archived: 15 - 21 Apr, 2007         Back                 Next

UPDATED: April 19, 2007  

                        “‘THE REDIRECTION’ BY SEYMOUR HERSH, REVISITED”                                                

Seymour Hersh’s The New Yorker article of March 5, 2007, “The Redirection,” drew an enormous amount of attention from the left-wing and antiwar media in this country and around the world.  It attracted very little attention in the “Mainstream Media” (which we on the left think ignores numerous important stories while O’RHannibaugh thinks that it is hopelessly biased to the Left).  But at any rate, it seems to have come and gone.  However, it contained a huge amount of hard evidence of the deviousness and downright evil of the CheneyBush Administration, in re Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general.   

Much has been made of the ample evidence that Mr. Hersh uncovered that Vie-President Cheney in particular is now arranging for funding of Sunni groups throughout the Middle East, as a counter-balance to Shiite Iran.  He is doing this despite the fact that it is the Sunni groups in Iraq that are the principal killers of American troops there, and that some of them are closely aligned with al-Qaeda.  In this column I will go beyond that particular outrage to look at other information that Mr. Hersh uncovered and in particular to examine the “whys” behind what Cheney and his minions are doing.  They do fit in well, it happens, with the thesis I published in this space on March 21, 2007.  You may recall that in my column “The CheneyBush War Policy: Connecting the Dots” I hypothesized that the true CheneyBush goal for the Middle East region was the creation of Permanent War in it. 

According to Mr. Hersh, the main US players in this tragedy are Cheney, US Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams, of Iran-Contra fame, the former US “Ambassador” to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and the seemingly ever-present (see Micahel Moore’s Fahrenheit 9-11) Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, former Ambassador to the US, present Saudi national security advisor, and always Bush-family financial partner in Middle Eastern (read OIL) affairs, through the Carlisle Group.   

One potentially good thing that group of folks has done is to bring Saudi Arabia and Israel together somewhat.  Unfortunately the “bringing together” seems much to do with countering Iran and its Shiite proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon than it does in finding a fair settlement of the Palestinian/Israel conflict.  The long-term outcome of this initiative?  According to Martin Indyk, a Senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration quoted by Mr. Hersh, it will be “a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War” (which, if Cheney has any say, could be turned to a hot one at any time).  Indyk holds that the White House does not seem to be fully aware of the potential consequences of its new pro-Sunni policies.  I should think quite the opposite.  Since the prospect for long-term intra-regional conflict is the most predictable outcome of this particular CheneyBush policy, I think that they know precisely that it is and indeed that is their true goal. 

CheneyBush are continually trying to stir things up with Iran.  Fortunately, the British tars who were seized by Iran last month while they were on who knows what kind of mission – the Brits claimed that they were looking for smuggled automobiles [!] --- have been freed.  Maybe they were in Iranian waters, maybe not.  There is not much wiggle room in the Shatt-al-Arab.  It happens that according to Iraqi fishermen ([!], Justin Raimondo, www.antiwar.com, 3/27/07), they were indeed in Iranian territorial waters.  Those fishermen, out there every day, should know, one would think.  And then there is Commodore Nick Lambert of the Royal Navy, who was head of the UK Foreign Office’s Maritime Section, 1989 – 1992 (Daily Mail, UK, 4-1-07).  He said that at the best, the waters are in disputed territory, and that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair faked the map that he showed to the public to claim that they were definitely in Iraqi waters.  But whatever provocations there are, as I have said elsewhere (e.g., http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/052) I don’t think that there will be an open, major US attack on Iran, regardless of the sabre-rattling and regardless of the need of the Georgites for a massive diversion from the failure of their Iraq policy, and --- you list it.   

However, Mr. Hersh presents much evidence that CheneyBush are planning for an indefinite low-level war on Iran, one that they have been conducting for some years now, using armed Iranian opponents of the regime such as a group known as the “MEK” and perhaps even US Special Forces.  This despite the fact that, as is well-known, Iran actually helped the US in the early days of the Afghanistan incursion.  They don’t like the Taliban either.  And they offered negotiations with the US back in 2003, when their nuclear program wasn’t nearly as advanced as it is now.  Their earlier help has been ignored and their offer turned down.  More evidence of what the CheneyBush strategy really is: keep the pot boiling.  If it does boil over at some point, why hey, it’s not our fault.  It’s the bloody Sunnis, Shiites, Hezbollah, Iraqis, Iranians, Persian Army against the “300” even, and what have you. 

I did not know, and Mr. Hersh told me, that 90 percent of Muslims worldwide are Sunni.  The Shiites just happen to be concentrated in places that are inconvenient for certain US interests (read OIL): Iran, Iraq, Bahrain (interestingly enough) and Lebanon.  (The Shiite/Sunni conflict is always explained in terms of some 7^th century dispute over the Mohammed the Prophet Succession.  It’s got to have some political/economic basis to have persisted this long, but such analysis does not appear in the Western press that I see, at least).   However, for my hypothesized CheneyBush interest in promoting Permanent War, they are located in just the right place.  An inter-Muslim civil war in the world’s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, would do them absolutely no good now, would it?  And believe me, if there were such an one, we would never hear about it. 

Further on in his article, Mr. Hersh tells us that the Saudis are using radical Sunni organizations like the “Muslim Brotherhood” and the “Salafis” to counter Shiite (read Iranian) influence in the region.  These are both terrorist organizations, that may have ties to al Qaeda.  But hey, they are “our” terrorists.  So that makes them OK, doesn’t it?  And if there is continuing “terror” In the Middle East, that just requires a continuing American presence there, doesn’t it?  Ah, yes.  According to one of Mr. Hersh’s open informants, Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Druze minority in Lebanon, the logical ally of any US move against Syria is the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.  Just a lovely bunch of Muslim extremists, but they would be ours, even if our ally Egypt, which has fighting the MB for years, would be very unhappy about that circumstance. 

Mr. Hersh somehow managed to get an interview with the Hezbollah leader in Lebanon, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.  For one thing the Sheikh confirmed the view of many observers that Hezbollah’s reason for picking up two Israeli soldiers was not to go to war with Israel but simply to arrange a prisoner exchange, which they had done on more than one occasion with Ariel Sharon. Remember him?  No dove.  It happens that there have been unsubstantiated reports that the Israeli operation against Southern Lebanon had been in the planning stages for a year before the soldiers’ capture.    

For better or for worse, the Sheikh’s comments support my hypothesis about what the real CheneyBush Middle Eat policy is all about.  Quoting Hersh: “Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to deliberately instigate fitna, and Arabic word that is used to mean ‘insurrection and fragmentation within Islam.’  ‘In my opinion, there is a huge campaign throughout the world to put each side up against the other,’ he said.  ‘I believe that all this is being run by American and Israeli intelligence.’  (He did not provide any specific evidence for this.)“  In my view, the documentary evidence of the correctness of his surmises is plain to see. 

Finally, Mr. Hersh wrote about the reliance by CheneyBush on clandestine operations, not reported to Congress at any level.  In that context he noted that two years ago there was a “lessons learned” conference on the Iran-Contra Scandal.  It was lead by Elliott Abrams, now Deputy National Security Advisor, formerly a Scandal convicted felon, pardoned by --- you guessed it --- GHW Bush.  Since that time, Abrams has been, among other things, President of the “Ethics and Public Policy Center” (!).  In his current position, he is in charge of the “global democracy strategy.”  Abrams has an absolutely fascinating view of what democracy is all about.  

According to Hersh, “[o]ne conclusion [of the ‘lessons learned’ conference] was that even though the Iran/Contra weapons supply program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress.  As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: ‘One, you can’t trust your friends.  Two, the CIA has got to be totally out of it [presumably the non-torture branch of the CIA, that is].  Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to run out of the Vice-President’s office’ --- a reference to Cheney’s role [this time around, that is], the former intelligence official [who was a principal source for Hersh] said.”  (One might note that the Vice-President during Iran-Contra was none other than GHW Bush.  But that’s another story.)  Yes, indeed, there’s a view of democracy held by the man who is responsible for the CheneyBush “global democracy strategy” that is indeed original, don’t you think?  And it is quite a policy/program that has been put together under that rubric. 

Which brings us right back to the hypothesis here (and elsewhere) presented.  Cheney is running this thing, and the thing has nothing to do with reaching end-points-on-the-ground, even military ones.  It has everything to do with creating and maintaining Permanent War.  At least that’s my view.

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