Rex Regnant Sed Non Gubernat

Pelosi and Dems Taken to Task by AIPAC, Cheney

No matter what Nancy Pelosi does, she cannot grovel enough before AIPAC. For instance, Pelosi attended the latest AIPAC confab, as should be expected of all Dems worth their salt—and mindful of their careers—but when she called the Iraq “war” a “failure on several scores,” she was roundly booed by the attendees. “Pelosi said the U.S. military campaign in Iraq had to be judged on three accounts: whether it makes the U.S. safer, the U.S. military stronger and the region more stable,” notes Ian Swanson.

Pelosi, of course, is merely stating the obvious, not that she is opposed to invading small countries enfeebled by criminal sanctions for well over a decade, but rather that the unitary decider and his neocon strangeloves have left the Dems out of the warmaking loop, a situation that irks Pelosi.

It seems a neocon hysteria has washed over Congress, enveloping even Dems, who are presumably “liberal,” whatever that means. As it turns out, according to the “authoritative” Congressional Quarterly daily report, more than a few Democrats were opposed to Pelosi inserting language in an Iraq occupation spending bill that futilely attempted to prevent the neocons from launching their shock and awe campaign against the people of Iran.

According to “the CQ some of the same Democrats most vehement about ending the Iraq debacle are resisting denying the President unilateral authority to go to war on Iran,” M.J. Rosenberg wrote last week. “It is worth noting that the AIPAC conference begins in Washington this weekend with thousands of citizen lobbyists are being deployed to Capitol Hill to deliver the message that Iran must be dealt with, one way or another. This battle over the Pelosi language is part of the overall Iran effort.”

In other words, “some Democrats,” enough to render Congress into little more than a bridge club, are eager to ignore Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which reads “Congress shall have Power To… declare War.”

It should really come as no surprise AIPAC was instrumental in having removed “a provision from a bill that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval for war against Iran. A number of congressional sources confirmed that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee backed dropping the provision from the Iraq war spending bill introduced Tuesday by Democrats…. AIPAC and a number of Democrats close to Israel said the provision would have hampered the president as he attempted to leverage Iran into backing down from its alleged nuclear weapon plans. Others said the provision simply reasserted the constitutional role of the U.S. Congress in declaring war that is believed to have been eroded by Bush during the Iraq war,” reports the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Naturally, AIPAC trumps the Constitution, although merely stating the obvious gets one pegged as an antisemite and a “Jew-hater,” as if attempting to prevent yet another invasion and mass slaughter of innocents, the squandering of a few hundred billion more dollars, and the as of yet untold sacrifice of American lives is analogous to hatred for Jews.

“AIPAC leaders have said about 6,000 of their members are in town for this week’s annual meeting, which ends today. Members are set to lobby individual lawmakers on the Hill for the rest of today. A priority for the group is to convince Congress to approve tougher sanctions on Iran, which is seen as a growing threat to Israel.”

Of course, AIPAC, infested with Likudniks and neocons, will never settle for mere sanctions—nothing short of decimating Iran with depleted uranium and nuclear bunker-busters will do. As we know, or should if we bother to pay attention, AIPAC is tightly integrated with the entire neocon infrastructure, from the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and beyond.

AIPAC operatives, “set to lobby individual lawmakers on the Hill,” will be pushing for an attack, not for sanctions, although the latter prints nicely in newspapers.

Finally, Dick Cheney’s speech before AIPAC, brimming with emotional nonsense about the threat of manufactured terrorism—once again eliciting the name “al-Qaeda,” the defunct database—served as a strident warning to a handful of pathetic Democrats opposed to the Iraq occupation. In essence, Dick has sicced AIPAC on the mildly dissenting Dems, who are lukewarm or weak-kneed on the idea of forever war, lasting generations, long after a blood clot has migrated to Bush’s brain.

In fact, the above mentioned lobbying of Congress at the conclusion of the AIPAC confab is all about sending a message to Democrats.

Get with the program—or find another job. 

It is shameless, but wholly typical. “Fears about U.S. job losses from globalization are driving the debate over renewing the White House’s fast-track trade negotiating authority and may require legislative action on a number of fronts, a top Senate Democrat said,” reports the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post. “The White House wants a renewal of fast-track trade legislation—also known as trade promotion authority—to finish the five-year-old Doha round of trade talks and pursue additional bilateral trade deals.”

Of course, this has nothing to do with fears of job losses, as impoverishing the American people, or rather putting them on a “level playing field” with the slave economy of “communist” China is the idea here. NAFTA was sold in much the same way. “NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t support this agreement,” declared Clinton in 1993, as he signed “NAFTA side agreements.” Clinton, a member of the Trilateral Commission, knew the exact opposite would happen—NAFTA made sure “good-paying American jobs” would eventually end up in China by way of Mexico.

It is no mistake “fast track” legislation was passed by Congress in 1974, a mere year after the founding of the Trilateral Commission. “In Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, authority is granted to Congress ‘To regulate commerce with foreign nations.’ An end-run around this insurmountable obstacle would be to convince Congress to voluntarily turn over this power to the President. With such authority in hand, the President could freely negotiate treaties and other trade agreements with foreign nations, and then simply present them to Congress for a straight up or down vote, with no amendments possible,” writes Patrick Wood for the August Review. “When an agreement is about to be given to Congress, high-powered lobbyists and political hammer-heads are called in to manipulate congressional hold-outs into voting for the legislation. With only 20 hours of debate allowed, there is little opportunity for public involvement.” Of course, “congressional hold-outs” are a minor issue, as Congress is by and large a corporate bought and paid for whorehouse.

“Fast Track was created as a very specific legislative tool to accomplish a very specific executive task—namely, to ‘fast track’ the creation of the ‘New International Economic Order’ envisioned by the Trilateral Commission in 1973,” Wood continues. Some of us call it the “New World Order.” I call it the “Neoliberal World Order,” as it is all about neoliberal economic policy as envisioned by the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, David Rockefeller, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who tutored Jimmy Carter on the ins-and-outs of predatory globalism. It is interesting to note that Brzezinski has come out in vocal opposition to the neocon faction, determined to start “World War Four” at the behest of Israel, as this most certainly endangers the “New International Economic Order.”

According to Woods, “the United States has literally been hijacked by less than 300 greedy and self-serving global elitists who have little more than contempt for the citizens of the countries they would seek to dominate. According to Trilateralist Richard Gardner’s viewpoint, this incremental takeover (rather than a frontal approach) has been wildly successful.” Indeed, as the brisk clip of the so-called North American Union zipping along demonstrates, mostly unseen by the vast majority of Americans, this “incremental takeover,” as opposed to the in-your-face “frontal approach,” is “wildly successful.”

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers told the Senate Finance Committee “fast track,” due to expire, must be “put it in the broader context of adapting the economy to globalization,” that is to say remaking America in the image of the slave labor gulag, China. Our “representatives,” beholden to multinational corporations, declare they only want to “better equip Americans to compete in the global workplace,” that is to say get them accustomed to working for a hundred bucks a week or less.

Obviously, little to nothing stands in the way of a unitary decider “fast tracking” largely ignorant citizens into the global slave labor plantation, i.e., the “New International Economic Order” mapped out by the Trilateral Commission and the CFR. 

A Horse of a Different Color

Obama, the Lobby, and the next war by Justin Raimondo

It had to happen sooner or later, and Barack Obama's startling rise to near the top of the Democratic presidential pack made it sooner – I'm talking about his speech to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It starts out with a riff about his ride in an IDF helicopter and how this made him "truly see how close everything is and why peace through security is the only way for Israel."

But of course the Palestinians are just as close to the Israelis as the Israelis are to them – and the Israelis have far more arms (provided by the U.S.) and are surely not averse to using them. So what is "the only way" for the Palestinians? Yet there can be no "peace through security" for the Palestinians, since there is no security from Israeli air strikes and repeated invasions of Palestinian territory.

The maudlin emotionalism of Obama's appeal is nowhere more apparent than in this speech, and nowhere more inappropriately one-sided. But, here, listen to Obama tell it:

"Our helicopter landed in the town of Kiryat Shmona on the border. What struck me first about the village was how familiar it looked. The houses and streets looked like ones you might find in a suburb in America. I could imagine young children riding their bikes down the streets. I could imagine the sounds of their joyful play just like my own daughters. There were cars in the driveway. The shrubs were trimmed. The families were living their lives."

Oh, please spare us! Does Mr. Obama really not know that there are – or were – similar communities in the occupied territories? Does he really not know that countless Palestinian villages – with "houses and streets like you might find in a suburb in America" – have been demolished by Israeli tractors? Can Obama imagine a young Palestinian child riding his bike down the street – can he imagine his joyful play? Can he imagine a car in the driveway, the shrubs trimmed – the families living their lives in the moment before the Israelis wiped it all out in their ruthless campaign of conquest and ethnic cleansing?

Of course he can't – if he wants to be president of the United States, that is. Israeli lives are more important, more valuable than Palestinian lives: that is what the occupant of the Oval Office must believe, or, if he doesn't quite believe it, then he must keep quiet about it and act as if he does. Otherwise, he'll never make it to the White House. Obama knows this, and therefore "forgot" to put the events in Kiryat Shmona into their proper context:
"Just six months after I visited, Hezbollah launched four thousand rocket attacks just like the one that destroyed the home in Kiryat Shmona, and kidnapped Israeli service members."

Oh, really? There seems to be something left out of this account – the Israeli re-invasion of Lebanon. A minor thing, really – after all, only 1,200 people, most all of them civilians, were killed by Israeli bombs – but, still, you'd think that a presidential candidate would know about these things, or, at least, have advisers who know. Of course Obama knows – yet he doesn't dare speak. The man who touts his early opposition to the Iraq war doesn't dare say the same about Israel's war on Lebanon.

As if that wasn't enough, he went on to endorse yet another prospective war, assuring his audience that he is willing to sign on to both prongs of the renewed Israeli-American aggression in the region. Obama touts his proposal for a "phased redeployment" (never say "withdrawal"!) from Iraq as giving us a chance to focus on the real threat to peace in the region: Iran. Bravely coming out against Holocaust denial – that Obama sure is a risk-taker! – this rising Democratic star delivered a truly Orwellian account of the Lebanese-Israeli war:

"When Israel is attacked, we must stand up for Israel's legitimate right to defend itself. Last summer, Hezbollah attacked Israel. By using Lebanon as an outpost for terrorism, and innocent people as shields, Hezbollah has also engulfed that entire nation in violence and conflict, and threatened the fledgling movement for democracy there. That's why we have to press for enforcement of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which demands the cessation of arms shipments to Hezbollah, a resolution which Syria and Iran continue to disregard. Their support and shipment of weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas, which threatens the peace and security in the region, must end."

Apparently when Israel was bombing factories, water facilities, Christian churches, and the barracks of the Lebanese army, this, too, was "self-defense." If the IDF attacked, say, Kazakhstan, on the grounds that the Kazakhs were supplying the Arabs with weapons, or whatever, Obama and the pro-Israel liberals would maintain that Israel has the "right" to "defend" itself by leveling that country to the ground. And, of course, the Lebanese have no right to defend themselves, no right to accept arms from anyone who will send them – but Israel has the "right" to unlimited military and economic aid from the U.S. (which Obama, naturally, supports).

"We should all be concerned," avers Arianna Huffington's preferred candidate, "about the agreement negotiated among Palestinians in Mecca last month" – after all, this means that the Palestinians won't be killing each other, that their democraticallyelected government may just be able to function, and that the ever recalcitrant Israelis may even have to negotiate with them (perish the thought!). We all know Israeli lives are worth more than Palestinian lives – so who cares if the Palies are slaughtering each other? It goes way beyond irony to see a black man exhibit such shameless racism – but, then again, I'm not surprised. What else do you expect from a Democratic Party hack, a world-class panderer, the product of the biggest, baddest, most notorious political machine in the country?

Obama quails at the very thought that the Palestinians would have a government that includes Hamas, but nowhere does he mention that Hamas was elected. Nor does the presence of the party of Avigdor Lieberman in the Israeli government raise so much as an eyebrow. Israel is praised by Obama for being "the only established democracy," but Palestinian elections and Israeli elections – like Palestinian lives and Israeli lives – are not to be equated.

We must, in Obama's view, "begin" all considerations of our policy in the region with "Israel's security," but of course we must ask for nothing for ourselves. According to Obama, we have no right to ask the Israelis anything in exchange for the billions we give them in "aid," or the political support we give to their most indefensible policies:

"In the end, we also know that we should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis and their security interests. No Israeli prime minister should ever feel dragged to or blocked from the negotiating table by the United States."

In the case of Israel and the United States, and their much vaunted "special relationship," the tail is truly wagging the dog. After all, what other country so dependent on American taxpayer dollars would we be afraid to pressure? What other nation on earth would be the recipient of so much U.S. largess and still be defiant when it comes to making concessions to American interests? And the Lobby isn't through yet. Israel and its American amen corner are pushing hard for a U.S. strike on Iran, and Obama is ready to push the button:

"The world must work to stop Iran's uranium enrichment program and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is far too dangerous to have nuclear weapons in the hands of a radical theocracy. And while we should take no option, including military action, off the table, sustained and aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions should be our primary means to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons."

There are so many levels of hypocrisy and bad faith here that one could write volumes exploring them all, but this will have to suffice: Although Iran, which is a signatory to the Nonproliferation Treaty, has the right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful uses, Israel, which has not signed the treaty, is allowed to possess nukes. Iran is a "radical theocracy" – but Israel, a nation founded on religion (by terrorists) is not. For a moment, there, Obama must have gotten confused and thought he was running for prime minister of Israel. Other politicians have gone to AIPAC, made the required noises, and hoped for the best, but this is really an oath of fealty quite beyond what even the vehemently pro-Israel Hillary Clinton has been willing to say. The difference is that Obama, unlike Clinton, frames the issue in ideological and religious terms: Iran, says Obama, is a "radical theocracy," and those crazy Muslims can't be trusted with a nuclear program, even for ostensibly peaceful purposes.

When push comes to shove, Obama is ready to attack Iran – if "aggressive diplomacy" (i.e., punishing economic sanctions and endless provocation) fails to do the job. This is a reality Obama's liberal "antiwar" supporters must come to grips with, and somehow rationalize, before they sign on with his campaign.

Now that the war in Iraq is quite obviously a disaster – even to this guy – those in the Democratic Party who held their opposition close to the vest or else openly supported the invasion are now rushing to the exits, declaring that they had doubts all along. It's easy to be antiwar these days, at least when it comes to the present war. The real danger, however, is the next war, as I've pointed outbefore. And there are blessedfew who are fighting that fight, because the Lobby is hell-bent on the U.S. attacking Iran.

As Wesley Clark, Matt Yglesias, and others have pointed out, the big Democratic contributors are hard-liners when it comes to pursuing Israeli interests. Iran represents a threat to Israel, therefore Iran must be destroyed – and the U.S. alone is capable of doing it. It's as simple as that. And woe unto those who don't agree…

Obama went before AIPAC, skillfully executed the ritualized gestures of obeisance without too brazenly defying his antiwar constituency, and in this way proved his mettle. The exact meaning of this ceremony was prefigured in "The Israel Lobby," a Harvard University study by Professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt:

"The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing U.S. support, because a candid discussion of U.S.-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favor a different policy."

The Democratic candidates have all prostrated themselves before the Lobby and pledged their undying fealty to a foreign policy distorted by its pro-Israel bias. This distortion was given full voice by Obama, who declared that our interest in the region "begins with a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel." Yes, begins – and ends. That has been the story for far too long, and a major cause of our troubles with the Muslim world. Obama has just signaled that this will not change under his leadership. How his antiwar supporters will take this – especially Obama's stated willingness to go to war with Iran – is an open question, but my guess is that many are bound to be sorely disappointed.

Far be it from me to disparage anybody who touts a presidential candidate rather more than is deserved just because they're hopeful that someone will rescue us from the consequences of a reckless and increasingly dangerous foreign policy. My preferred objects of undue affection are nearly always Republicans or third-party candidates: I admit to being harder on Democrats, if only because they promise so much more and deliver so much less.

But Obama is a horse of an entirely different color, and, no, I'm not talking about his skin color. He is not an alternative to the still hawkish Democratic Party establishment – hawkish, that is, compared to the average American voter – but only the appearance of one. He's all form and no content – a perfect replica of rebellion for the new millennium: slick, bromidic, and phony as all get-out. He's the Democrats' Wendell Willkie, the man who came out of nowhere, a public relations creation. Obama will disarm the Left on account of his color and overwhelm the Right on the sheer strength of his star power. Or so his strategists dream.

In the end, however, our foreign policy will remain pretty much the same: aggressive, arrogant, and the cause of our ultimate undoing.