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Israel Decides US Foreign Policy

Comment by Larry Ross, April 16, 2007

Scott Ritter, a friend of Israel, describes how Israel has clandestinely hi-jacked US foreign policy. US taxpayers give Israel about 3 billion dollars a year in military aid. That helps finance the Israeli war machine, its occupation of Palestine and its war on Lebanon. Some is channelled back to the US to help finance one of the most powerful and influential lobbies in Washington - The American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). By various methods, Israel manages to influence US legislators and the executive.

The US war on Iraq, and the planned war on Iran are now not approved by a majority of Americans according to recent polls. Yet both wars are in line with Israel's policy, and have been lobbied for by AIPAC and neocon members of the Bush Administration known to be particularly sympathetic to the wishes of  Israel.  Israel's wishes trump those of the majority of American citizens. For many reasons this is not a good policy for Israel, and certainly makes a mockery of the policies of the most powerful nation in history.

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The Final Act of Submission

by Scott Ritter, April 13, 2007

In the months leading up to President Bush's ill-fated invasion of Iraq, I traveled around the world speaking to various international groups, including many parliamentary assemblies.  I spoke about democracy and the need of any nation or group of nations espousing democracy as a standard to embrace the ideals and values of justice and due process in accordance with the rule of law.  I spoke of international law, especially as it was manifested in the charter of the United Nations (a document signed and adopted by all of the countries I visited). 

Invariably, my presentation focused on the nation in question, whether it was Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan or Great Britain, and the status of its relationship with the United States.  As an American, I said, I appreciated each nation's embrace of the United States as a friend and ally.  However, as a strong believer in the rule of law, I deplored the trend among America's so-called friends to facilitate a needless confrontation which would severely harm the U.S. in the long run.  These nations were hesitant to stand up to the United States even though they knew the course of action planned for Iraq was wrong. 

Such permissive submission was deplorable, and invariably led to a comment from me about the status of genuine sovereignty in the face of American imperial power.  If a nation was incapable of defending its sovereign values and interests, then it should simply acknowledge its status as a colony of the United States, pull down its disgraced national flag and raise the Stars and Stripes.

Now the tables have turned.  Americans, through the will of the people as expressed in the November 2006 election, voiced their dissatisfaction with the conduct of the American war in Iraq, and empowered a new Democratic-controlled Congress to reassert itself as a separate but equal branch of government—especially when it came to matters pertaining to war and the threat of war. 

This new Democratic leadership has failed egregiously.  Not only has the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, been unable to orchestrate any meaningful legislation to bring the war in Iraq to an end, but in mid-March she carelessly greased the tracks for a whole new conflict. By excising language from a defense appropriations bill which would have required President Bush to seek the approval of Congress prior to initiating any military attack on Iran, Pelosi terminated any hope of slowing down the Bush administration's mad rush to war.

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