My book review for "Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11"-- rejected by Amazon.com!
David Ray Griffin’s new book: 9/11 as yet another guilt trip for Christian Americans?
For the increasing number of those who have accepted the premise that the official account of who perpetrated the attacks of 9/11 is completely false, David Ray Griffin’s new book, Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11, asks the question: Where do we go from here?
The first half of the book is a summation of the evidence demonstrating that the official story of 19 Arab hijackers cannot be true, and that therefore “it was a “false-flag operation, orchestrated by domestic terrorists.” While many who have read Griffin’s previous books, The New Pearl Harbor and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, will readily agree that it was a false-flag operation, Griffin seems a bit hasty in assuming that it was carried out by “domestic” terrorists. Couldn’t they have been foreigners who had infiltrated American government institutions?
Griffin gives examples of false-flag operations by other countries, such as the 1933 Reichstag Fire in Germany, but he curiously omits Israel’s Lavon Affair of 1956, which would seem to be more compelling as it is an example of Americans being targeted with Arabs being set up as scapegoats, as was the case in the 9/11 attacks.
Regarding the collapse of the three World Trade Center buildings, Griffin notes that “foreign terrorists could not have secured access to the buildings to plant the explosives.” He suggests instead that “ federal officials...could have obtained access and would have had the means and motivation to bring the buildings straight down. They would also have had the ability to orchestrate a coverup, from the quick disposal of the steel and the planting of the evidence to the FEMA report to The 9/11 Commission Report to the NIST report.”
Here Griffin does not seem to be aware that many coverups are carried out by well-meaning officials who are only following orders, and who have been just as duped as the public as to the cause of an event. But on a more disturbing level, Griffin seems to not want to look too hard at who exactly planted those explosives. He concludes the section by stating, “the Bush-Cheney administration, and only it, had both the means and opportunity to bring about the attacks of 9/11.” That may be true in general; but it is as if Griffin is too eager to move on to his general thesis– that it is the drive for American Empire that is behind the attacks– and thus he does not want look too hard at the specific actors in the plot who might detract from that idea.
In the second section of the book, Griffin outlines the relationship of Palestine to the Roman Empire in the time of Jesus, and portrays Jesus as an activist against empire who, “in proclaiming the coming kingdom of God...was proclaiming an end to the present subservience of the people of Israel to the Roman Empire and its local collaborators” and who “challenged the payment of the tribute to Rome,” a most volatile issue. In this respect we Americans have every right to object to the comparison to Rome. Today it is the American taxpayer who pays a significant “tribute” to Israel, as well as significant payments to Israel’s neighbors such as Egypt which are understood to be in exchange for peaceful relations with Israel. Is there any record of the Roman Empire having such a relationship with any people? We might more accurately compare America today with the Gaul of Jesus’s day– a conquered province who are compelled to send not only monetary tribute to a foreign capital, but large numbers of sturdy and loyal soldiers as well to do the empire’s fighting in wars of the empire’s choosing. Griffin writes, “the motives behind this false-flag operation were imperial motives, oriented around the dream of extending the American empire...” True enough about the imperial part, but why does the expanding empire necessarily have to be an American one?
After a lengthy discourse on the existence of what he calls “demonic evil” associated with the politics of empire, Griffin concludes that “the attacks of 9/11...can be taken, I believe, as the chief revelation of our time. Not a divine revelation, to be sure, but the chief revelation of the demonic– of the extent to which it has taken control of the American government.” Demonic the attacks were indeed. But in assigning the blame to such a broad, fuzzy concept as “the American government” and on the faulty analogy of America as the new Rome, Griffin has taken the easy way out. Just as modern Americans are expected to unquestioningly accept responsibility for such events as slavery, the Nazi holocaust, and atrocities against Indians, it is here suggested that they should do the same for 9/11. That’s too bad for many reasons, but primarily because some of the real perpetrators of the attacks will be let off the hook, and will certainly strike again.
Whatever interpretation we have of the life of Jesus, we can all agree that he challenged those who held true power, and was thus tortured and killed. That example should inspire all– Christian or not– who want to find the truth behind 9/11.
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I promoted this to the front page for broader review.
I haven't read Griffin's new book, but I think andrewkornkven may have some valid criticism.
What does everybody else think?
I think DRG generally kicks ass, BTW.
griffin neglects israel's
griffin neglects israel's role in false-flag terror because he is a member of the presbyterian church, which gives israel more money than our government.
DREW IS AN ATC
This is a pretty good article review from a history major from the University of Wisconsin.
Here is what you don't know. Drew is an air traffic controller who suspiciously wasn't at work on 9/11.
Hmmmm????....
" That may be true in
" That may be true in general; but it is as if Griffin is too eager to move on to his general thesis– that it is the drive for American Empire that is behind the attacks– and thus he does not want look too hard at the specific actors in the plot who might detract from that idea."
If he had done that, it would only had been speculations. The only way to get details of the operation and to identify the specific actors in the plot.
Is to have a truly independent investigation with full access to all relevant material.
I think he uses vague terms
I think he uses vague terms like the "American Government" because we don't know the exact identities of the perpetrators at this juncture. All we can do at this point, is to narrow it down to the general government/corporate entities that had the means, motive, and opportunity to execute the plan. Only a truly independent investigation, with no predetermined agenda, can reveal the exact names of those involved.
David Ray Griffin is a natioal hero!
Had I not read his books, I would have not entered the truth movement, so I'm very much a fan. He feels the same folks that go to church and worship are in fact the same kind of people that , as a group, can stand up to the issue of the government's lie regarding 9/11. I will be at ground zero for the 5th, with t-shirt on and supporting the truth movement. I have also donated monies.
Excellent
This really is an excellent and insightful review. Great analogy to Gaul. Very scholarly precision.
It's disturbing and frustrating to me that it was rejected from the Amazon review section, when they leave in bullshit like: "dis iz teh best book and awesome Griffith tells it lik it is but he crazy mf" (the ever-present incoherent praise) or "DON'T READ THIS BOOK IT IS THE SAME OLD ZIONISTS-DID-IT ANTI-SEMITIC GARBAGE" (the obligatory hater-who-hasn't-read-the-book).
That a review as balanced and clearly expressed got rejected is highly suspicious...
I am heartened by the fact
I am heartened by the fact that this book has put 9/11 truth debate into the minds of many Christians for the first time. On a Christian forum that I go to, someone out of the blue put up a poll asking if 9/11 was an inside job. So far, its at around 30%.
News editor at The Watchman Report, www.watchmanreport.com, delivering 9/11 truth to the Christian community
Poor "Analysis"
The first major breakdown in analysis here is the assertion that the US is a client of Israel, rather than the reverse. The sole evidence mentioned is that the US gives billions of dollars a year to the Israeli government. Andrew then says this is "tribute and taxation" of a vassal state to the imperial power, Israel. But that's just ridiculous "reasoning". The US gives billions to Egypt, to Colombia, and to other states around the world; does that make any of them the imperial power? The purpose, rather, is to control and use the recipients of US largesse. Israel and Egypt, for example, are the "cops on the beat" in the Middle East, where they enforce American imperial control domestically and in the region. Witness the recent attack by Israel on Lebanon, quite evidently orchestrated by the US to attempt to further its designs on Syria and Iran.
The notion that the US was indeed caught offguard on Sep. 11 by agents of a foreign power, here Israel, is also ridiculous. A plausible case could be made, and has been suggested, that Israel was involved in the creation of the legends for the "Arab hijackers", and "ran" them as they say. But the "hijackers" could not have demolished he buildings, nor could the Mossad, unless the CIA and US military intelligence operatives employed them to do so, which of course is just a silly idea.
Unfortunately, the US public *is* responsible for what its own government and ruling class does. Only we can bring them down. Let's get real here, and get on with it.n
US and Israeli governments together did 9/11
We give money to Egypt because they support Israel. Israel and Egypt are by far the two largest recipients of US aid. Colombia gets much less, that mainly has to do with drug war shenanigans (primarily the US supporting drug lords).
And what does the US stand to gain from Israel attacking Hezbollah? Hezbollah only exists because Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and massacred 10,000 civilians.
And the idea that we're using Israel to "further our designs on Syria and Iran" is also absurd - the only "interest" we have in fighting these countries is to promote the interests of Israel. Look at the neoconservatives who are beating the war drums - mostly Jews with close connections to Likud and other right-wing factions in Israel.
No, it's not a silly idea - it's exactly what happened. The US government and Israel collaborated to carry off 9/11. Bush wanted to invade Afghanistan, Israel wanted US invasions of Iraq, Iran, and Syria. 9/11 provided the excuse needed to carry out both of their plans.
That is too bad that you got
That is too bad that you got censored on Amazon.com - I wonder what their criteria for rejection are. I appreciated your review, as I haven't gotten my hands on the book yet I can't really respond, but you did bring up some interesting points.
You might want to check out the 9/11 truth book group I created on Librarything, if you haven't already. It would be great if you posted your review on LibraryThing, too.
That is too bad to get censored
Book review:
August 30, 2006
Call me crazy. I blame terrorists.
How can 36 per cent of people polled think U.S. officials knew of or participated in 9/11?
MARK STEYN
Who is A. K. Dewdney? He's an adjunct professor of biology at the University of Western Ontario, and he has pieced together the truth about what happened on 9/11. You may be familiar with the official version: "To account for the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush White House has produced a scenario involving Arab hijackers flying large aircraft into American landmarks," writes the eminent Ontario academic. "We, like millions of other 9/11 skeptics, have found this explanation to be inconsistent with the facts of the matter."
Instead, he argues, a mid-air plane switch took place on three of the jets. "The passengers of one of the flights died in an aerial explosion over Shanksville, Pa.," he writes, "and the remaining passengers (and aircraft) were disposed of in the Atlantic Ocean." Most of us swallowed "the Bush-Cheney scenario" because we were unaware that, when two planes are less than half a kilometre apart, they appear as a single blip on the radar screen. Thus, the covert switch. Instead of crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the flights were diverted by FBI agents on board to Harrisburg, Pa., where the passengers from all three planes were herded onto UA Flight 175 and flown on to Cleveland Hopkins and their deaths. By then, unmanned Predator drones had been substituted for the passenger jets and directed into their high-profile targets. The original planes and their passengers were finished off over the Atlantic.
But what about all those phone calls, especially from Flight 93? Ha, scoffs Dewdney. "Cellphone calls made by passengers were highly unlikely to impossible. Flight UA93 was not in the air when most of the alleged calls were made. The calls themselves were all faked." Michel Chossudovsky, of Quebec's Centre for Research on Globalization, agrees: "It was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to place a wireless cell call from an aircraft travelling at high speed above 8,000 feet."
So all the "Let's roll" stuff was cooked up by the government spooks. So, presumably, were the calls from the other planes. Flight 175 passenger Peter Hanson to his father: "Passengers are throwing up and getting sick. The plane is making jerky movements." This at a time when, according to professor Dewdney, Flight 175 was preparing to land smoothly at Harrisburg. Or Flight 11 stewardess Madeline Sweeney: "We are flying very, very low. We are flying way too low. Oh my God, we are way too low." Two minutes later, Flight 11 supposedly crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center -- though, as professor Dewdney has demonstrated, by then the plane wasn't even in the state. These so-called "calls" all used state-of-the art voice modification technology to make family members believe they were talking to loved ones rather than vocally disguised government agents. In the case of Todd Beamer's "Let's roll!" the spooks had gone to the trouble of researching and identifying individual passengers' distinctive conversational expressions.
In the end, says Dewdney, Flight 93 was shot down by a "military-looking all-white aircraft." It was an A-10 Thunderbolt cunningly repainted to . . . well, the professor doesn't provide a rationale for why you'd go to the trouble to paint a military aircraft. But the point is, several eyewitnesses reported seeing a white jet in the vicinity of the Flight 93 Pennsylvania crash site, so naturally conspiracy theorists regard that as supporting evidence that the plane was brought down by the U.S. military rather than after a heroic passenger uprising against their jihadist hijackers. "It was taken out by the North Dakota Air Guard," announced retired army Col. Donn de Grand Pre. "I know the pilot who fired those two missiles to take down 93." It was Maj. Rick Gibney, who destroyed the aircraft with a pair of Sidewinders at precisely 9:58 a.m.
Ooooo-kay. We now turn to a brand-new book edited by David Dunbar and Brad Reagan called Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts. Brad Reagan? There's a name for conspiracy theorists to ponder, notwithstanding his cover as a "contributing editor" for Popular Mechanics. First things first: Maj. Rick Gibney is a lieutenant-colonel. At 9:58 a.m. he wasn't in Shanksville, Pa., but in Fargo, N.D. At 10:45, he took off for Bozeman, Mont., where he picked up Edward Jacoby, Jr., director of the New York State Emergency Management Office, and flew him back to Albany, N.Y., in a two-seat F-16B, unarmed -- i.e., no Sidewinders. The white plane was not an attractively painted A-10 Thunderbolt but a Dassault Falcon 20 corporate jet belonging to the company that owns Wrangler, North Face and other clothing lines. It was coming into Johnstown, near Shanksville, when Flight 93 disappeared and the FAA radioed to ask them if they could look around. "The plane circled the crash site twice," write Dunbar and Reagan, "and then flew directly over it to mark the exact latitude and longitude on the plane's navigation system."
Just for the record, I believe that a cell of Islamist terrorists led by Mohammed Atta carried out the 9/11 attacks. But that puts me in a fast-shrinking minority. In the fall of 2001, a coast-to-coast survey of Canadian imams found all but two insistent that there was no Muslim involvement in 9/11.
Oh, well. It was just after 9/11, everyone was still in shock.
Five years later, a poll in the United Kingdom found that only 17 per cent of British Muslims believe there was any Arab involvement in 9/11.
Ah, but it's a sensitive issue over there, what with Tony Blair being so close to Bush and all.
Professor Dewdney's plane-swap theory?
Come on, if you already live in Canada, it's not such a leap to live in an alternative universe.
But what are we to make of the Scripps Howard poll taken this month in which 36 per cent of those surveyed thought it "somewhat likely" or "very likely" that federal officials either participated in the attacks or had knowledge of them beforehand?
Debunking 9/11 Myths does a grand job of explaining such popular conspiracy-website mainstays as how a 125-foot-wide plane leaves a 16-foot hole in the Pentagon. Answer: it didn't. The 16-foot hole in the Pentagon's Ring C was made by the plane's landing gear. But the problem isn't scientific, it's psychological: if you're prepared to believe that government agents went to the trouble of researching, say, gay rugby player Mark Bingham's family background and vocal characteristics so they could fake cellphone calls back to his mom, then clearly you're not going to be deterred by mere facts. As James B. Meigs, the editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics, remarks toward the end of this book, the overwhelming nature of the evidence is, to the conspiratorially inclined, only further evidence of a cover-up: "One forum posting that has multiplied across the Internet includes a long list of the physical evidence linking the 19 hijackers to the crime: the rental car left behind at Boston's Logan airport, Mohammed Atta's suitcase, passports recovered at the crash sites, and so on. 'HOW CONVENIENT!' the author notes after each citation. In the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose logic of conspiracism, there is no piece of information that cannot be incorporated into one's pet theory."
When I was on the Rush Limbaugh show a couple of months back, a listener called up to insist that 9/11 was an inside job. I asked him whether that meant Bali and Madrid and London and Istanbul were also inside jobs. Because that's one expensive operation to hide even in the great sucking maw of the federal budget. But the Toronto blogger Kathy Shaidle made a much sharper point:
"I wonder if the nuts even believe what they are saying. Because if something like 9/11 happened in Canada, and I believed with all my heart that, say, Stephen Harper was involved, I don't think I could still live here. I'm not sure I could stop myself from running screaming to another country. How can you believe that your President killed 2,000 people, and in between bitching about this, just carry on buying your vente latte and so forth?"
Over to you, Col. de Grand Pre, and Charlie Sheen, and Alan Colmes.
The sad reality is that never before has an enemy hidden in such plain sight. Osama bin Laden declared a jihad against America in 1998. Iran's nuclear president vows to wipe Israel off the map. A year before the tube bombings, radical Brit imam Omar Bakri announced that a group of London Islamists are "ready to launch a big operation" on British soil. "We don't make a distinction between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents," he added, clarifying the ground rules. "Only between Muslims and unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value."
Our enemies hang their shingles on Main Street, and a University of Western Ontario professor puts it down to a carefully planned substitution of transponder codes.
blather
This is just idiotic. Right, mate. Israel is the real gobal hegemon and America is just its unfortunate pawn, required to "pay tribute" and do its bidding. So laughable! The analogy of contemporary America with the Roman Empire is not Griffin's invention. Its one that has been made and developed by many academicians, and it is a pertinent and potentially very edifying one. I'm pretty certain your analogy with Gaul, by contrast, isn't destined to start any fires in the academy.
From the very first evil twinklings of the idea of Israel in the mind of the West (have a look, for example, at William Engdahl's "A Century of War") it was conceived of as a potential support for Anglo-American oil politics in the region. Israel is the most poignant of all pawns of the new empire. Its like a pitbull that's been abused and deliberately kept in fear its whole life, and fed hormones by its owners to make it more vicious and so more effective at keeping control over the neighbourhood on behalf of its absent, cowardly owners.
(I'm not suggesting that Israelis bear no collective responsibility for the brutal history of their artificial state; only that Israel has been much more a pawn of Empire than a player.)
Dude, I'm glad there's some half-awake editors there at Amazon...
Israel does not benefit the United States
How in the heck does Israel help us get oil? They don't have a drop, and all the countries that do hate our guts for supporting Israel. Our support for Israel in the 1973 war was what led to OPEC's efforts to drive up oil prices.
Also, if Israel is our "pawn", then why does the Israel lobby even exist? Why do all these American Jews spend so much money and exert so much effort to lobby our government and manipulate the image of Israel presented in the media? If support for Israel is due to US interests they why bother? Wouldn't we be supporting Israel anyway?
What has Israel ever done for the United States? When have they ever helped us acquire oil?
Are you claiming that the
Are you claiming that the Jewish lobby is powerful enough to force the United States to prop up Israel against its own interests? (I'm talking of course about the interests of the American empire which are in no way the same as the interests of the American people.) Such a claim can immediately be see to be dubious by the fact that the Bush administration is currently scheming to find a way to get Israel to do its dirty work in Iran (which of course Israel has been doing since the nineteen fifties).
Initially, the support for establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine came from Britain, and not out of the goodness of the heart of the British Empire, but out of calculations of self-interest:
"The idea of a Jewish-dominated Palestine, beholden to England for its tenuous survival, surrounded by a balkanized group of squabbling Arab states, formed part of [the Round Table] group's concept of a new British Empire. Mackinder, commenting at the time of the Versailles peace conference, described his influential group's vision of the role a British protectorate over Palestine would play in the Great Game of British advance toward a post-1918 global empire, to be shaped around a Bristish defined and dominated League of Nations."
The quote is from the Engdahl book I mentioned. He goes on to quote Mackinder: "If the World-Island [that is, Great Britain] be inevitably the principal seat of humanity on this globe, and if Arabia, as the passage-land from Europe to the Indies and from the Northern to the Southern Heartland, be central to the World-Island, then the hill citadel of Jerusalem has a strategical position with reference to world-realities not differing essentially from its ideal position in the perspective of the Middle Ages, or its strategical position between ancient Babylon and Egypt."
The mechanisms by which the heavily armed proxy state of Israel has served the interests of first Britain and then America in the Middle East are complex but multifarious and not very difficult to appreciate. The existence of the Arab world without the proxy state of Israel is unimaginable to American power-mongers. The biggest threat to American control over oil resources in the Middle East throughout the second half of the twentieth century was the threat posed to American puppet regimes by emerging strains of populist pan-Arab unity. Without the presence of the representatives of American military dominance on their backdoor, such movements would have made it much harder for the United States to prevent the Arab world from asserting control over its supplies of the world's most important resource, in order to use the wealth that belonged to them by right for the benefit of Arab peoples.
But just as crucial as the military threat to Islamic unity posed by the American proxy army in Israel, is the ideological necessity of having a little America, a little, white, racist, spectacle of so-called democracy, right smack in the middle of the Muslim world. The oft-repeated, ludicrous and racist notion that Israel is the only democratic regime in the region is one of the ideological pillars that supposedly justify the incessant, self-interested American intervention in the political affairs of sovereign Arab states.
Are you claiming that the
Yes, they are that powerful. Try reading They Dare to Speak Out by Paul Findley, a former Illinois congressman who learned the hard way what happens when a politician (even one in a "safe" district) challenges the Israel lobby.
No, you have it 100% backwards - Israel is scheming to get the United States to do its dirty work in Iran. What interest does the United States have in invading Iran? And how do you propose that Israel is going to help us with an invasion of Iran? Are they going to put their precious Jewish soldiers in harm's way or are they going to let the Americans do that?
So the British created Zionism?
I do agree, however, that the Balfour Declaration was a (misguided) attempt at promoting Britain's self-interest - they agreed with the Zionists that in exchange for giving them Palestine, they would use their influence in the United States to bring the US into WWI against Germany.
Lots of people make this argument. It is superficially plausible but it doesn't actually make any sense. If you try thinking of concrete examples you will see that Israel does not serve US/British interests in this way. How does Israel suppress pan-Arab and pan-Muslim populist movements? It sure looks like Israel's actions provoke and bolster these movements to me. How does Israel help us get oil for lower prices? It doesn't - in fact the oil lobby and the Israel lobby are usually in competition.
This is a deeply important
This is a deeply important question, and one which, to be perfectly frank, I'm not altogether sure about. You make some good points. For polemical reasons I did perhaps overstate the ease with which its possible to explain how supporting Israel has been in America's interests, and the extent to which Israel is a pawn of those interests. (I guess its hard to sustain the idea that Israel has been a pawn when the US has guaranteed its very survival. But I question whether the violent imposition of the state of Israel on defenceless Palestine was in the genuine interests of Jewish people in the first place.) But to argue that US policy on Israel is entirely driven by the infernal cleverness of the Jewish lobby, and thereby to imply that it would have better served US geostrategic interests to ignore that lobby, cut off funding to the Israeli state, and allow Arabs and Jews to fight it out for themselves, seems to me to go too far to the other extreme. It seems highly unlikely that the alliance could have been sustained on propaganda and rhetoric alone. The relationship must surely be at the very least a symbiotic one, serving the interests of the wealthy and powerful of both states.
I am however very interested in your point of view. Could you point me towards some other materials that argue for the power of the Jewish lobby to hoodwink the American establishment?
"But I question whether the
"But I question whether the violent imposition of the state of Israel on defenceless Palestine was in the genuine interests of Jewish people in the first place."
Huh? Israel wouldn't be on the map, without using violence against defenceless Palestinians.
In 1948, they did a little ethnic cleansing operation, several massacres in Palestinian villages, they drew away 800 000 Palestinians, stole their property and land. To this day, they have not been allowed to return.
Israel have always denied it, until some years ago. Now they admit it, but claim it was necessary.
Read Zionist Benny Morris.
I am however very interested
Sure. The most thorough source I know of is the book I already mentioned, They Dare to Speak Out by former congressman Paul Findley, which is about how the Israel lobby is able to manipulate US foreign policy and public opinion toward Israel. There's also a video interview of Findley online here.
Another good source, if you haven't read it already, is the recent paper by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer (professors at Harvard and U. of Chicago, respectively) on the Israel lobby that has generated so much controversy - the abridged version that ran in the London Review of Books is here and the full version from the Harvard website is here. You can also find lots of interesting debate over the paper itself and the issues it raises by doing a search.
Also, on the issue of 9/11, a good place to start reading about the Israeli involvement is with Paul Thompson's Complete 9/11 timeline - the entries pertaining to Israel are here, and the Fox News broadcast on the Israelis arrested in connection with 9/11 is available here.
That should get you started. ;-)
Thanks for the references.
Thanks for the references. The Mearsheimer and Walt article was very interesting. But it goes too far in practically equating two distinct lobby groups. The so-called neoconservatives that have weilded such influence in the Bush administration are not equivalent in terms of goals and vision to the Israeli establishment. They have their own agenda, which is set out, among other places, in their policy paper "Rebuilding America's Defences." Their agenda is, in the first instance, the extension and entrechment of American military and economic hegemony. To the extent that the support of Israel is in accordance with that agenda, as it has been up until the present, the two lobbies might seem equivalent because the means to their different goals for the most part coincide. But to suggest, as the authors clearly do, that the main motive for American intervention in the Middle East (a motive that is wholly the product of the bamboozlement of the political class by the Israel lobby) is the protection of the state of Israel as an end in itself, is very misleading. As if the neocons who drafted all those sinister policy papers hadn't imagined the American military-industrial establishment benefitting enormously from a so-called War against Terrorism in the Middle East. As if the protection of Israel were more important to the neocons than power and profit.
In fact, the article itself contains allusions to the differing ends of the two groups. Speaking of the "Clean Break" report authored by Feith and Perle in 1996, it says that as well as calling for the removal of Saddam from power in Iraq, "it also called for Israel to take steps to reorder the entire Middle East. Netanyahu did not follow their advice, but Feith, Perle and Wurmser were soon urging the Bush administration to pursue those same goals. The Ha’aretz columnist Akiva Eldar warned that Feith and Perle ‘are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments . . . and Israeli interests’".
In fact, what the neocons wanted, in accordance with the ideology of their guru Leo Strauss, was a new way to bamboozle the American PEOPLE, following the demise of the spectre of communism, into accepting preposterous military budgets and an aggressive foreign policy aimed at maintaining US global dominance (have a look at the BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares"). The new spectre they manufactured on 911 was that of Terror that can strike anywhere at any time. The second major failing of the article is that it buys into their propaganda, arguing that Israel is an impediment to the war on terror. But the reality is that America and Israel have formed an unholy and mutually beneficial alliance against a manufactured enemy, fighting an illusory war against the spectre of Terror, as a cover for the real war which is, as its always been, the war against the emergence of authentic democracy and global justice.
Uri Avnery, former member of
Uri Avnery, former member of the Israeli parliament:
"AMERICAN-ISRAELI relations are indeed unique. It seems that they have no precedent in history. It is as if King Herod had given orders to Augustus Caesar and appointed the members of the Roman senate."
http://rescuemideastpolicy.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=art...
Regarding this
Regarding this comment:
"Today it is the American taxpayer who pays a significant “tribute” to Israel, as well as significant payments to Israel’s neighbors such as Egypt which are understood to be in exchange for peaceful relations with Israel. Is there any record of the Roman Empire having such a relationship with any people?"
The nation of Israel is described in the bible in Revelations as being spiritually the empire of Egypt.
And their bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.
(Rev 11:8)
Egypt is used as an example of imperialism throughout the bible. And the city of Sodom an example of pride (some Christians would have you think different)
Eze 16:49 Behold, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom; pride. Fullness of bread and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters. Nor did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
News editor at The Watchman Report, www.watchmanreport.com, delivering 9/11 truth to the Christian community
911 & the Holocaust: Cover-Up Perps' Ultimate Smear at 911 Truth
See "9/11 and the Holocaust: The 9/11 Cover-Up Perps' Ultimate Smear at 9/11 Truth" at http://www.breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=705 (and especially the audio at http://www.breakfornews.com/audio/NextLevel060831a.mp3).