By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – April 19, 2007
Seymour Hersh’s The New Yorker article of March 5,
2007, “The Redirection,” drew an enormous amount of attention from the
left-wing and antiwar media in this country and around the world. It
attracted very little attention in the “Mainstream Media” (which we on the left
think ignores numerous important stories while O’RHannibaugh thinks that it is
hopelessly biased to the Left). But at any rate, it seems to have come
and gone. However, it contained a huge amount of hard evidence of the
deviousness and downright evil of the CheneyBush Administration, in re Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general.
Much has been made of the ample evidence that Mr. Hersh
uncovered that Vie-President Cheney in particular is now arranging for funding
of Sunni groups throughout the Middle East, as a counter-balance to Shiite
Iran. He is doing this despite the fact that it is the Sunni groups in
Iraq that are the principal killers of American troops there, and that some of
them are closely aligned with al-Qaeda. In this column I will go beyond that
particular outrage to look at other information that Mr. Hersh uncovered and in
particular to examine the “whys” behind what Cheney and his minions are
doing. They do fit in well, it happens, with the thesis I published in
this space on March 21, 2007. You may recall that in my column “The
CheneyBush War Policy: Connecting the Dots” I hypothesized that the true
CheneyBush goal for the Middle East region was the creation of Permanent War in
it.
According to Mr. Hersh, the main US players in this tragedy
are Cheney, US Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams, of Iran-Contra
fame, the former US “Ambassador” to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and the seemingly
ever-present (see Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9-11) Saudi Prince Bandar
bin Sultan, former Ambassador to the US, present Saudi national security
advisor, and always Bush-family financial partner in Middle Eastern (read OIL)
affairs, through the Carlisle Group.
One potentially good thing that group of folks has done is
to bring Saudi Arabia and Israel together somewhat. Unfortunately the
“bringing together” seems much to do with countering Iran and its Shiite
proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon than it does in finding a fair settlement of
the Palestinian/Israel conflict. The long-term outcome of this
initiative? According to Martin Indyk, a Senior State Department official
in the Clinton Administration quoted by Mr. Hersh, it will be “a serious
Sunni-Shiite Cold War” (which, if Cheney has any say, could be turned to a hot
one at any time). Indyk holds that the White House does not seem to be
fully aware of the potential consequences of its new pro-Sunni policies.
I should think quite the opposite. Since the prospect for long-term
intra-regional conflict is the most predictable outcome of this particular
CheneyBush policy, I think that they know precisely that it is and indeed that
is their true goal.
CheneyBush are continually trying to stir things up with
Iran. Fortunately, the British tars who were seized by Iran last month
while they were on who knows what kind of mission – the Brits claimed
that they were looking for smuggled automobiles [!] --- have been freed.
Maybe they were in Iranian waters, maybe not. There is not much wiggle
room in the Shatt-al-Arab. It happens that according to Iraqi fishermen
([!], Justin Raimondo, www.antiwar.com,
3/27/07), they were indeed in Iranian territorial waters. Those
fishermen, out there every day, should know, one would think. And then
there is Commodore Nick Lambert of the Royal Navy, who was head of the UK
Foreign Office’s Maritime Section, 1989 – 1992 (Daily Mail, UK,
4-1-07). He said that at the best, the waters are in disputed territory,
and that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair faked the map that he showed to the
public to claim that they were definitely in Iraqi waters. But whatever
provocations there are, as I have said elsewhere (e.g., http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/052)
I don’t think that there will be an open, major US attack on Iran, regardless
of the sabre-rattling and regardless of the need of the Georgites for a massive
diversion from the failure of their Iraq policy, and --- you list it.
However, Mr. Hersh presents much evidence that CheneyBush
are planning for an indefinite low-level war on Iran, one that they have been
conducting for some years now, using armed Iranian opponents of the regime such
as a group known as the “MEK” and perhaps even US Special Forces. This
despite the fact that, as is well-known, Iran actually helped the US in the
early days of the Afghanistan incursion. They don’t like the Taliban
either. And they offered negotiations with the US back in 2003, when
their nuclear program wasn’t nearly as advanced as it is now. Their
earlier help has been ignored and their offer turned down. More evidence
of what the CheneyBush strategy really is: keep the pot boiling. If it
does boil over at some point, why hey, it’s not our fault. It’s the
bloody Sunnis, Shiites, Hezbollah, Iraqis, Iranians, Persian Army against the
“300” even, and what have you.
I did not know, and Mr. Hersh told me, that 90 percent of
Muslims worldwide are Sunni. The Shiites just happen to be concentrated
in places that are inconvenient for certain US interests (read OIL): Iran,
Iraq, Bahrain (interestingly enough) and Lebanon. (The Shiite/Sunni
conflict is always explained in terms of some 7th century dispute
over the Mohammed the Prophet Succession. It’s got to have some
political/economic basis to have persisted this long, but such analysis does
not appear in the Western press that I see, at least). However, for
my hypothesized CheneyBush interest in promoting Permanent War, they are
located in just the right place. An inter-Muslim civil war in the world’s
most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, would do them absolutely no good now,
would it? And believe me, if there were such an one, we would never hear
about it.
Further on in his article, Mr. Hersh tells us that the
Saudis are using radical Sunni organizations like the “Muslim Brotherhood” and
the “Salafis” to counter Shiite (read Iranian) influence in the region.
These are both terrorist organizations, that may have ties to al Qaeda.
But hey, they are “our” terrorists. So that makes them OK, doesn’t
it? And if there is continuing “terror” In the Middle East, that just
requires a continuing American presence there, doesn’t it? Ah, yes.
According to one of Mr. Hersh’s open informants, Walid Jumblatt, leader of the
Druze minority in Lebanon, the logical ally of any US move against Syria is the
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. Just a lovely bunch of Muslim extremists, but
they would be ours, even if our ally Egypt, which has fighting the MB for
years, would be very unhappy about that circumstance.
Mr. Hersh somehow managed to get an interview with the
Hezbollah leader in Lebanon, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. For one thing the
Sheikh confirmed the view of many observers that Hezbollah’s reason for picking
up two Israeli soldiers was not to go to war with Israel but simply to arrange
a prisoner exchange, which they had done on more than one occasion with Ariel
Sharon. Remember him? No dove. It happens that there have been
unsubstantiated reports that the Israeli operation against Southern Lebanon had
been in the planning stages for a year before the soldiers’
capture.
For better or for worse, the Sheikh’s comments support my
hypothesis about what the real CheneyBush Middle Eat policy is all about.
Quoting Hersh: “Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with
Israel to deliberately instigate fitna, an Arabic word that is used to
mean ‘insurrection and fragmentation within Islam.’ ‘In my opinion, there
is a huge campaign throughout the world to put each side up against the other,’
he said. ‘I believe that all this is being run by American and Israeli
intelligence.’ (He did not provide any specific evidence for
this.)“ In my view, the documentary evidence of the correctness of his
surmises is plain to see.
Finally, Mr. Hersh wrote about the reliance by CheneyBush on
clandestine operations, not reported to Congress at any level. In that
context he noted that two years ago there was a “lessons learned” conference on
the Iran-Contra Scandal. It was lead by Elliott Abrams, now Deputy National
Security Advisor, formerly a Scandal convicted felon, pardoned by --- you
guessed it --- GHW Bush. Since that time, Abrams has been, among
other things, President of the “Ethics and Public Policy Center” (!). In
his current position, he is in charge of the “global democracy strategy.”
Abrams has an absolutely fascinating view of what democracy is all about.
According to Hersh, “[o]ne conclusion [of the ‘lessons
learned’ conference] was that even though the Iran/Contra weapons supply
program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without
telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of
future covert operations, the participants found: ‘One, you can’t trust your
friends. Two, the CIA has got to be totally out of it [presumably the
non-torture branch of the CIA, that is]. Three, you can’t trust the
uniformed military, and four, it’s got to run out of the Vice-President’s
office’ --- a reference to Cheney’s role [this time around, that is], the former
intelligence official [who was a principal source for Hersh] said.” (One
might note that the Vice-President during Iran-Contra was none other than GHW
Bush. But that’s another story.) Yes, indeed, there’s a view of
democracy held by the man who is responsible for the CheneyBush “global
democracy strategy” that is indeed original, don’t you think? And it is
quite a policy/program that has been put together under that rubric.
Which brings us right back to the hypothesis here (and
elsewhere) presented. Cheney is running this thing, and the thing has
nothing to do with reaching end-points-on-the-ground, even military ones.
It has everything to do with creating and maintaining Permanent War. At
least that’s my view.