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Palestine Open Thread 2024-156
News & views related to the war in Palestine …
Of interest:
IAF attack helicopter pilots recount operations on October 7 in detail – Ynetnews
One of them had a trailer attached to a tractor carrying nine hostages from the kibbutz toward Gaza. I don’t know what the pilot could see from the air, but he opened fire at the tractor and hit the terrorists, but one of the hostages, Efrat Katz, was hit and killed by the fire.
… This order continues. “Enemy forces must not be allowed to retreat into Gazan territory and any such attempt must be stopped at any cost.” Another part of the order reads: “There must be no passage into Israeli territory and citizens must not be allowed to enter the area in the Gaza Strip.” Did this constitute a hint at the Hannibal Directive, i.e. the possibility of also hitting hostages?
Ilan Pappé – The Collapse of Zionism – NLR
We are witnessing a historical process – or, more accurately, the beginnings of one – that is likely to culminate in the downfall of Zionism. And, if my diagnosis is correct, then we are also entering a particularly dangerous conjuncture. For once Israel realizes the magnitude of the crisis, it will unleash ferocious and uninhibited force to try to contain it, as did the South African apartheid regime during its final days.
An Annihilation Discourse Has Taken Over Israel (archived) – Haaretz
Calls for Israel to launch a nuclear attack on Iran by historian Benny Morris and many others, including those on the left, is the continuation of a strategy of vengeance that would destroy everything. We must take to the streets and protest, while we still can
…
Who’s in charge in the U.S.?
Here in the U.S. and around the world, we’re hearing people ask “If Biden’s ‘not all there’ – who is running the U.S.?”
Answer: the same people that have been running the U.S. for the past 30 years. You remember them, right? The “Deep State”?
Someone will surely point out that there’s a lot of jockeying among the key players of the Deep State. “Isn’t the fact that the debate was scheduled so early in the year evidence that one (powerful) faction is trying to Dump Biden Now?”
Yes, there certainly is jockeying among the factions. But Biden’s game is up (“outed as not-there”), and it doesn’t matter much who replaces him. And it doesn’t matter much whether Trump or Biden-substitute wins in November.
There’s a long-running process that is gradually grinding to an end, and that end is just a few years away. If the Israel-Hezbollah war actually happens, the end-of-era moment may just be months away.
What’s the “long-running process” you speak of, Tom?
Allow me to offer a little context:
One of the major, possibly _the_ major force within the Deep State is, of course, the NeoCons, who seek worldwide, total dominance. NeoCons advocate for the divine right of the Exceptional. The other, related-but-narrower in scope force are the Zionists. Their brand of Exceptionalism centers on Israel.
The NeoCons and the Zionists have taken over most of the Deep State. The big pools of money, the control of CIA, Dept of State, Dept of Defense, Dept of Homeland Security, much of the media, a good bit of the finance industry, and a lot of the U.S. military-industrial complex are operated and owned by NeoCons and Zionists. How did that happen?
Hark back a few years to 1997 – just a few years after the first Iraq war (1991), and two years before 9-11 (2001).
In 1997 PNAC was founded. You may remember PNAC: it’s the Project for the New American Century . PNAC developed a military and political road map for Western domination of the world. PNAC’s founding members include many U.S. government officials – presidents, Defense department heads, State Department officials … and many Zionists, Military Industrial Complex key players, and so forth. If you follow the link above, scroll down to where the founding members are named, you’ll recognize … a lot of names. Who’s the Deep State? It’s mostly these people. The names have changed since 1997, but the current Deep State players are the ideological descendants of these PNAC founders.
The PNAC was a gamble: the U.S. must snuff out all competitors before they get powerful enough to cause trouble for the U.S. Can the job be done before the “others” – the “not-chosen” – are able to defend themselves?
Well, 25 years later, a whole lot of “snuffing out” got done, didn’t it?
The PNAC/Exceptionalism concept resulted in the destruction of Iraq, Libya, and Syria, Afghanistan, and more recently Ukraine. Russia and Iran were economically repressed for decades. The economy of the E.U. was degraded – a lot. The U.S. spent $650-850 billion a year just for the Defense budget between 1997 and 2024 (inflation adjusted).
That’s what the West gambled – spent – in order to maintain control over the rest of the world. That is – spent so far; the spending isn’t done yet.
Recall that PNAC is heavily staffed with Zionists. Zionists care about Israel, and so when the wrecking ball of mid-East destruction was loosed via 9-11, Israel-first Zionists made sure Iraq got squashed. Iran was in the cross-hairs, as was Syria. These were Israel’s enemies in the mid-East, and 9-11 provided the opportunity to ruin those enemies: Iraq and Syria were wrecked, and Iran was economically suffocated for decades.
But somehow the “others” – led by Russia and China- rallied, and after 25 years of war, PNAC – and the who and what it represents – has nearly exhausted itself.
The West bet, and paid, all those lives (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran, Afghanistan), all that money ($650 -$800 Billion / year, just for U.S. Defense budget), the welfare of the E.U. (economy severely compromised) and a great deal of the West’s credibility and trust … that’s spent, or killed, or ruined.
Yes, some grifters made out big – that much got done, and well. The ideologues and the grifters formed an unstoppable symbiotic force that lasted for decades.
Until now. We’ve arrived at the Last Act of the play.
The penultimate scene of the PNAC play is this incipient war in Palestine. This is the last possible prize the PNAC-cabal can hope for.
But there’s a catch: this last prize … is existential for the Exceptionalists.
If PNAC – the concept and the political fealty to it here in the U.S. – if PNAC can’t deliver Israel’s dominance (not just safety, but dominance) in the mid-East, then the concept of Western Exceptionalism dies, right then, and right there.
The Israel war is going to lose it all – and certainly not just for Israel. It’s going to lose it for the West, for the U.S, and most of all for the Exceptionalists.
If you’re hoping for a major change in the world politics, you may very well get your wish, and sooner than many expect.
Posted by: Tom Pfotzer | Jul 4 2024 18:28 utc | 40
Ilan Pappe’s analysis that b has linked (Ilan Pappé – The Collapse of Zionism – NLR)is excellent and should be widely read.
There is no question,for me at least, that Israel can not survive the inevitable consequences of its Zionist origins, racist nature and aggressive, expansionist, criminal practice. No state and society of such a nature can exist too long, measured in historical time, not human lifetime.
Pappe rightly points to the dangers inherent in the decomposition, implosion and, or destruction of a colonialist, supremacist state creation, in Israel’s case a nuclear armed one where in the public sphere lunacy reigns.
He doesn’t mention the additional danger coming from Israel’s powerful supporters,financiers and handlers – the US, UK, EU and the exploitative, monied interests they represent.
In the extreme complexity of events unfolding in and around Palestine, all at a time of radical changes in the world, it is crucial, in my view, to support the Palestinian resistance and heroic liberation struggle, genuinely, and in every way, so that the Palestinians can win back their land, their freedom, the ability to live as dignified human beings, and so that they can take their rightful place among the peoples of the world.
It is essential to support the Palestinian right to self-determination on the territory of historic Palestine, from the river to the sea, so that Muslims, Christians and Jews can live there in peace and arrange their affairs as they are best able to do.
Maybe one day they can live in brotherhood and unity. The rest of the world should help them, sincerely, without calculation, to achieve that.
Only such a solution in Palestine is a solution to ‘the Palestine question’, the greatest injustice and crime against a people in modern times and the most malignant symptom of a world order now shaking violently under the weight of its catastrophic results.
Palestine is the key to a new, hopefully better, more humane, just and peaceful system of global relations that the vast majority of people on our planet want and need.
Palestine is, hence, not only important for the Palestinians, it is also important for each one of us and all of us together.
That is all the more why the Palestinians should be supported. When the Palestinians are free, freedom for all will be (more) possible.
Posted by: JB | Jul 4 2024 21:25 utc | 57
@Tom_Q_Collins 77
“Except that I’d add in that if what I’ve read about the “Samson Option” (to repeat, stated in non-official capacity by historians and the like) is true, then it’s not just “regional” – allegedly European capitols would be targeted in what you’ve termed a ‘countervalue’ gambit.”
indeed – see e.g. Chomsky´s online archive:
https://chomsky.info/199112__/
“Middle East Diplomacy: Continuities and Changes
Noam Chomsky
Z Magazine, December, 1991”
“(…)
If US interests are reassessed and Washington decides to press Israel beyond what its leadership would accept, Israel does have certain options, despite its extreme dependency on the United States. The nature of these options has been the topic of considerable discussion within Israel. Writing about the matter almost 10 years ago, I quoted Aryeh (Lova) Eliav, one of Israel’s best-known doves, who deplored the attitude of “those who brought Samson complex’ here, according to which we shall kill and bury all the Gentiles around us while we ourselves shall die with them.” Others too regarded the greatest danger facing Israel as the “collective version” of Samson’s revenge against the Philistines, recalling Prime Minister Moshe Sharett’s diary entries from the 1950s, in which he recorded the “preaching” of high-level Labor party officials “in favor of acts of madness” and “the diabolical lesson of how to set the Middle East on fire” with “acts of despair and suicide” that will terrify the world as “we go crazy,” if crossed. Israel’s nuclear power, well-known to US authorities for many years, renders such thinking more than empty threats. Writing in 1982, three Israeli strategic analysts observed that Israel’s nuclear capacity included missiles able to reach “many targets in southern USSR,” a threat — real or pretended — that may well be aimed primarily at the United States, putting US planners on notice that pressures on Israel to accede to an unwanted political settlement could lead to an international conflagration. The reasoning was explained further in the Labor party journal Davar, reporting Israel’s reaction to the Saudi peace plan of August 1981, with the “signs of open-mindedness and moderation” that the government of Israel regarded as a serious threat. Israel’s response was to send military jets over the oil fields, a warning to the West of Israel’s capacity to cause immense destruction to the world’s major energy reserves if pressed towards an unwanted peace, Davar reported.37 The world has changed since, but Israel’s “Samson option,” as Seymour Hersh calls it in a recent book, remains alive.
(…)”
https://chomsky.info/20080806/
“All options on the table?
Noam Chomsky
Khaleej Times, August 6, 2008”
“(…)
Israel’s nuclear weapons may well harm its own security, as Israeli strategic analyst Zeev Maoz persuasively argues. But security is often not a high priority for state planners, as history makes clear. And the “Samson complex,” as Israeli commentators have called it, can be flaunted to warn the master to carry out the desired task of smashing Iran, or else we’ll inflame the region and maybe the world.
The “Samson complex,” reinforced by the doctrine that “the whole world is against us,” cannot be lightly ignored. Shortly after the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which left some 15-20,000 killed in an unprovoked effort to secure Israel’s control of the occupied territories, Aryeh Eliav, one of Israel’s best-known doves, wrote that the attitude of “those who brought the ‘Samson complex’ here, according to which we shall kill and bury all the Gentiles around us while we ourselves shall die with them,” is a form of “insanity” that was then all too prevalent, and still is.
US military analysts have recognised that, as Army Lt. Col. Warner Farr wrote in 1999, one “purpose of Israeli nuclear weapons, not often stated, but obvious, is their ‘use’ on the United States,” presumably to ensure consistent U.S. support for Israeli policies — or else.
Others see further dangers. Gen. Lee Butler, former commander-in-chief of the US Strategic Command, observed in 1999 that “it is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East, one nation has armed itself, ostensibly, with stockpiles of nuclear weapons, perhaps numbering in the hundreds, and that inspires other nations to do so.” This fact is hardly irrelevant to concerns about Iran’s nuclear programmes, but is off the agenda.
Also off the agenda is Article 2 of the UN Charter, which bars the threat of force in international affairs. Both US political parties insistently proclaim their criminality, declaring that “all options are on the table” with regard to Iran’s nuclear programmes.
Some go beyond, like John McCain, joking about what fun it would be to bomb Iran and to kill Iranians, though the humour may be lost on the “unpeople” of the world, to borrow the term used by British historian Mark Curtis for those who do not merit the attention of the privileged and powerful.
(…)”
Posted by: AG | Jul 5 2024 4:43 utc | 83
“Who’s in charge in the U.S.?”
@Tom Pfotzer | Jul 4 2024 18:28 utc | 39
One who attempted to shed some more light on the issue provided
an interesting piece ‘The Brittish link I’.
Written by the swedish blogger Klas Sandberg in 2007
(Auto-translated)
“The march against war was led by America’s neoconservatives, of that there can be no doubt. But they always had considerable support from a strong British delegation. They were there as researchers (Bernard Lewis, Nile Gardiner and Niall Ferguson). They worked there as columnists such as Sebastian Mallaby, (reinforced with some Canadians such as Michael Ignatieff, David Frum and Charles Krauthammer). And many, many secondary abilities.
A question arises.
Is there or was there a British equivalent to America’s neoconservatives? The answer could be both yes and no. The similarity is that, just like in the United States, there is a group of intellectuals who would like to bring about something that closely resembles a colonial renaissance. As in the US, they are not elected politicians but rather writers and debaters. Like their American counterparts, they are militarists who have never been to war or served as soldiers.
There are differences too. While neoconservative Americans have significantly increased resources for their lobbying work such as large funds, their own think tanks, newspapers, magazines and book publishers, their British like-minded people have had to make do with what was offered. They had to try to publish their texts in existing newspapers, their books in regular book publishers.
Moreover, the bulk of the British public could generally contain their fascination with their positions. As a result, many of them have instead cast their eyes across the Atlantic for both extra book sales and positions as pretend researchers at conservative think tanks.
They would mutually support and strengthen each other. British imperial nostalgics found new opportunities on the other side of the Atlantic.
American neoconservatives, on the other hand, liked to hear their opinions and arguments repeated in a British accent.
The first major figurehead was the writer Paul Johnson.
Originally he was a leftist intellectual. At the end of the 1970s, he changed sides with thunder and crash. Became a Tory supporter and eventually Margret Thatcher’s friend and confidant. In an interview, he boasted of being the one who, together with Thatcher, broke the British trade union movement. (“I advised her with that, and we solved the trade union problem in this country pretty well.”)[ii]
It was in 1983 that Paul Johnson made his big contribution with the book Modern Times. A Study of Twentieth Century History.
What was so remarkable about it?
The answer is that he thus gave conservatism and in particular the emerging Republican backlash movement in the United States its own history. Sure there had been before but Johnson’s version was readily available and popular. The importance of that cannot be overstated. If you want to start an ideological movement, measure 1A is to acquire, and maintain, your own history writing. One where the entire history of the world is explained in a way that makes one’s own actions appear in an explained light.
The historiography IS the worldview It was there that it was proclaimed that conservatives were victims of a historical injustice. Constantly opposed by all-powerful “liberal elites”.
What else did he think? Everything was better before, in short. Ideally, the whole society should go back to the nineteenth century economically, politically and economically. Paul Johnson vividly lamented the dissolution of the British Empire. Ghandi was compared to Hitler.
In addition, Paul Johnson became Thatcher’s self-appointed history teacher. Johnson regarded her as quite ignorant at first but when she left she “knew everything”. Towards the end of her career and after her retirement, Margaret Thatcher increasingly began to make small noises about how the British Empire was a wonderful institution and that it was a shame that it was broken up.
It was during the 1980s that the two murky pools, British imperial nostalgia and America’s neoconservatism, began to flow together. Both wanted, each for their own reasons, to push politics in the direction of nineteenth-century colonialism.
Through Thatcher’s mediation, Johnson got a job at the think tank American Enterprise Institute, where he worked during the 1980s.
That institute is the stronghold of the neoconservative movement. Paul Johnson became good friends with several of the neoconservative leaders.
By early 1990, new opportunities had begun to loom for Paul Johnson. In the book “The birth of the modern” he spoke of an alliance between the English-speaking nations to dominate the world, yes he tried, through a frantic twisting and turning of all the evidence, to prove that they always cooperated and were favored. The effect is almost a little strange because in the same chapter he tells about the second of the two wars that the USA and Great Britain fought.
According to American journalist Mickey Herskowitz, the decisive impetus for what was later called theatrical micromilitarism came from the Falklands War. According to Herskowitz, Bush’s election advisors were completely fascinated by the triumphant scenes from the end of the war. They were “… completely spellbound by the scenes of the (British) troops coming home, the ships, how people threw flowers at Thatcher and how she got a standing ovation in Parliament and made those magnificent speeches”.
The lesson went home. War could give a politician a serious vitamin injection. Vice President-to-be Dick Cheney, then serving in the Reagan administration, summed it up: “Start a small war. Pick a country that you can justify jumping on and going to invade”. [iii]
The Falklands War may have appeared as a brilliant success but as far as Britain was concerned it did not bring about a renaissance. On the contrary. The decline of the British Empire continued. On the contrary, shortly after the Falklands War, Thatcher was forced to sign an agreement with China to hand over Hong Kong, the last significant remnant of the Empire.
Victory or defeat did not matter. Dominating some strategically important parts of the world was simply not in Britain’s power anymore.
The Empire seemed to be dead and buried.
But the idea lived on.
Paul Johnson was old, but by the time he scaled back his business in the 1990s, he had done a lot of important work. The bulk of British public opinion was still not tickled but he had influenced important parts of the establishment. There were not many of them, but they were strategically placed in both politics and the university system. Above all: apart from a crowd of second-rate writers, he had received a full-fledged successor.”
That article was followed by ‘the British Link II’
Posted by: petergrfstrm | Jul 5 2024 6:42 utc | 87
Continuing quoting Klas Sandberg’s articles
The British Link: II, A Dream Come True
It was in early 2002 that the definitive evidence came that Britain would end up siding with the US in the war against Iraq, whether there were legitimate reasons for doing so or not.
There was a group of Brits who worked for almost 20 years to prepare the ground for this moment. They had slowly processed public opinion and they had whispered in the ears of those in power.
At last their moment had come.
The group of British imperial nostalgics has been active on two fronts. For one thing, they have strengthened the efforts of the neoconservatives in the United States. On the one hand, they strove to push Britain in the same direction. In the last years of the twentieth century, the British imperial nostalgics had acquired a new figurehead.
Niall Ferguson is a forty-year-old Scottish economic historian. By his own admission, he grew up bathed in a golden twilight of imperial nostalgia, devouring old short stories about British heroes in tropical helmets, waxed mustaches and breeches beating the wits out of the natives. For a while in the 1960s, he lived on a plantation in Kenya, which had only become independent shortly before but where the old colonial spirit was still in the walls.[i]
Then he became a student.
He then became a researcher in economics and history.
Then he began to construct business economic reasons why the colonial empires should be restored.
One can note: the issue of spreading democracy was mentioned only in passing and without much interest in Ferguson as in Paul Johnson. Instead, most of the arguments are about establishing control and securing opportunities for investment.
It would have stopped there had it not been for Ferguson stepping out of the pure world of research and establishing himself as a celebrity intellectual. A British intermediate between Peter Englund and Herman Lindkvist. He wasn’t content with writing thick bookends, no Niall Ferguson wrote best-selling history books, produced TV series and in these he increasingly turned to claiming that the British Empire had been an excellent institution. That the natives were happy, it was economically sustainable. It collapsed due to some regrettable mistakes in the twentieth century but these should be correctable again.
“Should” tended to be replaced by a “could” which in turn solidified into a “shell”.
He had what he thought was an ideal candidate to create the new empire; United States.’
Britain’s chances of once again dominating the world were less than microscopic, but a Britain linked with the US…
For the longest time, the idea appeared to be a preoccupation, but in the last years of the twentieth century, a series of events would help to remove the mental brake pads. The Cold War ended. The United States no longer had an equal rival. While Europe suffered one economic crisis after another, America carried out one frivolous intervention against thoroughly inferior adversary after another, against Grenada, against Panama, against Iraq, Yugoslavia, and slowly, slowly, the mental climate began to change.
In the early years of the twentieth century, American elites became increasingly fascinated by the idea of establishing an empire. According to some observers, it was precisely Niall Ferguson who introduced the idea. Donald Rumsfeldt became so interested that he ordered a proper investigation into the conditions for such a thing to work.
Ferguson lured them. At the beginning of the 21st century, the United States was in fact in the same golden position as Great Britain after the Napoleonic Wars, with military bases and spheres of interest all over the world, he explained. A proper world empire was the next, simple, logical, alluring stage. All it took was one decisive step.
A common counter-argument is usually that “there are no American colonies”. It was apparently not a formal colonial empire that haunted Ferguson. Iraq would not be occupied like the Victorians occupied African jungles. In one of his books, Ferguson instead recommended the British handling of Egypt as a suitable model. From the British invasion in 1882 until the Suez crisis in 1956, the country was formally independent but in practice a British vassal state.
The same things should happen in Iraq.
Niall Ferguson thought it was a very clever arrangement. According to Ferguson, planned hypocrisy would be the best way to establish and run the new empire. He noted with glee the 66 promises the British issued to withdraw during 72 years of occupation.[ii] Of course, of course, none of it was meant seriously.
The idea was presented on glossy paper and with color pictures in the book “Empire”. A richly illustrated, sunny chronicle of the British Empire which he rounded off with a small exhortation to the United States to found the new Anglophone Empire.
He was rather immediately invited to present his views to the then US Secretary of State Colin Powell and to start working at both Harvard and various think tanks.[iii]
Two thoughts strike the reader.
First: by then the American elites were on board. The idea of an empire was becoming increasingly attractive to them as well.
The second thought is that Ferguson’s fate may provide a hint as to why so many, both British and non-British, have been eager to support the idea of American empire. Taking the US side can be very, very profitable, whether it’s an up-and-coming celebrity academic, like Ferguson, or heads of state. An example of the latter is the former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, whose advisers after the election defeat were seen in the United States completely swarmed by neoconservative Americans who suggested one or the other mind course job at various American universities for the dethroned Aznar.[iv]
As I said, Niall Ferguson had quite immediately received a series of job offers from American universities, despite the fact that there must have been several football teams with British researchers who had better credentials than him. It may be worth remembering that of all that Ferguson has published, only “The House of Rothschild” has been praised by fellow researchers. Another thing that the Americans in their delight missed was that Ferguson is first and foremost an economic historian, not an expert on either colonial history or warfare.
A more shadowy figure in this context was Tony Blair’s foreign policy advisor Robert Cooper. About him, most of all you can learn that he is a diplomat and is said to be Tony Blair’s foreign policy oracle. And that he was clearly influenced by Paul Johnson and Niall Ferguson’s arguments.
Cooper advocated dividing the world. A group of nations, which he called postmodern, would keep peace among themselves. They would respect all agreements between themselves, but other nations were considered to live in the “jungle” and vis-à-vis other nations the “law of the jungle” would prevail.[v]
In other words: the “postmodern” or “civilized” states would have no qualms about either breaching agreements or wars of aggression against the nations that were considered to be lingering out in the “jungle”.
Niall Ferguson quoted Cooper with great approval in his book “Empire”. [we]
His and Paul Johnson’s lesson had gone home with the ruling elites at last. It was a foregone conclusion that Britain would end up siding with the United States when it came to invading Iraq.
Imperial nostalgia had begun to take hold among British Labor politicians. Gordon Brown, Tony Blair’s intended successor declared that “We should be proud […] of the Empire. The time when Britain has to apologize for its colonial past is over”.
—
Probably historians of the future will argue endlessly about when the turning point came. Perhaps it was in the autumn of 2003 or after the first siege of Fallujah in April 2004 or when unrest definitely spread to the British occupation zone in September 2005.
Sometime during that period, it began to become apparent that the United States and its coalition had no reasonable prospect of establishing a lasting American sphere of influence in Iraq.
Instead of a renaissance for the Empire, the invasion of Iraq began to look more like the last gasp of the British Empire.
And the beginning of the decline of the American superpower.
In the fall of 2005, the British troops in Basra were also under increasing pressure from Shiite militias. A British colonel wondered gloomily if the whole story was not in danger of ending with the British army in Basra being forced to withdraw to Iran to be interned there. The whole operation was, in his opinion, “a right rollickin cock-up”[vii]
According to former Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon, both Tony Blair and his ministers were “shocked” and dismayed by the level of “fanaticism” in Iraq. [viii] Contacts with the Americans mostly consisted of a series of behind-the-scenes arguments about whose fault it was.
To make matters worse, the British found that they had great difficulty getting their points across in Washington. The dream that London could become the second city in the new empire lived on a low flame. Instead, Tony Blair had been turned into a piece of props. Something that was rolled out by Bush’s side before the American public every time the American president needed to appear statesmanlike.
Niall Ferguson made one last attempt to gas himself and his readers in 2004.
In the book Colossus, he again went through all the reasons for “Liberal Empires”, literally wallowing in statistics. The biggest problem, in his opinion, was that the United States did not approach the work with a more imperialist attitude.
His cynicism is completely undisguised.
The key to the US Army’s inability to control Iraq was the lack of manpower. Ferguson thought the solution was simple:
“If you add up the number of illegal immigrants, unemployed and convicts, there should be more than enough raw material for a major American army”[ix]
In his opinion, re-introducing conscription would not be a major problem as long as the conscriptions were “targeted” correctly. Another untapped source he considered the conscript armies of Europe. If they were not to be deployed to support the American efforts, he said he had “difficult to see what those soldiers are for”.[x]
Well, the solution to all the problems is apparently simple. Throw in illegal immigrants, the unemployed, welfare cases and European conscripts in large numbers (and to allow themselves to be slaughtered in large numbers) and the US Army’s manpower crisis should probably be solved.
At the same time, a new opportunity has begun to loom on the horizon.
Iran.
Both Paul Johnson and Niall Ferguson seem to have perked up a bit at the thought of a final Anglo-American Ardennes offensive in the Middle East. Ferguson has painted a stark scenario of all the calamities that can happen if you neglect to clamp down on Iran.[xi]
According to Paul Johnson, he used to encourage fellow writers who got stuck by sending a small drawing of a rhinoceros. The call was not to think, but to simply attack blindly and continue until you won. Did US President George W Bush have the same disposition?
Paul Johnson hoped so.[xii]
Posted by: petergrfstrm | Jul 5 2024 6:44 utc | 88
@ steven t johnson | Jul 4 2024 19:14 utc, re: “who runs the U.S.?”
Steven: all your points are valid, imo. Additively, those realities dictate that the policy selected, which as you pointed out meets the needs of the people with big pools of money at their disposal – they’ve selected and implemented the policy generally set out as PNAC’s charter. PNAC mainly focused on creating the military capacity to execute this plan, the corollary political and financial (control of money flows at the governmental level, incl the banks and the Fed) are contributory and well-designed policies.
The point of my post was to set out the direction and intent of that policy, and to show that the policy’s proponents are strategically and continuously installed at key control points in the U.S. (and UK) government, and that those policies have the intent to control the world’s polity and resources, and to achieve the religious goals of the Judeo-Christian Zionists.
The other point I was trying to make is that the policy has run its course. They gave it their best shot, but they weren’t able to contain the intent/capability of the rest of the world. Despite their best efforts, the prey escaped the trap, and the “prey” is now actively attacking both the trap and the people that built that trap.
The prey has become – if not entirely the predator – has become a very sophisticated, aware, capable and quite determined author and executor of its own future.
And the PNAC team – with all its tentacles and mechanisms – is now known, and at least militarily defeated, and mostly politically defeated, and in short order, if the Rest of the World continues to concentrate on building new trade and political relationships, the PNAC team will be economically defeated as well.
The Israel war, if the West is too blinkered to step back from it, will destroy what’s left of the PNAC-team’s fear-control. And that fear-control is the only thing left of the West’s leverage over the rest of the world.
==== and on to aristodemos | Jul 4 2024 19:23 utc … who said, among other great points:
So come out with it, already. No need to be shy. Both the highly invested Neocons (actually inclusive of Khazarian royalty descended Robert Kagan)…along with the rabid Zionists…take their orders…just like the Agency and even Little Georgie of Our $orrow$ does…from the highest and most secretive rabbinical control-mechanism; the Sanhedrin.
Ever since the “Babylonian Captivity” some 2,500 years ago…a mutually selected group of Chosenites have intergenerational labored for centuries to establish a total “Rules Based Order”. Yes, in a sense, they do lay it out there for all to contemplate. The current world struggle is between the very most Chosens (essentially not even considered by the lesser Chosens)…and the rest of the world, whom they accurately describe as “the Nations”, aka the Goyanim, translated as “cattle”.
The secretive cabal – what you term Khazarians – certainly play a major role in the astonishing capture of the U.S. policy. While key players of PNAC hark from those cultural origins, many don’t. And the amazing ascendancy of the Christian-Zionist force in U.S. politics is worth a look. In my estimation, the point of convergence between the Israel-first Zionists and the Christian Zionists occurred about the time of Reagan, and got its mojo on with GW Bush. Bush became “born again” in prep for his ascendancy to the presidency. This was not accidental. Carl Rove was a key figure in this transformation, and I believe the calculus was “what are the levers that can control a sufficient portion of the polity in order to get elected, after which a broader agenda (the actual agenda) can be implemented”. That lever was religion.
I also believe some sort of deal was struck between the Israel-Chosen types and the domestic Oligarchy in a sort of power-sharing agreement. The behaviors – the cooperation of media, the flow of campaign funds, the support of all things Israel, etc. that confluence really consolidated and became vastly more effective during the GWB administration, and that, of course is when PNAC made the scene, and provided the rallying point for the full two-part agenda: domination of the world, and establishing Israel’s long-term security and the Israel-firsters primacy at the top of the social-order.
So it’s not difficult to trace the trajectory of the confluence of activity and interest between the U.S. oligarch class, as it was in the 70s and 80s, and the very sophisticated, masterfully performed gradual infiltration and co-option of the U.S. political realm executed (mostly, but not entirely) by the secretive, well-hidden Israel-firsters.
It’s important to note that Israel may not necessarily be as important to these people as it seems. They are after power and control, and Israel has been discovered to be a great sheep’s-clothing. It’s a powerful lever, but it may not (and I think it’s not) be the core interest.
It may be more accurate to reduce them to their core interest, which is to control the world’s resources, and sit comfortably atop a system that maintains their role at the apex of the social order, and just discard all the rhetoric about Jewishness and Chosen-ness and so forth. That’s just rube-control levers. What they really want is ownership and control and power and wealth and top-status.
That’s what they want.
OK, fine. That’s what they want, and the Rest of the World understands that, and has been able to side-step their attempt at domination. The PNAC-team’s tools of control are well-known, mechanisms and strategies well-known, well-discussed, well-planned-against, etc. That’s what they talk about when they gather and negotiate @ SCO, BRICS, etc. meetings. Hopefully Pepe Escobar will write more about that in the years to come.
So the jig is up for Asia, and possibly for Africa as well. India … hmm, can’t tell yet.
That’s why we’re seeing the destruction of EU (keep it out of the hands of the Asians) and the circling of the wagons in the Anglosphere, and the (this is coming) the re-concentration of attention on the Americas, which is where the remaining resource pools are located which are still under sufficient control or close-access as to be … at least a lot easier to control. That’s still a worthwhile prize, and it’s accessible.
But even here in the Americas, especially in central and south America, the methods of control are fraying. That’s Miguel Jose’s beat, and he covers it well.
Posted by: Tom Pfotzer | Jul 5 2024 12:12 utc | 93
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