Author: Justin Raimondo

Michael Scheuer, lately of the CIA, now a bestselling author, on the tail wagging the dog:

“Pro-Israel lobbyists have run an enviable ‘covert action’ in the United States, a former top CIA analyst said. Michael Scheuer, who wrote a best-selling book criticizing the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies last summer, while he still worked for the CIA, said the U.S.-Israel relationship was a case of the tail wagging the dog. ‘I just think it does America tremendous harm in the Islamic world for us to be so obviously the dog that’s led around by the tail,’ Scheuer said Thursday at a Middle East Policy Council briefing in Washington. He suggested that the United States should reconsider its aid to Israel, but that such a debate was impossible. ‘I think the Israelis have done a marvelous job in terms of being able to control the nature of debate in this country over our policies toward Israel,’ he said. ‘Whether it’s people sending out from AIPAC a list of rules on how to review my books or, you know, the fact that if you criticize Israel you’re an anti-Semite, it’s a tremendous covert action. I wish our intelligence community could have done the same over the course of the past 30 years anywhere.'”

The pro-Israel lobby and “covert action” — do you think he means this, or this — or maybe even this?

What are they putting in the water cooler over at the Cato Institute, once a bastion of reliably anti-interventionist scholarship and an invaluable resource for antiwar activists? I was reading Christopher Preble’s op ed on “How to Exit Iraq,” and everything was going along swimmingly –“there is only one rational option: a prompt military withdrawal” — and then came this:

“If Iraqis wish to retain their sovereignty and independence, they must ensure that al-Qaeda and other anti-American terrorist groups do not establish a safe haven in their country. Accordingly, the withdrawal of U.S. forces must be coupled with a clear and unequivocal message to the new government of Iraq: do not threaten us or allow foreign terrorists in your country to threaten us. If you do, we will be back.”

In other words, Iraqi “sovereignty” is entirely dependent on whether or not some Chalabi-esque character comes up with “intelligence” that links Iraq to “weapons of mass destruction.” And how, pray tell, could a fourth-rate power with a fifth-rate military possibly pose a “threat” to the mighty hyperpower?

Déjà vu, anyone? Oddly, for a supposed libertarian, Preble seems to have set out to prove the old Marxist aphorism that history repeats itself “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

What must even the most pro-American Iraqis feel as they are told that we’ll be back if Al Qaeda sets foot on Iraqi soil — when the terrorist incursion was made possible by the American invasion? Who turned Iraq into a ‘terrorist haven”?

That we are going to have to leave Iraq in worse shape than it was before the invasion is a given: war, after all, is mass death and destruction, and these conditions inevitably breed political extremism. Yet every moment we delay getting out swells Al Qaeda’s ranks. Gulf War II was a war of choice — and it was a bad choice. Just how bad is beginning to dawn even on those who gave Bush the benefit of a doubt.

Gil Guillory, who has been to Iraq, takes on yet another Cato bigwig, Tom Palmer, who argues that we can’t leave Iraq until the insurgents are “destroyed” and a functioning “democracy” is set up. Recalling the unanimity of his Iraqi contacts in favor of a swift U.S. withdrawal, Guillory writes:

“Their reasoning was that the longer the US military stayed, the more lasting would be US control of the Iraqi government, and the lesser chance for eventual political independence. If my colleagues’ opinions were representative of Iraqi opinion at large, and their opinions have not changed, then holders of the Palmer doctrine of withdrawal have a choice: either we let the Iraqis have a skinny freedom or impose a fat paternalism.”

What kind of a world are we living in when Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski are more anti-interventionist than the libertarian Cato Institute?

The more conditions we put on an American withdrawal, the deeper we sink into the Iraqi quagmire. Unconditional and immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq is the only practical course — and the only moral one as well.

The perfect retort to yet another 25,000-word tirade from Norman Podhoretz.

Glasnost, Iranian-style.

Uh oh …

Poor Glenn Reynolds, the Insta-expert over at Instapundit. The supposed bias of the MSM (mainstream media, for those not in the know) is sooooo anti-war – or anti-Bush: same thing – and they’re sloppy, too. Because, you see, that story about how the administration is contemplating the creation of death squads, a la Central America in the 1980s, that we’re running today is wrong, wrong, wrong. Newsweek writes:

Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.

To which Reynolds responds:

Er, maybe because the Iran-Contra scandal had to do with overthrowing the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, rather than the guerrilla war in El Salvador? I mean, I know all those people look alike to the folks at Newsweek, but this is either inexcusable sloppiness, or simply a stretch to try to bring in more stuff that might make it look bad.

The MSM, whines Reynolds, is trying to make the torturers in D.C. "look bad." Oh, boo hoo hoo! Thank god we have the fact-checkers in the pro-torture wing of the "blogosphere" to set us straight. Except that Reynolds, as usual, is emitting ignorant bullsh*t to the nth degree. The Nicaragua/El Salvador gang of thugs and torturers, led by Ollie North and funded by a deal with the Iranian mullahs (thanks, Michael Ledeen!), was no respecter of borders, as In These Times points out:

That policy included backing the contras – a surrogate army dedicated to overthrowing
the democratically elected Sandinista government of Nicaragua. It also involved funding the military thugocracy of El Salvador and supervising its war against a popular leftist rebellion. In his role as public servant, Abrams found time to cover up the genocidal policies of the Guatemalan government and embrace the government of Honduras while it perpetrated serial human rights abuses through Battalion 3-16, a U.S.-trained ‘intelligence unit’ turned death squad.

And of course the death squads of El Salvador are grateful to the Republicans, who supported them with money and political backing, with the ARENA party – founded by death-squads leader Roberto D’Aubisson – backing the Bushies to the hilt, as PBS points out:

The relationship between today’s President Bush and El Salvador’s conservative ARENA party government is one of mutual gratitude. Consider it payback.

The inheritors of the death-squads franchise (Central American division) have a lot of affinity for the Bushies, considering that so many of the latter are veterans of the Iran-Contra scandal: Eliot Abrams is now doing to the Middle East what he did to Central America in the 1980s. Current Bush administration officials Richard Armitage, John Poindexter, Roger Noriega, and Otto Reich are all alumni of Death Squad U. Having perfected their course materials, they are teaching Iraqis – and American soldiers – the basics of "counter-insurgency" techniques, updated for the post-9/11 era.

Obviously, the anti-insurgent operation run by Col. North against the Sandinistas was intimately connected to a similar covert-action program being run in El Salvador. As one report has it:

Some investigators, however, have concluded that North probably used the Iran arms-sales profits to finance a secret weapons airlift from a U.S.-controlled air base in El Salvador to contra fighters in Nicaragua.

Leave it to some shyster lawyer out in the boondocks to try to spin the horrific slaughter of Central American peasants during the 1980s as No Big Deal: "This is either inexcusable sloppiness," scolds "The Professor," "or simply a stretch to try to bring in more stuff that might make it look bad."

It looks bad, Glenn old boy, because it is bad, so go back to hectoring your students on the finer points of ambulance-chasing and ask yourself this: why do you approve of death squads, whether they be in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s, or in "liberated" Iraq?