POLITICS-US:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32487
Forum Over Substance
Analysis by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Mar 13 (IPS) - If the medium is the message, then U.S.
Pres. George W. Bush's choice of forum to launch a new public campaign
to defend his beleaguered Iraq policy should be troubling to those,
particularly in Europe, who had hoped that his administration was
moving toward a more even-handed stance in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The staunchly neo-conservative Foundation for the Defence of
Democracies (FDD), one of the most hawkish groups on the "war on
terror" since it was created two days after the Sep. 11, 2001
terrorist attacks against New York and the Pentagon, has often taken
strident positions against Arab and European allies whose cooperation
has been sought by the administration itself.
Part of an interlocking network of neo-conservative-dominated groups
that include the American Enterprise Institute, the Centre for
Security Policy, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs,
and the Committee on the Present Danger which it founded, FDD has also
tried to build support here for "regime change" in Syria and Iran.
Bush's speech, which broke little new ground, is the first of a series
scheduled this week aimed at bolstering badly sagging public support
for the U.S. occupation and reassuring voters that Iraq is not
descending into civil war despite the widespread sectarian violence
that followed the bombing of Samarra's Golden Mosque late last month.
"The Iraqi people made their choice," he said. "They looked into the
abyss and did not like what they saw," he said. "By their response
over the last two weeks, Iraqis have shown the world they want a
future of freedom and peace and they will oppose a violent minority."
His speech comes amid a growing consensus among independent analysts
here that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has successfully
displaced Vice Pres. ***** Cheney and the neo-conservatives who
clustered around him as the dominant influence on Bush's foreign
policy.
Rice's rise and the eclipse of the neo-conservatives, many of whom
have had close ties to Israel's right-wing Likud Party, have, in this
view, made Washington more modest about its ability to "transform" the
Middle East by effecting "regime change" against governments that are
perceived as actively hostile to the U.S. and Israel.
Similarly, Washington is now seen as far more eager to repair
relations with European and Arab allies that were badly frayed during
Bush's first term as a result of the unilateralist trajectory on which
Cheney and the neo-conservatives took U.S. policy.
In that sense, the White House's choice of the FDD as an appropriate
forum would appear somewhat anomalous, given the prominence of
neo-conservatives in their leadership and the stridency of its views.
Among its board of advisers are Centre for Security Policy president
Frank Gaffney, who has attacked Bush for supporting Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan; Weekly Standard
editor Bill Kristol; former CIA director James Woolsey, one of the
most ubiquitous advocates of the notion that Saddam Hussein played a
role in the 9/11 attacks in the run-up to the Iraq war; and American
Enterprise Institute's Richard Perle, the former ultra-hawkish
chairman of the Defence Policy Board who reportedly suggested in a
debate at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (that
was also addressed by Cheney) that 12 B-2 bombers could solve the
ongoing crisis with Iran over its nuclear programme.
The group, which is headed by Clifford May, a former New York Times
reporter and communications director for the Republican National
Committee, originally evolved from another organisation called Emet:
An Educational Initiative, Inc.
It was created in early 2001 by a number of wealthy Jewish
philanthropists, including Dalck Feith, the father of Bush's former
undersecretary of defence for policy and Perle protégé, Douglas Feith.
Its purpose, according to a 2003 article in The American Conservative,
was to bolster Israel's image among U.S. university students and
faculty in the face of the Palestinian intifada. After 9/11, Emet was
transformed into FDD with May at its helm and a former Israeli Embassy
official, Nir Boms, as its vice-president.
"Although FDD's mission statement makes no mention of Israel, FDD's
public statements and operations mostly concern Israel," according to
the Right Web website, which profiles neo-conservative and other
right-wing organisations.
Indeed, the group first came to public notice in the spring of 2002,
when Boms produced a 30-second television spot that played repeatedly
on cable news stations in Washington called "The Suicide Strategy."
The spot, whose main message was that there was no difference between
Palestinian suicide bombings and the Sep. 11 skyjackings, depicted
successive images of Yassir Arafat, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam
Hussein against scenes of violence and mayhem.
"The suicide strategy threatens all of us -- all those who are hated
as 'infidels'," the voice-over intones. "ŕIf we appease terrorism,
we'll get more terrorism. Our way of life is threatened."
In the run-up to the Iraq war, FDD and May, a regular guest on
right-wing radio and Fox News, gave voice to many of the same
arguments in favour of preventive war that were issued by the
administration and its neo-conservative supporters, including the
assertion that Hussein and al Qaeda had a long history of cooperation.
They also assailed western European governments and the United Nations
for failing to support the U.S.
Indeed, the U.N., which neo-conservatives have long attacked as
anti-Israel and anti-Semitic, became a major target of FDD when it
hired former Wall Street Journal writer Claudia Rosett to investigate
the U.N.'s "Oil-for-Food" scandal.
With the help of the Journal editorial page, the Weekly Standard, and
other neo-conservative publications, Rosett eventually published more
than 50 feature articles, testified against the U.N. before Congress
on several occasions and, in the words of FDD itself, took the
"scandal from a footnote to the front page".
In 2004, FDD, which had by then begun receiving government funds for
training students and activists in the Middle East in addition to
private contributions, submitted a brief to the International Court of
Justice in support of Israel's construction on Palestinian land of the
wall sealing off Israel and major Israeli settlement from the rest of
the West Bank on the grounds that "it can benefit the Palestiniansŕ"
In the same year, it also helped found Committee on the Present Danger
(CPD) and recruited former Secretary of State George Shultz and
Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose
Maria Aznar to its board. FDD and CPD have run a number of joint
conferences "targeted at the Washington policy community",
particularly regarding Syria and Iran, and espousing the view that
Washington faces "World War IV" in its battle with "Islamofascism".
That Iran poses a major threat to the U.S. is perhaps the most
prominent current theme of the groups' work. After the Hamas victory
in the Palestinian elections in January, May wrote that its "leaders
have long taken direction from the Militant Islamists of Tehran and
will continue to do so no matter how much money we throw at them".
In his most recent web posting just last week, May quoted another
Perle protégé, American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen, as
identifying Iran as the terrorist puppet master that "now exercises
effective control over groups ranging from Hezbollah, Ansar al-Islam,
al Qaeda, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Jaish-e-Mahdi, and Jaish-e-Huti (Yemen) to
the Joint Shi'ite Army of Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, and part of
Saudi Arabia, as well as Islamic movements in Thailand, Malaysia, and
Indonesia".
At another FDD/CPD forum in the Capitol building last month, Centre
for Security Policy's Gaffney warned that Iran's missile programme was
designed to detonate a nuclear weapon "in space high above the United
States, unleashing an immensely powerful electro-magnetic pulse (EMP)
(that) could reduce the United States to a pre-industrial society in
the blink of an eye".
"The Foundation is making a difference across the world," Bush said
Monday, "and I appreciate the difference you're making." (END/2006)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32487
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Just some favorite sites:
http://www.antiwar.com/
http://www.ussliberty.org/
http://www.lewrockwell.com/ips/lobe-arch.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAoe26MaTew&search=fox%20news
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