Michael Scheuer | Non-Intervention

Not since Citizen Genet has a foreigner behaved as atrociously in America as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu did at this week’s AIPAC conclave of 8,000 cheering U.S. citizens — including 300-plus congressmen and senators — who are more loyal to Israel than the United States. The behavior of both men, I think, reflects the fact that they represent arrogant governments that rule by violence.

The major difference between Genet and Netanyahu is that Genet’s effort to subvert President Washington’s non-interventionist foreign policy and push America into war with Britain on France’s behalf, and Netanyahu’s effort to strengthen Israel’s war-causing yoke on today’s U.S. foreign policy is that Washington stood firm for U.S. interests, and both Federalists and Republicans — including even Jefferson — resented Genet’s interference and subsequently ignored him, letting his words serve as enough rope to hang himself and his government’s hope of forcing America into France’s war. This week, on the other hand, many Republicans and Democrats — and 8,000 other purportedly U.S. citizens — gave Netanyahu a thunderous ovation and pledged to help him drag America into any way Israel wants to fight.

It also is worth noting that Netanyahu and his cohort of U.S. Israel Firsters spew the same transparent and lethal lie about what motivates our Islamist enemies, thereby ensuring U.S. soldiers and Marines will continue to die fighting an enemy that does not exist while the real Islamist enemy grows stronger in its credibility among Muslims, its geographic reach, and its military strength. Like the Israel-Firsters who weaken U.S. security from positions in the Congress, the federal bureaucracy, the media, and many Christian evangelical churches, as well from the pages of leading Israel-First journals like Commentary, the Weekly Standard, the National Review, and the Wall Street Journal, Netanyahu chanted the big-lie mantra, one that has helped to kill well over 10,000 Americans in the last decade from the Pentagon to Manhattan and from a Pennsylvania field to Afghanistan to Iraq. Here are Netanyahu’s lying, American-kids-killing words:

“Our soldiers and your soldiers fight against fanatic enemies that loathe our common values. In the eyes of these fanatics, we are you and you are us. To them, the only difference is that you are big and we are small, you are the Great Satan and we are the Little Satan. This fanaticism’s hatred of Western civilization predates Israel’s establishment by over one thousand years. Militant Islam does not hate the West because of Israel. It hates Israel because of the West.

“Because it sees Israel as an outpost of freedom that prevents them from overrunning the Middle East. When Israel stands against its enemies, it stands against America’s enemies.”

As despicable as was Netanyahu’s performance, however, it gives President Obama a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dump the Israelis and the Palestinians. Instead of lapping up the humiliation Netanyahu dished out to him, Biden, and America, Obama should tell Americans the truth: We are at war with a growing portion of the Islamic world not because of what Americans think or how we live, but because of what their government has done in the Muslim world over the past forty years. He then should make a clear presentation to Americans about Israel’s perfidy, describing its plans for continuing to annex Palestinian land, as well as its vision for a Palestinian “state” that would have all of a nation-state’s attributes except independence, sovereignty, and genuine self-rule; that is, a Palestinian state that would be a pathetic, dependent duchy of Israel.

And then Obama could deliver some truth about the Palestinian side, which is that the game is up for the geriatric secular Palestinians in Fatah and ditto for most of Hamas, except for the group’s hard-line Islamists. The combination of corrupt, incompetent, and self-serving Palestinian leaders and Israeli oppression — with that inflicted by Israel’s Jordanian and Egyptian lap dogs — have birthed a Sunni Islamist movement in Palestine and across the Levant that will not be squashed, first because of its religious zeal, and second because the Saudis and other wealthy Arabs are funding the movement. Reinforcing this movement and hardening its zeal — courtesy of the always less-than-bright Neocons and their Iraq war — are the Salafi jihadis flowing westward out of Afghanistan, through Iraq, and into the Levant. In other words, Obama should acquaint Americans with reality: the Israel-Muslim religious war is unendable, both sides are becoming more warlike, and both sides seek to involve the United States in their war.

The trick for the United States is to get out of the mess it helped create before it blows up. Dumping the Palestinians would be relatively painless, save for some cries from aging Fatah folk; massive whining from the EU; and squeals of horror from the Democratic left and Republican right — both always panting to intervene on Israel’s side — and the Pacifist block of Democrats and U.S. Christian/Catholic church leaders who always want Washington to intervene to give peace a chance, no matter how many American kids get killed while diplomatic diddling goes on.

Dumping the Israelis is harder because so many congressmen, senators, journalists, and White House staff are owned by AIPAC. In addition, the Israelis will have no qualms at striking back at us before we can dump them by provoking another war with the Palestinians and/or Lebanese Hizballah; by selling our enemies the immense amount of the best U.S. technology we have given them; or by attacking Iran and starting what, in essence, would be the clash of civilizations the late Dr. Huntington wisely warned about.

Great opportunities often require the taking of great and even harrowing risks to be successfully exploited. This is one of them, and Obama ought to take it before the Israel-Muslim religious war — now in the hands of violent zealots on both sides — escalates and pushes America’s economy and national security all the way down the drain that decades of misrule by both parties now have them circling.

What part will you play Mr. Obama, patriot or toady, George Washington or Pierre Laval?

As the week ended there seemed to me three things that merited attention, none of which boded well for the United States.

1.) Gee, does war really require killing?: The CIA Director this week said he believed the increased pace of drone attacks into the Waziristan area along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border had put the al-Qaeda organization there “on the run.” He was careful to note he was not saying the organization as a whole was on the run, although that interpretation was given his remarks by much of the media. The Director’s careful remarks, I think, raise an interesting issue. If al-Qaeda is on the run in Waziristan — which is good news — it is because we are applying lethal force diligently and killing more of the enemy. As always, the steady application of military power is an effective means of collecting intelligence that will afford more chances to kill the enemy. This is a callous statement, no doubt, but a true one; people being shot at make mistakes in communications, movements, etc. that assist those who are hunting them to be more effective. In short, the more you kill, the more opportunities you will have to kill.

All of this is commonplace and common sense, but it stands in marked contrast to the U.S. military’s operations in Afghanistan which are based on winning the hearts and minds of the Afghans and killing as few of the enemy as possible. We have heard no news that the Taliban is on the run; indeed, this week our commander in Afghanistan detached 3,000 troops from his force in the country’s south and moved them to the heretofore quiet northern provinces where the Taliban’s insurgency is growing in intensity. This suggests that the campaign to win hearts and minds is going to be a a long, uphill slog, and perhaps ultimately a futile one. If Afghanistan’s history proves anything beyond doubt it is that for Afghans’ “familiarity breeds contempt” when it comes to a foreign occupier.

Perhaps it would be better to have the CIA and the U.S. military operating off the same page. [NB: I must say it is a bit disorienting to find a few dozen CIA officers are at this moment more successful and lethal in killing America’s foes than the entire U.S.-NATO field army.] Maybe both should focus on killing as many of the enemy and its supporters as possible in the shortest possible time and then come home and let the survivors brood over their losses and reflect on the cost of attacking America in North America.

2.) Has there ever been a better Fifth Column?: The Israeli government’s deliberate public humiliation of Vice President Biden — and through him the United States — is playing out in a predictable manner in much of the U.S. media. This week saw the Washington Post, Commentary, the Wall St. Journal, and many other media outlets condemn the Obama administration for making the poor, innocent Israelis’ “blunder” into a “a crisis with America’s best ally.” If any American doubted the pervasiveness of the Israel-First Fifth Column in this country, and its willingness to damage America to any degree necessary to protect Israel, that doubt ought now to be erased. Israel’s treatment of Biden — and Obama’s abject acceptance of it — will very literally ensure that more U.S. soldiers and Marines are killed because it proves to Muslims the Islamists’ claim that Israel owns the U.S. governing elite, which, in turn, will harden the Islamists’ resolve to fight on and prompt both more volunteers and funding for them. Each new settlement house in Jerusalem and each new acre of Palestinian land occupied drives another nail into the coffin of a U.S. serviceman or servicewoman, and increases the likelihood of home-grown terrorism in the United States. While I maintain it is none of Washington’s business to tell Israel what it can and cannot do in terms of settlements and territorial aggrandizement, I do believe that it is time to cut ties with Israel, let it pursue its national defense as it sees fit, and make it clear to the rest of the world that the United States has no hand in Israel’s religious war with Islam, nor in Islam’s religious war with Israel.

3.) Questions that will not be asked on Sunday’s 60 Minutes: There is much ballyhooing going on promoting 60 Minutes’ interview this weekend with Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff. Here are a few questions that should but will not be posed to Mr. Emmanuel:

a.) Why during the 1990-1991 Gulf War did you leave the United States and serve with the Israeli military?

b.) Do you carry an Israeli passport? If so, why do you think a person like yourself — with an obvious allegiance to a foreign power — should you be trusted to have access to the most sensitive U.S. intelligence data?

c.) Given your reputation for being the most knowledgeable Democratic Party insider, can you tell us how many Democratic congressman, senators, White House staff, and senior party officials and contributors carry Israeli passports? Can you give us an estimate of how many Israeli passports are help by Republican senators and congressmen?

In the past two days, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton rushed to the media to say U.S.-Israel ties are a “close, unshakable bond” and to pledge their “absolute commitment to Israel’s security.”

Vice President Biden would have said the same, but he is still so shamed by the meal of humiliation he disgracefully lapped up at Netanyahu’s table that he is hiding under the bed.

This mighty U.S.-Israel “crisis” looks ready to blow over quicker than it started. Obama and Clinton have accepted that Netanyahu and AIPAC are their bosses and the Muslim world will note that carefully. Obama’s eager acceptance of Israel’s humiliating dressing-down will shock always honor-minded Muslims, reinforce their perception that Israel runs U.S. foreign policy, and convince the Muslim world — moderate and militant — that the “new opening” Obama declared in Cairo was simply a “new opening” meant to again delude Muslims into thinking change will occur in U.S. policy in the Middle East. The icing on the cake for our Islamist enemies will appear when Israel successfully goads the Palestinians into a third Intifada — and that seems not too far off — and Clinton, Obama, Biden, and Republican leaders immediately announce more U.S. taxpayer funds for “poor little Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East” and AIPAC-owned members of Congress sign the traditional blank check.

If nothing else this little episode shows Americans the problem in Israel-U.S. relations is not Israel, but the greedy, cowardly, and disloyal Americans in Congress who keep supporting Israel with large sums of money and — in Iraq — the blood of our kids. It long has been obvious that AIPAC is loaded with U.S. citizens who care for America only because it is a convenient milk cow they can keep draining on Israel’s behalf. These Israel-First “warriors,” of course, push for war with Muslims from here in North America where their wealth and kids are safe from the impact of their war-mongering, unless of course they encourage their children to follow the Rahm-Emanuel-model of publicly emphasizing disloyalty to America by serving with Israel’s military.

In the last 10 days, however, we also have been able to more clearly see — thanks to their near total silence over Biden’s humiliation — that many of our elected representatives are also nominal U.S.citizens who take their marching orders from AIPAC and care more about Israel than the United States. No American parent can any longer doubt that when they send a young son or daughter to serve in the U.S. military, the Congress will always be eager to spend their lives if Israel and its U.S. citizen supporters deem it necessary to do so.

Amidst this disaster, Americans, I think, must be clear in their minds that this situation is not to be blamed on Israel. The Israeli government’s actions on settlements, suborning Americans to commit treason, conducting covert political action in the United States, or killing Palestinians are all part and parcel of its program of national defense, and therefore its own business. Unsavory as these actions may be, all nations — including our own — play the game of international politics in much the same way. At day’s end, the policies and actions necessary for Israel’s defense can only be decided by Israelis, and Washington has no business intervening to force Israel’s decisions one way or another. (NB: The same holds true for the decisions of the Palestinian leadership.)

So let the blame for this mess rest where it rightfully belongs — on the U.S. federal government. The executive and legislative branches of our government built and are maintaining the current U.S.-Israel relationship. And it is a relationship that corrupts our domestic political system, media, and academy, and — as General Petraeus said this week — commits us to endless war with the Muslim world on behalf of a country from which America derives zero benefit but incurs a steady and deepening flow of economic and human costs. Again, the issue must not focus on Israel. The issues to be be resolved are U.S.-centric and are encompassed in two questions: (a) Why do those we elect to the presidency and Congress “to preserve, protect, and defend” the constitution ignore that duty and place much more value on preserving and protecting the welfare, territorial ambitions, and survival of a country irrelevant to U.S. interests? and (b) Why do so many U.S. citizens put Israel first and expect their fellow citizens to pay for their disloyal preference with their taxes and the lives of their children?

Honest answers to these questions, I believe, would show how thoroughly the problem of Israel is really a thoroughly American problem which is powered by the greed, disloyalty, and arrogance of some U.S. citizens.

Last spring I took part in a debate at Georgetown University that considered the statement: “This house believes that it is time for the U.S. administration to get tough with Israel.” I was on the “yes” side and performed poorly, both because I am a pretty bad debater and because I do not support the type of “get tough” policy the house was considering, which was to exert heavy U.S. pressure on Israel to make peace with the Palestinians. I believe this kind of U.S. intervention is just as inappropriate as is intervention that yields blind support for Israel. Likewise, I do not believe that Washington should intervene to tell the Palestinians or the Israelis how, when, or by what means they can defend themselves. I believe the correct U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine is one that protects U.S. national security by recognizing America has no dog in the Israeli-Palestinian fight.

Now that Israel’s government has publicly and repeatedly humiliated Vice President Biden and — through him — the United States, it perhaps is time to suggest points I tried but failed to make at the Georgetown debate. I am not sure that anything will change because the Israelis treated Biden as what he and all U.S. leaders are when dealing with Israel — abject and effete lickspittles. But an attempt must quickly be made to end the present U.S.-Israel relationship before the corrupting impact is felt of the wads of money and media “explanations” U.S. citizen Israel-Firsters are now preparing to deliver for the use of those they have suborned in the Federal government, the Congress, and among the paragons of free speech they own across the breadth of the U.S. journalistic profession.

My own position on this issue follows:

1.) Washington’s intervention prolongs the Palestine-Israel religious war, and its unqualified support for Israel requires U.S. leaders to ignore the al-Qaeda-led Islamists’ motivation for attacking the United States. The Obama administration can serve U.S. interests and facilitate the war’s end by breaking ties with both sides.

• Non-intervention will remove the U.S. involvement that permits Israeli and Palestinian recklessness, and leave the combatants solely responsible for fighting until one, the other, or both are destroyed, or peace is made.
• This is a wise policy: adolescents always sink or swim by their own actions; no nation has a right to exist; and the war’s outcome is irrelevant to America.

2.) In the post-war period, Washington can consider requests for restored relations with each entity, or with whichever survives.

• Palestine’s request would be mostly pro forma; it does not threaten America.
• Israel is different story, with an ominous historical parallel.
• In 1861, Lincoln said America had faced three questions of survival. Two were answered: independence was won and the government administered the nation. The third question — Can rebellion by an election’s losers be crushed? — was answered positively in 1865.
• Lincoln faced a fourth question: Can domestic subversion be defeated? He did so, neutering by law and politics disloyal Northerners — called Copperheads — who overtly and covertly aided the rebels.
• Today’s question is identical: Can America defeat a pro-Israel fifth column of U.S. citizens — Neo-Copperheads — that corrupts U.S. domestic politics and foreign-policy making and whose arrogant intransigence poses the most lethal threat to Israel’s survival?

3.) For renewed post-war ties, then, Washington must insist that Israel take five actions to help destroy the U.S. citizen-led, Israel-First fifth column that has made Israel the most arrogant, avaricious, and treacherous U.S. ally.

• Americans always have served God and Caesar, but they abhor fellow citizens who serve a foreign Caesar, as do those who subordinate U.S. interests to their assessment of Israel’s needs.
• Four public Israeli government actions will focus loyal U.S. citizens on their disloyal countrymen, those who want their taxes spent and soldier-children killed in a religious war for Israel.

a.) Israel must list all U.S. intelligence and technology it has given or sold to third countries.

b.) Israel must identify all U.S. citizens who have or are serving its military and so have sworn allegiance to a foreign power.

c.) Israel must admit sponsoring anti-U.S. espionage by Pollard and others, and publicly name all U.S. citizens and front companies it has paid in the past or is now paying or assisting to commit treason against the United States.

d.) Israel must list all U.S. citizens, living and dead, to whom it has issued passports, in the following categories: (a) Senators, Congressmen, Cabinet members, and senior political appointees; (b) federal civil servants, especially diplomats and intelligence officers; (c) civilian and uniformed Pentagon employees; (d) journalists, academics, and entertainers; and (e) other citizens.

e.) The fifth Israeli public action is simple justice. Israel must publicly admit that it deliberately attacked the USS Liberty in 1967.

These actions will incite popular revulsion in loyal U.S. citizens against the pro-Israel fifth column and the Democratic and Republican politicians it bribes and manipulates. Subsequent publicity and elections will end the Neo-Copperheads’ influence in U.S. politics; relieve Israel of fatal U.S.-citizen friends who can give it only calamity; and afford Americans a more precise understanding of the Islamists’ motivation so that foe can be correctly analyzed and then annihilated.

In the ongoing debate over the seven attorneys hired by the Department of Justice after working pro bono to defend terrorists is drifting away from what I think is the main point of the issue — the ardent desire of Barack Obama to surround himself with people who either hate America or are intent on fundamentally changing everything America has traditionally respected and honored.

I was fortunate enough to attend Catholic schools for most of my education and one of the most important lessons I recall was offered in second grade by a little nun named Sister Mary Lawrence. “Class,” this good lady said to us on many occasions, “over your life you will be known by the company you keep.” Now approaching my dotage, Sister Mary Lawrence’s lesson has been among the most accurate I have encountered. So, using Sister’s guidance, what to make of Barack Obama?

1. He worshiped for many years — until the media found out — in a church whose pastor, the Rev. Wright, seems to be a racist who quite clearly hates America.
2. He appointed as his chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, a man who deserted America to stand with Israel’s armed forces during the 1990-91 Gulf War, and has now given this man access to the nation’s most sensitive national security information.
3. He wanted to appoint a self-avowed communist to work on his staff in the White House, and would have had not the media exposed him.
4. He appointed Attorney General Holder, a man whose major life accomplishment seems to have been selling pardons for Bill Clinton; who has declared legal war on the CIA/U.S. Intelligence Community at a time when our military and intelligence services are fighting overseas; and who has hired lawyers who devote their spare time and charity to defending terrorists.
5. He appointed a woman to the Supreme Court who out of her own mouth admitted she was a bigot — Latina’s are better judges then white guys — and whose rate of overturned decisions must make one question her basic judicial competence.
6. He sent Cass Sunstein to the Department of Justice, a man who the media report champions legal representation for dogs in court; regards unborn human beings as a “handful of cells;” and believes the government should decide about who and who does not get life-preserving health care.

These are just a few of the high-profile folks Mr. Obama feels most comfortable around and whose mindset, judgment, and ideas he concurs with. We have no way of knowing, of course, what others of similar types he has appointed at lower levels of the bureaucracy.

Fifteen months into Mr. Obama’s administration it seems clear that in 2008 American voters unknowingly elected their first anti-American president — and that Sister Mary Lawrence long ago gave her students a simple and seemingly infallible means with which to identify that fact.

With the arrival of Vice President Biden in Israel today, the Israeli government acted to remind poor Biden that it and not the government he represents is America’s boss. There to push the eternally useless “peace process” and to beg the Israelis not to attack Iran, Biden was met with the announcement of Israel’s authorization for another spate of land-stealing, settlement construction. The message for Biden is, of course, remember that Israel is the boss and that U.S. citizen Israeli Firsters fund the campaigns of many Democratic and Republican congressional candidates. Poor Biden, the Israelis have him and all other U.S. political “leaders” by the neck. All Biden can do is tug his forelock — if he has enough hair left — and like the Baboo in Kipling’s “The Man Who Would be King” declare “Thank you, Sir” as the Israelis kick him off the train.This is more business as usual for the non-sovereign U.S. government, and the American people must by now realize that their soldier-children will be taken to war automatically if Israel decides to attack Iran. In regard to Israel it can be said as it was in the era of the British Empire: “If the King is at war, the Empire is at war.” For America, the pathetic truth is that if Israel is at war, the United States is at war.

But Israel is not alone in its ability to drag America into war without its citizens’ approval. Indeed, since the end of the Cold War U.S. leaders have expanded such automatic war commitments. NATO, for example, has been greatly expanded and the trip-wire for war in Europe is now stretched over a far broader area than ever before. U.S. and European leaders also eagerly engaged in the theft of Serbia’s province of Kosovo — sacred territory for the Orthodox Serbs — and gave it to the province’s Muslim population as an independent state. So when the Serbs eventually decide to take back the land that is properly and legally theirs, the United States will be bound to try to defend the undefendable Muslim nation-state it foolishly helped to create in Europe.

In Asia, Washington continues to be bound by a mutual assistance treaty with Thailand, a nation troubled by a slowly but steadily growing Islamist insurgency in its southern provinces. And, of course, there is Taiwan, the existence of which we have long guaranteed with political and military commitments, even while we have placed control over much of the U.S. economy in the hands of China, the funder of our runaway national debt and the eternal and lethal enemy of an independent Taiwan.

On top of these, there are the obvious U.S. military commitments that will be triggered if any revolt or other form of disturbance seriously curtails the production of oil on the Arabian Peninsula or in the Gulf of Guinea.

Each of the foregoing are instances where the sovereignty of the United States to decide whether or not to go to war has been knowingly compromised by America’s governing class. In the areas of issuing blank checks for war and refusing to control its own international borders, the federal government — under both parties — has made a hollow shell of America’s sovereignty and cannon-fodder of its soldier-children.

For the past few days, the media have been covering the publication in Britain of a fatwa that “absolutely” prohibits suicide operations, a tract claiming that anyone conducting such an attack will go to hell. The author of the fatwa is an eminent UK-based Pakistani Sunni scholar named Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri, and over the course of 600-pages he decides that: “there is no place for any martyrdom [by Muslims] and their act is never, ever to be considered jihad.”

Needless to say, the liberal/Pacifist media has warmly welcomed the fatwa; ditto for the Republican/Democratic press; and, of course, the Neoconservatives are ecstatic because the fatwa allows them to argue that our current war with al-Qaeda and its allies results from theological deviations among Muslims and not from U.S. intervention in the Islamic world. But what does the fatwa really have to do with whether of not the current war will continue?

First, I must say that I am not and never will be an Islamic scholar. Dr. ul-Qadri’s fatwa may well be both impeccable and irrefutable from a theological perspective. But there are two facts that ought to tone down the rejoicing over the fatwa: (1) there are pro-martyrdom fatwa’s out there from scholars as eminent as Dr. ul-Qadri, and, more important, (2) Dr. ul-Tahir offers nothing in terms of actions or a strategy to take the place of martyrdom attacks for those who believe they are fighting for God by resisting U.S. and Western interventionism.

If our Islamist foes were attacking the United States and its allies for the inane reasons offered by both Republicans and Democrats — they hate our lifestyle, freedoms, gender equality, elections, etc. — then Dr. ul-Tahir’s fatwa might have a chance of generating a deemphasis on martyrdom attacks as a tool of warfare. It is, indeed, quite easy to imagine a young Muslim deciding to abstain from committing suicide because my daughters go to university or because of early primaries in Iowa.

But the Republican/Democratic litany that describes the things for which we are hated has virtually nothing to do with what actually motivates young Muslims to volunteer to conduct suicide attacks. The young Jordanian doctor that killed seven CIA officers in a suicide attack in Afghanistan last December, for example, left what the 19th century called “death-bed testimony” that he was galvanized into action by Israel’s invasion of Gaza. And it is in such testimony that Dr. ul-Tahir’s work is undone, for it is the impact of Western intervention that the Islamists are fighting and dieing to resist, and not a threat they see from presidential primaries.

For Islamists, Dr. ul-Tahir’s fatwa is a message of appeasement and surrender. If one cannot use the only weapons at hand to resist that which is considered the enemy of Islam and Muslims, than the only option is surrender to that foe and willingly accept a now half-century-old status quo controlled by that foe. If the fatwa is accepted, the Islamists now on the battlefield must acknowledge that they were wrong from the start, and that it is God’s will that they live forever under the yoke of Arab tyrants and Muslim police states; that Israel — with U.S. approval and funding — can do as it pleases in Palestine and the Levant; that infidel troops can be based on the Arabian Peninsula forever; and that Muslim countries can be invaded whenever the U.S. and West feels it is necessary to do so. Historical perspective and common sense should tell all of us that a decision to abjectly submit by the Islamists is, to say the least, unlikely.

Dr. ul-Tahir’s scholarly, brave, but ineffective document is likely to have a longer life in the U.S. and the West than in the Muslim world. Naive Pacifists, office-seeking Republicans/Democrats, and war-hungry Neoconservatives will use it as one tool to protect the interventionism they adore. Pacifists will use it to argue that the threat from al-Qaeda and its proliferating allies will now ebb and so we can continue westernizing Muslims by non-military intervention. Republicans/Democrats will use it to keep status quo U.S. foreign policies and avoid a debate over interventionism in 2010 or 2012. Neoconservatives — with strong Republican/Democratic support — will use it to push forward their most important foreign-policy priority, Israel’s interests and territorial aggrandizement. And so for average Americans, ironically, Dr. ul-Tahir’s peace-oriented fatwa will mean more war.

I recall the admirable General Colin Powell, the general who use to say that the U.S. military was meant to completely defeat America’s enemies when war begins so that the same war would not have to be re-fought. The media certainly did not like his attitude, but before the 1990-91 Iraq war he stood by his position that the U.S. military’s job was to “surround and kill” the Iraqi army and then come home. His advice was ignored and look where we are today.

That experience it seems ruined General Powell in so far as his ability to contribute to the defense of America is concerned. As a politician and now, I suppose, an elder statesman his record has been the equal of any other media-pleasing political hack. Read Bob Woodward’s “Bush at War” and see Secretary of State Powell, after 9/11, urging the president not to attack certain targets in Afghanistan because they might offend either our European or Arab allies. Whether destroying such ally-offending targets would have saved the lives of some of our soldiers and Marines — Powell’s former comrades — did not seem to factor into the equation.

Then, Powell was one of two men — the other being then-DCI George Tenet — who could have stopped the Iraq war, a war that Powell knew was not necessary even if all the evidence he presented to the UN had been true. He again refrained from doing the right thing, America went to war, and nearly 6,000 of our service personnel have died so far in Iraq — and more are to come.

And only yesterday, General Powell appeared on “Face the Nation” and claimed that the United States is not less safe under President Obama. Powell ticked off all that Obama has done to dismantle defense mechanisms that President Bush had established. On the suitability of those mechanisms, people can differ. I personally believe that Bush woefully under-defended America, and that Obama is mistaken to eliminate the little Bush did without having anything replace it. But as in so many other policy areas, Obama seems to be an expert at getting off of one horse without having another to mount.

But, to be honest, Powell was on “Face the Nation” on Sunday not to discuss national defense, but to defend his endorsement of Obama during the last presidential campaign. That endorsement completed the political hack-ification of Colin Powell and it must weigh on his mind. In endorsing the completely inexperienced Obama to be president, Powell urged voters to put the future of 300 million Americans, their country, and its heritage into the hands of a man to whom, as General Powell, he would not have given command of an Army platoon because he lacked any relevant experience to command it.

In two decades, General Powell has become the equal of any other leading U.S. politician in either party. How sad for him. How destructive for America.

Fox News this morning (24 Feb. 10) showed a film clip of the Israeli ambassador to the United States being shouted down by Muslim students during a speech he was invited to make at a university in California. Fox’s announcers took the ambassador’s side in the name of free speech and the fact that he had been formally invited to give the talk. I agree with that argument, and believe that almost any suppression of free speech is a sure road to civil violence over the long term.

But the real question raised by the film clip, at least in my mind, is why none of the commentators — and I believe this to be true not only of Fox but of almost all news organizations — expressed any concern with the obvious; that is, with each passing year the Muslim-Israel religious war is coming nearer to the towns and cities of America. The students who shouted down the Israeli ambassador presumably have taken umbrage at the Israeli government’s actions to slow or stop the flow of food, fuel, and water into Gaza and its apparent killing of a Hamas commander in the Gulf. The Israeli ambassador, on the other hand, could legitimately cite the long history of attacks on Israel and Israelis by secular and now Islamist Palestinian insurgents. Both sides have a dog in the fight, but no news commentator or journalist ever notes another point that is equally clear — the United States does not have a dog in the fight.

Neither Israel nor Palestine contribute anything to the United States that we could not easily live without. Indeed, both are unnecessary expenses for our national purse. The correct U.S. policy is simply neutrality. Wish both sides well, and let them fight it out. Both have an absolute right to defend themselves as they see fit; neither they nor the U.S. nor any other nation has a right to exist; and if one, the other, or both disappeared they would merely join a very long list of once thriving but now defunct nation-states.

The fact of the irrelevancy of the Israel-Muslim war to genuine U.S. interests, however, is clouded by groups of U.S. citizens who support one or the other side and have formed politically active organizations in the United States that fuel the lust of U.S. leaders in both parties to intervene overseas wherever an opportunity exists. U.S. citizen Israel-Firsters have a head start on their fellow Muslim U.S. citizens. The Israel-Firsters, AIPAC, and their media operatives have pretty thoroughly corrupted the U.S. political process and now own any number of senators, congressman, and federal bureaucrats who — by their public words, actions, and depletion of the U.S. Treasury on Israel’s behalf — seem to rank their allegiance to Israel as their major obligation, far ahead of any obligation to the American people. And to date, these Israel-Firsters have managed to prevent any major media organization from covering and analyzing the at least three major books published in recent years that document the criminal activity of U.S. citizens working on Israel’s behalf.

But the Israel-Firsters? dominance is slowly eroding. The growth of the American Muslim community in numbers, wealth, education, and political influence is proceeding apace, as are the growth of organizations like CAIR, a group that seems bent on becoming the Muslim answer to AIPAC. And it is in this context that the Fox film clip should be viewed and analyzed. These two groups of U.S. citizens — pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian/Muslim — have exceedingly strong overseas allegiances and show every sign of wanting to keep Washington intervening at the sites of their battles abroad and to keep fighting them out inside the United States, rhetorically for now. But take a look at that film clip and note the understandable rage in the faces of those heckling Muslim students — a rage we must assume is understandably matched in the minds of university-age students of U.S. Israel-First parents — and it becomes clear that no one can confidently bet that the future will see this domestic Israel-Muslim contest remain limited to harsh rhetoric.

Thanks to Washington’s relentless bipartisan intervention in this religious war, the Israel-Muslim issue is no longer a far away problem for the citizens of the United States. The issue is now part of our domestic politics and it will, I fear, bring violence to America’s streets in the not too distant future. Dr. Paul and others who oppose the U.S. government’s unnecessary intervention overseas have long pointed out the direct and irrefutable correlation between that intervention and unnecessary wars that drain our treasury, kill our soldier-children, and undermine our national security. Americans, if they are paying attention, are now observing a case where that unnecessary intervention is bringing to our shores an alien religious war, one in which we Americans have no genuine, live-and-death interests.

There has been much discussion about what President Obama and his administration should do about Iran. I participated this week in a discussion on the National Journal’s national security blog on this issue, which included two questions:

1. What should President Obama do about Iran
2. Should Obama take the military option off the table re: Iran?

My comments on the blog are below.

Answer to Question 1:

President Obama should:

1. Explain to the American people that Iran is no threat to the United States unless we or Israel attack it first, and then it would be a serious threat to U.S. access to energy and would likely stage terrorist operations in the continental United States. [The last thanks to 30-years of immigration policies that leave us with knowledge of neither who is in the country nor what they are capable of doing.]
2. Publicly state that there will be no U.S. surprise attack on Iran, and no U.S. attack at all on Iran unless the president asks for a formal declaration of war and the Congress votes its approval in a constitutional manner.
3. Call in Israel’s ambassador to the United States and tell him that we understand that Israel believes Iran is a threat to its survival, and that we agree that Israel has every right to defend itself. If Israel believes it must go to war with Iran, then so be it. But also tell the ambassador that if Israel attacks Iran, the U.S. administration will declare U.S. neutrality in the war and immediately cut off military and financial support to all combatants in the war.
4. Speak to the American people and tell them to expect to be brutally propagandized by U.S. citizen Israel-Firsters through AIPAC, their ubiquitous media shills, and the men and women they own in the U.S. Congress and federal bureaucracy. Urge Americans to ignore this effort by U.S. Israel-Firsters to get them to send their soldier-children to fight in a religious war in which the U.S. has no genuine national interest at stake, and in which U.S. participation would further bankrupt the country, require the reintroduction of conscription, and put America at war with all of the Muslim world — Shia and Sunni — for the foreseeable future.

Answer to Question 2:

The military option should be taken off the table in all instances — save an immediate response to foreign attack — until we elect a president and congress that will abide by the constitutional requirements and machinery for declaring war that were put in place by the Founders.

In addition, and more practically, the option should be taken off the table vis-à-vis Iran because we have a military that cannot win a war. The common wisdom is that the politicians are to blame for preventing the generals from doing their job; that is, killing the enemy and, as needed, its civilian supporters until each is convinced it is irrefutably defeated. I begin to think, however, that the common wisdom is only partially correct. Our bipartisan political leadership surely is pathetic when it comes to war-making, but the U.S. general officer corps — save for a few Marine generals — is today chock full of bureaucrats, nation-builders, and wanna-be social scientists.

Take that mighty warrior General McChrystal, for example. In the midst of a supposedly ‘major offensive’ in Helmand Province, the general has spent most of his time apologizing for the deaths of civilian supporters of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and withdrawing from the battlefield a weapon system that presumably was there because it contributed to victory and helped protect our soldiers and Marines. Sparing civilian casualties might make sense if those civilians were pro-U.S. or even pro-Karzai, but they are not.

The Taliban’s steadily upward trend line across Afghanistan — not just in the southern provinces — since 2006 can only be explained by growing popular support from Afghans who are pro-Taliban (some) and/or opposed to the U.S.-NATO occupation (most). To think you are going to win the hearts and minds of these Afghans by limiting civilian casualties is a figment of the social-science minds of counter-insurgency theorists. It is not for nothing that the acerbic but thoroughly brilliant Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld wrote that counter-insurgency doctrine is always written by losers.

For the life of me, and as the father of a newly draft-age son, I cannot imagine why American parents still trust their soldier-children to politicians — in both parties — and generals who are unwilling to do anything so old-fashion, anachronistic, and politically incorrect as relentlessly killing the enemy and his supporters until they are defeated. One hopes that American parents will soon wise up and begin to discourage their kids from joining a military whose generals increasingly see U.S. casualties are the necessary cost, not of winning, but of nation-building, fawning over their addled political masters, and pleasing international opinion and the pacifist purveyors of international law.

The wars we are fighting today are the products of the lethal-for-America fantasy that war has changed and no longer requires much killing or an outright victory. This, of course, is nonsense and only our elites and those of Europe believe it; our Islamist enemies know better. America once knew that you never go to war without aiming for victory, and led by men like William Sherman, U.S. Grant, Nathan Bedford Forrest, George Patton, and, until recently, most Marine generals, our military leaders knew that, in Forrest’s words, war means fighting, and fighting means killing. Armed with this fact, and with Sherman’s dictum that the only mercy in war is fast and complete victory, the U.S. military once put fear and sober second thoughts into those who meant America harm. Today, the same military causes some circumspection among our enemies, but it mostly causes mirth in their minds over the specter of a hapless pack of general officers who seek to win un-winnable hearts and minds at the cost of many hundreds of billions dollars and numerous wasted young lives.