Dear Mr. President: Letters From Israel
Partisans That Took America To War
01 April 2012
By Maidhc Ó Cathail
According to its June 3, 1997 Statement of Principles,
the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was
created to advance a "Reaganite foreign policy of
military strength and moral clarity," a policy PNAC
co-founders, William Kristol and Robert Kagan, had
advocated the previous year in Foreign Affairs to
counter what they construed as the American public's
short-sighted indifference to foreign "commitments."
Calling for a significant increase in "defense
spending," PNAC exhorted the United States "to meet
threats before they become dire."
The Wolfowitz Doctrine
The idea of preemptive war also known as the Wolfowitz
Doctrine—subsequently dubbed the "Bush Doctrine" by
PNAC signatory Charles Krauthammer—can be traced as
far back as Paul Wolfowitz's Ph.D. dissertation,
"Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East," which was
based on "a raft of top-secret documents" his
influential mentor, Cold War nuclear strategist Albert
Wohlstetter, somehow "got his hands on" during a
post-Six Day War trip to Israel. The "top-secret"
Israeli documents supposedly showed that Egypt was
planning to divert a Johnson administration proposal
for regional civilian nuclear energy into a weapons
program. Among those who signed PNAC's Statement of
Principles were Wohlstetter protégés Francis Fukuyama,
Zalmay Khalilzad, and Wolfowitz, who despite having
been investigated for passing a classified document to
an Israeli government official through an AIPAC
intermediary in 1978 would be appointed Deputy
Secretary of Defense in the George W. Bush
administration, where he would be the first to suggest
attacking Iraq four days after 9/11; Wolfowitz protégé
I. Lewis Libby, who later "hand-picked" Vice President
Dick Cheney's staff mainly from pro-Israel think
tanks; Elliott Abrams, who would go on to serve as
Bush's senior director on the National Security
Council for Near East and North African Affairs, his
mother-in-law, Midge Decter, and her husband, Norman
Podhoretz; and Eliot A. Cohen, who would later smear
Walt and Mearsheimer's research on the Israel lobby's
role in skewing U.S. foreign policy as "anti-Semitic."
On January 26, 1998, PNAC wrote the first of its many
open letters to U.S. presidents and Congressional
leaders, in which they enjoined President Clinton that
"removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power […]
now needs to become the aim of American foreign
policy." Failure to eliminate "the possibility that
Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use" its
non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the letter
cautioned, would put at risk "the safety of American
troops in the region, of our friends and allies like
Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant
portion of the world's supply of oil." An additional
signatory this time was another Wohlstetter protégé,
Richard Perle, a widely suspected Israeli agent of
influence whose hawkish foreign policy views were
shaped when Hollywood High School classmate and
girlfriend, Joan Wohlstetter, invited him for a swim
in her family's swimming pool and her father handed
Perle his 1958 RAND paper, "The Delicate Balance of
Terror," thought to be an inspiration for Kubrick's
Dr. Strangelove.
Having helped sow the seeds of the Iraq War five years
before Operation Iraqi Freedom, PNAC wrote a second
letter to Clinton later that year. Joining with the
International Crisis Group, and the short-lived Balkan
Action Council and Coalition for International
Justice, they took out an advertisement in the New
York Times headlined "Mr. President, Milosevic is the
Problem." Expressing "deep concern for the plight of
the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo," the letter
declared that "[t]here can be no peace and stability
in the Balkans so long as Slobodan Milosevic remains
in power." It urged the United States to lead an
international effort which should demand a unilateral
ceasefire by Serbian forces, put massive pressure on
Milosevic to agree on "a new political status for
Kosovo," increase funding for Serbia's "democratic
opposition," tighten economic sanctions in order to
hasten regime change, cease diplomatic efforts to
reach a compromise, and support the Hague tribunal's
investigation of Milosevic as a war criminal. Now that
"the world's newest state" (prior to Israel's
successful division of Sudan) is run by a "mafia-like"
organization involved in trafficking weapons, drugs
and human organs, there appears to be much less
concern for the plight of the ethnic Serbian
population of Kosovo.
A New Pearl Harbor
One year after the publication of its September 2000
report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," the "new
Pearl Harbor" PNAC implied might be necessary to
hasten acquiescence to its blueprint for "benevolent
global hegemony" occurred on 9/11. Nine days after
that "catastrophic and catalyzing event," it wrote to
endorse President Bush's "admirable commitment to
‘lead the world to victory' in the war against
terrorism." However, capturing or killing Osama bin
Laden, the letter stressed, was "by no means the only
goal" in the newly-declared war on terror. "[E]ven if
evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack,
any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism
and its sponsors must include a determined effort to
remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq," cautioned
the PNACers. "Failure to undertake such an effort will
constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in
the war on international terrorism." Disingenuously
characterizing Israel's enemy Hezbollah as a group
"that mean[s] us no good," the Israel partisans called
on the administration to "consider appropriate
measures of retaliation" against Iran and Syria if
they refused to "immediately cease all military,
financial, and political support for Hezbollah."
Touting Israel as "America's staunchest ally against
international terrorism," they counseled Washington to
"fully support our fellow democracy in its fight
against terrorism." The letter concluded by urging
President Bush "that there be no hesitation in
requesting whatever funds for defense are needed to
allow us to win this war."
PNAC's concern for "America's staunchest ally" was
even more evident in its next letter to the White
House. On April 3, 2002, it wrote to thank Bush for
his "courageous leadership in the war on terrorism,"
commending him in particular for his "strong stance in
support of the Israeli government as it engages in the
present campaign to fight terrorism." Evoking the
memory of the September 11 attacks "still seared in
our minds and hearts," the Israel partisans thought
that "we Americans ought to be especially eager to
show our solidarity in word and deed with a fellow
victim of terrorist violence […] targeted in part
because it is our friend, and in part because it is an
island of liberal, democratic principles—American
principles—in a sea of tyranny, intolerance, and
hatred." Returning to its favorite theme of regime
change in Iraq, PNAC cautioned, "If we do not move
against Saddam Hussein and his regime, the damage our
Israeli friends and we have suffered until now may
someday appear but a prelude to much greater horrors."
Prefiguring the cheerleading of Kristol and Kagan et
al. for the "Arab Spring," they assured Bush that "the
surest path to peace in the Middle East lies not
through the appeasement of Saddam and other local
tyrants, but through a renewed commitment on our part
[…] to the birth of freedom and democratic government
in the Islamic world."
PNAC Redux
Having "developed, sold, enacted, and justified" a
disastrous war over non-existent WMD, PNAC's final
report in April 2005 entitled "Iraq: Setting the
Record Straight" claimed that "the case for removing
Saddam from power went beyond the existence of weapons
stockpiles." Smugly concluding à la Madame Albright
that "the price of the liberation of Iraq has been
worth it," PNAC soon after quietly wound up its
operations. However, in 2009, PNAC co-founders Kristol
and Kagan were instrumental in setting up its
successor organization, the Foreign Policy Initiative
(FPI), whose self-appointed mission is to address the
"many foreign policy challenges" facing the United
States "and its democratic allies," allegedly coming
from "rising and resurgent powers," such as China and
Russia, and, perhaps most significantly, from "other
autocracies that violate the rights of their
citizens."
FPI's February 25, 2011 letter to President Obama gave
a clear indication of the significance of that mission
statement. Approvingly citing the president's
declaration in his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance
speech that "Inaction tears at our conscience and can
lead to more costly intervention later," they told him
that he "must take action in response to the unfolding
crisis in Libya." Warning of an impending "moral and
humanitarian catastrophe," the letter recommended
establishing a no-fly zone, freezing all Libyan
government assets, temporarily halting importation of
Libyan oil, making a statement that Col. Qaddafi and
other officials would be held accountable under
international law, and providing humanitarian aid to
the Libyan people as quickly as possible. "The United
States and our European allies have a moral interest
in both an end to the violence and an end to the
murderous Libyan regime," averred FPI. "There is no
time for delay and indecisiveness. The people of
Libya, the people of the Middle East, and the world
require clear U.S. leadership in this time of
opportunity and peril."
With Libya in the midst of a genuine catastrophe
brought on by that "humanitarian intervention," FPI
turned its attention to the foreign-stoked strife in
Syria. On February 17, 2012, it joined the Foundation
for Defense of Democracies, a think tank closely
aligned with the Israel lobby whose leadership council
is dominated by PNAC alumni, in urging President Obama
"to take immediate steps to decisively halt the Assad
regime's atrocities against Syrian civilians, and to
hasten the emergence of a post-Assad government in
Syria." Acknowledging that Syria's future is "not
purely a humanitarian concern," the letter writers
revealed their primary concern about Syria in their
remark that "for decades, it has closely cooperated
with Iran and other agents of violence and instability
to menace America's allies and partners throughout the
Middle East."
Wars of Muslim Liberation
Commenting on Obama's reluctance to intervene in
Libya, Bill Kristol mocked the president's "doubts and
dithering" about "taking us to war in another Muslim
country." Declared the founder of the Emergency
Committee for Israel, "Our ‘invasions' have in fact
been liberations. We have shed blood and expended
treasure in Kuwait in 1991, in the Balkans later in
the 1990s, and in Afghanistan and Iraq—in our own
national interest, of course, but also to protect
Muslim peoples and help them free themselves. Libya
will be America's fifth war of Muslim liberation." In
a follow-up note to the Weekly Standard, Paul
Wolfowitz had "one minor quibble": "Libya, by my
count, is not ‘America's fifth war of Muslim
liberation,' but at least the seventh: Kuwait –
February 1991, Northern Iraq – April 1991, Bosnia –
1995, Kosovo – 1999, Afghanistan – 2001 and Iraq –
2003." With Syria awaiting its "liberation" in 2012,
perhaps it's too early yet to say, "Shukran, Israel."
Maidhc Ó Cathail writes extensively on the Israel
lobby's influence on U.S. foreign policy.
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