- Review of Stephen J. Sniegoski's 'The Transparent Cabal:
The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest
of Israel
- Enigma Editions - Norfolk, Virginia, 2008
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- Not a few honest political analysts have long recognized
the tight relationship between the Israel-U.S. partnership and the disastrous
Bush administration adventures throughout the Middle East, including
its backing for Israel's systematic oppression of the Palestinians. Stephen
Sniegoski has had the persistence to ferret out mountains of impossible-to-challenge
evidence that this Israel- U.S. connection is the driving force behind
virtually all Middle East decisionmaking over the last eight years, as
well as the political courage to write a book about it.
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- Sniegoski's new book demonstrates clearly how U.S. and
Israeli policies and actions with respect to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan,
Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the other Gulf states, and even
most recently Georgia are all tied together in a bundle of interrelated
linkages, each of which affects all the others. The right wing of Israeli
politics, the neoconservatives in the U.S. who strongly support Israel,
and the aging Israel lobby in the United States all have worked together,
and are still doing so, to bring about more wars, regime changes, and
instability, specifically the fragmentation of any Middle Eastern states
that might ever conceivably threaten Israel.
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- In addition, one purpose of such wars and other changes
is explicitly to intensify the discouragement of Palestinians as the
latter's potential allies are knocked off one by one, making it easier
for Israel, over time, to finish off the Palestinians. That's the theory.
Those who believe it is vital to improve the human rights situation and
the political outlook for the Palestinians must not only work to reverse
present Israeli policies, but it is probably more important that we in
the United States work even harder to reverse U.S. policies.
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- This is a long but quite splendid book. After a foreword
by ex- Congressman Paul Findley and an introduction by Professor of Humanities
Paul Gottfried, Ph.D., the text itself has 382 pages covering the entire
history of the neoconservatives from the 1960s to 2008. The author has
clearly spent untold hours reading all the writings he could find by not
only the top few neocons but also numerous others who are far less well
known but still important figures in the movement.
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- The neocons, by the way, are by and large not conspiratorial.
They prefer to write voluminously and act openly with respect to their
philosophies and actions. The word "transparent" in the title
of the book emphasizes this very point. On the other hand, the neocons
are also very skilled propagandists and are more than willing to spin
"facts" in many situations in ways that often do not leave readers
with an honest, unvarnished version of "truth."
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- Sniegoski states his own main argument as follows:
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- "This book has maintained that the origins of the
American war on Iraq revolve around the United States' adoption of a war
agenda whose basic format was conceived in Israel to advance Israeli
interests and was ardently pushed by the influential pro-Israeli American
neoconservatives, both inside and outside the Bush administration. Voluminous
evidence, much of it derived from a lengthy neoconservative paper trail,
has been marshaled to substantiate these contentions." [Page 351]
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- The author then points out that
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- " what was an unnecessary, deleterious war from
the standpoint of ["realists" in] the United States, did advance
many Israeli interests, as those interests were envisioned by the Israeli
right. America came to identify more closely with the position of Israel
toward the Palestinians as it began to equate resistance to Israeli occupation
with 'terrorism.' Israel took advantage of the new American 'anti-terrorist'
position. The 'security wall' built by the Sharon government on Palestinian
land isolated the Palestinians and made their existence on the West Bank
less viable than ever. For the first time, an American president put the
United States on record as supporting Israel's eventual annexation of
parts of the West Bank. Obviously, Israel benefited for the very reason
that the United States had become the belligerent enemy of Israel's enemies.
As such, America seriously weakened Israel's foes at no cost to Israel.
The war and occupation basically eliminated Iraq as a potential power.
Instead of having a unified democratic government, as the Bush administration
had predicted, Iraq was fragmenting into warring sectarian groups, in
line with the original Likudnik goal." [Pages 356-357]
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- And yet one more quote is in order here:
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- "Since one is dealing with a topic of utmost sensitivity,
it should be reiterated that the reference to Israel and the neoconservatives
doesn't imply that all or even most American Jews supported the war on
Iraq and the overall neocon war agenda. A Gallup poll conducted in February
2007 found that 77 percent of [American] Jews believed that the war on
Iraq had been a mistake, while only 21 percent held otherwise. This contrasted
with the overall American population in which the war was viewed as a
mistake by a 52 percent to 46 percent margin. [Nevertheless,] evidence
for the neoconservative and Israeli connection to the United States war
is overwhelming and publicly available. There was no dark, hidden 'conspiracy,'
a term of derision often used by detractors of the idea of a neocon connection
to the war. It should be hoped that Americans should not fear to honestly
discuss the background and motivation for the war in Iraq and the overall
United States policy in the Middle East. Only by understanding the truth
can the United States possibly take the proper corrective action in the
Middle East; without such an understanding, catastrophe looms." [Pages
371-372]
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- The reader will note that the above excerpts all come
from near the end of Sniegoski's book. Before reaching this point in the
book, you will be treated to informative and well-written chapters on
the origins of the neoconservative movement, the Israeli origins of the
United States' Middle East war agenda, and neocon planning against Iran,
as well as chapters entitled "World War IV" (a very important
chapter), and "Democracy for the Middle East." A particularly
important chapter on "Oil and Other Arguments for the War" argues
that oil was /not/ as important a reason for the 2003 U.S. invasion of
Iraq as was Israel.
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- This book is a veritable bible on the neocons -- and
a frightening one. Anyone who thought that neocon thinking and policymaking
had become passé with the political eclipse of the likes of Paul
Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith will be disquieted to find
that these individuals were only the tip of the iceberg and that on all
issues having to do with Israel neocon thinking lives on in policymaking
councils and is about to be passed on to the next administration, whether
it be Democratic or Republican.
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- _____
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- Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He
served as a National Intelligence officer and as director of the CIA's
Office of Regional and Political Analysis. Kathleen Christison is a former
CIA political analyst. She is the author of 'Perceptions of Palestine'
and 'The Wound of Dispossession'. They can be reached at kb.christison@earthlink.net.
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