Speaker of the House, John Boehner, recently shocked the American public and managed to drive a wedge between the usually united block of Jewish voters and supporters of Israel when he went behind the White House’s back and invited Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give a speech before Congress that sought to undermine President Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Iran. Not to be outdone, the Senate doubled down on this treasonous behaviour, with 47 Senators, all Republicans, signing an open letter to the Iranian leadership, essentially telling them to not take any deal brokered with the President of the United States, especially Barack Obama, too seriously, explaining in a condescending manner that the way our Constitution worked, these Senators would enjoy decades of entrenched power while U.S. Presidents come and go.
Even though “Bibi” Netanyahu’s speech was predictable, and full of the same, tired, fear mongering rhetoric and saber rattling for war against the evil Iranians that all of his speeches have been over the past decade, the context in which the speech was given, against diplomatic protocol and unusually divisive and controversial in a Congress that is usually bipartisan in its unflinching support for Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and its war crimes, exudes a new air of desperation. It appears that the prospects of some type of peace negotiation with Iran by the United States, after 3 decades of hostilities, is so unacceptable to Netanyahu’s vision of Israel’s place in the Middle East, that he will risk decades of a near blank check written to Israel by the United States, which has provided the military hardware to continue its murderous siege and destruction the Palestinians and its neighbors in Lebanon. It also smacks of ungratefulness at the essential diplomatic immunity that the United States has provided Israel over the years at the United Nations, blocking and vetoing action against the many war crimes committed by Israel, the illegal occupation of Palestine, the unauthorized possession of at least 300 nuclear weapons, and a well maintained stockpile of illegal chemical weapons.
Throughout the turbulent recent history of the Middle East, post World War II, the balance of power and the alliances that go with it have been somewhat fluid, but always with one goal in mind, at least from the standpoint of United States policy planners: U.S. hegemony of the region. Until the Iranian Revolution of 1978, the Shah of Iran was a reliable, brutal dictator, sponsored by the U.S., who kept the domestic Iranian population in line – subservient to U.S. and Western demands, with control of their rich oil resources within Washington’s easy grasp. When Iranians wrestled back control of their own resources, the U.S. supported a new favorite dictator, the Butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein, who was given military hardware and chemical weapons to murder Iranians with, compliments of U.S. taxpayer money. We all know how that worked out. Today’s friend is tomorrow’s enemy, blowback be damned.
Throughout these changing conditions, the Middle East has remained the center knot in a giant tug of war for strategic control of the world’s energy resources, with world powers fighting for either supremacy, or at the least, relevance. The so-called civil war in Syria is a proxy war waged by regional and world powers, between U.S. Gulf States allied with the West, and Russia and China. Throughout this modern history, Israel has risen in military power, and thrived against increasing diplomatic international isolation, thanks to the United States, as a dominant force in the region. But in the world according to Netanyahu, Israel faces an “existential threat” from Iran, should Iran manage to make a nuclear bomb. The former Iranian President Ahmajinedad is often misquoted (through mistranslation) as saying that Iran wants to “wipe Israel off the map.” Israel continues to portray this as Iran’s ultimate goal, to acquire a nuclear weapon that would allow them to nuke Israel into oblivion. This logic of course, assumes that the advanced nation of Iran is ruled by single minded, obsessive leaders, so focused on destroying Israel, that they would trade their own existence for the chance to destroy Israel. As noted, Israel has at least 300 nuclear weapons, more than enough to assure mutual destruction, should the Iranian leaders become so evil and consumed with hatred of Israel that they would sacrifice all of their people and country.
Surely even Netanyahu and hardliners in Israel know that they are crying wolf when they proclaim that Iran is developing nuclear material for the sole purpose of getting a nuclear bomb to destroy Israel with. So what is it about Iran’s nuclear program, and the prospects of a deal with the West that whips warmongers in Israel and the United States into such a frenzy? For Israel, one reasonable theory is that Iran, like all countries who become a nuclear power, becomes immune to invasion, and less vulnerable to bullying by other nuclear armed countries. Israel also hates Iran’s support of Hezbollah in Lebanon, a resistance army in southern Lebanon where Israel has maintained an illegal occupation off and on since 1982. Beyond that, it could be that Israel fears that if the U.S. and Iran become more friendly towards each other, Israel loses some of its support from it’s enabler, the United States, as their common enemy becomes less of a unifying force militarily and diplomatically.
What is less clear than Israel’s motivations for sabotaging U.S. peace efforts with Israel, is the U.S. Congress’s motivations for not only sabotaging current negotiations, but for an unprecedented public undermining of the President in the middle of negotiations that involve not only the United States, but five other world powers as well: the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the United Kingdom, France, China and Russia, plus Germany. I cannot recall anytime in recent history where the Senate has acted so publicly, interjecting itself into the middle of high stakes negotiations involving the White House and State Department, and other world powers, to deliberately undermine the authority of the President. One has to wonder if this is more about embarrassing President Obama, or trying to demonstrate their loyalty to Prime Minister Netanyahu and the state of Israel.
It is common knowledge that Israel has some of the most powerful lobbies operating in Washington. In a controversial academic paper titled “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” by University of Chicago political scientist John J. Mearsheimer, and Harvard professor Stephen M. Walt, that was published in 2006, a detailed account is documented to show how the Israeli Lobby has influenced the United States to take the side of right wing warmongers in Israel for years, often times in obvious conflict to the best interests of the United States. The authors were met with the usual slander of being called anti-Semitic, a version of the same slander that U.S. warmongers use against U.S. doves opposed to military operations by labeling them unpatriotic, or un-American. These authors are not the first or only prominent Americans to note the overly represented and powerful Israel Lobby and its influence over Congress. Here is a link to the full paper: http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/IsraelLobby.pdf
Former President Jimmy Carter authored a book titled “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” in 2006 that was critical of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, and received the same vitriol from Jewish organizations, even resulting in an outrageous class action lawsuit filed against Carter and his publishers. ( http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/jews-still-planning-to-sue-jimmy-carter-over-anti-israel-book/2013/04/10/ )
President Carter had this to say in the Los Angeles Times regarding his book and its reception:
“For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices. . . It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. . . . What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land.” ( http://www.latimes.com/news/la-oe-carter8dec08-story.html )
That is about as close to hearing it from the horse’s mouth that the foreign government of Israel bribes through a corrupt process known as “campaign contributions” American politicians to embrace the foreign policy desires of Israel over the United States.
Now, with an “open letter” from 47 Republican Senators to the Iranian leadership rebuking the Obama Administration and it’s other five global partners in the negotiations, we see first hand the financial and ideological corruption that has led an already disrespectful and dysfunctional Congress to engage in near treasonous acts.
It is worth noting that even as Congress attempts to sabotage and undermine President Obama’s authority with regard to foreign policy, it is at the same time avoiding its clearly Constitutional authority and duty to declare war or authorize military force to use against ISIL, failing so far to agree to President Obama’s new request sent to the Congress in February, as an editorial in today’s New York TImes points out ( http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/opinion/congresss-duty-on-authorizing-force.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region ).
Many Americans realize the recent stunt by Senate and House Republicans is not only unhelpful, but downright destructive – and wrong. It is time that an honest discussion of U.S. foreign policy take place without being held hostage by the smearing and slandering of critics and politicians who, for whatever reasons, have demonstrated a loyalty to the Prime Minister of a foreign state and its national interests over that of the country in which they are citizens and servants of, the United States of America.