On the road to Damascus with the
neo-cons By Tom Barry
Getting
out of the political quicksand of Iraq, or at least
burying the bloody occupation as an embarrassing daily
news item, is mission number one for the re-election
campaign of US President George W Bush.
And
though extricating US troops and political capital from
the mess the Bush administration created in Iraq may be
mission impossible, the president's political and
ideological handlers have proved adept at spinning the
administration out of scandals and misadventures. Their
operating principle, which they've enshrined as an
official national security strategy, seems to be: the
best defense is a good offense.
After all, when
they're down in the polls, and the "bring 'em on"
machismo no longer seems to get the patriotic rise it
once did, the Bush team doesn't retreat; it advances
with more tough words backed by military muscle and
missionary zeal. The Bush administration still has an
itchy trigger finger and is in search of another
evildoer to confront.
Even before US occupation
forces settled into former Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein's palaces in Baghdad, the neo-conservatives who
have set the direction of the Bush presidency's radical
foreign and military policies were looking toward Syria.
And before the month is out, US officials said on
Wednesday, President Bush will announce new sanctions
against Syria - accusing the northern neighbor of
Israel, Lebanon and Iraq of many of the same offenses
that were leveled against the Hussein regime in Iraq.
The charge list includes developing biological and
chemical weapons of mass destruction, condemning the US
occupation of Iraq, supporting international terrorism
and succoring anti-US and anti-Israeli guerrilla forces.
Further, immediately before the invasion of
Iraq, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and
International Security John Bolton traveled to Israel
and promised Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that "it will
be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and
North Korea afterwards". In April 2003, Deputy Secretary
of Defense Paul Wolfowitz warned: "There's got to be a
change in Syria."
The road to Damascus, which is
at the center of the Bush administration's roadmap for
restructuring the Middle East, doesn't run directly from
Baghdad. Its starting points are in Washington,
Jerusalem/Tel Aviv and Beirut - charted by the
neo-conservative think-tanks, the Christian Right and
the right-wing Zionists who move easily back and forth
between Capitol Hill and the Middle East.
The
neo-conservatives harbor a deep sense of history - one
that is shaped, they say, by the forces of good and evil
and the righteous and the appeasers. For the neo-cons,
history also teaches the virtues of certain political
strategies, such as the necessity of establishing
bipartisan front groups and establishing the legislative
foundation for their agendas.
One of the key
figures setting Washington on the road to Damascus is
Ziad K Abdelnour from Lebanon who, together with neo-con
supporters of Israel's Likud Party and the Christian
Right, established the US Committee for a Free Lebanon
(USCFL) in 1997.
The USCFL describes itself as
the "cyber-center for Pro-Lebanon Activism" and was one
of the leading proponents of the "Syria Accountability
and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003", which
calls for a series of sanctions against Syria, and which
President Bush signed on December 12, 2003.
Like
Ahmad Chalabi, chief of the London-based and US-financed
Iraqi National Congress, the USCFL's Abdelnour is an
expatriate investment banker. He has lobbied the Bush
administration and the US Congress for a US foreign
policy that mirrors the hard-line position of Israel's
Likud Party.
Meanwhile, working closely with
neo-con supporters on Capitol Hill in the late 1990s,
Chalabi helped persuade Congress to pass the Iraq
Liberation Act of 1998, which provided support for the
Iraqi National Congress and other anti-Saddam Hussein
forces and set the bipartisan foundation for a
military-induced regime change in Iraq. In the lead-up
to the US invasion of Iraq, neo-con polemicists such as
Richard Perle, William Kristol and Bruce Jackson created
the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq to consolidate
bipartisan support for the preventive war.
The
neo-conservatives, strongly backed the right-wing
Zionist lobby through such groups as the Orthodox Union
and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs,
have followed a similar strategy to advance their agenda
for political transformation in Syria and Lebanon. In
much the same way that they moved forward their agenda
for regime change in Iraq step-by-step, the neo-con
advocates for a radical transformation in the Middle
East have, in the case of Syria and Lebanon, also formed
a "front group" - the USCFL - and supported bipartisan
legislation that would establish the political base for
sanctions against Iraq - and eventual US military
action. USCFL's page of "selected links" recommends just
three lobbying organizations: the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations,the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the
Christian Coalition of America.
USCFL, a
self-described "non-profit, non-sectarian think tank",
states that it aims to rid the Middle East of
"dictatorships, radical ideologies, existential
conflicts, border disagreements, political violence and
weapons of mass destruction" and will do so while
abiding with the tenets of the Charter of the United
Nations.
USCFL's core supporters, which it calls
its "Golden Circle", include several members of the Bush
administration: Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Paula
Dobriansky, Michael Rubin and David Wurmser. Other
prominent neo-cons in the Golden Circle include Daniel
Pipes (Middle East Forum and US Institute for Peace),
Frank Gaffney (Center for Security Policy), Jeane
Kirkpatrick (American Enterprise Institute or AEI),
Michael Ledeen (AEI), David Steinmann (Jewish Institute
for National Security Affairs) and Eleana Benador
(Middle East Forum). Also included in this circle of
those who have donated US$1,000 or more to USCFL is
Republican Eliot Engel, the congressional representative
who was the main sponsor of the Syria Accountability and
Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003.
The USCFL also lists Amin Gemayel, who, as
Lebanon's president in 1983 signed an aborted peace
treaty with Israel, as a leading supporter. Although
there are a few Muslims in USCFL's Golden Circle, most
of the Lebanese-Americans associated with USCFL are
Christian, including Abdelnour. In its selected links,
USCFL includes the Guardians of the Cedars, a fascistic
Christian Right Lebanese organization that has a
military wing. The large majority of USCFL supporters,
however, are Jewish-Americans.
USCFL may be
"non-sectarian", but its list of core supporters and the
"pro-Lebanon" groups listed on its website signal its
neo-conservative and pro-Likud sympathies. Included
among the organizations interlocked with USCFL's Golden
Circle are the Foundation for the Defense of
Democracies, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI),
Project for the New American Century, the Center for
Security Policy, Middle East Forum (MEF), the Hudson
Institute and the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs.
In 1999, Abdelnour founded the Middle
East Intelligence Bulletin (MEIB), the USCFL's monthly
online publication. Michael Rubin is on the editorial
board and Gary C Gambill, an associate with the Middle
East Forum and Freedom House, is the editor. In 2002,
Daniel Pipes of the MEF became a co-publisher of MEIB.
The MEIB concentrates on "internal political
developments in the Middle East, especially those that
are thinly covered in other English-language
publications".
In 2000 Pipes co-authored a
jingoistic report with Abdelnour that advocated the use
of US military action to force Syria out of Lebanon and
to disarm Syria of its alleged weapons of mass
destruction. Virtually all 31 signatories of this MEF
report, which was used to persuade Congress to introduce
and pass the Syria Accountability Act, are USCFL
members, and several became high officials or advisers
in the Bush foreign policy team, including Abrams,
Perle, Dobrianksy, Wurmser and Douglas Feith, the US
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.
The 2000
report by Pipes and Abdelnour concluded that that
"Syrian rule in Lebanon stands in direct opposition to
American ideals". It strongly criticized Washington's
policy of engaging Syria rather than confronting it. The
Lebanon Study Group of the Middle East Forum advocated
harsh economic and diplomatic sanctions. "The Vietnam
legacy and the sour memories of dead American Marines in
Beirut notwithstanding," the group observed, "the United
States has entered a new era of undisputed military
supremacy coupled with an appreciable drop in human
losses on the battlefield." Finally, said the report,
"If there is to be decisive action, it will have to be
sooner rather than later."
The Syria
Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act
of 2003, which received overwhelming support in both the
US House of Representatives and the Senate, is a public
law that aims: "To halt Syrian support for terrorism,
end its occupation of Lebanon, stop its development of
weapons of mass destruction, cease its illegal
importation of Iraqi oil and illegal shipments of
weapons and other military items to Iraq, and by so
doing hold Syria accountable for the serious
international security problems it has caused in the
Middle East, and for other purposes."
It is
designed to punish Damascus for its alleged links to
terrorist groups and its alleged efforts to develop
weapons of mass destruction. It also bans all transfers
of "dual-use" technology to Syria. In addition, the act
recommends an arsenal of sanctions against Syria,
including: reducing diplomatic contacts with Syria,
banning US exports (except food and medicine) to Syria,
prohibiting US businesses from investing or operating in
Syria, restricting the travel of Syrian diplomats in the
US, banning Syrian aircraft from operating in the US,
and freezing Syrian assets there. Although the bill
obligates the executive branch to enact at least two of
the recommended sanctions, it also permits the president
to waive the sanctions if it is determined that they
would harm US national security.
USCFL commended
Rep Engel for his leadership in moving the bill through
the House, and also expressed its special appreciation
for the strong support provided by Rep Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen, and to Senators Barbara Boxer and Rick
Santorum "for pioneering it in the Senate".
The
appointment of David Wurmser, a long-time advocate of US
military action against Syria, to the staff of Vice
President Dick Cheney in September 2003, followed by the
president's signing of the Syria Accountability Act in
December were widely regarded as another signal that the
US regional restructuring crusade might soon be
embarking on the road to Damascus.
If the
president imposes sanctions against Syria rather than
attempting to engage it through diplomatic channels,
it's likely that the Syrian regime will be painted with
the same fear-mongering brush used to justify the
invasion of Iraq. With Osama bin Laden still on the lam
and bedlam in occupied Iraq, the Bush administration
needs to refocus public attention on another evildoer -
which, not so coincidentally, is also the next preferred
target of the Likudniks in Israel.
Tom
Barry is Policy Director of the Interhemispheric
Resource Center (IRC), online at: www.irc-online.org
