Cole describes some of the key players in the Iraq War planning, and provides a number of helpful links. His article is also very good in describing the influence of the hardline ideas of Israel's rightwing Likud Party on the Bush administration foreign policy. And doing so in a way that provides a fact-based way to recognize that influence without being suckered by the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of which Old Right isolationist war critics are especially fond.
Not that any actual involvement of Israel or of Jews has ever been needed for people to manufacture Jewish-conspiracy theories. But this case offers the anti-Semitic far right to generate more than the average level of confusion in that regard.
Cole writes:
Most of the members of Cheney's inner circle were neoconservative ideologues, who combined hawkish American triumphalism with an obsession with Israel. This does not mean that the war was fought for Israel, although it is undeniable that Israeli concerns played an important role. The actual motivation behind the war was complex, and Cheney's team was not the only one in the game. The Bush administration is a coalition of disparate forces -- country club Republicans, realists, representatives of oil and other corporate interests, evangelicals, hardball political strategists, right-wing Catholics, and neoconservative Jews allied with Israel's right-wing Likud party. Each group had its own rationale for going to war with Iraq.
In terms of voting constituencies, the Christian Right groups with their blind enthusiasm for Likud Party militance - an enthusiasm behind which lies a Christian-apocalyptic theology that is stunningly hostile to Jews - are a far more important part of the Republican Party constituency. In the 2004 election, well over 70% of Jewish voters went for John Kerry.
In talking about a policy paper "A Clean Break" which David Wurmser co-authored with several other heavies among the "neoconservative", Cole gives us an idea of how reckless this administration has been in its formulation of its Iraq War policy by showing how poorly conceived some of the neoconservatives's have been:
The neoconservatives were actually more concerned with Syria initially than Iraq, since it more directly threatened Israeli security. Indeed, "A Clean Break" advocated the removal of Saddam Hussein mainly as a way of pressuring Damascus. The policy paper said, with astonishing ignorance, "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right - as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions. King Hussein may have ideas for Israel in bringing its Lebanon problem under control. The predominantly Shia population of southern Lebanon has been tied for centuries to the Shia leadership in Najf [sic] Iraq rather than Iran. Were the Hashemites to control Iraq, they could use their influence over Najf to help Israel wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hizballah, Iran, and Syria. Shia retain strong ties to the Hashemites: the Shia venerate foremost the Prophet's family, the direct descendants of which — and in whose veins the blood of the Prophet flows — is King Hussein."
This paragraph must be the most absurd, ill-informed and frankly lunatic pieces of prose ever produced by any policy advisor anywhere. It is full of false premises and ignorant assumptions. Saddam Hussein's branch of the Baath Party was a rival of the Syrian Baath Party, not a supporter. Syria had joined Bush I's coalition against Iraq, allying with the Americans in 1990-91. Removing the Iraqi Baath would more likely strengthen Syria than weaken it. As for the Shiites in Iraq and southern Lebanon, they had been deeply influenced by the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini, who preached that monarchy is incompatible with Islam. The idea that the old Hashemite monarchy could be revived and reinstalled in revolutionary Iraq was itself absurd. That a Sunni king in Baghdad might have any appeal to the Shiites of southern Lebanon, who favored Hezbollah and Khomeinism, would only occur to someone completely ignorant of the actual politics of Tyre and Nabatiya. The tragedy is that this sort of hallucination appears actually to have underpinned real policy moves by the neoconservatives as they became powerful in Washington under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Such highly-ideological, often unrealistic and even downright crackpot ideas have driven Bush's Iraq War policy from the start. CheneyGate is really a much larger story than the criminal outing of Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA agent. That act was one outgrowth a reckless and irresponsible policy.
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