing this review of Jonathon Cook’s new book Israel and the Clash of Civilizations:
“Given that Saudi Arabia is “Israel’s only Middle Eastern rival for influence in Washington,” the Jewish state had long desired to see the destruction of OPEC, which would also deprive the Saudis of their “muscle to finance Islamic extremists and Palestinian resistance movements.” Furthermore, as far back as 1982 the Israeli newspaper Haaretz’s legendary military correspondent Ze’ev Schiff (recently deceased) had written that Israel’s “best” interests would be served by “the dissolution of Iraq into a Shi’ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part,” a prescription that the US is attempting to fill a quarter of a century later. Israel was also wary of “strongmen” who might act as a focus to awaken the dozing giant of Arab nationalism, although Quislings are always welcome.
Clearly Israeli and US neoconservative perceived interests are being met by the current Iraq war better than by its predecessor, when George H.W. Bush, advised by the wily oilman James Baker, declined to advance on Baghdad and oust Saddam Hussein, whose survival was still regarded as essential for “stability” in the region.
Six months before the 2003 reinvasion of Iraq, the egregious neocon Michael Ledeen wrote: “We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria Lebanon and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize.” Clearly, a cynical travesty of Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” has become the motto for a breed of militaristic ideologues whose element is chaos.
If Israel is “the region’s policeman,” then, it is “one spreading discord rather than order …” The Israeli army, in reality that country’s “permanent government,” is braced for permanent warfare, using Gaza and the West Bank as laboratories from which to export ideas, techniques and technologies. “The US Department of Homeland Security was one of Israel’s most reliable markets, buying high-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems.” Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine may be read as a complementary account to Cook’s, albeit on a broader canvas.
As against “Chomsky’s view that the positions of AIPAC and the Israeli lobby mainly reflected US interests in the Middle East,” Cook cites Chomsky’s own view in the early 1980s that Israel sought the “Ottomanization” of the region, “that is, a return to something like the system of the Ottoman empire, with a powerful center (Turkey then, Israel with US-backing now) and much of the region fragmented into ethnic-religious communities …” (Chomsky’s The Fateful Triangle). What this would entail is laid out in the words of Hizballah’s astute leader Hassan Nasrallah. In Lebanon, “There will be a Sunni state, an Alawi state, a Christian state, and a Druze state,” although a Shiite state may well be prevented. Israel, Nasrallah adds, will be surrounded by “small tranquil states. I can assure you that the Saudi kingdom will also be divided, and the issue will reach to North African states … Israel will be the most important and the strongest state in a region that has been partitioned into ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement with each other. This is the new Middle East.” Meanwhile, the US and its accomplices will have obligingly split Iraq into three quiescent statelets, as we have seen.”
-AA
conservatives like Pat Buchanan, Paul Craig Roberts, and Ron Paul have strenuously objected to generous and uncritical support of Israel.
Very good point, but not one I would expect Rosner to make; I suppose that there is a limit on how much insights into what has really been going on in the USA Haaretz editors are willing to accept.
VS
I’m not sure exactly where to post this but Paul Craig Roberts has few insightful observations about McCain, neocons, and endless war in his latest column:
“If the U.S. now needs foreign troops to save its bacon in these two lost wars, it should demand them from Israel. Israel is why the U.S. is at war in the Middle East. Let Israel supply the troops. The neocons who dominated the Bush regime and took America to illegal wars are allied with the extreme right-wing government of Israel. The goal of neoconservatism is to remove all obstacles to Israeli territorial expansion. The Zionist aim is to grab the entirely of the West Bank and southern Lebanon, with more to follow later.
Remember “mission accomplished”? Remember all the strutting neocons with their promises of a “cakewalk war”? Remember all the ignorant bragging about having “defeated the Taliban”? All of these lies were designed to tie American down in interminable wars in the Middle East for Israel’s benefit. There is no other reason for Bush’s invasions. We know for certain that Bush and his entire administration lied through their teeth about the Taliban and about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
What a total crock of ignorance and deception the Bush regime represents. Bush, defeated in Iraq, defeated in Afghanistan, with Pakistan crumbling in front of his eyes, is now reduced to begging the French, whom it was such grand sport for his neocon officials to denigrate, to send soldiers to save his ass in Afghanistan.
What a laughing stock Bush has made of America. What ruination this utter idiot and his supporters have brought to America. What total traitors the neoconservatives are. Every last one of them should be immediately arrested for high treason. Neonconservatives are America’s greatest enemies, and they control our government! All Americans have to show for six years of Bush’s “war on terror” is an incipient police state.”
Also, Dahr Jamail reports that the US is resorting to massive airstrikes in Iraq. I know you’ve mentioned this before, but this is the latest such report.
Frankly, I don’t believe any of this nonsense is making America more secure. It’s very demoralising to see that both McCain and Hilary are willing to pursue this course further.
What also frustrates me is that most voters have yet to realize that the neocon line of relentlessly waging aggressive wars is very much a centrist tendency in American politics. Both the extreme left and the extreme right oppose war. But the MSM would have us believe that being ardently pro-war is conservative and that the moderates or liberals are those who are only tacitly or regretfully pro-war. Anything outside the bounds of these views is not to be construed as serious foreign policy position.
-AA