Israel: An ally from hell Saudi Arabia is a problem child, but not as bad as the Israelis.

…by Jonas E. Alexis, VT Editor

Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute has recently called Saudi Arabia “an ally from hell.” This is actually true, but Bandow’s title is obviously misplaced here, since we all know that Israel should be the first country to don that title.

Obviously Bandow cannot aptly put that label on Israel because Bandow is also writing for the American Conservative, a magazine which in 2017 fired Philip Giraldi, a former CIA analyst, for saying that “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars.” Giraldi was an American Conservative contributing writer for fourteen years.

Giraldi is no ordinary man. He graduated from the University of Chicago and has a Ph.D. in European History from the University of London. He was a CIA officer for eighteen years. He has appeared on Good Morning America, 60 Minutes, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the British Broadcasting Corporation, etc. He has also been a columnist here at Veterans Today.

Giraldi has been putting the Neocon war machine on a frying pan over the past decade or so, and they certainly don’t like him. He once exposed Jewish Neocon Michael Ledeen for forging fake evidence pretentiously showing that Saddam Hussein was buying uranium from Niger. Giraldi said:

“These people did it probably for a couple of reasons, but one of the reasons was that these people were involved, through the neoconservatives, with the Iraqi National Congress and Chalabi and had a financial interest in cranking up the pressure against Saddam Hussein and potentially going to war with him.”

Ledeen was one of the most vocal representatives for the idea of bombing Iran. He is also known for his book The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction. Ledeen is a former scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Neoconservative think tank where he worked with “Prince of Darkness” Richard Perle, and for over twenty-five years was actively involved in “the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA), an activist group that promotes a strategic alliance between the United States and Israel.”[1]

Central to Ledeen’s thesis in The Iranian Time Bomb is that Iran is responsible for September 11th. Not only that, Iran has always sought “to destroy or dominate” the United States![2] Moreover, for Ledeen, Iran is “the mother of modern terrorism.”[3]

Ledeen believes the best way to destroy “the mother of modern terrorism” is through war. In fact, Ledeen has been a proponent of the idea that peace can come through violent war. “I don’t know of a case in history where peace has been accomplished in any way other than one side winning a war [and] imposing terms on the other side.”[4]

Ledeen also maintains that Iran was the chief mine of terrorism, proven, says Ledeen, by court documents (even though he never tells where to find the court documents or what they actually said); in the same article, Ledeen even implied that the quicker the U.S. invaded Iran, the better.[5]

By invading Iran, Ledeen argued, the U.S. would eventually bring down “the mullahcracy, for they will keep killing our people and our friends.”[6] It is not surprising that Ledeen has been described as “one of the most dishonest and ludicrous jokes on the political scene.”[7]

As the United States moved toward war against Iraq, Ledeen claimed that countries that did not fully support the United States were allying themselves with terrorism. “The Franco-German strategy was based on using Arab and Islamic extremism and terrorism as the weapon of choice, and the United Nations as the straitjacket for blocking a decisive response from the United States,” he wrote, claiming that both France and Germany should be treated as “strategic enemies.”[8]

In response to this, Jonah Goldberg proposed the “Leeden doctrine,” which simply is that “every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”[9]

Once again we are back to perpetual wars, not only in the Middle East, but wherever the Jewish Neocons like Ledeen want them. As Ledeen himself declared, the level of casualties in the Iraq War are “secondary. It may sound like an odd thing to say. But all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war.”[10] This is not the first time Ledeen had turned to blatant fabrication in order to promote an ideology. As we have already seen, he was one of the people who promoted the falsehood that Saddam Hussein had bought uranium in Niger.[11]

In short, it is pretty well confirmed that people like Ledeen love perpetual wars in the Middle East. In fact, Neoconservatism, which is a Jewish ideological movement, has been proposing perpetual wars in the Middle East since its progenitors took over US foreign policy.[12]

So, when Philip Giraldi argued that “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars,” he was right on target. Giraldi is not saying that every single Jew in America is “driving America’s wars.” If a person happens to say that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, he is not saying that every single Japanese is responsible for the Pearl Harbor disaster. Giraldi specifically said after the article was published:

“Some individual American Jews and organizations with close ties to Israel, whom I named and identified, are greatly disproportionately represented in the government, media, foundations, think tanks and lobbying that is part and parcel of the deliberations that lead to formulation of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Inevitably, those policies are skewed to represent Israeli interests and do serious damage to genuine American equities in the region.

“This tilt should not necessarily surprise anyone who has been paying attention and was noted by Nathan Glazer, among others, as long ago as 1976.

“The end result of Israel centric policymaking in Washington is to produce negotiators like Dennis Ross, who consistently supported Israeli positions in peace talks, so much so that he was referred to as “Israel’s lawyer.” It also can result in wars, which is of particular concern given the current level of hostility being generated by these same individuals and organizations relating to Iran.

“This group of Israel advocates is as responsible as any other body in the United States for the deaths of thousands of Americans and literally millions of mostly Muslim foreigners in unnecessary wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. It has also turned the U.S. into an active accomplice in the brutal suppression of the Palestinians.

“That they have never expressed any remorse or regret and the fact that the deaths and suffering don’t seem to matter to them are clear indictments of the sheer inhumanity of the positions they embrace.

“The claims that America’s Middle Eastern wars have been fought for Israel are not an anti-Semitic delusion. Some observers, including former high government official Philip Zelikow, believe that Iraq was attacked by the U.S. in 2003 to protect Israel. On April 3rd, just as the war was starting, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz headlined ‘The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history…’

“My suggestion for countering the overrepresentation of a special interest in policy formulation was to avoid putting Jewish government officials in that position by, insofar as possible, not giving them assignments relating to policy in the Middle East.”

Giraldi’s assessment is confirmed by numerous scholarly studies. But guess what? The American Conservative has recently fired Giraldi for saying uncomfortable but true things. Giraldi writes:

“The Editor of The American Conservative (TAC) magazine and website, where I have been a regular and highly rated contributor for nearly 15 years, called me and abruptly announced that even though my article had appeared on another site, it had been deemed unacceptable and TAC would have to sever its relationship with me. I called him a coward and he replied that he was not.

“I do not know exactly who on the TAC board decided to go after me. Several board members who are good friends apparently were not even informed about what was going on when firing me was under consideration.

“I do not know whether someone coming from outside the board applied pressure in any way, but there is certainly a long history of friends of Israel being able to remove individuals who have offended against the established narrative, recently exemplified by the hounding of now-ex-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel who had the temerity to state that ‘the Jewish lobby intimidates lots of people’ in Washington. As Gilad Atzmon has observed one of the most notable features of Jewish power is the ability to stifle any discussion of Jewish power by gentiles…

“Three days later, another shoe dropped. I was supposed to speak at a panel discussion critical of Saudi Arabia on October 2nd. The organizer, the Frontiers of Freedom foundation, emailed me to say my services would no longer be required because ‘the conference will not be a success if we get sidetracked into debating, discussing, or defending the substance of your writings on.’ Last Saturday morning, Facebook blocked access to my article for a time because it ‘contained a banned word.’”

So, for Doug Bandow to come out and say that Saudi Arabia is an ally from hell while implicitly ignoring what the Israelis have been doing for the better part of sixty years is really stunning. Saudi Arabia, as we have repeatedly said in the past, is a problem child, but not as bad as the Israelis. Saudi Arabia is not getting at least 3 billion dollars every year from the United States; Saudi Arabia is not constantly manipulating US president to the point that even Bill Clinton had to tell Benjamin Netanyahu, “Who’s the fucking superpower here?”[13]

Bandow writes of Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud: “Rarely has a president so ostentatiously welcomed such a dictator to the White House, assiduously protected such a dictator from accountability, and effectively armed such a dictator to commit further villainy.”[14] Well, Bandow, doesn’t that statement apply to Israel as well? Hasn’t Netanyahu tried to manipulate US presidents from the beginning of time? Less anyone thinks this is far-fetched, listen to the mad man from Tel Aviv very carefully here:

“I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.”[15]

There you have it. There is no way for anyone to ignore this bold statement at all. Bandow has been writing fairly decent articles for years, but it is pretty easy to see that even people like him have been driven by fear—fear of being fired, of reprisal, or even fear of losing political prestige at places like the Cato Institute. Obviously Bandow realizes that Giraldi lost his job, and Bandow doesn’t want to commit the same mistake.

Bandow continues to say: “So bad is the Kingdom’s reputation among other governments that it was the only candidate nation denied membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council in the latest round of voting.”[16]

We would challenge Bandow to pick up scholarly studies such as Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and even Zionist studies such as Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001.[17] As has been pointed out by numerous journalists, Israel has “normalized torture of Palestinian prisoners.”[18] Human Rights Watch published an article in 2017 entitled, “Israel: 50 Years of Occupation Abuses.”[19] It stated:

“Fifty years after Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it controls these areas through repression, institutionalized discrimination, and systematic abuses of the Palestinian population’s rights…

“At least five categories of major violations of international human rights law and humanitarian law characterize the occupation: unlawful killings; forced displacement; abusive detention; the closure of the Gaza Strip and other unjustified restrictions on movement; and the development of settlements, along with the accompanying discriminatory policies that disadvantage Palestinians.”[20]

Bandow declares that “The crown prince’s greatest crime is the war in Yemen,” and we completely agree. But again what about Israel? What about what Carl Bernstein called “the Jewish Neocons” who gave us perpetual wars in the Middle East? Iraq? Syria? Afghanistan? Will Bandow write about this any time soon in the American Conservative?

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• [1] Jim Lobe, “Veteran Neo-Con Advisor Moves to Iran,” Asia Times, June 26, 2003.
• [2] Michael A. Ledeen, The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007), 19.
• [3] Michael Leeden, “Faster, Please,” National Review, April 1, 2002.
• [4]  Lobe, “Veteran Neo-Con Advisor Moves to Iran,” Asia Times.
• [5] Michael Ledeen, “Iran Connects the Dots: The Mullahs and the Global War on Terror,” National Review, June 9, 2006.
• [6] Ibid.
• [7]  Glenn Greenwald, “Stephanopolous and Ledeen: Together in the Most Accountability-free Profession,” Salon, November 4, 2009
• [8] Lobe, “Veteran Neo-Con Advisor Moves to Iran,” Asia Times.
• [9] Jonah Goldberg, “Baghdad Delenda Est, Part II: Get On With It,” National Review, April 23, 2002.
• [10] “Iraq: What Lies Ahead,” American Enterprise Institute, March 25, 2003.
• [11]  Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rosen, and Paul Grastris, “Iran-Contra II?,” Washington Monthly, September 2004.
• [12] For scholarly studies on this, see Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).
• [13] Aaron David Miller, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Netanyahu,” Foreign Policy, May 30, 2012.
• [14] Doug Bandow, “Saudi Arabia: The Ally From Hell,” American Conservative, November 27, 2020.
• [15] “Netanyahu In 2001: ‘America Is A Thing You Can Move Very Easily,’” Huffington Post, July 16, 2010.
• [16] Ibid.
• [17] Norman Finkelstein, Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018); Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: One World Publications, 2006); Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 (New York: Vintage Books, 1999).
• [18] Ben White, “Israel has normalised torture of Palestinian prisoners,” Middle East Eye, October 2, 2019.
• [19] “Israel: 50 Years of Occupation Abuses,” Human Rights Watch, June 4, 2017.
• [20] Ibid.

https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/12/12/israel-an-ally-from-hell/