Cole on Franklin

[arisbe]

"Here is my take on the Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal in the Pentagon.

"It is an echo of the one-two punch secretly planned by the pro-Likud faction in the Department of Defense. First, Iraq would be taken out by the United States, and then Iran. David Wurmser, a key member of the group, also wanted Syria included. These pro-Likud intellectuals concluded that 9/11 would give them carte blanche to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv (not wars that really needed to be fought, but wars that the Likud coalition thought it would be nice to see fought so as to increase Israel's ability to annex land and act aggressively, especially if someone else's boys did the dying)."

Comments

[rawmr.livejournal.com]

You always find the best entertainment in conspiracy theory.

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

I don't understand your comment.

I don't understand your comment.

[rawmr.livejournal.com]

I assume you do not agree with the writer, whose article essentially states that Israel's Likud party is running our Pentagon, from what I gathered of a quick read. Hence, conspiracy theory entertainment. You come up with a lot of similar articles.

Re: I don't understand your comment.

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

I don't have any specialized knowledge, so my agreement or disagreement doesn't matter so much. Professor Cole is highly regarded by other ME scholars, according to a neighbor who is one.

Some of these neocon fellows were certainly working for (paid consultants to) Likud before the Bush people brought them into power.

While the Pentagon seems to be running itself for better or worse, it is certainly infiltrated by agents of influence who sincerely believe that the world would be better off with the ME under Israeli-US hegemony. Just as the American government was once infiltrated by agents of influence who sincerely believed that the Soviet Union under Stalin was the hope of humanity.

The Communist movement and its numerous sympathizers were wrong then. The Israel lobby and its numerous sympathizers are wrong now.

Article still over the top

[rawmr.livejournal.com]

Again, I do not believe that Israel dictates US ME policy. As for Israeli policy, I have far more disagrements with Palestinian policy than that of the Israelis. Palestinians had the opportunity to aquire virtually the entire West bank and Gaza disputed lands. They chose terrorism instead. Terrorism cannot be rewarded. There are still significant Palistinian factions who continue to observe the policy of NPR (No Negotiation, No Peace, No Recognition), and the Palestinian Authority has continued to refuse to disarm them. They continue to fire rockets, and try to get suicide bombers into Israel, though not so successfully these days thanks to constant, and yes brutal, military pressure. With all due respect, unless you can come up with viable alternative solutions for Israeli policy, don't condemn it.

Re: Article still over the top

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

If anyone claiming to represent me or paid by my taxes were encouraging the PA in their idiocy, I would excoriate them in no uncertain terms as well.

You are avoiding the issue

[rawmr.livejournal.com]

Not to be hard on you, but you offer no alternatives. To easy just implying that US/Israeli policy is idiotic. You don't have to answer here, but you should seriously ask yourself how the ME would be a kinder, gentler place if you were dictating policy.

Re: You are avoiding the issue

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

It may never be a kinder, gentler place, nor is it our job to make it so, and our attempts have only brought that war home to us.

Are you safer than you were three years ago today?

I watched thousands of Americans die for Israel.

Is Israel any better off for it?

Re: You are avoiding the issue

[rawmr.livejournal.com]

Do you also believe that Hilter and the Japanese should have been allowed to go uncontested? If no, then your point about the ME is extremely moot, and obvoious things could be far worse. If yes, then I will know better than to ever bring this up again.

Now for some co-related Green Party philosophy

[rawmr.livejournal.com]

"I don't necessarily see the al-Sadr forces as being the 'bad guys' here. Shouldn't people have the right to defend their country against outside invading forces?"

Just couldn't resist that.

[richardf8]

I think this all begs the question of why the Bush administration in particular would bring people into the fold who have this agenda in the first place.

I do not think either Israel's or World Jewry's interests are served by an enterprise bent on "reshaping" the middle-east. Even Likud seems moderate compared with some of the folks Bush has brought on board. I, for one, am skeptical of the "help" given Israel by the radical right, the Bushies, and DeLay. I think they are trying to immanentize the eschatological vision put forth in books like "The Late Great Planet Earth." As for guys like Feith or Wolfowitz, they have their own warped vision, which I think is separate and distinct from Likud's. Their actions give credence to the libel that there is a "Great Jewish Conspiracy," and thus they are greater friend to the Anti-Semites and White Suprecists than they are to either Jews at large or to Israel in particular.

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

Yes, these people don't serve the real interests of Israel, and it is good to hear that even Likud is not so crazy. Of course we can't blame Israelis, whose lives are after all at risk, from being a little, well, crazy from time to time. It's not so much that Israel has seduced and corrupted America, as that the American "friends" of Israel have led Israel down the garden path. And America, too. As for the so-called Christian Zionists, they want to provoke a world war in which all Jews who refuse to worship Jesus as God will be exterminated. When will Israel learn they can't trust people like that?

[richardf8]

As for the so-called Christian Zionists, they want to provoke a world war in which all Jews who refuse to worship Jesus as God will be exterminated. When will Israel learn they can't trust people like that?

Well, when you pit one wacky eschatology against another, no one wins. You see, no Jew believes that the Jews will be exterminated in the world to come, so this motivation becomes irrelevant. If the Christian Zionists want to believe this and put up their money, "fine," say the wackos of the Jewish community who have their own eschatological vision.

The problem with the Eschatologists, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, is that they are trying to reify a fiction, and in each and every case are basing policy on a narrative derived from the revenge fantasies of people being murdered by the dominant regime. In such a hurry are they to immanentize this eschaton, and so firm is their belief that it will turn out the way they expect, that they are willing to gamble incalculable death and suffering on their personal salvation. A damnably selfish proposition.

This is why religious extremists, rather than any given religion, is the major problem, and why, too, that these extremists need to be told, collectively, to sit down and shut up. Instead we let Falwells and BinLadens and Kahanes run around unchecked, and are surprised when one of them engages in terrorism

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

I think we should have let bin Laden run around unchecked. Instead of building him up from nobody to somebody. And of course it was the neocons behind that, too.

[brave-heart.livejournal.com]

To me it's not a huge leap from the assertions in this article (and from this in yesterday's LA Times: "[T]he ranks of Israel's diplomatic and intelligence corps are honeycombed with native Arabic speakers") to the proposition that Israel was behind 9/11. Yes, rawmr, I'm a conspiracy nut, and I've collected much additional evidence on this subject in the "sept11truth" LiveJournal community.

braveheart

[rawmr.livejournal.com]

"Yes, rawmr, I'm a conspiracy nut"

You could just use "nut" for short.

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

Do you think it wasn't bin Laden? Or that a Mossad agent whispered the idea into his ear? I just don't see that. The fact that Israel was the only world power to benefit from the tragedy does not mean that they were "behind" it in any meaningful sense of the term.

[richardf8]

If you can call an increase in anti-semitic attacks on Jews in the Diaspora, and an increase in anti-Israeli sentiment worldwide a "benefit."

[brave-heart.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think it was not bin Laden. The Caspian Sea region holds untapped oil reserves second only to Iraq's, as well as vast natural gas reserves. The only feasible way to get the oil and gas to the West is through Afghanistan. In a paper published in 1998, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al.--believers that the foreign policies of the U.S. and Israel's coincide--advocated unilateral action against Iraq and other uncooperative strategic nations, but acknowledged that the voting public would not back such action absent a "Pearl Harbor like event." Bin Laden unequivocally denied involvement in 9/11 shortly the event and speculated that Israel was behind the attacks. The facial features of bin Laden in the poor quality videotapes "found" by the U.S. in the months following 9/11--the only public evidence of bin Laden's involvement--do not match the actual bin Laden's facial features. Before the invasion of Afghanistan the Taliban offered to turn bin Laden over to the U.S. if the U.S. could establish that he was involved; the U.S. refused. Basically, we have been asked to take the Bush administration's word that bin Laden did it--the same Bush that looked us in the eye and lied to us about his motives for invading Iraq.

You've probably seen all this stuff before. If not, I can provide links.

-The Nut