Farewell? To WTCD

[just saw Lazlo's post on truthaction courtesy of Jpass....I think here's where the discussion should take place...so here's the blog I wrote this morning. 

Hey everyone,

Before I say adieu I wanted to take the time to apologize for my
rather nasty remarks the other day in Dicktater’s thread on Ayn Rand
(what can I say – she brings out the worst in me!) The truth is that I
was fairly intoxicated at the time and not really “all there”, as they
say. The lift was working, it just wasn’t going to the top floor. I was
in an antagonistic mood to boot, so in place of rational critique I
just sort of lashed out. Please accept my apologies.

I do recall saying that I do not believe the people on this blog to be
racist but rather anti-racist, hence the fierce opposition to Zionism.
At the same I also recall quoting a Judeophobic passage from the
otherwise brilliant Mikhail Bakunin, insinuating that his remarks would
probably be well received by many here. The contradiction is a sign of
my muddled thinking at the time, but it also points to a certain
discomfort I have with some of the content on this blog and with the
issue of Ziono-centrism in general.

Many Israeli apologists have stated that “anti-Zionism” is the new mask
for “anti-semitism”. Being an anti-Zionist I obviously do not share
this view. The fact that many Jewish people are among Israel’s greatest
detractors is invariably omitted from these analyses, which are
designed primarily to shield Israel from criticism by conflating
anti-Zionism with anti-Jewish sentiment.

I would be lying, however, if I didn’t say that some anti-Zionist
critics seem to bear all the hall-marks of traditional “anti-semitism”.
The Protocols. All-encompassing conspiracies attributed to a Jewish
cabal with gentiles relegated to puppet status. Jews accused of dual
loyalty etc. The end-result actually undermines the anti-Zionist
critique imo, more on that later.

On the issue of “dual loyalty”, I have no doubt that some Jews in
positions of power care more about Israel than the United States, just
as some (most) Jews and gentiles in positions of power care more about
corporations than people. But the mere fact that someone in a position
of power bears a Jewish surname should not automatically entail some
sort of fanatic devotion to Zionism. On this subject Finkelstein wrote:

“Mainstream Jewish intellectuals became "pro"-Israel after the June
1967 war when Israel became the U.S.'s strategic asset in the Middle
East, i.e., when it was safe and reaped benefits. To credit them with
ideological conviction is, in my opinion, very naive. They're no more
committed to Zionism than the neo-conservatives among them were once
committed to Trotskyism; their only ism is opportunism. As
psychological types, these newly minted Lovers of Zion most resemble
the Jewish police in the Warsaw ghetto. "Each day, to save his own
skin, every Jewish policeman brought seven sacrificial lives to the
extermination altar," a leader of the Resistance ruefully recalled.
"There were policemen who offered their own aged parents, with the
excuse that they would die soon anyhow." Jewish neo-conservatives watch
over the U.S. "national" interest, which is the source of their power
and privilege, and in the Middle East it happens that this "national"
interest largely coincides with Israel's "national" interest. If ever
these interests clashed, who can doubt that, to save their own skins,
they'll do exactly what they're ordered to do, with gusto?”

Sometimes, the “Jewish surname” thing is taken to absurd extremes.
So in Petras’ work “Do Zionists Run America?” the author goes so far as
to mention, in a foot note, that some or other war-monger has a Jewish
wife! Petras’ solution is to "move ahead and decolonize our country [of
Zionists], our minds and politics as a first step in reconstituting a
democratic republic, free of entangling colonial and neo-imperial
alliances." Sounds familiar. Like Alex Jones except instead of NWO
agents we have a Zionist infestation. I’m also reminded of the
Mershheimer/Walt piece:

“This argument has been heard before. Although it superficially sounds
“radical”, it is most often heard from paleoconservatives like Pat
Buchanan who also sparked controversy in the 1980s for making similar
arguments.

it might be worthwhile to put [Walt and Mershheimer] into context
ideologically. Both men subscribe to “neorealist” theory, which falls
within the international relations (IR) branch of political science.
This term is related to “realpolitik,” the word coined by Bismark that
obviously described the way that another realist Henry Kissinger
conducted foreign policy.

“States are assumed at a minimum to want to ensure their own
survival. This driving force of survival is the primary factor
influencing their behaviour and in turn ensures states develop
offensive military capabilities, as a mean to increase their relative
power. Neorealists bring attention to a persistent lack of trust
between states which requires states to be on guard and act in an
overtly aggressive manner.”

Full: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neorealism

To some extent, it is difficult to predict how realist scholars
will apply their theories to the world of practical politics. One
realist, E.H. Carr, had a career that defied conventional
anti-Communist expectations while another, George Kennan, exemplified
professional anti-Communism.

Mearsheimer was opposed to the invasion of Iraq and signed an ad in
the NY Times with other realists like Kenneth Waltz under a heading
that is quintessentially realist: “War with Iraq is not in America’s
national interest”. And what if it was? Bombs away?

The Question of what is or is not in “America’s national [ie
state/corporate] interest” is not easy to answer. So while some
factions of the ruling class were opposed to the Iraqi adventure,
others (not merely Zionists) saw it as crucial:

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington
expressed this concern most clearly in a November 2000 report made
public in February 2001 under the title, The Geopolitics of Energy into
the 21st Century. According to this report, world energy demand should
increase by over 50 percent during the first two decades of the 21st
century.

“The Persian Gulf will remain the key marginal supplier of oil to
the world market, with Saudi Arabia in the unchallenged lead. Indeed,
if estimates of future demand are reasonably correct, the Persian Gulf
must expand oil production by almost 80 percent during 2000–2020,
achievable perhaps if foreign investment is allowed to participate and
if Iran and Iraq are free of sanctions.”

“For the Bush administration, as in fact for U.S. capitalism as a
whole, the need to put an end to the embargo imposed on Iraq was
becoming urgent. It was time to make possible reconstruction and
modernization of Iraq’s oil infrastructure—meaning several years of
investments and work. Iraq sits on the second largest oil reserves in
the world after the Saudi kingdom; Washington’s goal was to allow Iraq
to double and then triple its production (up to its estimated capacity)
during the first decade of the new century, so as to ward off an oil
crisis during the following decade. Underlying this concern was the
principle according to which a substantial margin of flexibility in
Saudi production—a safety margin between the kingdom’s actual
production and its production capacity[12]—must be maintained. This is
crucial to the stability of the world oil market under supervision from
the United States, and constitutes “the cornerstone of its oil
policy.”[13]

Similarly, on the subject of Afghanistan;

“The invasion of Afghanistan was also a chance for the Bush
administration to carry out a project it had cherished since the final
collapse of the Soviet Union. But establishing a direct U.S. military
presence in the heart of ex-Soviet Central Asia had seemed even more
improbable than a U.S. occupation of Iraq.[14] A military presence in
the heart of the Eurasian continental mass joining Russia to China—two
countries tempted to ally with each other in order to resist U.S.
hegemonic pressure more effectively,[15] or even to ally with Iran as
well—had evident geostrategic value. Besides, a U.S. military presence
in Central Asia and the Caspian basin (in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan,
Georgia and so on) fit into its global and Middle Eastern strategy of
taking control of sources of oil, supplemented in this particular case
by natural gas.”

I’m not sure why this should even be an issue, frankly. It is well
known that control over oil reserves has been the obsession of every
American administration since (at least) Einsehower. Plans of directly
seizing Arab oil fields have been in development for decades (complete
with talk about the need for a “boogeyman” to justify said seizure).
The reasons for this obsession should be fairly obvious. It’s about
long-standing U.S. attempts to acquire and maintain strategic control
over the region and its resources (again, not only in the middle east
but across the globe).

For these reasons alone I agree with Finkelstein that US policy in
the middle east would not be drastically different in the absence of a
Zionist state (excepting Palestine, of course). Israel is an important
partner in these atrocities and has her own reasons for fomenting the
“war on terror” myth, already well known to readers here. Her existence
makes things markedly worse. I’m not trying to dispute any of this.

What I’m trying to say is that 911 cannot be viewed in a vacuum.
The simple fact is that the US has been incredibly consistent with its
policies toward weaker states in the middle east and elsewhere. Not
only the US, in fact, but just about every powerful state in the
history of mankind.

“The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in
all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public
odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and
encroachments.” Henry Clay, 1834

911 was the logical choice for the American state in the wake of
Glasnost, the oil crisis and a bourgeoning “anti-globalization”
movement, among many other factors. As Rocker wrote of totalitarianism:

“Modern monopoly capitalism and the totalitarian state are merely the
last terms in a development which could culminate in no other results.”

As so it has been said, that if Bin Laden didn’t exist the Pentagon
would have had to create him. In a manner of speaking: they did.

Speaking of the Pentagon and Glasnost, the issue of military
Keynesianism is another area that seems to be entirely absent from the
ZIHOP thesis.

“Our excessive military expenditures did not occur over just a few
short years or simply because of the Bush administration's policies.
They have been going on for a very long time in accordance with a
superficially plausible ideology and have now become entrenched in our
democratic political system where they are starting to wreak havoc.
This ideology I call "military Keynesianism" - the determination to
maintain a permanent war economy and to treat military output as an
ordinary economic product, even though it makes no contribution to
either production or consumption.

This ideology goes back to the first years of the Cold War. During
the late 1940s, the US was haunted by economic anxieties. The Great
Depression of the 1930s had been overcome only by the war production
boom of World War II. With peace and demobilization, there was a
pervasive fear that the Depression would return.

The result was the militaristic National Security Council Report 68
[NSC-68] drafted under the supervision of Paul Nitze, then head of the
Policy Planning Staff in the State Department. Dated April 14, 1950,
and signed by president Harry S Truman on September 30, 1950, it laid
out the basic public economic policies that the United States pursues
to the present day.

In its conclusions, NSC-68 asserted: "One of the most significant
lessons of our World War II experience was that the American economy,
when it operates at a level approaching full efficiency, can provide
enormous resources for purposes other than civilian consumption while
simultaneously providing a high standard of living."

With this understanding, American strategists began to build up a
massive munitions industry, both to counter the military might of the
Soviet Union (which they consistently overstated) and also to maintain
full employment as well as ward off a possible return of the
Depression. The result was that, under Pentagon leadership, entire new
industries were created to manufacture large aircraft, nuclear-powered
submarines, nuclear warheads, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and
surveillance and communications satellites. This led to what president
Dwight D Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address of February
6, 1961: "The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a
large arms industry is new in the American experience." That is, the
military-industrial complex.

By 1990, the value of the weapons, equipment, and factories devoted
to the Department of Defense was 83% of the value of all plants and
equipment in American manufacturing. From 1947 to 1990, the combined US
military budgets amounted to $8.7 trillion. Even though the Soviet
Union no longer exists, US reliance on military Keynesianism has, if
anything, ratcheted up [due to – you guessed it – the “war on terror”]

It is not my wish to exculpate the Israeli agents who took part in
the 911 attacks, hence my inclusion of the “Dancing Israelis” in my
film The Third Stage. They are every bit as guilty as the individuals
who planned the war games, for instance. The problem I see is that
people either grossly underplay or grossly overplay the significance of
Zionism in world affairs.

On the “overplay” front, I do indeed view the theory of a singularly
“Zionist” motivation/agency behind 911 as a limited hangout every bit
as wrong-headed as the Patsyian angle. It basically robs us of any
perspective on the root problems of militarism and statism and
therefore the ability to rectify these problems.

I think the ZIHOP view presented on this blog discredits 911 truth, not
because of any real or perceived “anti-Semitism” but because, to put it
bluntly, it is simplistic and naïve. I also think the Zionist “master
control” thesis actually undermines the anti-Zionist cause. A critique
of Petras’ work argued the same:

“Unfortunately, his current book may be taken up there and elsewhere as
some seemingly worthwhile analysis of how and why the United States
does what it does in the world. It may also be seized upon as
documented "proof" of "the anti-Semitism of the Left." It might
conceivably be taken up by elements of the far right, already convinced
and not needing to be told, but always receptive to more "proof" of
Jewish machinations and conspiracies.

More ominous, perhaps, the book will certainly seem attractive to
numbers of unevenly developed and unschooled radicals, disenchanted
youth and others already opposed to war and occupation abroad and
assaults on civil liberties and increasing authoritarianism at home. It
may contribute to miseducating and disorienting a movement that needs a
serious, trenchant and materialist critique of imperialism and of
Zionism.

To understand what seems to have led Petras into this blind alley,
it may be worth looking at the remarkable recent renascence of various
forms of populism -- left, right, and just plain confused -- with its
illusory solutions to real problems. Grounded in vague notions of "the
people," joined in opposition to some oligarchy or "plutocracy" of
usurpers at the top, populism as an ideology is often backward-looking,
filled with demands to regain a declining status and position and calls
to "take back our lands/nation/democracy/republic."

While populism certainly has had its contradictory progressive and
democratic edge, typified in our own period by anti-corporate demands
of the Green party and other forces in the global justice struggle,
populism has also had a reactionary side appealing to social groups
bypassed and buffeted by economic forces beyond their control -- a
nativist, xenophobic and racist side, a penchant for conspiratorial
theory and a related quest to exorcize evil cabals, rid the country of
outsiders and/or their domestic agents, and reclaim "the republic."
This retrograde side of populism is evidenced above all today in ugly
anti-immigrant racism.

Such mistakes could be corrected, but the quality of the analysis
is hardly better than the editing. This is a real shame, because the
poisonous effect of AIPAC is a genuine political problem, and any
attempt to confront "The Lobby" or intelligently discuss U.S. Middle
East policy brings immediate denunciation and retribution…”

I hope this short piece will help to illustrate why I (and many
others) reject the ZIHOP thesis. Shillery needn’t be involved, although
accusations of such seem to the preferred method of dealing with
opposing views by many in the 911 truth movement. If I have
misrepresented anyone’s position it was not done intentionally. It’s
just the way I interpret this website’s message.

I will probably not be visiting here much in the future simply because
I find the recent vogue of attacking Truthaction mean-spirited and
counterproductive (even though I’m sure some constructive criticism is
in order). I’m disappointed that things have turned out as they have
but, that’s life.

Good luck.