WASHINGTON - Seeing a major opportunity to
regain influence lost as a result of setbacks in
Iraq, prominent neo-conservatives are calling for
unconditional US support for Israel's military
offensives in Gaza and Lebanon and "regime change"
in Syria and Iran, as well as possible US attacks
on Tehran's nuclear facilities in retaliation for
its support of Hezbollah.
In a Weekly
Standard column titled "Our war", editor William
Kristol called Iran "the prime mover behind the
terrorist groups who have started this war",
which, he argued, should be considered part of
"the global struggle against radical Islamism".
He complained that Washington recently had
done a "poor job of standing up and weakening
Syria and Iran" and called on
President George W Bush to
fly directly from the "silly [Group of Eight]
summit in St Petersburg ... to Jerusalem, the
capital of a nation that stands with us, and is
willing to fight with us, against our common
enemies".
"This is our war, too," said
Kristol, who was also a founder and co-chairman of
the recently lapsed Project for the New American
Century (PNAC).
Echoed Larry Kudlow, a
neo-conservative commentator, at the Standard's
right-wing competitor, the National Review: "All
of us in the free world owe Israel an enormous
thank-you for defending freedom, democracy and
security against the Iranian cat's-paw wholly
owned terrorist subsidiaries Hezbollah and Hamas.
"They are defending their own homeland and
very existence, but they are also defending
America's homeland as our frontline democratic
ally in the Middle East," according to Kudlow,
who, like Kristol and other like-minded
polemicists, also named Syria, "which is also
directed by Iran", as a promising target as the
conflict expands.
The two columns are just
the latest examples of a slew of commentaries that
have appeared in US print and broadcast media
since Israel began bombing targets in Lebanon in
retaliation for Hezbollah's fatal cross-border
attack last Wednesday.
They appear to be
part of a deliberate campaign by neo-conservatives
and some of their right-wing supporters to depict
the current conflict as part of global struggle
pitting Israel, as the forward base of Western
civilization, against Islamist extremism organized
and directed by Iran and its junior partner,
Syria.
This view was perhaps most
dramatically expressed by the former Republican
Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, in an
appearance on the National Broadcasting Co's
Meet the Press on Sunday when he described
the conflict as "the early stages of ... the Third
World War".
The effort to frame the
current round of violence as part of a much larger
struggle - and Israel's role as Washington's most
loyal front-line ally - recalls the
neo-conservatives' early reaction to the terrorist
attacks on New York and the Pentagon on September
11, 2001.
Just nine days after September
11, Kristol and PNAC - whose charter members
included Vice President Dick Cheney, Pentagon
chief Donald Rumsfeld and half a dozen other
senior Bush administration officials - released an
open letter to Bush that called for the United
States to retaliate not only against al-Qaeda and
Afghanistan, but also against Israel's main
regional foes, beginning with Iraqi president
Saddam Hussein and Palestine Liberation
Organization chairman Yasser Arafat.
In
addition, the letter advised, "any war against
terrorism must target Hezbollah. We believe that
the administration should demand that Iran and
Syria immediately cease all military, financial
and political support for Hezbollah and its
operations. Should Iran and Syria refuse to
comply, the administration should consider
appropriate measures of retaliation against these
state sponsors of terrorism.
"Israel has
been and remains America's staunchest ally against
international terrorism, especially in the Middle
East," the letter asserted. "The United States
should fully support our fellow democracy in its
fight against terrorism."
While the Iraqi
and Palestinian components of PNAC's agenda were
soon adopted as policy and in essence achieved,
neo-conservative hopes that Bush would move on
Hezbollah - as well as Syria and Iran - eventually
stalled as US military forces became bogged down
in an increasingly bloody and costly
counter-insurgency war in Iraq.
As the
situation in Iraq worsened, neo-conservative
influence in and on the administration also
declined to the benefit of "realists" based
primarily in the State Department who favored a
less aggressive policy designed to secure
Damascus' and Tehran's cooperation in stabilizing
Iraq and strengthen the elected Lebanese
government of which Hezbollah was made a part.
In that context, the current conflict
represents a golden opportunity for the
neo-conservatives to reassert their influence and
reactivate their Israel-centered agenda against
Hezbollah and its two state sponsors.
"Iran's proxy war", blazed the cover of
this week's Standard, which also featured no fewer
than three other articles, besides Kristol's
editorial, underlining Iran's sponsorship of
Hezbollah and Hamas and the necessity of the US
standing with Israel, if not taking independent
action against Tehran and/or Damascus as
recommended by Kristol himself.
A major
theme of the new campaign is that the more
conciliatory "realist" policies toward Syria and
Iran pursued by the State Department have actually
backfired by making Washington look weak.
"They are now testing us more boldly than
one would have thought possible a few years ago,"
wrote Kristol. "Weakness is provocative. We have
been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be
perceived as weak," he went on, adding that "the
right response is renewed strength", notably "in
pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran [and]
consider[ing] countering this act of Iranian
aggression with a military strike against Iranian
nuclear facilities".
The notion that US
policy in the region has become far too flaccid
and accommodating is echoed by a number of other
neo-conservatives, particularly Michael Rubin, a
prolific analyst at the hardline American
Enterprise Institute and protege of Cheney
confidant and former Defense Policy Board chairman
Richard Perle.
In a companion Standard
article, Rubin qualified recent State Department
policy as "all talk and no strategy" that had
emboldened enemies, especially Iran, to challenge
Washington and its allies.
In another
article for the National Review on Monday, bluntly
titled "Eradication first", Rubin elaborated on
that theme, arguing that diplomacy in the current
crisis will only be successful "if it commences
both after the eradication of Hezbollah and Hamas,
and after their paymasters pay a terrible cost for
their support. If ... peace is the aim, it is
imperative to punish the Syrian and Iranian
leadership," he wrote.
Above all,
according to the neo-conservatives, the US
position in the region is now inextricably tied to
the success or failure of Israel's military
campaign.
In yet another Standard article,
titled "The rogues strike back: Iran, Syria, Hamas
and Hezbollah vs Israel", Robert Satloff,
executive director of the hawkish, pro-Israel
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued
that "defeat for Israel - either on the
battlefield or via coerced compromises to achieve
flawed ceasefires - is a defeat for US interests;
it will inspire radicals of every stripe, release
Iran and Syria to spread more mayhem inside Iraq,
and make more likely our own eventual
confrontation with this emboldened alliance of
extremists."
