Right-wing Israeli Faction's Threat to U.S. National Security

Washington leaders of both parties have ceded foreign policy independence to the military Israeli right wing.

Michel Scheuer, self-described “hawkish” former head of the Osama bin Laden tracking unit at CIA, has given an urgent warning about the danger of supporting the militant Netanyahu regime that should have been headline news in the New York Times:

Netanyahu can take 300 million Americans to war whenever he wants even if Congress has not voted to declare war or if Iran has not attacked us. [As heard in Scheuer’s interview video on Newsmax.]

Scheuer, who strongly reaffirms the danger of the jihadi challenge, warned that the mid-term results may increase the danger of a war with Iran and pointed out that the cause of the jihadi challenge is the nature of U.S. foreign policy toward the Muslim world, not Western lifestyle.

The last thing Americans, in recession and with tens of thousands of permanently wounded Veterans, need is yet another war, but the truth is that the U.S. is sliding toward war with Iran. In fact, the danger of a war by mistake is increasing daily because of hostility provoked by irresponsible politicians such as Netanyahu, Ahmadinejad, and (this weekend) Lindsey Graham; the arms race (Iranian defense measures against US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan plus its naval armada in the Persian Gulf); ideological commitment blinding both sides; and the self-defeating habit of speaking only the language of force rather than searching for mutual accommodation.

As if all that were not enough, Scheuer points out the crucial additional element that Washington's groveling before the right-wing regime in Israel has ceded U.S. independence to the point that Netanyahu could shove us into a war with Iran. And Netanyahu has plenty of reasons to want such a war: it would justify his rhetoric, gain Israel even more free arms from the U.S., enable Israel to expand its mini-empire (probably covering the Israeli colonization of Lebanon); and distract attention from Israel's campaign to swallow the West Bank.

Handing a foreign country control over the decision of peace or war gives a whole new meaning to the term "abuse of power." Normally leaders abuse power by grabbing more than society offers them, but in this case Washington is giving up the power to decide the issue of war or peace--one of the key duties assigned to Obama by the U.S. people--by ceding it to a clique of foreigners intent upon manipulating the U.S. for its own private purposes.

It is important to be clear that the issue is not Israeli security but the particular policies of the militant and expansionist Israeli right-wing ruling elite that constitute the danger to U.S. security. Scheuer's message should be headline news and should remind us all of the similar message Petraeus tried to send last spring.