The
Panel II:
The Contemporary American Political Landscape
and the
Samih Farsoun: The panel is entitled
"Contemporary American Political Landscape and the
So
with us are people who have written extensively on these matters. Two of the important political, social
groupings of forces in American society that have contributed to this shift to
the right more recently than anything else really, although they are anchored
in longer history, are the neoconservatives that are so importantly entrenched
in the Bush Administration often they're called neocons, as distinct from the
old conservatives which are sometimes also called paleo-cons, by Greek
terminology. And the other major
grouping that we will be addressing is the role of the and the rise of the
evangelical Christian groups to political prominence and influence in this
country.
So
with that very brief introduction, please let me introduce you to Mr. Jim Lobe,
who writes for the Inter Press and his articles are extensively circulated,
especially on the Net. I read them all
the time on the Net. Sometimes I get
five or six hits on the same article coming to me from that. Mr. Lobe.
Jim Lobe: Jim Lobe has worked with inter press service
for most of the last 25 years as a correspondent specializing in u.s. foreign
policy, particularly toward developing countries, and international economic
issues, especially the Washington-based world bank and international monetary
fund. since 9/11, he has written for other publications, including
tompaine.com, alternet, and the Daily Star of
Jim
Lobe: I don't speak much in
public, as you can probably tell already and will find out more as I go
along. I have no sense of time, particularly when I speak.
Although I cover current events and who's up and who's down in the
administration, what really interests me about neocons - and I'll use the word
"neocons" not out of disrespect but it'll slash a lot of my time if I
don't have to say neoconservatives - what interests me most is motivation and
why they think the way they think. I've devoted a lot of thinking to it
myself. I, like many of them, am Jewish and my parents came from
Im going to try to enumerate the neocon worldview. You'll notice that I
won't talk much about democracy, because I essentially see that as a tactic,
one in which many neocons believe but I don't think is at the heart of the
movement itself. Whenever anybody talks about neocons being Wilsonians, I
faint in a certain way. I don't think they are at all.
Im going to focus - there are two kinds of basic explanations about
neoconservatism. One of them has to do with the fact that many founding
neoconservatives were Trotskyites. I'm not an expert on the sectarian
left, but I find many of those arguments quite interesting and in some ways
quite persuasive, but I'm not going to address them here. I'm going to
talk more about existential kinds of issues, particularly in what I think might
be the Jewish core of the movement, although there are obviously many neocons
who are not Jews and I think they relate to it in a somewhat different
way. But in many ways their relationship to it is affected by their
perception of Jews, of
So I'm going to start enumerating and I'll go as quickly as I can. I
won't cite too many quotes in order to save time. I just want to try to round
out their worldview. Then, if there's time at the end and you have
questions about proof for what I'm saying, I can go back and quote more.
First of all, neocons take a very Hobbesian view of human nature. Like
Hobbes, they think that the nature of man or man in the state of nature, his
life is nasty, brutish and short. Or as Machiavelli put it - Machiavelli
being one of their heroes - men are more ready for evil than for good. In
the absence of a Leviathan, using Hobbesian political ideas, the state of
nature is a war of all against all. So it's not something that hippies
could relate to, for example, of the 1960s. By the by, I would say you
have to also see neoconservatism as a serious reaction to the 1960s.
The second principle would be that in defining good and evil, or just how bad
the nature of man can be, Nazism and the Holocaust are seen as the absolute
evil, or evil incarnate. That kind of brutality and inhumanity is
translated into a very Manichaean view of the world - that is, a view of the
world that actually dates back from ancient Persia, whereby there are forces of
good and forces of evil, and history, or life, or human life, is essentially a
struggle of the forces of evil versus the forces of good. That's what
life is about. That's all about what life is about. And a Manichaean
view, which actually is very close to a strong U.S. tradition which begins with
the Pilgrims and the Puritans - who, as persecuted people in England, shared
very much a Manichaeanism - pervades very much their view of politics.
Politics is a struggle of good versus evil. It's an eternal thing.
As Mike Ledeen told BBC in a broadcast, in which I played a part and as a
result of which I've been told I can't ever attend American Enterprise
Institute briefings again, - "I
wrote a book on Machiavelli and I know the struggle against evil is going to go
on forever." What a great statement. But that is very much at
the core of a lot of neoconservative thinking.
This Manichaeanism has a tendency of defining the world in terms of good and
evil, constant struggle, in which the statement "if you're not with me,
you're against me" makes a whole lot of sense. In fact, it's
essential. It seems like the president of the
I think there's a strong moral dimension to this. Perle told the
BBC in the same program that the Holocaust - and I think he wasn't exaggerating
- was "the defining moment of our history." He went on that we
must stop totalitarian regimes, "because when we fail to so, the results
are catastrophic." Again, I think it's the Holocaust that sits in
the back of the mind of a lot of these people, as the absolute evil, the definition
of catastrophe..
The principle has to do with how do you avoid a Holocaust? How do you
prevent a Holocaust? What lessons can be learned from it?
In
Internationally, the sin was not liberalism but something that they think goes
with it, called appeasement, or failure of will. You will note that every
time they make an historical reference of something, talking about whatever
current struggle they're involved with, it's always in terms of
A
quick example, but a very good one. Donald Kagan is a classicist, he's
the father of Robert Kagan, who's an editor at the Weekly Standard. He's
a classicist at Cornell - first at Cornell, now he's at Yale. He writes
books and articles about "why
Fourth, the role of military power and peace through strength. The way to
fight a Hitler is through military power. Yes, they talk about
ideological stuff; there's always hearts and minds and the war of ideas and so
on. But ultimately what really counts is military power. Peace
processes are for sissies and Europeans. As a Wall Street Journal
editorial writer once wrote: "Peace doesn't come from a
process." This is one of their main editorial writers. He
called the 1990s a "decade of appeasement."
So the neo-con worldview also puts this very strong emphasis on military power
and thus whenever they talk about enemies, the enemies are always supposed to
be awed by military power. It's the only thing they understand, whether
it's the
Fifth, the role of the
Sixth, despite its moral goodness, the
Seventh, if you have such a strong feeling as to your own goodness,
naturally you don't want to be constrained in any way or have anybody else
constrain you except yourself. Hence, there is this hostility to
multilateralism and to international law. Because if you're really the
incarnation of good and the evil is out there, it makes no sense to tie your
freedom of action to powers that are less moral, does it? I think
not. I think that that explains a lot about the unilateralism of this
country. Or as Perle said just the day before yesterday about Iraq in
London, which caused a big deal on the web, "I think in this case international
law stood in the way of doing the right thing." Well, that's an
important point, because if you don't have confidence in international law - I
speak now as a trained lawyer - the law has very little to do with
morality. If you think there are higher laws and a higher morality,
you're not going to accord much faith in international law, right? I
mean, it follows. There is a logic here. Or take what Perle said
about the idea of permitting the UN Security Council to decide whether the U.S.
could invade Iraq: "This is a dangerously wrong idea that leads inexorably
to handing great moral and even existential political, military decisions to
the likes of Syria, Cameroon, Angola, Russia, China and France."
Which gets to the next point, and now I'm going to go really fast.
So, eighth, neo-cons don't like Europe, and in that they are consistent with a
strong U.S. tradition. They see the Europeans as amoral, cynical,
hierarchical, decadent, elitist, cowardly. All traditional isolationist attitudes
that have been adopted by the neocons. They also see them as kind of
sissy, they won't stand up for what's right. That's after all what
happened in the 1930s, remember. So neo-cons are extremely contemptuous
of Europe and you can see that a lot, and especially when it comes to questions
about Israel and anti-Semitism. Then the real anger comes out and pours
forth. I can give many examples, but I have no time.
They also don't like multinational corporations, for kind of the same reason.
That's principle number nine. Corporations make commercial calculations and
neo-cons think only moral calculations count. Therefore, I've always
argued that the neoconservatives are very hostile to the interests,
philosophically speaking, of multinational capital.
Finally, there's the centrality of Israel and the Holocaust that relates
together. William Bennett, a gentile neocon, "America's fate and
Israel's fate are one and the same." I would say this is because
they're one and the same in a moral dimension, in the views of neoconservatives
- not necessarily in a geopolitical dimension but in a moral dimension, which
has the highest value. That's changed over time in the sense that for a
long time it was the State of Israel which was given that status. But as of
1992, when Rabin signed the Oslo Accords, which was heavily criticized by most
neo-cons, it moves somewhat to the right of the State of Israel, depending on
which government was in power.
One thing in anticipation of the later panelists. Again, this goes to the
question of the ability to sacrifice principles for political gain in pursuit
of a larger interest. Irving Kristol, talking about defending the
relationship with Christian Zionists who were explicitly anti-Semitic: "It
is their theology, but it is our Israel." To me, that is one of the
more cynical statements that's come from my co-religionists in a long time, but
nonetheless I think it helps define the way they view the world. Thanks.
prospects?
Joe Sobran: Joe Sobran received his B.A. in English from Eastern
Michigan University and did graduate studies in English, specializing in
Shakespeare. In 1972, he went to work for National Review Magazine,
beginning what would be a 21-year stint, including 18 years as senior editor.
He has been a nationally syndicated columnist since 1979, first with the Los
Angeles Times Syndicate, then with the Universal Press Syndicate, and now with Griffin Internet Syndicate. He also writes the weekly
column Washington Watch for The Wanderer, a weekly
Catholic newspaper. Mr. Sobran is the author of three books. Single Issues: Essays on the Crucial Social Questions , Alias
Shakespeare: Solving the Greatest Literary Mystery of All Time, and Hustler:
The Clinton Legacy, a
collection of essays selected and edited by Tom McPherren (with a foreword by
Ann Coulter) and published in 2000 by Griffin Communications.
Joe Sobran:
Thank you, Jim, for making about half the points I was planning to
make. A very stimulating talk and a
tough act to follow, I must say.
During
the debate on the war on Iraq, these neoconservatives have come under public
attention and scrutiny for the first time.
Even their nickname, "neocons," has become familiar to
us. It wasn't very long ago that these
terms were hardly known outside the conservative circles in which I've
generally traveled. A cover story in the
November 17th issue of Newsweek on Vice President Dick Cheney refers freely to
the neoconservatives in Cheney's inner circle, including Paul Wolfowitz,
Douglas Feith and Richard Perle. But the
text is kind of vague about what these men stand for. It does describe them as foreign policy
hardliners but it leaves the reader to guess what neoconservatism really or
ultimately means.
By
now, sophisticated readers don't really have to guess. The defining mark of the neocons is their
devotion to and often their personal connections with the State of Israel, and
particularly its ruling Likud Party. Yet
the entire four-page Newsweek article makes no mention of Israel, nor are we
told that these men have been pressing aggressively for war on Iraq long before
the events of September 11, 2001, which is the ostensible reason for the war on
terror proclaimed by President Bush.
Most Americans still assume that the war on Iraq was merely part of his
war on terror and have no idea that the notion was hatched more than a decade
ago. But anyone who's observed the
neoconservatives over the years knows better.
As the intellectual wing of the pro-Israel lobby, they've sought war
with Iraq, one of Israel's chief enemies, since before the Persian Gulf War in
1991. In fact, they were severely
critical of the first President Bush for failing to "finish the job"
by outright conquest and occupation of Iraq and the removal of its dictator,
Saddam Hussein. A particularist Jewish
and specifically Zionist goals of the neocons have been disguised by their
false universalist rhetoric of democracy, which has recently been skillfully
blended with an equally false particularist rhetoric of American patriotism,
well summed up by the Bennett quote Jim just gave us "America's fate and
Israel's fate are one and the same."
There can be no question of dual loyalty, or rather prior loyalty, if
you simply identify what's good for Israel with what's good for the United
States. It's like what Charlie Wilson
notoriously said about General Motors what's good for General Motors is good for
the country. Well, Israel is this generation's
General Motors.
American
and Israeli interests have thus been deceptively conflated. We're asked to believe that what's good not
just for Israel but for the most reactionary elements in Israel also just
happens to be good for America, and even for mankind in general, including
Arabs and Muslims.
Even the
label "neoconservative" is very misleading. The neoconservatives are only superficially
conservative. This isn't the occasion
for a lengthy analysis of the old question of what conservatism really means,
but a few salient points are relevant.
American
conservatism has generally stood for a limited government and especially for a
restricted role for the federal government.
It views government power with suspicion and frowns on foreign aid and
"foreign entanglements" in general.
It was hostile to the New Deal and before Pearl Harbor opposed America's
entry into World War II. For a long time
it was decidedly cool to Zionism and Israel, both of which it considered
socialist.
But the
so-called isolationism of conservatives was complicated, if not altogether
ended, by the Cold War, when communism in the form of a nuclear-armed Soviet
Union appeared to threaten the very existence of the United States. Most conservatives supported the Vietnam War
and indeed any anti-communist military intervention. Many of them still regard that misguided war
as, in President Reagan's words, "a noble effort to save freedom."
All this
began to change in 1967. With the Six
Day War between Israel and the Arabs, overt hostility emerged between Israel
and the Soviet Union. At that point,
neoconservatism also began to emerge.
Its chief spokesman was Irving Kristol.
Kristol was a Zionist, a New Deal liberal, who however was also
anti-communist and rather skeptical toward the welfare state, though he
approved of it in principle. The term
"neoconservative" was coined by one of his liberal critics I think
it was actually the socialist Michael Harrington. Kristol cheerfully accepted and adopted the
term and very soon a group of likeminded intellectuals likewise began calling
themselves neoconservatives.
In their
obsession with communism, old-fashioned conservatives including me quickly
welcomed the neoconservatives as allies and overlooked deep differences in philosophical
principle. After all, the
neoconservatives will still liberals at heart, advocates of limitless
government, even if they wanted to use government for different purposes from
those of most liberals. The fact that
mainstream liberals were hostile to neoconservatives satisfied the old-style
conservatives that the neocons were "on our side." So conservatism and neoconservatism
merged. This required concessions on
both sides, but I should say the old conservatives did most of the
conceding. It was tacitly agreed that
conservatives would drop their opposition to Zionism, foreign aid and foreign
entanglements, at least where Israel was concerned. Ronald Reagan was an enthusiastic supporter
of Israel, even after Prime Minister Menachem Begin brazenly lied to him about
Israeli designs on Lebanon. Other
conservatives followed Reagan's lead.
Reagan welcomed many neoconservatives into his administration.
Curiously,
though conservatives were many and neoconservatives were few, neoconservatism
more or less swallowed up conservatism.
The neoconservatives were skillful infighters, infiltrated two
Republican administrations, those of Reagan and the first President Bush, more
or less as Soviet agents had once infiltrated the administration of Franklin
Roosevelt. But just as earlier
objections to Soviet influence had been stigmatized as McCarthyism, so
objections to Zionist influence were branded anti-Semitism.
Today,
despite such things as the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, despite the
Jonathan Pollard spy scandal, despite Israeli espionage and technology theft
against the U.S. over the years, and despite the enmity and reproach the
American-Israeli liaison has caused throughout the world, it's become an
article of faith among conservatives that Israel is America's "reliable
ally." How this clichι can be
reconciled with either American interests or true conservative principles has
yet to be explained.
Neoconservative
that is, Zionist influence has been even more successful in the second Bush
administration. In fact, the first
President Bush had been more resistant to that influence than his son and had
incurred intense neocon hostility. Bush
the Elder never trusted the earlier Likudnik Prime Minister Yitzhak
Shamir. But Bush the Younger has been
cowed and manipulated by the incumbent Ariel Sharon, whom he seems to regard
with something like awed reverence. Just
as the conservatives have been strangely deferential to the neocons, the
younger Bush appears inexplicably submissive to Israel and the Zionists.
But there
may be an explanation. The pro-Israel
lobby is no longer overwhelmingly Jewish and secular. It now has a large component of
fundamentalist Christians who see the Middle East as an apocalyptic
battleground. These Christians are an
important part of the younger Bush's political base and there are signs that
he, in striking contrast to his father, shares their view. The older Bush, much to the annoyance of
conservatives who loved Reagan, was at heart a businessman with few evident
convictions. He also took a businesslike
view of America's interest in the Middle East, which for him came down to
access to Arab oil. In religion, he
seemed to be a rather conventional Episcopalian, unencumbered by dogma and
anything but apocalyptic. Getting Iraq
out of Kuwait and restoring the status quo was his only war aim in 1991.
The
younger Bush, by contrast, may have more convictions than we know. He's reportedly a devout Protestant. He uses more overtly religious rhetoric than
his father ever did. But he's also very
guarded about revealing his specific beliefs.
At the same time, he has a far more grandiose vision of America's role
in the Middle East than his father did.
He aims at a total transformation of the region in the name of freedom
and democracy, terms he hasn't defined but which he uses interchangeably.
Only one
country in the Middle East, in Mr. Bush's view, seems not to require
transformation. Israel already satisfies
his notions of freedom and democracy.
Though he urges the creation of a Palestinian state, he will not use
American force to achieve it. Though he
adamantly insisted that Saddam Hussein presents intolerably menacing weapons of
mass destruction, which have yet to be found, he's not at all alarmed that
Israel has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons or that Israeli democracy is based
on the direct denial that all men are created equal.
The
younger Bush stands in contrast to his father in another respect: the
neoconservatives adore him. They
bitterly detested the elder Bush for his insubordination to Israel. A few even confessed that they voted for Bill
Clinton in 1992. But the entire
neoconservative press, including such pundits and publications as Charles
Krauthammer by the way, I think his name should be changed now to Froghammer,
given what he's written about the French.
He did hammer the Krauts for some years, but now he's changed
targets. William Safire, Paul Greenberg,
A.M. Rosenthal, David Brooks, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, the
New York Post, Investors Business Daily, the National Review, to name only a
few, have been solidly enthusiastic about the current President Bush.
In this
previously mentioned issue of Newsweek, the columnist Farid Zakaria says of the
neoconservatives that "the one agency of government they love is the
military." This is shrewd
indeed. The neocons are all for big
activist government, provided it's shooting and bombing. They favor huge government programs, so long
as they're lethal to Arabs and Muslims.
Their goal is power. Their agenda
is not to conserve but to destroy.
Despite
their label, the neoconservatives are as alien to true conservatism as they are
to principled liberalism. It's tragic
that most conservatives still fail to perceive this. Thank you very much.
Don Wagner: Donald E. Wagner received a BA from Westminster
College (Pennsylvania) in 1964 and an MDIV in 1967 and ThM in 1969 both from
Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1984 he received a DMin from McCormick
Theological Seminary. From 1980-1989 Mr. Wagner was the National director,
Palestine Human Rights Campaign, Chicago. He also served as Director of Middle
East Relations, Mercy Corps International (Chicago office). In 1986 he became a
co-founder of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding, and was its National
Director for ten years, a position from which he resigned on December 31, 2000.
He currently serves as a consultant to World Vision International and remains
on the Board of Directors for Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding. He
has received numerous awards and citations, the most recent being the Human
Rights Award from the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation in Washington,
D.C., which he received in October 2001. Donald Wagner has published five
books, the most recent being Dying in the Land of Promise: Palestine and
Palestinian Christianity from Pentecost to 2000 (Fox Communications Ltd.
London, England. In 1995 he published Anxious for Armageddon (Herald Press) and
in 1993 Peace or Armageddon? (Zondervan-Harper & Row).
Don Wagner: It's a great privilege to be with
you and wonderful to hear the previous panelists. I'll shift the turf just a little bit now and
talk about the Christian Zionist movement and some of its origins. This is a movement I grew up in. I'd like to show, after some introductory
remarks, just a short clip that some of you may be familiar with. It's from "60 Minutes" about a year
and a half ago. You may have seen this,
but I think it highlights in a brief way the worldview that we're discussing here.
I
appreciated Professor Sharabi's opening remark about part of the unreality of
the real. Certainly the Christian
Zionists really fits this mode and this thesis, the unreality of the real. In fact it has been somewhat dismissed, I
think, by the mainstream political scientists and the secular press until very
recently, because this is a movement that has been emerging for some time. I'll try to trace just a little bit of that.
So what
I'll do is talk just a little bit about the worldview of the Christian
Zionists, make a few historical comments and then I'll probably run out of time
to make any political commentary. My
colleague Cliff will take care of that.
I say it
should not have been any surprise that this movement was emerging because as
early as 1986, according to a Pew Research poll that demonstrated that at least
26 percent of the Republican Party held the views of the Christian Zionist
orientation a literalist Biblical view, a type of millenarian perspective on
the end time, and a radical commitment to Israel as in the interests of the
U.S. policy and success. 26 percent in
1986, at the height of the Reagan era, where I think many of these movements
crystallized, as I'll try to show in a moment.
But in 1999, those numbers jumped to 33 percent. I'd say they're increasing at the present
time. So within the Republican Party,
the Republican right, these views are very deep and very strong. This is a Pew Research poll.
The clip
I'd like to show you now is a "60 Minutes" documentary on the Christian
right, which many of you have seen. What
they're highlighting is a particular period.
We all recall when Israel went into and reoccupied the West Bank after
that tragic suicide bombing in Netanya, and the reinvasion of the West Bank and
particularly Jenin drew international outcry and significant pressure on the
Bush Administration. We recall the
president making one of his many strong serious speeches to Sharon, said,
withdraw! Withdraw immediately! Well, let me show you in this video how that
happened.
["60
Minutes" clip begins]
Bob
Simon: What's the number one item on the
agenda of the Christian right?
Abortion? School prayer? No, and no.
Believe it or not, what's most important to a lot of conservative
Christians is the Jewish state, Israel.
Its size, its strength, its survival.
Why so? Well there is the
alliance between America and Israel in the war on Islamic terror, but it goes
deeper. For Christians who interpret the
Bible in a literal fashion, Israel has a crucial role to play in bringing on
the second coming of Christ. This
Friday, thousands are expected to gather on the Mall in Washington to express
their faith and to lobby the administration.
The rally is being organized by the Christian Coalition, which wants to
make sure that the Bush Administration sees the struggle in the Middle East
between Jews and Muslims their way: the Christian way.
At a
congregation in Colorado, it's Israel Awareness Day. But this is not a Jewish congregation and
these are not Jewish dancers. They're
all Christians. Not only are they
holding these pep rallies all across America, they're also streaming here to
Israel, to the dangerous streets of Jerusalem, to express their undying
devotion.
Female
Speaker: We're forever with Israel! Hallelujah!
God bless you!
Bob
Simon: American Christian Zionists say
they're now a more important source of support for Israel than American Jews
and the traditional Jewish lobby.
Jerry
Falwell: It is my belief that the Bible
Belt in America is Israel's only safety belt right now.
Bob Simon:
The Reverend Jerry Falwell is one of the leaders of the Christian right. That's the bulk of evangelical Christians and
Falwell claims to speak for all of them.
Jerry
Falwell: There are 70 million of
us. If there's one thing that brings us
together quickly, it's whenever we begin to detect our government becoming a
little anti-Israel.
Bob
Simon: Falwell began to detect just that
last April, when President Bush called on Israel to withdraw its tanks from
Palestinian towns on the West Bank.
George
Bush: Withdraw without delay.
Bob
Simon: So Falwell shot off a letter of
protest to the White House, which was followed by 100,000 emails from Christian
conservatives. Israel did not move its
tanks. Bush did not ask again.
Jerry Falwell: There's nothing that would bring the wrath of
the Christian public in this country down on this government like abandoning or
opposing Israel in a critical matter.
Bob
Simon: This is his core constituency.
Jerry
Falwell: It is, and I don't think for a
moment he's going to do that. I really
believe when the chips are down, Ariel Sharon can trust George Bush to do the
right thing every time.
Bob
Simon: Prime Minister Sharon can
apparently trust the Christian evangelicals to do the right thing too. They treated him like a rock star when they
flocked to Jerusalem last week to celebrate the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles.
Male
Speaker: United with God's help, a new
solidarity, we will win! We will
win! [cheering]
Bob
Simon: With the flags of sixty nations
on display, there was an Olympic air about the event.
Female
Speaker: The United States of
America! [cheering]
Bob
Simon: Gold went to those who loved
Israel the most.
But what
propels them? Why do they love Israel so
much? Because the return of the Jews to
their ancient homeland is seen by evangelicals as a precondition for the second
coming of Christ. Therefore, when the
Jewish state was created in 1948, they saw it as a sign. Israel's conquest of Jerusalem and the West
Bank in 1967 deepened their excitement, heightened their anticipation. Today's war between Jews and Arabs was also
prophesized, they say. They've seen it
all before in the pages of the Bible.
Ed
McAteer: The Bible does not contain the
word of God, Bob. Listen to me closely. The Bible is the word of God.
Bob
Simon: Ed McAteer is known as the
godfather of the Christian right. He's a
former Colgate marketing executive from Memphis and was a founder of the Moral
Majority. He wears his religion on his
sleeve and his politics on his tie.
There is a
battle going on in the Middle East right now?
Ed
McAteer: No question about it.
Bob
Simon: Is this the beginning of the
final battle?
Ed
McAteer: Bob, as I used to tell my
salesmen, don't give me a happiness report, tell me like it is. So I don't push my views on people, but I'm
telling you from my heart, I believe that.
I believe.
Bob
Simon: The end of days is upon us?
Ed
McAteer: I believe that we are seeing
prophecy unfold so rapidly and dramatically and wonderfully. Without exaggerating, it makes me breathless.
Bob
Simon: And he's not the only one. Countless millions of Americans are reading a
series of novels called "Left Behind." They're topping bestseller lists all over the
country and they're being made into movies.
They chronicle apocalyptic times.
The setting is the 21st century, complete with warplanes and TV
correspondents.
[clip from
movie]
Actor: This is Buck Williams reporting live from
Israel. I am standing in the middle of
an all-out attack.
Bob
Simon: But the plot is ripped from the
pages of the Bible, so it all winds up here in Israel, where according to the
Book of Revelations, the final battle in the history of the future will be
fought on this ancient battleground in northern Israel called Armageddon. It will follow seven years of tribulation
during which the earth will be shaken by such disasters that previous human
history will seem like a day in the country.
[end of
clip]
Don
Wagner: Well, this is another worldview
for many of us. This is what I grew up
in and have slowly migrated out of it, but my dear mother, godfather, much of
my family, still holds to it and wonders why I'm concerned about working for
justice in the Middle East, because it's all going to happen the way the Bible
says anyway.
Let me
turn now to take a look at a little bit of this worldview, in the few minutes
that I am, and try to deconstruct a few things.
What is
Christian Zionism? This term really was
not used very much in the secular press or among political scientists until
very recently, although it was emerging in the 1980s. I think we can locate this movement within
fundamentalist dispensational Christianity, and I'll try to unpack that a
little bit. That may be a new term for
many of us. It is a fundamentalism that interestingly
has its parallels and its shadow movements in Wahhabism and some of the
ultra-Messianic Zionist movements. It is
an apocalyptic theology which views that we are in the latter days of history,
in a confrontation between the forces of good and evil.
Now
Falwell often merges, as does Robertson and many others, the fundamentalist
movement with evangelicalism. I think we
constantly have to decouple those two terms.
Evangelicalism, and this needs a long time to describe but I'll give a
shorthand, evangelicalism is a broad umbrella to describe historical
Protestant, conservative Christianity, which is a relatively modern
development. It has a left, represented
by Sojourners and many justice-seeking evangelicals. But they hold to a high view of Scripture,
but not always a literalistic view, as do the fundamentalists. Great sense in the born-again experience and
Christ and whatnot. But much of the left
and the center of evangelicalism will interpret the Bible symbolically, whereas
the fundamentalists have two camps: the literalist reformed fundamentalists,
but more importantly the dispensationalist groups. It's the dispensationalist groups that
emerged in the 19th century that gave birth to Christian Zionism.
Let me
just outline a few of these beliefs.
This is a modern, and I would say heretical, development in Christian
theology. I use that term
specifically. More and more Christian
theologians are stating this. This is a Biblical and theological heresy.
Here are
some of the positions that they take. A
radical distinction between the forces of good and the forces of evil. See how this lines up so nicely with the
neoconservative doctrines. Second, the
Bible is to be interpreted literally and predictively, so that passages that
may have already been fulfilled -- looking at the return of the Jews to
Palestine, say, after the Babylonian captivity -- they project into a future
fulfillment in our time.
Thirdly,
they view this as an apocalyptic I prefer the term apocalyptic, which is the
radical distinction between two eons, where there will be a climax of
history. This is rooted in Persian and
then later Jewish millennial thinking, that we are in a countdown to the end
time of the forces of good and the forces of evil.
There is a
mythic force called the Antichrist, who will emerge at a particular point in
history. There's always been speculation
who this is. When I was a kid it was the
Soviet Union. Then it became the
UN. Previously it had been the
pope. They're always casting around, who
is it? Today, you can guess
Islam. You need an enemy and you need a
global world force to identify with this Antichrist idea, who embodies the
forces of evil and the devil incarnate.
At the end
of time, this Antichrist will emerge.
Falwell and others believe we're in these last days. How do we know? Because in 1948, Israel became a state in the
fulfillment of Bible prophecy. So here
again, this is literal predictive fulfillment, equating the modern political
state of Israel with the biblical concept of Israel, which most evangelicals do
not accept.
Next,
introduced in the 19th century was the concept of two covenants. This is very important, it may sound bizarre
to many. But they developed the idea
that the covenant with Israel based upon Genesis 12 is eternal and that it is
specific and literal and will be revealed and fulfilled in the future. Whereas most Christian theologies see that
the modern state of Israel is symbolic, that the Church either fulfills or is
in continuity with the biblical Israel.
This theology says that the Church will disappear in an event called the
Rapture. This is a modern
invention. If I let this video go on
further, you would see that doctrine. So
that the true born-again Christians are a church as a mere parenthesis it's a
very low ecclesiology, your doctrine is a church. So the true church, the born-again
Christians, will disappear in a mystical event where Jesus will take them
literally out of history. If you watch
any or read any of this "Left Behind" series, you will see cars are
crashing all over, planes are crashing because the pilots are born-again
Christians and the drivers of the cars are born-again Christians and they're
pulled right out of history and assumed into heaven with Jesus. So see the literal futuristic fulfillment
concept.
Then at
that point, the true covenant reverts back to Israel. This is a literal political state. So Israel truly replaces the Church as the
instrument of God in the events of the latter days. This is again a novel invention that
developed in 19th-century theology by a theologian called John Nelson
Darby. Darby made six missionary
journeys to the United States in the 19th century. These doctrines were growing in England. They had significant influence on the social
reformer Lord Shaftsbury. I'm convinced,
by the way, that Lord Shaftsbury, who wrote an article in 1839 where he used
the phrase "a land of no country for a people with no land," that
that was later adapted or influenced the Zionists. He wrote that in 1839.
He had
considerable influence on U.S. fundamentalism, which was growing during this
period. One significant figure was
William E. Blackstone, a fellow Chicagoan, who wrote a book in the 1880s called
"Jesus is Coming," which was a classic strong statement of this
theology, a bestseller in his day.
Blackstone, from my research, organized the first Zionist lobbying,
1891, predating Herzl. Blackstone
organized a major campaign that included several U.S. senators, two chief
justices of the Supreme Court, many congresspersons, with full-page ads in
major newspapers from Boston to the Mississippi, calling for a Jewish state to
be created in Palestine to fulfill scripture and to rescue the Jews from the
pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe.
1891. Then President Harrison
rejected that initiative and eventually it went nowhere. But this actually demonstrates that the
Christian Zionist theology took a political dimension a bit before the first
World Zionist Congress. It had some
influence, and I won't go into that, with some of the early Zionist fathers.
Let me
talk about a couple more of the theological points and then I'll have to
end. Let me jump ahead, make a couple
comments on historical developments. In
the 1970s, I believe the movement really began to take shape. In popular culture, when I was a pastor, I
saw many of my young people being caught up in the Hal Lindsey, "Late,
great planet Earth" phase that some of us may be familiar with.
After the
1948 creation of the Jewish state in Israel and the '67 war, many evangelicals
and fundamentalists began to say we are in the latter days. They used the phrase "the clock of Bible
prophecy is ticking down to the revelation of final events." It became a worldview that was embedded deep
in the culture of many within fundamentalist Christianity and swept along many
mainstream evangelicals in different ways.
Then
politically, a number of events began to happen. Fundamentalists and evangelical churches
began to be the fastest growing sector of Christianity in the late '60s and
'70s, in reaction to the liberalism and the radicalism politically. So these views began to grow deep in a
growing sector of Christianity for the first time in the States.
Second, we
had the election of an evangelical president, Jimmy Carter. But he did not hold these views. However, when Carter was elected, he had the
support of most evangelical and fundamentalist Christians. He lost it in one speech perhaps, which he
gave in March of 1977, where he inserted into his speech, "The Palestinians
have a right to a homeland." Not
even state, a homeland. Immediately the
conservative Christians and the pro-Israel lobby and I prefer to use the term
"pro-Israel" rather than Jewish, because of the gentile dimensions of
this these two forces began to work in sync.
AIPAC working with the Moral Majority and many others began to take out
full-page advertisements in major newspapers, saying that evangelical
Christians stand with Israel against the forces of liberalism which would ask
Israel to give up an inch of their sacred land.
[inaudible] text with biblical text.
Another
development was the election of Menachem Begin and Likud coming to power and
using many of these biblical arguments and finding convergence with the
Christian right. That goes into tourism
and planes to Falwell and all kinds of different developments. But this was a significant development, Likud
using these ideas. It seems that the
Christian Zionist always is in ascendancy when Likud is in power. These views, I believe, along with the Iran
crisis, caused the downfall of Carter, along with other developments.
So that
Reagan came to power already a Christian Zionist. Ronald Reagan was significantly influenced by
many of the movers and shakers in this movement. On at least six public occasions, Reagan used
the phrase Armageddon. There's a famous
interview that was planted in the Washington Post and the AP of an interview
between Reagan and Tom Dine of AIPAC, where Reagan says, "You know, Tom,
don't you think that we are in the last days where we're going to see all these
wonderful events unravel before our eyes?
Your people, Israel, will be right in the center of it and we're
standing with you." Reagan believed
these in his heart and he had several people in his administration around him
who will forget James Watt, who wasn't terribly concerned about the future of
the environment because Jesus was coming soon?
So why not sell off large tracts of land in Alaska and California to the
oil companies?
So it's
really during Reagan that these views accelerated. They came into a descendancy during the first
Bush era, where Bush and Baker really pressed Israel on the human rights agenda
and, you remember, the settlements question, on the loan guarantees.
An
interesting development, and then perhaps I should close here, that Bush, Sr.,
assigned George W. to deliver the evangelical Christian and the pro-Israel vote
in his reelection. Bush, Jr. learned his
lesson well, that you cannot buck those two forces and you need them in your campaign
and in any reelection. I'm not convinced
yet that Bush, Jr. is so theologically sophisticated that he differentiates one
of these views from the other. He's
clearly influenced by the Franklin Grahams and others, but I would say it's
more for political reasons and theologically he has sympathy with the
evangelical dimension. But he could
shift quickly. It may be that as we see
the significant opposition from the crisis in Iraq that Phyllis and others have
so ably outlined for us that there will be new pressures on Bush, but I would
not say we would see them quickly. With
the percentage of the Christian right in the right wing of the Republican
Party, the power of the neoconservatives to drive that agenda, and the
convergence that we have seen not only with the neoconservatives and the
Christian right but also the multinational construction agencies Bechtel and
Halliburton and the rest there is a convergence that's unique at this
point. I dont see that changing in the
immediate future.
So Israel
will stand front and center. We will see
few critiques or they will simply be passive kind of remarks or blunt kind of
declarations with no political teeth. Then the Tom DeLays and the others will
rally the troops, bring pressure on the administration, deliver 100,000-200,000
emails and personal visits, and like Falwell said, Ariel Sharon can count on
George Bush to do the right thing for Israel every time. Thank you.
Clifford A. Kiracofe, Jr.: DR. CLIFFORD A. KIRACOFE is an
Adjunct Professor at Virginia Military Institute in the Department of History
and the Department of International Studies and Political Science. He is a
former Senior Professional Staff Member of the US Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations. He holds a B.A. (Foreign
Affairs). M.A. (Foreign Affairs), and Ph.D. (Foreign Affairs) from the
University of Virginia.
Clifford Kiracofe: I'm going to move very rapidly and I'm going
to be blunt I'm from Chicago, in Chicago we're blunt. So that's just how it is.
Owing to
the Bush Administration's preventive war against Iraq and failure to
constructively address the Palestine question, confidence in America has
collapsed in the Arab and Muslim world, not to mention in Europe. In my view, the passionate attachment of
American Christian Zionists to the modern state of Israel and their inveterate
antipathy toward the Arab and Muslim world impairs the United States' capacity
to properly defend our national interests.
Christian Zionist influence in the executive branch and in Congress
poses a serious challenge to the formulation and implementation of American
foreign policy. The Bush Administration's reckless foreign policy in the Middle
East preventive war against Iraq, blank check for Zionist expansion, and
crusade against the Arab and Muslim world is not the result of any
intelligence failure. Rather, it is the
result of a national policy failure, and this national policy failure is a
direct result of the actions of politicians and their advisers in the executive
branch and in Congress who are under the influence of Zionist lobbies,
Christian and Jewish alike.
That the
foreign policy of the Bush Administration is dominated by militant
(revisionist) Zionist neoconservatives is beyond argument. That this neoconservative, neo-imperial and neo-colonial
foreign policy is staunchly supported by the Christian Zionist lobby is also
beyond argument, as Don just demonstrated.
Today I
shall comment.
Let's
start with Christian Zionism as a tool of imperialism. The use of Christian Zionist support to
promote imperial policy in the Middle East is nothing new. In fact, the technique was developed in early
Victorian England by Lord Palmerston.
President Bush's neo-imperial policy today parallels the old British
imperial policy of Lord Palmerston. Back
in 1839 and 1840, Palmerston, as foreign secretary, influenced by the man you
mentioned, devised a Middle East policy for the British Empire that promoted a
Jewish entity in historic Palestine, linked to the Ottoman Empire, as a
counterweight to Egypt and Russia.
Today, taking a page from Palmerston, Bush's neoconservative advisers
call for a U.S.-Israel-Turkey axis in the Middle East. Their policy of active
destabilization of the Arab world, cloaked under calls for democratization and
modernization, is designed to tighten the U.S.-Israel-Turkey axis as a
stabilizing regional force. Some of
these concepts were developed in '96 in the other papers aside from "Clean
Break." There were two other papers
that were important to take into account.
In line with
the old Palmerston policy, various Christian clerics and movements in England
who supported Palmerston's imperial policy in the Middle East obligingly called
for the restoration of Jews to Palestine.
British preachers spread Christian Zionist ideology in North America as
well. Thus, the defrocked Anglican
priest I'm an Anglican John Nelson Darby, during a series of visits to the
United States and Canada, he formed his own cult. Between 1859 and 1872, spread the Christian
Zionist dispensationalist ideology of the bizarre religious cult he himself
created it was called the Plymouth Brethren.
Today in the United States, pro-Zionist Christian clerics and religious
movements provide political support and political cover for the
neoconservative, neo-imperial policy in the Middle East. The influential network of Christian Zionist
preachers and advocates we know Falwell, Robertson, Hal Lindsey, Swaggart,
Bakker, all those people.
Ladies and
gentlemen, today we are certainly far from the traditional American approaches
to the Arab and Muslim world that reach back into our founding period of our
early republic. During the 19th century,
American foreign policy toward the Middle East was based on a constructive engagement
with the Arab and Muslim world. Our
policy of implicit rejection of British and European imperialism was expressed
in this policy of constructive engagement through the formation of the American
University in Beirut, the American University in Cairo, Roberts College in
Turkey indicated our constructive cultural engagement. Development of fair and mutually beneficial
commercial relations in the region with countries such as Morocco, Oman, for
example, in this early period, indicated our constructive economic
engagement.
Getting to
the legal issue, which our colleague Jim Lobe raised so wonderfully and so did
Phyllis earlier, American foreign policy traditionally emphasized international
law. As John Bassett Moore, a great
authority on international law and legal adviser to the Department of State,
said almost a century ago, "Besides exerting an influence in favor of
liberty and independence, American diplomacy was also employed in the
advancement of the principle of legality.
American statesmen sought to regulate the relations of nations by law,
not only as a measure of protection of the weak against the aggressions of the
strong but also as the only means of ensuring the peace of the
world." This was our position in
the late 19th century and the early 20th.
But during
the 20th century, something changed in American policy. We strayed from our traditional path of
friendly and mutually beneficial engagement with the Arab and Muslim world. The
rise of Zionist influence Christian and Jewish in our polity during World
War I and subsequently accounts in large measure for this. I'll then go on to quote Professor Spicer, a
professor of Semitics at the University of Pennsylvania writing in 1947, where
he comments that "any foreign policy in the Near East which is not
comprehensive regional policy is an invitation to bankruptcy." He also criticizes any alignment of the
United States with British imperialism in the region. This is '47.
Christian
Zionists and the Israeli right is what I'll comment on now. Christian Zionist ideology is aggressively
promoted by fundamentalists who are politically allied to the most militant,
extremist elements of the Israeli political spectrum. Over the past two decades, American Christian
Zionists developed complex and close relations with a range of extreme
right-wing Messianic Jewish circles in Israel, including the Gush Emunim, the
settlers movement and the old-line Jabotinsky right-wing nationalists of
Begin's Herut Party.
Let's go
back to the 1980s for a moment. The
Christian Zionist lobby held its first national prayer breakfast for Israel in
Washington, D.C., on February 6, 1985.
The event attracted many important political personalities and political
activists. This is 1985. The keynote speaker did not pull any
punches. He said, "A sense of history,
a sense of poetry, a sense of morality imbued Christian Zionists who for more
than a century began to write and plan and organize for Israel's
restoration. The writings of Christian
Zionists, British and American, directly influenced the thinking of such
pivotal leaders as Lloyd George, Arthur Balfour and Woodrow Wilson." The keynote speaker was none other than
Israeli ambassador to the United Nations at that time... Bibi.
A few
months after the national prayer breakfast for Israel, the first international
Christian Zionist Congress was held in Basel, Switzerland, in August 1985. The
meeting was held symbolically in the same hall Theodor Herzl used for his own
first Zionist Congress at the end of the 19th century. The 1985 Christian Zionists Congress in Basel
declared, "Judea and Samaria are and by biblical right ought to be part of
Israel." Et cetera.
For our
purposes today, however, the relevant background on the Israeli link to
contemporary American Christian Zionists dates to the '67 war. In the wake of that war, extremist elements
in Israel formed the Movement for Greater Israel, the settler movement that
established Kiryat Arba near Hebron. The
extremist Gush Emunim organization grew out of this environment. In the years after '67, the Gush Emunim
became the leading edge of Israeli new right, which is going to link to the
Republican right.
Components
of the new right were three. Labor Party
factions let's bear this in mind Labor Party factions supporting the
Movement for Greater Israel. New
religious nationalist activists and the old-line Jabotinsky nationalist right
converted into the Begin-led Herut party.
From the time that Likud came into power in '77, the power of Gush
Emunim over the government was complete because Begin was a long-time supporter
of the settler movement. Given the Begin
government coming to power in Israel, it's not surprising that U.S. Christian
Zionists were then easily led to interface with leading extremist political and
religious circles in Israel. This is a
complex demonstration of that.
Indeed,
Christian Zionist clergy in the United States assimilated the theological and
political views of the most extreme Israeli religious nationalist leaders. A peculiar Christian Zionist, literalist
emphasis on the Old Testament paralleling the extremist Jewish Messianism is
characteristic of the mindset. In this
sense, I think, Christian Zionists have rejected the good news of the New
Testament and the new covenant mediated by Jesus Christ and so are not
authentic Christians within the traditional understanding of the faith, as
expounded by Jesus himself and St. Paul, for example. Leaving that aside.
In 1979,
Jerry Falwell made an important visit to Israel -- '79, just before the '80 elections which
advanced the political alliance between the Christian Zionists in the United
States and Likud in Israel. This Falwell
visit to Israel spurred the development in the '80s of the Christian
Zionist-Israeli right political alignment.
This
particular political alignment also reinforces the influence and power of the
neoconservatives, both Jewish and, like Bennett, Christian or gentile, in
Washington during the Reagan years. It
is therefore not surprising that high-level coordination between Christian
Zionist leaders in the United States and extremist political leaders in Israel
is an ongoing process. Several weeks ago
I mean late September, early October the Israeli tourism ministry, Benny
Elon, who is linked to the most extreme we're talking Temple Mount
political elements in Israeli society, such as the Molodet Party, made a
special trip to the United States to interface with key Christian Zionist
circles. Who did he interface with? In Memphis, Tennessee, he met with the
well-known evangelical leader Ed McAteer, we just saw him on the TV there, and
a number of Christian Zionist leaders McAteer had organized to visit. The alliance of the Christian Zionists and
the hard-line revisionist Zionists I call them revisionist Zionists
neoconservatives on the one hand, the Israeli Likud and the other extremist
Israeli political parties such as Molodet on the other hand ... I once had
breakfast with a very leading general in Molodet, who told me that in his view
it's just he was explaining to me, the American, what the situation was. It's just like the cowboys and Indians. Okay.
That's what he told me over breakfast, just during the first intifada. Molodet has not gone unnoticed around the
world. During the past year, a raft of
articles appeared in prominent European newspapers and magazines detailing this
international strategic political alignment.
European journalists as well as even in the Far East and Japan I've
been interviewed on Japanese television several times, they're quite interested
in this topic, the Japanese.
Christian
Zionists and the Republican Party. Over
the past two decades, the Republican Party has become increasingly under
pressure from Christian Zionism.
Organizations such as the Christian Embassy, National Unity Coalition
for Israel, play a key role in pressuring Congress and political leaders to
adopt pro-Israel policies. This is
important. The foreign policy positions
of the Christian Zionist organizations because Christian Zionists are more
theological, religious are the foreign policy positions advanced by the
neoconservative network. So the
neoconservative policy network is the network providing the foreign policy
positions to the Christian Zionists. Hence,
Frank Gaffney would be advising the Family Values Institute. You kind of see how that works.
Any doubt
about the pervasive influence of Christian Zionist ideology in the Congress was
erased by the former leader of the Republican Party in the House of
Representatives on May 1, 2002. Texas
Congressman Richard Armey on national television bluntly told MSNBC host Chris
Matthews that he supported the mass expulsion of Palestinians from
Israeli-occupied Palestine. Meaning all
of Palestine, but at any rate... Dick
Armey's protιgι and now House Majority Leader Tom DeLay openly espouses a
Christian Zionist ideology using coded terms such as Judea and Samaria to
describe a portion of today's occupied Palestine. Speaking to the Israeli Knesset on July 30th
of this year, just a couple months back, "The common destiny of the United
States and Israel is not an artificial alliance dictated by our
leaders." The Christian Zionist
influence over the Republican congressmen and senators has reached such a level
that Republicans in Congress routinely introduce and vote for inflammatory and
irresponsible resolutions and bills opposed to U.S. national interests and
security requirements in the Middle East.
Prior to
the 1980 elections in the U.S., the Israeli new right made very careful and
we were discussing this preparations to form political relations with
Christian fundamentalist groups to penetrate the Reagan Administration, as a
power base for the neoconservative foreign policy, like we see them all
throughout the administration today. The
vector of an extremist pro-Likud foreign policy in the Republican Party is of
course the neoconservative policy network.
The neoconservatives piggybacked on the staunchly pro-Israel
conservative movement, which over decades aimed to take over the Republican
Party. Of the so-called conservative
movement, we should not forget Bill Buckley and his National Review crowd
attacked President Eisenhower's Suez policy and defended British, French and
Israeli aggression against Egypt. So
there's a substantial pro-Israel faction within the so-called conservative
movement anyways.
On the
underlying philosophical foundations of the neoconservatives, I would strongly
urge academics in particular to read Shadia Drury's book called "Leo
Strauss and the American Right," St. Martin's Press. You cannot understand the neoconservatives,
in my view, without understanding Leo Strauss' philosophical influence on these
people. Strauss himself, a Jewish ιmigrι
from Nazi Germany, was actually trained by Karl Schmidt, the chief judicial theoretician
of the Nazi regime. So Strauss the Jew
was educated and framed by Karl Schmidt, the chief Nazi judicial theoretician
of the Hitler regime. That's brought
over here and mediated in various ways.
During the
1980s, the Christian Embassy so-called set up in Jerusalem in 1980. Established an office here in Washington,
D.C., as part of the organizational support on Capitol Hill for the
movement. The National Unity Coalition
for Israel again, in 1990s, was formed as an important lobbying arm of the
American Christian Zionists here in Washington.
The National Unity Coalition for Israel works in parallel with AIPAC,
Christian Coalition and others to dominate Congress when it comes to
legislation and policy regarding the Middle East.
In
conclusion, what should we do? What
should be done, ladies and gentlemen?
Quite simply, we as a nation must return to our traditional principles
of foreign policy. We must begin to
rebuild our international position on the basis of good faith and justice to
all worlds, to use George Washington's phrase.
Bush 43 Administration has led the Republican Party far from its general
post-World War II foreign policy orientation, ranging from moderate
internationalism of an Eisenhower to a conservative internationalism of
Nixon. Even the ultra-conservative U.S.
Senator Robert Taft, back in 1951, rejected preventive war and supported
international cooperation. He said,
"I do not think this moral leadership ideal justifies us in engaging in
any preventive war." Senator Taft
also rejected the neo-imperialism of those who "want to force on these
peoples through the use of American money and even perhaps American arms the
policies which moral leadership is able to advance only through the sound
strength of its principles and force of persuasion."
I would
remind people in closing, the 1944 Republican program or platform talked about
the attainment of peace and freedom in the world based on justice and security
and emphasized organized international cooperation and law, stating,
"Responsible participation by the United States in postwar cooperative
organization among sovereign nations to prevent aggression and to attain
permanent peace with organized justice in the free world." The Republican Party must come to its senses. Republicans, Democrats, independents, Christians,
Muslims, Jews, all persons of good will who oppose the extremist policies of
the Christian Zionists and neocons, can work together in a broad front. We must support a nonpartisan foreign policy
to promote peace and justice in today's world.
We must insist on a just solution to the Palestine question and we must
halt our neo-imperial occupation of Iraq.
Thank you.
Samih Farsoun:
Thank you, all the panelists. I
think we can probably entertain about three or four questions, if you would not
mind saying them all and then we will have a chance for the panel to speak.
Question:
It would be nice if the subject of this panel had been a very bright
panel, I learned a lot, and I've been involved in this for years the
Palestine question and Michael Jackson, and we would have gotten some cameras
here. My question is of the general
panel, how can we change? Because George
Bush might well be reelected. I've just
been on a speaking tour of the West and I tell you, it's hard to sell our case
and our crusade there. How do you see
any member of the panel change the way in which the 72 percent of Jews are
voting for Jewish Democrats I'm sorry, are voting for the Democratic
candidate last time and the evangelicals probably went at least as much for Bush,
and they had a lot more people. How can
we get a new administration?
Question:
I myself am sort of a secularist, but my question is, it seems that we
have a challenge both within Islam to build moderate, Renaissance,
Enlightenment visions of Islam, but there's an equally important battle within
the Christian faith to reinstate or reinforce or defeat or whatever these
heretical concepts. My question is, do
you see a relationship between those and also do you see the sort of
traditional U.S. Christians as being prepared to confront these views actively,
or is this appeasement in another form?
Question:
My comment or question is directed to Jim Lobe. Don't you think that giving them the cover of
the horrors of the Holocaust to these guys, giving them some sort of a moral
impetus I remember running into some of these guys in the late '70s, early
'80s, and they were really super anti-Soviets, almost with a Trotskyite kind of
fervor that believed that the Soviets were using surrogates in the national liberation
movements throughout the world and paramount among these liberation movements
were the Palestinians, the PLO.
The second
point is that they really loved corporations.
Look at all the money that Richard Perle was going to make and they are
still making, as long as of course it's to their liking. So it is not completely that these guys are
so ideologically driven and so on. They
have very practical agenda and they are out there on the forefront to really
protect their investment, so to speak, in the state of Israel.
Samih Farsoun:
We just have time for our panelists to respond to these three.
Jim Lobe:
Off the record, I think neoconservatism is more of a psychological condition
than a political one, in the sense that I also felt - you have to remember, the
Holocaust was not talked about until the early 1960s. It was ignored in
the late '40s and throughout the '50s. Then it came on with the Eichmann
trial and "Judgement at Nuremburg." I can tell you that as a
Jew growing up in Seattle, just entering teenage years, just "Judgement at
Nuremburg," a Hollywood production, traumatized the hell out of me.
I think that they may have been already predisposed to think that the world
hated them. Certainly Podhoretz, Kagan's father, Donald, as well as some of the
others, very famously wrote about how they were kind of persecuted as children,
because they weren't "tough" like black kids or Polish kids or
Italian kids who would beat them up. I didn't have that problem in
Seattle, because the main ethnic group was Scandinavian. They were
peaceful.
So my answer to you
is, yes, I think some are more cynical than others. I would certainly
rate Perle up there. But I still think it comes from this sense of
catastrophe that I already talked about. The possibility that they could
be wiped out, exterminated, that that has already happened in the modern world
and they don't want it to happen again. But we can talk more about it
after, I don't want to belabor the point.
On companies, I
would say, yes, they are allied certainly to certain sectors of what we would
call capital, particularly high-tech weaponry type capital, which makes a
certain sense. But in terms of the long-range interests of multinational
capital in the United States, I can't imagine that it can believe that its
interests are served by the kind of incredibly vitriolic statements that have
really hurt U.S.-European relations. Multinational corporations think
Europe is really important. The kind of direction that this is leading in
is fundamentally disastrous to their long-term interests abroad. Any kind
of political dispute with Europe of the kind that we've seen over the last year
over Iraq and they way the neo-cons have really inflamed those tensions -- kind
of poured salt in the wounds over and continue to do so - as Joe said, in the
Frankhammer quote - those political tensions come out in economic problems of
just the kind that multinationals do not like. So I personally think that
if you're really anti-globalization, Charles Krauthammer and Richard Perle are
really your friends, very strong allies.
If I could just
very quickly address, I think the question over here on the Islamic versus
other fundamentalists. I just sat down with some people who are doing
research on Irving Moskowitz, who funds these Messianic groups
incredibly. They're mainly yeshivas - or they're called yeshivas,
right? But their Hebrew name is midrash, which is the root word for
madrasa. Yeah, exactly, the symmetry is just wonderful on the Jewish
side.
How do we
change U.S. foreign policy? I would just say, I think there is this
coalition behind this administration of hard-right militarists of the Cheney
kind, neocons and the Christian right. But I don't know, because I don't
know many people who are associated with the Christian right, but my sense is
that the Christian right is fundamentally the heartland and the Bible
Belt. That's the region whose kids are dying in Iraq. I would
assume that pressure is rising through the ranks, and I've heard this a little
bit, up to the leadership, saying what have you gotten us into here?
What's the prospects?
Joe Sobran: I'd ju