>August 14, 2008
>The Lobby Like No Other Wants a War Like No Other
>
>by Michael Scheuer
>
>Having watched John McCain and Barack Obama resolutely pledge their allegiance – and their
>countrymen's lives and treasure – to the defense of Israel via AIPAC, the media, and personal
>meetings with Israeli leaders, it is worth asking what could possibly drive these men to so
>ardently commit America to participation in other people's religious wars. This question is
>particularly important today as the Bush administration and the Israel-firsters continue to
>push for an unprovoked U.S. attack on Iran.
>
>Let me say that I harbor no resentment over the actions of Israel's leaders. For more than 60
>years, they have knowingly made their country a pariah in the Arab and Islamic worlds, just as
>the Palestinians have made themselves pariahs in much of the West. This is, of course, the
>right of both parties, but neither seems to want to face the consequences of their decisions.
>With demographic realities and increasingly radical, well-armed Arabs making them panicky about
>Israel's security, Israel's leaders naturally to try to lock down as much U.S. support as
>possible. Having consciously – if unwisely – put all their eggs in the U.S. basket since the
>1973 War, Israel's leaders must do everything possible to protect their relationship with
>Washington.
>
>The U.S. invasion of Iraq, it seems, was not enough for the Israel-firsters. Now, according to
>Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a U.S.-launched war on Iran is needed because "the threat that the U.S.
>and Israel face from the Islamic Republic of Iran is today greater than ever." Though based on
>the fantasy that Ahmedinejad's tin-pot regime is a threat to the world's only superpower, this
>is a perfectly commonsense position for Israel and its U.S.-citizen backers in AIPAC to
>champion. In their view, U.S. wars with Muslims are the ultimate good for Israel. Recall, if
>you will, the perfectly accurate April 2008, words of Benjamin Netanyahu, likely Israel's next
>prime minister: "We [Israel] are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the twin
>towers and the Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq." These wars, Netanyahu said, have
>"swung American public opinion in our favor." How much more must Netanyahu and AIPAC believe
>that a U.S. war with Iran would add to this "swing" in Israel's favor?
>
>My own anger falls not on Israel, then, or on Palestine, for that matter; as I have written
>elsewhere, America would do just fine and would be better off without either or both. It falls
>rather on the lobbying efforts of AIPAC, that organization's blatant purchasing of fealty from
>U.S. politicians in both parties, and the media's obsequious parroting of specious canards
>about "Israel's right to exist" and "the duty of Americans to support an island of democracy in
>the Middle East."
>
>While few would question the right of AIPAC leaders to lobby U.S. politicians, legally bribe
>them with campaign contributions, or limit their right to speak as they please in public, not
>matter how scurrilous or libelous their words, I sometimes wonder if Americans have focused on
>what AIPAC lobbies for and what its acolytes in politics and the media support.
>
>It is a commonplace to say that lobbying is a pervasive activity in U.S. politics at all levels
>of government, especially at the federal level. People lobby for tax advantages for business or
>tax breaks for individuals; for the right to own guns or laws to ban them; for subsidies for
>agriculture or vouchers for private schools; for universal health care or smaller government.
>Across this diverse array of lobbyists there are two common threads: (A) None are working to
>push the United States to participate in other peoples' wars; and (B) All are arguing for
>things that will – from their perspective – improve America, whether by making it richer,
>better protected, more competently educated, healthier, freer, etc. The anti-gun lobby, for
>example, is no less confident than the NRA and its affiliates that they are working for the
>best interests of Americans. One or the other is wrong, but their activities are shaped by
>their perception of what is best for America.
>
>It is this last point that separates the lobbyists working for and with AIPAC – most of whom
>are U.S. citizens – from almost all other U.S.-based lobbyists. AIPAC does not lobby, bribe,
>and libel to make Americans and America better off. It lobbies solely, forthrightly, and
>cynically to make Israel richer, better protected, and able to do as it pleases in its
>relations with Muslim states. AIPAC makes no pretense of doing things meant to benefit America;
>rather, its members take pride in seeking a goal that runs directly counter to the economic
>welfare and physical security of almost all other U.S citizens by seeking to keep them involved
>in a religious war in which no U.S. national interest is at stake.
>
>Now, there are a few other similar anti-American lobbies – those for Armenia, Lebanon, Greece,
>etc. – but AIPAC is clearly primus inter pares in this dastardly group. And given that every
>AIPAC success is a net loss for U.S. security and the U.S. Treasury, it seems odd that our
>so-called political leaders take orders and funds from this fundamentally anti-U.S.
>organization. Odd or not, however, that is the reality. Senators Obama and McCain have become
>AIPAC poster boys, each strengthening his support for Israel over the course of the current
>presidential campaign. Obama's position, in fact, has changed so drastically in a pro-Israel
>direction that the Illinois senator appears to have no mind of his own on this issue. He has
>simply and obsequiously adopted the Democrats' traditional abject subservience to their small
>but powerful pro-Israel constituency.
>
>McCain is an Israel-firster of the deepest hue. Coached by Joe Lieberman – who argues there is
>a U.S. duty to ensure God's promise to Abraham about Israel is kept – McCain is now considering
>Republican Congressman Eric Cantor for his running mate. Rep. Cantor, needless to say, is eager
>to spend American blood and treasure to secure Israel. Speaking in Israel, Cantor pushed the
>same false assertion that is the staple of U.S. leaders in both parties. "What befalls
>Jerusalem," Cantor said, "threatens the security of the United States and its allies worldwide.
>That's because Jerusalem and Israel are Ground Zero in the global battle between tyranny and
>democracy, radicalism and moderation, terrorism and freedom."
>
>This, of course, is nonsense of a high order, and Lieberman and Cantor know it. Both men are
>committed to Israel as a religious idea, not because it has anything to do with U.S. security.
>According to Lieberman, "The rabbis say in the Talmud that a lot of rabbinic law is to put a
>fence around the Torah so you don't get near to violating it. Well, McCain has a series of very
>clear-headed policies toward terrorism and Islamic extremism [that put] extra layers behind his
>support for Israel." He also told a conference of Christians United for Israel that he was
>pleased they recognized it was America's duty to defend Israel, blithely lying to them that
>"President Washington and the Founding Fathers" would support America fighting Israel's wars.
>Cantor, playing to both the Israel-firsters and their U.S. evangelical allies, also has made
>clear where his primary loyalty lies:
>
>"Jerusalem is not merely the capital of Israel but the spiritual capital of Jews and Christians
>everywhere. It's the site of the First and Second Temples, which housed the Holy of Holies, and
>it's the direction in which we Jews face when we pray. This glorious City of David is bound to
>the Jewish people by an undeniable 3,000-year historical link."
>
>My own view is that if God promised Palestine to the Israelis, God is perfectly capable of
>keeping that promise, and America is no way committed to expend the lives of its
>soldier-children in a war over conflicting interpretations of God's word. The Israelis and the
>Muslims should be perfectly free to fight over whether Yahweh and Abraham or Allah and Mohammed
>are right, and Americans should be perfectly free to draw the correct conclusion, that the
>United States does not have a dog in this fight. In addition, there is a genuine constitutional
>question of church-state separation on this issue. Why should American taxpayers have their
>earnings and children's lives spent to defend a theocracy in Israel or, for that matter, to
>protect an Islamic theocracy in Saudi Arabia.? (Imagine the howls of protest and torrents of
>church-state separation rhetoric from the media and both parties if a congressman introduced a
>bill calling for the U.S. to designate that an amount equivalent to what's spent to protect
>Israel and Saudi Arabia be sent to the Vatican – a nation-state like Israel and Saudi Arabia –
>to improve its defenses against the now well-articulated threat from al-Qaeda and other Islamists.)
>
>Objectively, three realities are clear: (1) U.S. survival is not at stake in the Israeli-Muslim
>war; (2) the taxes of Americans should not be spent to defend theocratic states; and (3) holy
>books are insane tools to use as guides for U.S. foreign policy. In America, however, these
>realities lie unspoken because of the lobbying efforts of AIPAC and the pro-Israel mantras of
>the politicians it purchases with campaign contributions and promises of media exposure,
>including McCain and Obama. By their consistent anti-American actions, AIPAC and the U.S.
>politicians who do its bidding have fully validated the words of the real George Washington –
>not the figment of Washington painted by Joe Lieberman. "Against the insidious wiles of foreign
>influence," President Washington wrote in 1796, "the jealousy of a free people ought to be
>constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most
>baneful foes of republican government."