De Borchgrave: WMD, Gulf of Tonkin, and Neocons

Subj: De Borchgrave: WMD, Gulf of Tonkin, and Neocons
Date: 2/11/04 8:03:58 PM Pacific Standard Time
From:
To:
Sent from the Internet (Details)



Friends,

De Borchgrave: WMD, Gulf of Tonkin, and Neocons

This piece by establishment figure Arnaud de Borchgrave contains a mixture of
error along with significant, taboo-breaking truth. First, his contention that
"WMDs were not the principal reason for going to war" is obviously true—war
critics have never claimed that the Bush administration actually believed the
war propaganda-- but it was the administration’s STATED reason for war. The
Bush administration certainly based its argument for war on the fallacious
claim that Iraq threatened the US and that the pre-emptive strike would
eliminate that threat. Thus, the Gulf of Tonkin non-attack is not an accurate
analogy. While it was a pretext for military escalation, the Johnson
administration did not claim that the purpose of the war in Vietnam was to
avenge the alleged attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. Rather, the stated reason for
war in Vietnam focused on the need to stop Communist aggression—the alleged
"domino effect."

De Borchgrave points out that Israeli interest was the real reason for the war.
"So the leitmotif for Operation Iraqi Freedom was not WMDs, but the freedom of
Iraq in the larger context of long-range security for Israel." De Borchgrave
made a similar taboo-shattering statement last February, when he pointed out
that "Washington's ‘Likudniks’ — Ariel Sharon's powerful backers in the
Bush administration — have been in charge of U.S. policy in the Middle East
since President Bush was sworn into office."
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/arti...6/143619.shtml

What makes this view especially significant is that de Borchgrave is an
establishment figure. He was editor-in-chief of The Washington Times and was
with Newsweek for 30 years as chief foreign correspondent and senior editor. He
was appointed editor in chief of the Washington Times in 1985. He left this
post with the Washington Times in 1991, and currently serves as its
Editor-At-Large. He served as president and CEO of United Press International
from 1999 to January 2001. He is currently serving as Editor-At-Large at UPI.
Interestingly, he is a member of Benador Associates speakers bureau, which
ironically is a principal marketing agency for neoconservatives. Among
Benador’s clients are such neocons as: Richard Perle, A.M. Rosenthal, Michael
Ledeen, James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney, Max Boot, Laurie Myroie, Charles
Krauthammer, Richard Pipes, Meyrav Wurmser.
rightweb.irc-online.org/corp/benador_body.html

After presenting this taboo-shattering truth about the neocon role in the war,
de Borchgrave descends to significant error when he presents their alleged
goal. "The liberation of Iraq, in the neocon scenario, would be followed by a
democratic Iraq that would quickly recognize Israel. This, in turn, would
‘snowball’ -- the analogy only works in the Cedar Mountains of Lebanon --
through the region, bringing democracy from Syria to Egypt and to the
sheikhdoms, emirates and monarchies of the Gulf.

All these new democracies would then embrace Israel and hitch their backward
economies to the Jewish state's advanced technology. And Israel could at long
last lower its guard and look forward to a generation of peace. That was the
vision."

DeBorchgrave then chastises the neocons for being naïve—since the result of
the Iraq war has been chaos.

The fact of the matter is that the neocons—at least the leading
neocons—never really held this roseate view, which served as war propaganda
just like the non-existent WMD danger. Rather, the neocons believed that the
war would destabilize and fragmentize the Middle East, with various little
ethnic and religious groups fighting among themselves. By weakening Israel’s
enemies, Israel’s security would be enhanced.. This fits in with the
fundamental Likudnik view going back to Lev Jabotinsky, the ideological father
of the Israeli right, that the Jewish state could only survive through
force—the "iron wall." http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2001/441/441p21.htm
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/ironwall/

This Likudnik destabilization and fragmentation policy was put forth in a 1982
policy paper entitled, "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," authored by Oded
Yinon. Yinon proposed that Israel should engage in military action to bring
about the dissolution of its Middle East enemies. In summarizing this strategy,
the late critical commentator on Israel affairs Israel Shahak observed that
Yinon’s essay "represents … the accurate and detailed plan of the present
Zionist regime (of Sharon and Eitan) for the Middle East which is based on the
division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the
existing Arab states."
[http://www.theunjustmedia.com/the%20...ddle_east.htm]

The neoconservatives adopted this Likud strategy. Richard Perle, David Wurmser,
Douglas Feith, and others openly pushed this destabilization strategy in their
1996 study, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," which was
originally prepared as a working paper for then-Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu of Israel. In this work, the elimination of Saddam's regime would
serve as a first step towards eliminating the anti-Israeli governments of
Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. [The Institute for
Advanced Strategic and Political Studies’ "Study Group on a New Israeli
Strategy Toward 2000," "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,"
http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm ]

The report was a framework for a series of follow-up reports on strategy, one
of which by David Wurmser, entitled "Coping with Crumbling States: A Western
and Israeli Balance of Power Strategy for the Levant," emphasized the fragility
of Syria and Iraq, and how Israel should take advantage of that situation. The
report read: "Syria’s and Iraq’s regimes are based on Baathism, a variant
of Nasser’s brand of secular-Arab nationalism. Baathism has failed. . . .
Underneath facades of unity enforced by state repression, their politics are
still defined primarily by tribalism, sectarianism, and gang/clan-like
competition. It is unlikely that any institutions created by tyrannical
secular-Arab nationalist leaders, particularly the army, will escape being torn
apart." [http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat2.htm ]

Notably, there was no mention of democracy in these proposals. The goal was not
to create stable, productive Middle East states, but instead dissolved,
fragmented entities that would not be any threat to Israel. It is quite
apparent that the war on Iraq has achieved positive results from the
neocon/Likudnik perspective—the weakening of Israel's Middle East enemies,
the US planted more firmly in the Middle East in opposition to Israel's
enemies, the worsening of the Palestinian position, a firmer alliance between
Israel and the US, the Middle Eastern states faced with destabilizing terror
attacks, and international pressure being placed on Iran and Syria to eliminate
its nuclear program. Even the fact that the Arabs/Muslims are fighting the US
is a positive achievement from the Likudnik position. In short, not only is
Israel not alone as an enemy of the Arabs/Muslims, it would actually seem that
the US has replaced Israel as the foremost enemy--a very good achievement from
the position of Israeli national security. None of this is to deny that the
neocons would prefer to have even greater achievements: regime change
throughout the entire Middle East with pro-Israel puppet regimes installed by
the US. But such a development was unlikely and cannot be attained at this
moment because of political realities. But again it should be emphasized that
from the neocon/Likudnik perspective, the power situation in the Middle East
has much improved since 9/11/2001.

___________

http://www.washingtontimes.com/funct...0040209-090308
-2252r

The Washington Times

www.washingtontimes.com

Iraq and the Gulf of Tonkin

By Arnaud de Borchgrave

Published February 10, 2004

The dust is not about to settle over the intelligence failure in Iraq. But it
has already blurred our vision about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

There is still time to remind ourselves WMDs were not the principal reason for
going to war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq; they were the pretext. And that's
why irrefutable evidence was not the standard. Axis of evil regime change was
the lodestar.

When this writer first heard from prominent neoconservatives in April 2002 that
war was no longer a question of "if" but "when," the casus belli had little to
do with WMDs. The Bush administration, they explained, starkly and simply, had
decided to redraw the geopolitical map of the Middle East. The Bush Doctrine of
pre-emption had become the vehicle for driving axis of evil practitioners out
of power.

President Bush made clear Sunday the U.S. was justified in toppling Saddam
irrespective of elusive WMDs.

The liberation of Iraq, in the neocon scenario, would be followed by a
democratic Iraq that would quickly recognize Israel. This, in turn, would
"snowball" -- the analogy only works in the Cedar Mountains of Lebanon --
through the region, bringing democracy from Syria to Egypt and to the
sheikhdoms, emirates and monarchies of the Gulf.

All these new democracies would then embrace Israel and hitch their backward
economies to the Jewish state's advanced technology. And Israel could at long
last lower its guard and look forward to a generation of peace. That was the
vision.

WMDs were weapons of mass deception that became the pretext for the grand
design. As was a much ballyhooed, and later discredited, park bench meeting in
Prague between an Iraqi intelligence agent and Mohamed Atta, the September 11,
2001, Saudi kamikaze.

The amateur strategists in the neo-con camp knew a lot more about Israel and
its need for peace than they did about the law of unintended consequences, writ
large in Iraq, and in the Arab world beyond.

The neocons were not alone in misreading the state of play in Saddam's Baghdad.
The dictator was so detached from reality that he was writing heartthrob
romance novels and sending them to Deputy Premier Tariq Aziz, the only
sophisticated literary person in his entourage, for editorial comment.

As for WMDs, his scientists lied to him about the lack of progress in their
laboratories and then got more funding for nonexistent programs. In a part of
the world where telling the truth is considered the height of stupidity, even
Republican Guard commanders were successfully disinformed about mythical WMDs
capability being in other units than their own. We owe an apology to U.N.
inspectors under Hans Blix -- they got it right.

The principal intelligence failure was in not understanding the state of decay
in the Ba'ath Party regime that most probably would have fallen of its own
accord with another year of anywhere-anytime-intrusive-inspections throughout
the country.

A cursory study of Iraqi history would have demonstrated that democracy in Iraq
without a strong hand at the helm is a recipe for civil war.
One-person-one-vote would quickly give the dominant (60 percent) Shi'ites the
majority and a license to run the country in close partnership with the
clerical regime that runs neighboring Iran. But this is clearly unacceptable to
the Sunnis (20 percent) and the Kurds (20 percent).

The Shi'ites control the oil of the south and the Kurds can easily take
possession of the oil of the north. The three Kurdish provinces moved a step
closer to a unilateral declaration of independence when twin suicide bombers
killed 72 last Sunday at the headquarters of the two main political parties.

Kurdish independence would leave the Sunnis high and dry in the center sans
oil. Dominant for 85 years, the Sunnis are not about to roll over and accept a
state of their own in the middle of the country. And the Shi'ite clergy has
told U.S. authorities it is not interested in a secular, Westernized Iraq.

The U.S. plan to rescue a unitary state in Iraq with Iowa-type caucuses in 18
provinces was also doomed to failure -- if only because Iraq is not Iowa. It
also demonstrated one-person-one-vote elections are not the sine qua non of
democracy the way they are in India, Western Europe and North America.

President Bush says, "I want the American people to know that I, too, want to
know the facts" about what happened to WMDs in Iraq. Apparently, the president,
too, was disinformed about WMDs being the reason he ordered U.S. troops into
harm's way. Because this was no more the provocation given by the war's
architects than the one put forward by the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that led
to escalation of the Vietnam War -- and 58,000 American servicemen killed in
action.

North Vietnamese gunboats did not attack U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin,
anymore than Saddam threatened to attack us with his nonexistent WMDs.

So the leitmotif for Operation Iraqi Freedom was not WMDs, but the freedom of
Iraq in the larger context of long-range security for Israel. Mr. Bush is right
to change the rationale for war to
isn't-the-world-a-better-place-without-Saddam? Of course it is. Was Iraq ever a
threat to the U.S. homeland? Of course it wasn't. But hasn't the U.S.
occupation of Iraq provided a force multiplier for al Qaeda? Of course it has.
And the world is not a more peaceful place than it was before the occupation of
Iraq.

The armchair strategists who pushed the war envelope in early 2002 dismissed
any possibility of an insurgency after the liberation of Iraq. The entire
population, according to this improvised conventional wisdom, couldn't wait to
join forces with the U.S. Now, two or three U.S. soldiers are killed every day
in Iraq; some $200 billion in unbudgeted Iraqi and Afghan costs have been added
to the national debt; a resurgent Taliban, fueled by the opium/heroin trade, is
spreading its tentacles again in Afghanistan -- all persuasive talking points
for Democratic candidates on the stump.

The Bush Doctrine of pre-emption is now badly frayed at the seams. Operations
Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom have stretched deployable U.S. forces,
including the guards and reserves, to the point where another pre-emption
campaign would break the system -- and bring back the draft.

A steady stream of would-be jihadis, or Islamist holy warriors, is making its
way into Iraq across the unmarked, mostly desert, borders of Syria, Saudi
Arabia and Iran. Camel caravans trekking from the Saudi kingdom all look the
same, whether they are carrying dates or detonators. It was also the very same
terrain Desert Storm troopers used to turn Saddam's flank with a historic Hail
Mary pass.

Saudi Arabia's 150,000-strong army could patrol more aggressively some 400
miles of a desert border that is largely unguarded. But the Saudis now worry
more about internal threats to the regime than anything happening on their
far-flung borders in the Arabian Peninsula.

Iraq's nonexistent WMDs were never a threat to anyone. But they have already
struck a devastating blow to the credibility of the Bush White House. The
Doctrine of pre-emption becomes inoperable without unimpeachable intelligence
accepted by all as the coin of the realm.



Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United
Press International.