SEGO AND SARKO FACE-0FF

“Sego” is chic, statuesque and once wore high heels while touring a Beijing slum. “Sarko” is small and has been called “Little Napoleon,” because of his diminutive stature and appetite for power. He has also been compared to “Iznogoud,” pronounced “is no good,” a well known comic book character.
They are Segolene Royal, 53, and Nicholas Sarkozy, 52, the two candidates who emerged victorious from the first round of the French presidential election on April 22. They will now face off on May 6 in a second and final round of voting to decide who will run a country with one of the worst economies in Europe, increasing social unrest and a large, disgruntled Muslim population.
“Sarko,” a conservative and former interior minister with a reputation for toughness captured 30% of the first round vote, leaving his rival with 25%. Two other candidates fell by the way side – Jean Marie Le Pen of the National Front, and Centrist, Francois Bayrou. Le Pen, who polled an amazing 16.8% in the last presidential election and reached the final round, saw his popularity plummet to 11.5%, but Bayrou polled 18.3%. The votes of both these men will be up for grabs and will probably be the deciding factor in who next governs France. This is now a traditional French political battle of the Left versus the Right. However, both candidates will have to appeal to the Center, carefully nuancing their positions because Le Pen’s base may stay away from the final vote convinced the Left and the Right, as represented by “Sego” and “Sarko,” created the problems France now faces.
For the media the election has always been about “Sego” and “Sarko,” two candidates who are ideal media fodder and who are exceedingly ambitious. It has been said of both that they lack clearly defined political agendas but share an insatiable thirst for power. “Sarko” says “Sego” has no political ideas but admits she is formidable and beautiful. He believes her major liability is her husband who is head of the Socialist Party that she represents. In her defense, the French prime minister, Dominique De Villepin has called “Sarko” a “dwarf” who engages in dirty tricks and is a dangerous authoritarian.
Both candidates admire Tony Blair but have different visions of a New France. “Sarko” takes a Thatcherite line on economics, promising tax cuts and an end to the French 35-hour week that has left French workers with one of the lowest output figures in Europe. He promises to be tough on crime, immigration and inner city violence and opposes Turkey’s entry into the EU. Last year, he raised the hackles of the Left when he campaigned against gay marriage and said there should be no public funding for mosques. He is said to be pro-American, even though he opposed the Iraq war, and that he believes France needs to repair relations with the US.
His rival has made no bones about her dislike for George Bush, stating that she would not “kneel” at his feet. That was seen as a political swipe at the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who has formed a close relationship with the US president. On domestic policy, “Sego” presents a confusing agenda, promising a less hard leftist position on the economy while assuring workers their traditional benefits will be protected. She is nevertheless a formidable individual who broke the chauvinist mold of French politics by becoming the first woman to reach the final round of a presidential election. To do that she had to battle against elements in her own party ranks as well as public opinion. Some of her critics have attributed her approval ratings not so much to her campaigning but to an ingrained fear on the Left and in the Center that the Right could dominate the French political scene if not checked. Most observers admit, however, she is more than just a pretty face even though she has had surgery to fix her teeth and is happy to be photographed in a bathing suit on the French Riviera. She so far has graced the front covers of Time and other major magazines.
It is her appealing personal history that has helped draw the French public her way. She was fourth in a family of eight and her father, a colonel in the French army, was not only a strict Catholic but physically abused his wife and children and believed women were born to procreate. He played religious music constantly in the home and made his children go to church every morning and evening. Though “Sego” tends not to talk much about her past she says she knew in her teens that the only way to escape the constant “humiliation” at home was to be successful. She later launched a court challenge against her father when he refused to divorce her mother or pay child support. She also persuaded the rest of her siblings to join her and not to communicate with him. They agreed and won the court battle shortly before he died. Her supporters say all those experiences, as well as the years she spent on the political scene, gave her a toughness that will serve her well if she becomes France’s first female president.
During her election campaign, she has successfully used the Internet and young bloggers to bring her name to a wider public and has toured French towns and villages, arguing that the elite in Paris, or “les elephants” as the old political elites are called, have had too much say in shaping the country Some columnists have said she is France’s version of Hilary Clinton with more style and beauty.
Her opponent, “Sarko,” is no slouch when it comes to making headlines and also has an interesting background. He was born to a Hungarian father and French mother of Greek Jewish origin but was baptized Roman Catholic by his French grandfather who converted to Catholicism after becoming a supporter of French president, Charles De Gaulle. When “Sarko” was four his father left his mother and refused to pay child support. As a consequence, “Sarko” because estranged from his father and says he had to develop an inner strength growing up without a father figure. He became a devout, conservative Catholic and later declared that his heroes were Charles De Gaulle and the late Pope John Paul II.
His supporters and critics agree “le petit Nicholas” as he is often called, is extremely ambitious and has a sharp lawyer’s tongue. In 2005, he described rioters in Paris as the dregs of society and established a reputation for being tough on illegal immigration and crime. When it comes to his career, he is not frightened to sacrifice friendships. In the 1995 presidential election he walked away from his friend, Jacques Chirac and supported his rival. The Chirac family, notably Jacques Chirac’s daughter who dated “Sarko,” was further angered when he walked out of a possible marriage with her. The betrayal led Madame Chirac to comment “To think I saw le petit Nicholas in his underwear.” Jacques Chirac was subsequently quoted in L’Express crudely remarking that “le petit Nicholas penetrated my privacy.”
There was bad blood between “Sarko” and Chirac, the elderly doyen of the French Center Right, when the younger man severely criticized the other’s anti-Americanism at the start of the Iraq invasion in 2003. That later led to “Sarko’s” enemies calling him a potential “Bush stooge.” As a result of his war of words with Chirac, the latter fought to limit his career in French conservative politics but eventually realized that “le petit Nicholas” was not only a shrewd political operator but was more than a match for him. Chirac and his family have since changed their minds and backed him.
For the first time in several decades the French presidential election has encouraged large numbers of French voters to go to the polls and has captured the attention of the rest of Europe and Washington. Now both candidates will have to soften their positions slightly to capture the votes in the Center while not straying too far from their traditional bases. EU leaders recognize that a strong EU needs an economically stable France and not one that is presently second in output per worker to Portugal. For its part, the US hopes that if “Sarko” wins he will soften his stance on Turkey’s bid to join the EU and not scupper ongoing talks on that issue, given that Turkey is an important member of NATO. If Sego, or “La Bella” as she is sometimes called, becomes the first female president of France it could be a sign that female leaders are in vogue. Hilary Clinton take note!

U.S. MUST MAINTAIN MILITARY DOMINANCE OVER CHINA

A Council on Foreign Relations task force has recommended that the United States must be ready to defeat China swiftly and decisively in any military conflict.
In order to do that, the US will need to expand its forces in Asia and shift the balance of its naval and maritime powers from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It will also have to invest heavily in new technologies appropriate for a naval and air battle with the Chinese.
The recommendations were delivered in a report written by a panel of experts led by retired Admiral, Dennis C. Blair whose distinguished career included commanding missile destroyers in the Atlantic and Pacific and leading the Kitty Haw Battle Group. The panel suggested it was time for the US to “sustain and selectively enhance its force posture in East Asia, ensuring its capabilities were commensurate with the region’s growing importance to the US economy and other vital national interests.”
The task force report made it clear that the US should continue to upgrade its large military base on Guam because maritime interests in the years ahead will undoubtedly be in the Asia-Pacific Theater. It will therefore be vital for the US to maintain the naval, as well as and air and space superiority it has had over the Chinese since the end of the Second World War. To that end the US military and its intelligence component will have to improve its intelligence targeting of China and employ more Chinese language specialists.
The report noted that while China was spending billions of dollars modernizing its armed forces, many of its neighbors were doing likewise including Japan and South Korea:
“Japan has significantly upgraded capabilities over the past fifteen years, deploying the Aegis radar system and accompanying missile systems for its navy and advanced fighter aircraft armed with advanced air-to air missiles. Japan is working in partnership with the United States to develop theater missile defenses, primarily oriented against the North Korean threat, but with the obvious application in the event of any conflict with China.”
The report identified the fact that South Korea was purchasing advanced weapons systems from the US that would have a high level of operability with US systems in the event of a conflict with China. In a section of the report dealing with China’s neighbors, the task force made the point that even though Russia was China’s largest military supplier, Russia was using its vast oil wealth to modernize its own armed forces. As a consequence, Moscow’s growing military capabilities could eventually complicate China’s defense planning and force posture because it would have to “keep a war eye on its 4,300 kilometer border with Russia.”
On the volatile issue of Taiwan, the report stated that while China’s military modernization was proceeding at a fast pace, Taiwan was lagging behind. During the 1990s Taiwan in response to China’s build up had responded by purchasing early warning aircraft systems and several hundred advanced aircraft from the US and France. More recently defense spending actually decreased and the Taiwanese government failed to find $18 billion to pay for arms authorized in 2001 by President Bush. The arms package was to include submarines, anti-submarine aircraft and missile defense systems. The task force panel pointed out that Taiwan was now trying to come up with $3 billion to replace its ageing F-5 fighters with sixty new F-16s but had again failed to find the cash, even though it had been urged to do so by Washington. It was made it clear to Taiwan that it could not make any more requests for weapons until it had resolved previous requests. Nevertheless, despite Taiwan’s failure to keep pace with China’s military modernization, the US was moving ahead with its own military upgrades in the region.
“For its part the United States is upgrading forward deployed naval and air forces in the Pacific theater (especially on Guam) and will for the first time base a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in Japan. The United States is improving interoperability with its major Asian allies, staging more realistic and complex multilateral training exercises. The United States is also expanding military cooperation with India, Mongolia and Indonesia,” the report concluded.
The panel however conceded that American air and maritime forces were one to three generations ahead of China’s and that US military spending remained eight times that of China. The US also had a major advantage over China because its forces had “significant, large scale combat experience” and had mastered joint, integrated operations. The US also had a big maritime edge over its rival because it continued to dominate the region’s sea lanes which represented a life line for China’s supplies of oil and other commodities needed for the expansion of its economy.
One of the matters the report seemed unable to resolve satisfactorily was the actual amount China spends on its military. A previous Council on Foreign relations task force ran into the same problem, noting that “it all depended on which figures” one was prepared to rely on. Beijing has only admitted to spending between $30 billion to $35 billion annually whereas most experts agree the true figure is closer to $65 billion. The Pentagon is prepared to go higher, citing a figure of $170 billion. But even that is dwarfed by the 2006 US defense budget of $240 billion which is roughly equivalent to the combined defense spending of the rest of the world.
Much of China’s defense spending is directed at the purchase of long and short range missiles, cruise missiles and submarines. Presently, it has upwards of 800 short range missiles ready at any time to strike Taiwan. Some experts believe China’s military procurements represent a message to the US that it would be foolish for it to intervene to defend Taiwan if China should ever fulfill its threat to invade the island. The Pentagon believes China’s military posturing towards is Taiwan is now “shading beyond deterrence into coercion, trying to force Taiwan to negotiate on China’s terms and to deter a US response to a Taiwanese crisis.”
The most troubling aspect to China’s increased defense spending build up is that it has gone hand in hand with a more assertive claim to oil and gas exploration in the Pacific. Some Pentagon experts argue that China is not too many years away from using its armed forces to challenge US dominance in Asia. They point to China’s increasing numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarines as a strategy to “project force outside Asia.”
In contrast, Pentagon critics believe no one can really be sure what China intends to do and at any rate it is not capable of confronting the US militarily. Instead it needs a good relationship with the United States if it is to continue to build its economy and some day reach superpower status.
Some critics have even suggested that US hegemony in the region is the real problem. It has not only drawn Russia and China closer together but has encouraged both nations to modernize their armed forces. Additionally the US policy of forming closer military relationships with China’s neighbors – India and Japan – has forced China into a more military competitive posture, all of which justifies the Pentagon spending hundreds of billions of dollars each year on a projected war with China.
Pentagon advocates respond that projecting threats into the future is what the Pentagon is required to do. Should it fail to accomplish that duty and a war broke out with China, people would ask why it had not anticipated it and planned for it. One of the Pentagon’s recent concerns is the future threat from the SCO –Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It is comprised of China, Russia and several Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan, has been organizing joint military maneuvers. All its members have publicly voiced their disapproval of the US presence in the region.
The Council on Foreign Relations task force offered the following advice on what it saw as the overall message it wanted to confer on Sino-American relations:
“While the United States should not turn a blind eye to the economic, political, and security challenges posed by China’s rise and should be clear that any aggressive behavior on China’s part would be met with strong opposition, US strategy towards China must focus of creating and taking advantage of opportunities to build on common interests in the region and as regards a number of global concerns.”

BRIT SAILORS WERE TRAPPED IN SHADOWY WAR

Evidence is emerging that the capture of the 15 British sailors by Iranian Revolutionary Guards was part of a shadowy war being waged by the US against Iran.
The Iranians were particularly incensed by an ongoing US operation to seize Iranian diplomats traveling outside Iran, especially within the borders of Iraq. In the early hours of January 11, US Special Forces, supported by Black Hawk helicopters, swooped into an Iranian liaison compound in Arbil within Kurdish northern Iraq. Within minutes they had seized five Iranians and whisked them off to a secret location to be interrogated. When news of the operation broke, US authorities in Iraq, as well as Pentagon officials, admitted responsibility and heralded it as a major success. Journalists were told the five Iranians were members of Iran’s Revolution Guard and were in Iraq to meet with members of the insurgency.
The Iraqi government was angered by the arrests and so were leaders of the Kurdistan Regional Government who had invited the Iranians to visit them. But there was a controversial aspect of the story that only came to light in a report on April 3 by Patrick Cockburn, the London Independent’s correspondent in the region. He discovered that the Arbil operation was botched because the intended targets were not the five who were arrested but two senior Iranian generals. One was Mohammed Jafari, deputy head of Iran’s National Security Council, with special responsibility for internal security. He was a prominent critic of the US and had charged that the US and Britain were fomenting civil strife within Iran to destabilize the country. The other target was General Minojahar Frouzanda, chief of intelligence of the Revolutionary Guard, probably the most powerful and independent military grouping within Iran.
Both men were in Iraq on a sanctioned diplomatic trip and prior going to Arbil had met senior Iraqi government officials. In Kurdistan they met Iran’s Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani and Mazoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Regional Government. Kurdish leaders were livid when they learned of the US operation and complained that it was setting a dangerous precedent.
From a US perspective, the prospect of annoying the Kurds or the Iraqi government was a small price to pay for getting their hands on two Iranian generals with intimate knowledge of the workings of the military, political, nuclear and intelligence structures within Iran. As for Iran, it made no comment about the attempt to abduct the generals but complained about the arrests of the five other Iranians. Some time later, a senior Iranian figure referred to the true nature of the American operation when he remarked that the US objective had been to arrest Iranian “security officials” who had gone to Iraq to discuss security issues affecting both countries.”
On February 4, yet another Iranian, Jalal Sharafi, a second secretary at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad was snatched off the streets of the Iraqi capital by members of Iraq’s 36 Commando Unit. It quickly transpired, from statements made by members of the Iraqi Government, that the arrest had been ordered by the US and that Sharafi was transferred to US custody for interrogation. Members of the Iraqi government and Iranian leaders called for Shafari’s release but to no avail. The US insisted in was not involved in his seizure and blamed it on elements within Iraq’s military. A month later, Revolutionary Guard Brigadier General, Alireza Ashgari, disappeared while traveling abroad. He was on a state-sanctioned mission to meet the Syrian Defense Minister to finalize an arms deal between the two countries. But, on a stopover in Istanbul, Turkey, he vanished. Days later, leaks to the media suggested he had defected to the US and was willing to divulge a lot of Iran’s nuclear and military secrets. Iran angrily claimed he had been abducted and some sources said the Israeli Secret Service, Mossad, had seized him on behalf of the US.
In light of all those episodes, it was inevitable that Iran would respond in a tit-for-tat way and it did so with the arrest of the 15 British sailors on March 24. That brought the British into the shadowy war and set in motion three-way negotiations for the release of the sailors in return for the freeing of Sharafi and the five seized in Arbil. The first sign that the British had pressured the US into giving up some of its Iranian captives in return for the release of the sailors came on April 3 with the freeing of Sharafi, who immediately returned to Iran.
Some observers warn that this shadowy war could easily spiral out of control. They point to the fact that if the US is going to seize Iranian diplomats or security figures in Iraq or Turkey, then Iraq may well feel it is entitled to retaliate by snatching US or British diplomats in other Middle east nations, including neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The US continues to deny all knowledge of Shafari’s arrest, preferring to blame it on Iraqis. The Pentagon and US military figures in Iraq have yet to acknowledge that the operation in Arbil was botched.

REAL RISK IRAQ WAR WILL EXPAND

While the focus in Iraq has been on the sectarian war between Shiites and Sunnis, and on the Bush Administration’s “Troops Surge,” there have been ominous developments in Kurdish northern Iraq that could lead to a widening of the Iraq conflict.
One of those developments was a warning from Turkey that it will intervene militarily in Iraq unless America deals with Kurdish guerillas that are launching attacks into Turkey. To date, the Turks have dispatched special operations teams to capture some of the 4,000 members of the PPK – Kurdistan Workers Party – they claim are enjoying a safe haven in Kurdish towns and villages in northern Iraq.
The PPK has been battling the Turkish military for decades, demanding that Turkey cede independence to Kurdish regions within its south east border. The Turks have fought a counter insurgency war against the PPK in which tens of thousands of people have died. What angers the Turks is that the PPK has frequently used bases in Iraq to launch strikes into Turkey. Until recently the US thought the situation was under control. It had been assured by Kurdish officials with close ties to Washington that the Kurdish militias had the situation under control.
Iraq’s Kurds, however, have no love for the Turks and have long suspected that Turkey has plans to invade the north of Iraq in the event of an all-out civil war in. The Kurds claim the Turks have their eyes on a big prize – the oil fields of Kirkuk. By seizing them, the Turkish military would be able to crush the political ambitions of Kurds throughout the region. For the Bush Administration, the Turks-Kurds issue is a difficult one. The US protected the Kurds with a no-fly zone during the last years of the Saddam era and Israel has developed strong links to the Kurds. The Israelis have persuaded Washington that an independent, oil rich Kurdistan in northern Iraq would be an ideal buffer against a future Iran-dominated Iraq. Israel’s argument may not be without merit in the eyes of neocons. They now recognize that the US overthrow of Saddam empowered Iran and enabled it to exercise considerable power over its fellow Shiites, the majority population of Iraq. As part of a strategy to enhance the military capability of the large Kurdish militias, Israel has been providing them with specialized military training. For Washington, the biggest problem facing it is the fact that Turkey is an ally and a member of NATO. In the event Turkey followed through with its threat to intervene in Iraq, the US could find itself in the precarious position of having to confront the Turks on a battlefield.
From a Turkish perspective, the Kurds of northern Iraq pose a serious terrorist threat. The Turkish argument goes something like this. Iraq descends into civil war and the Kurds hold the rich oil fields of Kirkuk and expel the Arabs from the Kirkuk region. The Kurds then use the oil to become a serious power in the region and advance the PPK cause of uniting parts of south East Turkey and Iran with Iraq’s Kurdish areas to form an ancient Kurdistan. Few experts agree with that scenario but many accept the tensions between the Turks and the Kurds in northern Iraq could quickly get out of hand and flare into a major conflict, leaving the US to decide which side to support. Much more worrying from a US military perspective would be a need to dispatch troops to the north which has been relatively peaceful and until now has not been a drain on US military resources. That would seriously deplete US reserves and undermine the present surge strategy in Baghdad.
Turkey’s foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, warned recently that his government ruled nothing out and that the US had been warned that Turkey would take whatever steps it considered necessary to deal with the threat from the PPK, especially threats emanating from across the border in Iraq. To make his point, Abdullah Gul said he had recently reminded the US that Turkey would not wait around forever for the US to deal with PPK elements in the Kurdish north of Iraq.
“We will do what we have to do. I have said to the Americans many times: “What would you do if there was a terrorist organization in Mexico attacking America. We cannot wait forever.”
Turkey has been privately telling journalists that its ally, the United States, has been playing a duplicitous and dangerous role in northern Iraq by allowing the CIA to fund an Iranian section of the PPK. Like its Turkish counterpart, Iran’s PPK believes Iran should cede independence to Kurds living on part of its territory. According to Turkish intelligence, the CIA has been funding the Iranian PPK and using it as a proxy to carry out attacks within Iran to destabilize the Iranian regime. The Turks argue that such a strategy is tantamount to supporting terrorists because training and funding for the Iranian PPK benefits all PPK fighters, especially those launching raids into Turkey.
Presently, Turkey feels somewhat isolated from the West because of overwhelming opposition among Europeans to its request to join the EU and a growing feeling it is being punished by Washington for failing to allow the US to launch a major strike into Iraq from Turkish territory in 2003. That feeling of being isolated has been manifested in a growing anti-western movement among Turks and loud demands for the country’s military to assert itself over the Kurdish issue. In 2006, the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan, was close to ordering an invasion of northern Iraq when he declared that his country’s patience was wearing thin. In particular, he singled out the US, accusing it of prevarication, meaning it had given him assurances it would deal with the PPK but had not followed through.
Aside from the Turkish threat of military intervention, the US should also be concerned about Kirkuk, which was seized by the Kurds in April 2003. Prior to that, Saddam had forced Kurds out of the city and replaced them with Arabs. Since 2003, Kurds have flooded back in and tensions between them and Arabs have been growing. The Kurds intend to hold Kirkuk because of its oil wealth and make it part of Kurdistan. To that end they have promised the Arabs a census followed by a referendum before the end of 2007. The referendum would allow Arabs and Kurds to decide whether Kirkuk should come under the control of a Kurdish regional government. The likelihood of a referendum is now slim due to the instability of the Shiite dominated government in Baghdad. It had agreed to a regional government for the Kurds and a referendum on Kirkuk. Now, Shiite political leaders in Baghdad are beginning to get cold feet because their followers and Iranian backers are opposed to the handing over of the oil fields of Kirkuk and the city to a Kurdish regional authority.
Kurdish leaders are determined to press on with the planned referendum because Kirkuk means so much to their plans for the future of Kurdistan. If the Shiite leadership back tracks on its promise to allow a referendum that could lead to a direct confrontation between the Kurds and Shiites. Should the present conflict widen to include the Kurdish north an all-out civil war would be inevitable. In that event, Turkey would not sit idly by and the US would find itself facing off against the Turkish military, which is a NATO partner.
Sources close to the CIA say the agency has warned Washington of Turkey’s ambitions to seize the Kirkuk oil fields and the real possibility Iran would respond by taking possession of the oil refineries at Basra. That is the malign scenario but it is not one that can be dismissed in such a volatile region.

JEWISH BILLIONAIRE ATTACKS ISRAEL LOBBY IN AMERICA

Jewish billionaire, George Soros, has invited the wrath of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee by publicly claiming it silences critics of Israel and has too much influence within America’s two main parties.
According to Soros, in an article in the New York Review of Books, anyone who confronts AIPAC invites its wrath with the result that few people are prepared to question its power over America’s Middle East policy. He feels it is time American Jews “reined in” AIPAC which has been at the center of a major spying scandal in the past year. Two of its senior executives were accused of passing US secrets to a Mossad agent within the Israeli embassy in Washington. That fact, however, did not deter many leading republicans and democrats, including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and the Clintons from continuing to support the organization. Its annual meeting in Washington is attended by the high and mighty from Capitol Hill. During this year’s conference, AIPAC lobbied for the US to stand firm with Israel and refuse to accept the new Palestinian national unity government – a stance not supported by most European and Arab states.
Soros knew that by standing up to AIPAC he was placing himself in the firing line. That was the fate of former president, Jimmy Carter, a year ago when he accused Israel of imposing a form of apartheid on Palestinians by continuing to encircle Palestinian territory with a wall that has been condemned by the International Court in The Hague. Carter was branded an Anti-Semite and has since admitted the level of vitriol directed at him was something he had never before experienced. In his opinion, it was all because he did something most Americans and the American media have been frightened to do. He questioned Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. It was clear to him that the Israel lobby intimidated and silenced critics of Israel by accusing them of being Anti-Semites. Carter quickly found he had few friends in Washington. Bill Clinton, whose wife Hilary needs the Jewish vote in her run for the presidency, distanced himself from Carter’s remarks and senior figures connected to Carter’s presidential library resigned.
None of that bothered Soros. He was quickly becoming familiar with the tactics of the pro-Israel lobby. In February, Martin Perez at the New Republic described him as “a cog in the Hitlerite wheel.” It was the type of low brow, thuggish comment Soros had come to expect from people who could not tolerate genuine debate. In his New York Review of Books article, Soros made it clear that anyone who challenged AIPAC or Israeli policy was sure to be subjected to a campaign of vilification. He added that Democratic and Republican politicians were so well acquainted with the risks of taking on the Jewish lobby and that they were part of a wall of silence surrounding the activities of AIPAC. As a consequence, AIPAC’s hardline policies hurt Israel and it was time for American Jews to speak out against the lobby group.
It is important to see Soros’ political view in a wider context. He is Jewish but admits he is not a practicing Jew, nor a Zionist. He is also one of the Democratic Party’s most generous benefactors. Recently he openly supported presidential candidate, Barack Obama, but Obama was careful not to alienate the Jewish lobby by insisting he did not subscribe to the Soros thesis about the need for debate about Israeli foreign policy. Soros says he cares about his fellow Jews and for that reason believes Israel must rid itself of its innate militarism. In particular, he asserts that policies, which lead to the killing of ten Palestinians for every Israeli and the virtual destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon, cannot be justified. He warns that if Israel continues to silence debate on these issues it will find itself in the same position that America found itself in during the lead up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. The Bush administration silenced critics by accusing them of being unpatriotic and then launched an invasion that may well turn out to be one of the greatest blunders in US history. Likewise, Israel, through groups like AIPAC, continues to charge that its critics are its enemies. In so doing, it risks not seeing the bigger picture and could well make errors of judgment that will endanger its security and that of the region.
Soros is greatly troubled by the power AIPAC wields within the Democratic Party and the likelihood that democrats will not be willing or able to alter that reality. While he is heartened that a debate is beginning in America about US Middle East policy, he nevertheless warns it will go nowhere “as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence” within the two parties on Capitol Hill. Democrats, he points out, have made promises about change but promises will prove hollow unless they become reality. Anyway, little headway will be made until Democrats “resist the dictates of AIPAC,” which he also calls “pervasive.”
He would earnestly love to see a wide ranging debate in America on Israeli policy in the Middle East region. He also wants Israel to abandon its biblical “eye for an eye” philosophy in favor of intelligent diplomacy. In his view, the Bush administration is going down a dangerous road by adopting the Israeli hardline strateg of not recognizing the new Palestinian government. He points to the fact the Saudis managed to bring that unity government into being, believing it was better for Middle East stability and a necessary precursor to an eventual settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. Soros claims the recent meeting between Condoleezza Rice, the Israel Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president, Abu Abbas, was “an empty formality” because it did not include Hamas which is a central element of the new Palestinian political entity.
Soros is not the only one taking heat from the Jewish lobby in the US and the Israeli media. Pulitzer Prize columnist, Nicholas Kristof, was recently lambasted by the New York Sun for “spreading a blood libel.” His perceived sin was that he dared to suggest in a New York Times article that American politicians “muzzled themselves” when it came to talking about Israel. He also said there was “no serious political debate among Democrats or Republicans about our policy towards Israelis and Palestinians.”
The Economist, one of Europe’s most highly respected magazines recently stated that it was time for America to have an open debate about its role in the Middle East and if AIPAC was to remain “such a mighty force” in American politics it had to play a positive role in that debate. Predictably, The Economist came in for a torrent of criticism but so too did the prominent website Salon.com. It carried an article by Gary Kamiya who said it was time for American Jews to say to AIPAC: “Not in my name!” He argued that American Jews had to seriously challenge the myth that AIPAC’s policies reflected the views of the wider Jewish community.
The developing debate about AIPAC, which is being described in some circles as “near nuclear” because of vehement reactions from the Jewish lobby, may well have its roots in an event last year. In March 2006, two political scientists, John Mearsheimer of Chicago University and Stephen Walt of Harvard were viciously attacked in Jewish outlets for a document they published, claiming that Israeli influence pushed America into the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and America’s unquestioning support for Israel was not strategic. It served to increased the threat of terrorism to the US. The Walt-Mearsheimer thesis also exposed the brutality of Israeli military policies and questioned the myth that Israel was David fighting Goliath. The academics thought the opposite was true and Israel was the Goliath in the Middle East. Those assertions placed the two academics in the center of a firestorm of criticism and charges they were Anti-Semites. Many fellow academics who agreed with them were much too frightened to come out publicly and say so.
As this latest debate involving Soros rages, AIPAC will either take center stage or sit back and hope it fizzles out. It knows it has unquestioning support in the corridors of power in Washington and within the media. In 1997 when Fortune magazine polled members of Congress about the most powerful lobbying organizations in Washington, AIPAC came in second. Since then little has changed.