When all else fails . . .

Ledeen: Neocon Critics are Antisemites


Kurt Nimmo
It is said Karl Rove once told Michael Ledeen to fax his "ideas" to him and these so-called ideas often became "official policy or rhetoric," according to the Washington Post.

Back in June, 2003, a few months into the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Jim Lobe, writing for the Inter Press Service, said Rove regularly consulted with Ledeen, to the horror of foreign policy veterans. In fact, Ledeen, according to Lobe’s sources, was the "only full-time international affairs analyst" consulting with Rove, who had Bush’s ear.

As the Baker Boys attempt to reign in the neocons, or so we are told, and the American people have turned against the Iraqi occupation, Michael Ledeen is as determined as ever to subvert the republic—or the few shreds that remain of the republic—and use it as Israel’s truncheon against Arab and Muslim enemies.

"If we continue to misunderstand the "regional war" kicked off by the neocons in the Middle East, if we remain locked in this fundamental error of strategic vision, we will endlessly respond to our enemies’ initiatives, playing defense in one place after another," writes Ledeen on his NRO blog. "Today in Iraq and Afghanistan, tomorrow in Lebanon, Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopea (sic) and Eritrea (that is the mullahs’ game plan), then in Israel and Europe, and finally here at home. We do not need intelligence agencies to know this, all we need to do is listen to our enemies, who announce it at the top of their lungs."

Of course, this is nonsense, more of the same Likudnik scare tactics employed repeatedly over the years to motivate the masses—that is, American masses, easily fleeced and bamboozled—to back Israel’s inveterate war against Arabs and Muslims.

For Ledeen, it is an easy jump from poverty-stricken Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Eritrea to Europe and the United States, never mind this is preposterous. America is not threatened by Islam. However, Israel is increasingly threatened by angry Arabs, and rightfully so. Israel remains a brutal racist state. Israel believes America needs to fight its bloody and interminable wars against the Arab and Muslim hordes, routinely characterized in cartoonish fashion. Michael Ledeen and the Israel First neocons are there to make sure this war, this brutality, is opened-ended, for a generation, maybe a hundred years or more, as promised.

However, for Ledeen, the problem is "our leaders may be so demoralized that we could just surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the realists and the antisemites desire. But that would only delay the reckoning, and ensure that the war will be far bloodier."

In other words, Bush is not doing what is expected of him, he has not attacked Iran, and he is losing Iraq and Afghanistan, presumably because he refuses to go whole hog in Nazi Blitzkrieg fashion, sort of like the German Wehrmacht in Poland and later the Soviet Union.

For Ledeen and the neocons, the problem here is that Bush is not Lord Kitchener, employing a merciless scorched earth policy against the Iraqis, destroying every last home and farm, leaving women and children homeless and starving in the open, as the British did to the Boers. Of course, for the Brits, this was a dismal failure, so they herded women and children into concentration camps where they died from starvation and disease in large numbers.

It is interesting, if not wholly predictable, that Ledeen call those of us who disagree with this madness "antisemites," although "realists" is more or less a compliment, because realism rules on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. My Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines realism as "the tendency to view or represent things as they really are," obviously a bad thing for the neocons, who apparently prefer unrealism, following polices that have no reference to concrete objects or specific examples, for instance the inexorable belief they can beat "insurgencies," that is to say resistance to occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, never mind the historical examples of Algeria and Vietnam, to name but two. Israel First neocons don’t do history.

It should not come as a surprise Ledeen calls the opposition, the "realists," antisemites, as this is the habitual response of Likudniks and Israel Firsters. Ledeen has attempted to remain above them, preferring the illusion of intellectual independence, more closely associated with Gabriele D’Annunzio (the subject of his doctoral dissertation), precursor of the ideals and techniques of Italian fascism. "D’Annunzian political style—the politics of mass manipulation, the politics of myth and symbol—have become the norm in the modern world," Ledeen has written (see The "Universal Fascism" Behind the Cheney Cabal, Jeffrey Steinberg).

For Ledeen and the neocons, and of course Karl Rove and his fax machine, "the politics of myth and symbol," resulting in "mass manipulation" of the American people, is all good for the tiny outlaw racist state of Israel. If you happen to look through the flimsy gauze of Ledeen’s rhetoric, see the real goals there and complain, you are of course an antisemite.

Soon enough, if the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith has its way, such antisemitism, that is to say disagreement with the neocons and their scorched earth policies at the behest of the racist state of Israel, will be illegal, indeed a punishable "hate crime," or rather thought crime.

Meanwhile, it seems Bush gets the message, regardless of the Iraq Study Group, sniffing a way out of the quagmire—or looking to set-up a shell game, anyway—and the complaints of the American people, who donate their family members and money to Israel’s dirty little war.

In Riga, Latvia, to bolster a floundering NATO effort in Afghanistan, Bush "under pressure to change direction in Iraq, said Tuesday he will not be persuaded by any calls to withdraw American troops before the country is stabilized," that is to say more Iraqis are killed and more depleted uranium spread around for the next few billion years. "Earlier Tuesday, Bush blamed the escalating bloodshed in Iraq on an al-Qaeda plot to stoke cycles of sectarian revenge, and refused to debate whether the country has fallen into civil war."

In other words, the plan is on schedule. "Jordan’s King Abdullah, hosting the Bush-al-Maliki summit, has warned that the new year could dawn with three civil wars in the Mideast—with one in Iraq added to those already ongoing in Lebanon and between the Palestinians and Israelis. The country is reeling from the deadliest week of sectarian fighting since the war began in March 2003," reports the Associated Press.

"There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of these attacks by al-Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal," declared the fantasist Bush, or rather his neocon handlers declared, as Bush is more or less an empty vessel, "unengaged and inscrutable," as former secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill has said.

Of course, we shall not retreat from al-CIA-duh, as it was specifically created to get a rise and scare small children.

Once again, the neocons rule the day, regardless of all the blithe nonsense pushed by the corporate media, who would have us believe the adults have taken over, sent on gallant white horses by Daddy Bush to save the day.

So long as the "al-Qaeda" villain can be effectively cited—and Ledeen presumably sends his talking point faxes to Bush’s brain, Karl Rove—and that exaggerated if not entirely fictional threat can be said to soon lurk the back streets of America, the Iraq project will continue for the foreseeable future, as engineered "civil wars," designed to render countries into ethnic and religious pieces, can go on indef, or until the damage is done.

Soon enough, it may be even smoother sailing for the neocons, that is if Congress enacts "hate," or criticizing Israel legislation. For as Michael Ledeen tells us, his enemies, the enemies of the Israel First neocons, are antisemites.

And there is no worse appellation, short of child molester or serial rapist.

Original article posted here.