Veteran WaPo columnist Jim Hoagland was a big drum-beater for the US invasion of Iraq, and he is now playing a belligerent and fundamentally dishonest role in trying to win US support for a still very possible Israeli attack against Iran.
In his column yesterday, Hoagland seems to be adopting a strongly Israelo-centric– or let me say Likudo-centric– perspective.
He writes,
- Obama has already offered diplomatic engagement to Iran without preconditions — making Tehran’s behavior, not Washington’s conduct, the dominant issue for international opinion. The policy adjustments have been necessary and adroitly handled.
But they have also stirred doubts in Israel’s untested and politically heterogeneous government about Obama’s commitment to Israel’s security, as Netanyahu defines it…
And then this extraordinary piece of misjudgment:
- The nightmare scenario for Obama is that Israel launches an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities that is largely unsuccessful but that provokes an Iranian missile retaliation against Israel and all-out guerrilla campaigns by Hamas and Hezbollah. Could any U.S. president, however angry, turn his back on Israel in that situation?
No, Jim Hoagland. The nightmare scenario for any American president is that Israel launches an attack against Iran that then invites– and under international law, almost certainly justifies– Iranian retaliation against the vulnerable, over-extended supply lines in the Middle East of Israel’s strategic ally, the United States.
Not even one whisper of a mention of that possibility, Jim Hoagland? What an incredibly dishonest and extremely dangerous silence on your part!
Hoagland alludes to what is the most compelling evidence the Iranians would have, in certain circumstances, for retaliating against the US. Namely, that Israeli aircraft used in an attack on Iran would most likely have to have either flown through US-controlled airspace, whether in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or elsewhere, or to have used refuelling planes supplied by the US to Israel for specifically defensive purposes.
If Israel uses other delivery platforms for munitions used against Iran, including missiles or drones, US collusion in the development of those weapons could also be argued by the Iranians.
In any case, the Iranians would have a very strong case under international law for an argument that retaliating against such a close Israeli ally in military affairs as the US would be justified in the event of an attack against them by Israel.
It has been that contingency that has kept several high-level American military planners up late at nights with worry for the past few years. It was that contingency that persuaded even the Bush administration to state forcefully to Israel last year that it would not give Israel the permission (and associated IFF codes) its planes would need if they were to fly to Iran over Iraq’s extremely sensitive airspace.
Hoagland referred to last year’s Israel-US exchange about overflight rights– but he made no reference at all to the concern many in the US military have about the blowback their very vulnerable forces would most likely suffer in the event of an Israeli attack against Iran. Why is he being so dishonest?
Elsewhere on the same page yesterday, I note, David Ignatius scored a hole in one by asking this simple question, in response to a series of vivid war reports the NYT has carried about firefights the US forces have been engaged in in Afghanistan’s remote Korengal Valley:
- I found myself wondering: Why is the United States fighting insurgents in the remote Korengal Valley in the first place? The story described the enemy as “Taliban,” but it said the locals are angry “in part because they are loggers and the Afghan government banned almost all timber cutting, putting local men out of work.” There’s apparently no sign of al-Qaeda in the valley, where people are fiercely independent and speak their own exotic language.
While applauding the bravery of the U.S. soldiers, we should also ask the baseline question: Is this use of American military power necessary or wise?
He only raises the questions and is not yet prepared to give the only answer that makes sense to me. (Neither necessary nor wise.) But at least he’s heading in the right direction.
Unlike that dishonest old war-monger, Jim Hoagland.
It ought to be clearly understood that the idea that Israel could attack Iran without US agreement is incredible.
It might suit propagandists to suggest otherwise but anything Israeli might do it would be doing with US supplied and controlled weaponry.
In other words any attack on Iran would be a US attack.
My own view is that such an attack cannot take place but then I’m still trying to understand why Iraq was attacked.
WashPoo columnist lineup is a rogue’s gallery. Krauthammer (now why would his mother name him that!) looks like he just drank a quart of Arab blood and wants more before it becomes light; Ignatius and Cohen – need I say more; Will – a shabbesgoy down to his neatly parted blonde hair and who was speech writer for Jesse Helms who in turn should have been suffocated at birth and his body given to the local blacks so they could put him on the tip of a spear. All these, and many many others, have colluded to throw huge sums of money at dirty little Izzy when poor blacks, hispanics and yes whites have had to do with much less (nutrition, education, health, literacy) for several generations. Proves how dumb Americans are. They continue reading the same crap over and over. To make matters worse they don’t even write WELL. I will take a Guardian writer or a Harold Pinter over any American warmongering and falsely moralising opinion spewing windbag any time.
What’s that smell?
It has been that contingency [an Israeli attack on Iran with all its attendant consequences] that has kept several high-level American military planners up late at nights with worry for the past few years.
There is no need to worry. Just get Michelle Obama to get her husband to pull up his socks and pick up the phone to Israel and tell them they are on their own if they attack Iran. And immediately after that phone call go on TV and tell all of us Americans just what he told the Israelis and why.
That’s what someone concerned about American interests would do. It is my thesis that while he might be mildly concerned about American interests he is preponderantly concerned about USMIC/AIPAC/Israeli interests and will not do what any American President must do : put US interests ahead of those of a foreign nation, no matter how lucrative pandering to those foreign interests may be.
I believe in Michelle Obama. I do not believe in her husband.
There is no doubt in my mind that Israel would strike Iran without US permission if they can work out the logistics for an attack.
Why would they not? Look at the pattern. From the USS Liberty to their deliberate provacations of the US Marines in Beriut to all the ‘acidential’ killings like Rachel Corrie, UN observers, Tristan Anderson, Lebanon in 2006, Gaza, on and on….Israel has never been held to account or punished for any of their actions. The US and the world just come in behind them and pay for the damage they do. 48 US million for the power plant they blew up in Palestine,untold billions for the mindless destruction of Lebanon infastructure,millions in basic aid just to try and prevent the Palestines from starving every time Israel razes Gaza.
I don’t even know how to describe the insanity that allows this to continue. Israel reminds me of the sociopathic child in the old movie the Bad Seed that the adults refused to recongize as a killer until she murdered almost everyone around her.
For all the screeching the Israelis do about mad Mullahs it is the Israelis and US jewish Lukids that are not rational.
And it is our own corrupted congress that enables this abomination. It has to end somehow.
Comment from… John Francis Lee
I believe in Michelle Obama.>>>>>>>
Might be wishful thinking but for some reason I do too. Some of her remarks during the campaign showed a basic sense of justice and a no bullshit mentality. Let’s hope she hasn’t gotten so deep into the First Lady “traditional role”of see, hear and speak no political evil that she doesn’t use her influence with her husband.
A word from her on I-P or Israel would go a long way with the US public but I doubt she will ever go public on that so her imput will be pillow talk I suspect. In contrast to Obama’s politically adept coolness, I get the impression that Michelle wields the steely sword of conscience in that partnership and marriage.
Michelle Obama is a powerful woman. She’s stuck with Obama this far, correctly seeing that she could push him all the way to the White House.
I am sure that, unlike himself, she is aware that the White House is not the prize, but that the power wielded from the White House is. I hope she slaps some sense back into Barak. She must have seen some spark in him once.
“What’s that smell?”
Check your pockets. Its that pound of flesh beginning to rot.
You know, all this hysterical ranting reminds me of the period in 2002 – 2003 when people were warning that Israel would use a US invasion of Iraq to “ethnically cleanse” the West Bank. There were even groups of “intellectuals” here like Neve Gordon, Ilan Pappe and Jeff Halperin who were on the lookout for movement of trucks that could facilitate such ethnic cleansing.
Well, obviously, it never happened and I doubt that any of the doomsdayers would own up to it today.
A note to “American” and John Francis Lee:
I was under the impression that the voters in the US elected one person as president, not his or her entire family.
“Henry A. Kissinger, who as secretary of state helped arm and prop up Iran’s monarchy in the 1970s, said there was “no reason for the United States to resist a strong Iran” today. The goal should be to restore the old regional balance of power based on the pillars of two countries friendly to America, Israel and Iran,”
Interesting that disappointment in Barack is taking the form of an exaggerated assessment of Michele based on no real evidence at all.
Israel has used far less obvious techniques than trucks for ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and they are getting away with it, so why should they turn to trucks now?