Scott Ritter from this speech on YouTube, Oct 16, 2006 (my transcription, my errors):
"One of the big problems - and here comes the grenade - is Israel. The second you mention the word 'Israel', the nation of Israel, the concept of Israel, many in the American press become very defensive. We're not allowed to be highly critical of the state of Israel.
The other thing we're not allowed to do is discuss the notion that Israel, and the notion of Israeli interests, may in fact be dictating what America is doing. That what we're doing in the Midle East may not be to the benefit of America's National Security, but to Israel's National Security.
But we don't want to talk about that - because of of the great success stories out there is the pro-Israel Lobby which has successfully enabled itself to blend the two together - so that when we speak of Israeli interests, they say 'No - we're speaking of American interests'
It's interesting that AIPAC and other elements of the Israeli Lobby don't have to register as agents of a foreign government. It'd be nice if they did, becuase then we'd know when they're advocating on behalf of Israel, and when they're advocating on behalf of the USA.
I'd challenge the New York Times to sit down and do a critical story on Israel, on the role that Israel plays in influencing American foreign policy. There's nothing wrong with Israel trying to influence American FP - let me make that clear. The British seek to influence our foreign policy. The French seek to influence our foreign policy. The Saudi's seek to influence our foreign policy. The difference is that when they do it, and they bring American citizens into play, these Americans they take the money of a foreign government, once they advocate on behalf of a foreign government, they register themselves as an agent of that govt so we know where they're coming from. That's all I'm asking the Israelis to do - let us know where you're coming from. Stop confusing the American public that Israeli interests are necessarily America's interests.
I can tell you right now that Israel has a viable, valid concern about Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon. If I was Israeli, I'd be extremely concerned about Hezbollah, and I'd want to do everything possible to nullify that organization. As an American, I'll tell you, Hezbollah does not threaten the National Security of the US one iota - so we should not be talking about using American military forces to deal with the Hezbollah issue. That is an Israeli problem. And yet, you'll see the New York Times and The Washington Post and other media outlets confusing the issue. They want us to believe that Hezbollah is an American problem. It isn't.
Hezbollah was created 3 years after Israel invaded Lebanon - not 3 years after the US invaded Lebanon, and Hezbollah's sole purpose was to liberate Southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation.
I'm not here to condone or sing high praises of virtue for Hezbollah. But I will tell you that Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization that threatens the US.
6 comments:
But I will tell you that Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization that threatens the US.
I completely agree with Scott, at least as far as the civilian population of America is concerned.
"What do the people who worked in those two [World Trade Center] towers, along with thousands of employees, women and men, have to do with war that is taking place in the Middle East? Or the war that Mr. George Bush may wage on people in the Islamic world?" he asked me. "Therefore we condemned this act -- and any similar act we condemn."
"Well, of course, the method of Osama bin Laden, and the fashion of bin Laden, we do not endorse them. And many of the operations that they have carried out, we condemned them very clearly."
- Hassan Nasrallah - Secretary General of the Lebanese Islamist party Hezbollah.
Washington Post
There was a disturbing implication in something Seymour Hersh quoted from an Israeli Deputy Defense Minister in his recent article:
The danger isn’t as much Ahmadinejad’s deciding to launch an attack but Israel’s living under a dark cloud of fear from a leader committed to its destruction. . . . Most Israelis would prefer not to live here; most Jews would prefer not to come here with families, and Israelis who can live abroad will . . . I am afraid Ahmadinejad will be able to kill the Zionist dream without pushing a button.
It's bad enough if the US is defending Israel from its actual enemies. But if the US is now getting pressed into defending Israel from the perception by its own citizens (or potential citizens) that it might be surrounded by enemies bent on its destruction and therefore might just possibly not be the safest place in the world for them to live, then we really have no end to our labors.
Thank you for the transcript.
In regard to Nasrallah's comments, there's probably very little evidence (I have seen any of it yet) that OBL orchestrated 9/11. Anyone who doesn't believe me chech his bounty on cia.gov.
simon, re Nasrallah, and your recent comments abuot M.E. folks hating the US 'freedoms' in Saudi arabia, it's remarkable that there has been neither an organized 'hit' in the US, NOR any freelancing. i'm sure that proves something or other.
starroute. that is truly frightening. apparently the reverse isn't true though. how many folks live under the umbrella of israel's nukes?
romunov - i havent seen any either (although i did see obl deny it).
I too find this very interesting,
"...The danger isn’t as much Ahmadinejad’s deciding to launch an attack but Israel’s living under a dark cloud of fear from a leader committed to its destruction. . . . Most Israelis would prefer not to live here; most Jews would prefer not to come here with families, and Israelis who can live abroad will . . . I am afraid Ahmadinejad will be able to kill the Zionist dream without pushing a button..."
This raises so many questions.
The person who said this wants us to believe that the problem facing Israel and the common Israeli who has some choice about where they live, is that there are a few bad apples in the world. There's a crazed leader in Iran, or a cabal with some power in Lebanon, and maybe some insane kids who want to kill themselves and others with explosives in Palestine.
If this was the problem you'd think they would try to get the rest of the world to control or reform the crazies. You know, get together with the majority of reasonably sane people and make sure that the few nuts who happen to live near Israel don't start hurting anybody. You might even try to address the disputes that exist between Israel and it's antagonists so that these conflicts could be resolved without anyone resorting to force.
If this was the case, then you'd imagine that there would be a lot of Jews who would choose to live elsewhere, and may consider living in Israel only after it was safer.
But, this is not what I've seen the Israelis do. It seems they have not been trying to make coalitions within the UN to protect themselves. Instead, they've been relying on force to beat up the crazies themselves. They support all sorts of bad things in the world which they do, probably, because they think it is in their interest to do so, despite whatever enemies they make in the process.
I suspect the reason they don't do what I would expect them to do is because they think, instead, that most of the world is like the crazed leadership in Iran, the mob in Lebanon, or the suicides in Palestine.
I don't believe this is true. I don't believe most people have anything against Jews just because they are who they are. I think you dislike somebody because they don't treat you well or show you disrespect, and for reasons like that. And you dislike others because the both of you fail to deal with your differences.
Israeli's might understand this fact, however, they might want Jews to think the world is not safe for them so that they could get them to move to Israel, a supposedly safer place, because it is, on their view, the one government devoted to their security and supporting their interests. They promote this story about the world in order to support the zionist dream.
Maybe, they think there are some differences between people in the world, but they may think that most of it wouldn't do much to defend Israel if the enraged people of the Middle East were able to get through their locked and bolted doors. Sort of a "Middle East Desert of the Dead" scenario.
I am impressed by how much depends on the manipulation of people's perceptions. Rather than figure out whether or not the world is populated by Jew-eating zombies, or why people would turn into such monsters, the Zionist's major effort is being put into manipulating our perceptions in order to get this group of zombies to go after that group so the Jews would be left alone.
I'm interested in this "Dream." I thought it was about the idea that since there's no place in the world safe for Jews, they had to make a place for themselves.
They got this idea and were supported in it by looking at the birth and success of the United States. Here we have a country of people who thought they could make a country for themselves, despite resistance from the people who were already here.
I think there are differences which, when pointed out, should have shown that just taking things from people and killing anyone who objects, is not always going to work.
Well, the native american community, although at one time numbered in the millions, could not over time survive the genocide committed by the United States government. This occured at a time when there wasn't much concern from the world about what heppened to them, or efforts made to rescue them. In addition, The U.S. was also able to control the "public relations issues" so that the country doesn't now suffer from committing one of the world's major campaigns of murder and cultural genocide. Nor do we suffer from having been a slave state.
In fact, we can pretend to be moral exemplars and the world's police officers.
I don't know what I want to say about whether the world has made any moral progress. You'd like to think that the United States could not now get away with the kind of behavior it relied on to get ahead in the past. Maybe the Zionists were thinking there has not been, and never will be, any world where the weak are safe from powerful thugs. And so, they calculate that if you can't beat them, join them.
If we have any idea that the world can change, and that the United States would suffer from these crimes if done now, whereas they did not in the past, then we should also think that taking land from the Palestinean and shooting him if he objects is a crime now worth opposing.
If the Zionist dream had anything to do with modelling itself on the way the United States was born or became successful, then it would not be a dream worth having.
thnx steve.
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