It is a rule that has been tried and tested many times over the last 2,000 years: When things go bad, blame the Jews.
So it can hardly be a surprise that the problems that have arisen for the United States in Iraq have led some of the conflict’s fiercest critics to trot out the same bag of tired tricks.
From the beginning of the debate over Iraq, discrediting some of the war’s more prominent architects has meant smearing them as Zionist tools determined to drag America into a war for Israel’s sake.
It is a familiar drill: Claim that the war is an invention of the “neo-conservatives,” then produce a roster of neo-cons solely inhabited by Jews.
One recent instance was an episode of the CBS news show “60 Minutes” that featured an interview with retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni. Zinni rose briefly to fame in 2002 during a stint as Washington’s envoy to the Middle East.
He was so ineffective that the post itself was obsolescent and he dropped from the public eye. But there’s no keeping a publicity-hungry ex-military man down.
Zinni used the war in Iraq to begin trying to even the score with his political foes inside the Pentagon. This campaign of self-aggrandizement via anti-war rhetoric climaxed with the publication of a book (with techno-thriller maven Tom Clancy as co-author) and the “60 Minutes” interview.
Correspondent Steve Croft played right into Zinni’s hands as he (Croft) described the Iraq invasion planners as “a group of policymakers within the administration known as ‘the neo-conservatives,’ who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel. They include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle; National Security Council member Eliot Abrams; and Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby.”
Growing iceberg
Following in the footsteps of other media outlets, including Business Week, Croft managed to list only Jewish members of the administration. That’s a neat trick when you remember that neither Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld nor any member of the cabinet is Jewish.
Nor did Croft mention that a broad cross-section of the defense and intelligence establishment viewed Iraq and Saddam Hussein as threats to U.S. security and to the security of “moderate” Arab states.
Responding to previous criticisms of his singling out Jews, Zinni said: “Because I mentioned the neo-conservatives … I was called anti-Semitic. I certainly didn’t criticize who they were. I certainly don’t know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I’m not interested.”
Given the confrontational culture of the “60 Minutes” genre, you would have expected Croft to nail Zinni for uttering such disingenuous tripe. At least, you would expect a follow-up question.
But just because he plays “journalist” on television doesn’t mean he actually practices the craft of journalism. Zinni was allowed to get away with not only spreading a lie, he wasn’t even challenged to defend it.
Zinni’s screed is the tip of a growing anti-Semitic iceberg. Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings (D-S.C.) recently told the Senate that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has been dictating policy to the White House and Congress for decades, and that the reason the Bush administration went to war was to gain Jewish votes.
Days later, United Press International editor-at-large Arnaud de Borchgrave wrote in a May 24 column in The Washington Times that the reason Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi was dropped by his former sponsors in the Pentagon is that he had reneged on a pledge to recognize Israel and sign a peace treaty with it once he was installed in power in Baghdad.
The embattled Chalabi was never in any position to make good on such a pledge, and it’s highly unlikely that the Pentagon demanded he do any such thing. But if, like de Borchgrave, you are a longtime critic of Israel, anything — even an unsubstantiated story like this — is fair game.
The conservative Web site NewsMax.com circulated on May 24 an unattributed report that claimed “Israeli nationals” were behind the Iraq prison controversy.
Whether or not the war in Iraq proves to be a success (and heaven help the Middle East if our foes win), the idea that this project was all an Israeli plot is an obvious falsehood. Whatever gains in security the war inadvertently made for Israel are far outweighed by the potential boost to the American security and regional stability.
Should the tables turn and American strategy be seen as succeeding in Iraq, you can expect talk of Jewish plots to cease. But the next time anything else goes wrong, we know whose heads are going to be offered on a plate.
Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.
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