The Petraeus briefing: Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story

[grassfed]

On January 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief JCS Chairman Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) "too old, too slow...and too late."

The January Mullen briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus's instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. "Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling," a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. "America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding." But Petraeus wasn't finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command - or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus's reason was straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged in the region's most troublesome conflict.

The Mullen briefing and Petraeus's request hit the White House like a bombshell. While Petraeus's request that CENTCOM be expanded to include the Palestinians was denied ("it was dead on arrival," a Pentagon officer confirms), the Obama Administration decided it would redouble its efforts - pressing Israel once again on the settlements issue, sending Mitchell on a visit to a number of Arab capitals and dispatching Mullen for a carefully arranged meeting with Chief of the Israeli General Staff, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi. While the American press speculated that Mullen's trip focused on Iran, the JCS Chairman actually carried a blunt, and tough, message on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: that Israel had to see its conflict with the Palestinians "in a larger, regional, context" - as having a direct impact on America's status in the region. Certainly, it was thought, Israel would get the message.

Israel didn't. When Vice President Joe Biden was embarrassed by an Israeli announcement that the Netanyahu government was building 1600 new homes in East Jerusalem, the administration reacted. But no one was more outraged than Biden who, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, engaged in a private, and angry, exchange with the Israeli Prime Minister. Not surprisingly, what Biden told Netanyahu reflected the importance the administration attached to Petraeus's Mullen briefing: "This is starting to get dangerous for us," Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace." Yedioth Ahronoth went on to report: "The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel's actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism." The message couldn't be plainer: Israel's intransigence could cost American lives.


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[Pirate Smile]

1. I wish they would give that briefing to Congress - both sides and both parties.

[Douglas Carpenter]

2. the last paragraph of this article was particularly interesting

There are important and powerful lobbies in America: the NRA, the American Medical Association, the lawyers - and the Israeli lobby. But no lobby is as important, or as powerful, as the U.S. military. While commentators and pundits might reflect that Joe Biden's trip to Israel has forever shifted America's relationship with its erstwhile ally in the region, the real break came in January, when David Petraeus sent a briefing team to the Pentagon with a stark warning: America's relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America's soldiers. Maybe Israel gets the message now.

http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/03/14/the_petraeus_briefing_biden_s_embarrassment_is_not_the_whole_story

[Jefferson23]

3. Wow, I sure as hell would never have thought that influence on this

issue would come from Petraeus, not on this level anyway. But I thought it was interesting that Axelrod has already softened the words regarding remarks Biden reportedly made to Bibi. “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden castigated his interlocutors. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.” http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/0310/What_Biden_told_Netanyahu_behind_closed_doors_This_is_starting_to_get_dangerous_for_us.html


snip* TAPPER: I hate to say this, but yes or no, David, does the intransigence of the Israeli government on the housing issue, yes or no, does it put U.S. troops lives at risk?

AXELROD: I believe that that region and that issue is a flare point throughout the region, and so I'm not going to put it in those terms. But I do believe that it is absolutely imperative, not just for the security of Israel and the Palestinian people, who were, remember, at war just a year ago, but it is important for our own security that we move forward and resolve this very difficult issue.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/03/axelrod-israel-settlement-approval-an-affront-insult.html

[Jefferson23]

4. UPDATE:

A senior military officer denied Sunday that Petraeus sent a paper to the White House. "CENTCOM did have a team brief the CJCS on concerns revolving around the Palestinian issue, and CENTCOM did propose a UCP change, but to CJCS, not to the WH," the officer said. "GEN Petraeus was not certain what might have been conveyed to the WH (if anything) from that brief to CJCS." (UCP means "unified combatant command," like CENTCOM; CJCS refers to Mullen; and WH is the White House.)]

[Jefferson23]

5. Greenwald picks up on the Foreign Policy's article too.

U.S.-Israel rift undermining some long-standing taboos

(updated below)

The rather extraordinary dust-up between the U.S. and Israel has, among other benefits, shined a light on two of the most taboo yet self-evidently true propositions: (1) our joined-at-the-hip relationship with Israel is a significant cause of anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, fuels attacks on Americans, and entails a very high price for the U.S. on multiple levels; and (2) many American neoconservatives have their political beliefs shaped by allegiance to Israel.

As for the first: not only did Joe Biden tell Prime Minister Netanyahu that Israel's actions are endangering U.S. troops in the region, but -- more important -- as Foreign Policy's Mark Perry reports, both Adm. Mike Mullen and Gen. David Petraeus within the last couple of months stressed the same causal connection to Obama officials: "Israel's intransigence could cost American lives." It's rather difficult to maintain the fiction that only fringe Israel-haters see the connection between our support for Israel and Muslim hatred toward the U.S. when two of America's most respected military officials (responsible for U.S. troops in the region) are making that case explicitly. Moreover, the Mullen/Petraeus alarm is almost certainly what accounts for the Obama administration's sudden (and commendable) willingness to so publicly oppose Israel. As Perry says: "There are important and powerful lobbies in America: the NRA, the American Medical Association, the lawyers -- and the Israeli lobby. But no lobby is as important, or as powerful, as the U.S. military."


As for the second point: I've previously noted the glaring contradiction among neoconservatives, whereby they simultaneously (a) tell American Jewish voters to vote Republican because (they claim) the GOP is better for Israel and (b) insist that it's anti-Semitic to point out that some are guided by their allegiance to Israel when forming their political beliefs about U.S. policy. Obviously, anyone who does (a) is, by logical necessity, endorsing the very premise in (b) which they want (when it suits them) to label anti-Semitic. Neoconservatives constantly make political appeals to Jewish voters expressly grounded in the premise that American Jews are guided by allegiance to Israel (vote Republican because it's better for Israel), yet then scream "anti-Semite" at anyone who points this out. When faced with this glaring contradiction, their typical response -- as illustratively voiced by Commentary's Jennifer Rubin, after she argued in a 2008 Jerusalem Post column that American Jews should vote against Obama because he'd be bad for Israel -- is to deny that "that the interests of the U.S. and Israel are antithetical" and insist that "support for Israel in no way requires sacrificing one’s concerns for America’s interests." In other words: to advocate for Israel is to advocate for the U.S. because their interests are wholly indistinguishable, even synonymous.


http://www.salon.com/news/israel/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/03/15/israel

[grassfed]

6. Israel’s Lobby Imposes Crippling Sanctions on America — Again

The Israel lobby’s campaign against US and international corporations doing business with Iran is gearing up this week. The tip of the spear is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee sponsored expansion of the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996. If signed into law by president Obama, the legislation would institute onerous new monitoring to ensure exports never enter Iran, along with mandatory divestment from and penalties for any corporations discovered doing business in Iran. A new type of “office of special plans” at the Treasury Department that AIPAC and its think tank lobbied to create by executive order in 2004 is also on the warpath. Stuart Levey, the head of the office of “Terrorism and Financial Intelligence” is traveling to Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman “pointing out that they face dramatic risks by doing business with Iran.” Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon finished a long set of meetings urging the US National Security Council to impose harsh sanctions on Iran.

The New York Times started the week with a list of corporations doing business in Iran and their US government procurement revenues. Most companies on this list long ago appeared on hit lists compiled by AIPAC for quiet divestment campaigns in state legislatures across the country. The New York Times ominously highlights in red any company that may be a “possible violator of the Iran Sanctions Act.” National Public Radio’s Scott Simon, after reading it, was apoplectic. He fretted aloud on the air whether US companies and subsidiaries on the target list were “betraying their country’s national security interests.”

What should Americans make of this drive to label all companies doing business with Iran unpatriotic smugglers? First, they should consider the source of the multi-tiered Iran sanctions drive. Then, they should start getting angry.

The proto Israel lobby was born in the cradle of a real arms theft and smuggling operation that relentlessly preyed on the United States in the 1940s. Violating US arms export controls and bans on weapons transfers to the Middle East, this network certainly did “betray national security” — but managed to establish a small state in Palestine. The Director of US Central Intelligence judged that “U.S. national security is unfavorably affected by these developments and that it could be seriously jeopardized by continued illicit traffic in the implements of war.” That was an understatement, but none of the financiers of the arms smuggling network ever faced any consequences. When The Pledge, a tell-all book about the smuggling network, was published in 1970 the Department of Justice received public protests about the vast unpunished arms smuggling. The Internal Security Section duly wrote and internally circulated a 9-page book report about the people, dates, and crimes committed. The Chief of the Foreign Agents Registration Unit then responded to one protester that any arms smuggling prosecutions would be barred by the statute of limitations, though he did forward complaints to the FBI and State Department.

The Israel lobby further developed the ethos that “no crime for Israel would be punished in the US” when it allegedly stole and smuggled US weapons grade uranium from NUMEC, “an Israeli operation from the beginning” according to CIA Tel Aviv station chief John Hadden. A secret nuclear arsenal would allow Israel to initiate “The Samson Option” pulling down the entire world if it were ever threatened — a capability judged worth all the stealing and law breaking.

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[grassfed]

7. Stupidity and the "peace process" - Jews Sans Frontieres

Foreign Policy writer Mark Perry reports an interesting story, interesting because of course nobody knows exactly who decide to leaks which part of what transpired somewhere behind the closed doors of the Pentagon. Allegedly, Gen. Petraeus, the Proconsul of Arabia, who aims high and probably sees himself as a future president, threw the White House a gauntlet when he asked that Gaza and the West Bank be transferred from EUROCOM to CENTCOM. This is of course very serious. It signals a development that Chalmers Johnson has already predicted as the natural trend in a militarized global empire. As the government in Washington slowly bleeds both its capacity to act and its legitimacy, power is shifting to the Proconsuls, who are in fact the governors of the different provinces and command the only U.S. governing institution that is well funded and functional, the military.

It does not signal a breach in the relations between Israel and the U.S. The problem for American dominance is not Israel, which is and will remain a valuable ally, but the out of control populist right wing in Israel which has developed a sort of bulimic land eating disorder, and needs to feed more and more often on Palestinian land to feel satiated. That populist right wing is also a problem for the Israeli ruling class, but primarily to the extent that it matters to the US. As long as the US allows it, the Israeli ruling class would rather not confront it. Let the fanatics, as far as the Israeli center is concerned, get their daily nibble at the Palestinian expense. The predatory relation is already deeply institutionalized; the whole Israeli military apparatus is organized around the colonization process; it can be slowed down or sped up, but it cannot be dismantled with serious damage all around. The US will not risk serious damage to Israel, unless it is pushed really hard by its Arab clients. They, in their turn, couldn't care less, except occasionally when they fear that things have gone too far and they need to get a bone that they can hang on their breast as proof to their people that they are not totally venal but can get some respect from Washington. It's a political game whose object for all the players is none other than the ultimate goal of politics according to Raymond Aron, "to make things last." In its Middle East version it is often known as the bicycle principle, in the words of former Israeli FM Meridor: “the peace process like being on a bicycle; one must keep pedaling lest you crash and fall off.” Except it is cycling on training rollers and need not actually go anywhere.

We are now in one of these moments when, because of a few momentary lapses, the bicycle seems about to fall off the rollers. Enter Proconsul Petraeus. We wish him to fail. But that is a far fetched expectation given that all he needs to do is remind all the bikers in the room of the importance of pedaling. But trust the commentariat and the blogosphere to read it as some kind of cosmic battle between Israel and the U.S., Netanyahu and Obama, the Lobby vs. the Army, Cpt. America vs. The blue-white Hulk.

The silly phrase of the day belongs to Mark Perry, who hyperventilates like he was just given the go order for the invasion of Normandy:
America's relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America's soldiers. Maybe Israel gets the message now.
Really? That must be why the Bush administration couldn't find money for body armors in the half a trillion dollar a year defense budget, not to mention the Walter Reed scandal or other moments when the truth about how much the ruling class cares about the grunts emerges in broad daylight. Soldiers are cheap, really cheap. They are made in large batches from unemployed and looking forward to a life of un- and under-employment youth. The supply is growing, and I have full faith in the White House to create the economic conditions that will keep it growing for a while.

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[Jefferson23]

8. Perry is stating a truth, and concludes with a "maybe Israel gets it now"

I don't think that makes him naive, there has been evidence of this since the 9/11 report...blowback. This writer who seems to consider Petraeus's motives as devious, even if that were true, would it matter? I think not, the important aspect is that the concern is out there and is legitimate.

Israel seems to have made itself very clear, they aren't interested enough in our concerns for U.S. security, our troops...the question is, how much so are we?