By JOHN WALSH, originally published on CounterPunch.org, 10/24/06
Last week in CounterPunch
(1), I wrote that the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee (DCCC), Congressman Rahm Emanuel, had worked hard to
guarantee that Democratic candidates in key toss-up House races
were pro-war. In this he was largely successful, because of
the money he commands and the celebrity politicians who reliably
respond to his call, ensuring that 20 of the 22 Democratic candidates
in these districts are pro-war. So the fix is in for the coming
elections.
In 2006, no matter which party
controls the House, a majority will be committed to pursuing
the war on Iraq–despite the fact that the Democratic rank and
file and the general voting public oppose the war by large margins.
(I hasten to add that this state of affairs can be reversed
even after the sham election between the two War Parties.)
What are Emanuel’s views on war and peace? Emanuel has just
supplied the answer in the form of a scrawny book co-authored
with Bruce Reed, modestly entitled: The
Plan: Big Ideas for America. The authors obligingly
boil each of the eight parts of “The Plan” down to
a single paragraph. The section which embraces all of foreign
policy is entitled “A New Strategy to End the War on Terror,”
a heading revealing in itself since “war on terror”
is the way the neocons and the Israeli Lobby currently like to
frame the discussion of foreign policy. Here is the book’s summary
paragraph with my comments in parentheses:
“A New Strategy to
Win the War on Terror”
(“War on Terror,”
as George Soros points out, is a false metaphor used by those
who would drag us into military adventures not in our interest
or that of humanity.)“We need to use all the
roots of American power to make our country safe. (He begins
by playing on fear.) America must lead the world’s fight
against the spread of evil and totalitarianism, but we must stop
trying to win that battle on our own. (Messianic imperialism.)
We should reform and strengthen multilateral institutions for
the twenty-first century, not walk away from them. We need to
fortify the military’s “thin green line” around the
world by adding to the U.S. Special Forces and the Marines, and
by expanding the U.S. army by 100,000 more troops. (An even
bigger military for the world’s most powerful armed forces, a
very militaristic view of the way to handle the conflicts among
nations. What uses does Emanuel have in mind for those troops?)
We should give our troops a new GI Bill to come home to.
(More material incentives to induce the financially strapped
to sign up as cannon fodder.) Finally we must protect our
homeland and civil liberties by creating a new domestic counterterrorism
force like Britain’s MI5. (A new domestic spying operation
is an obvious threat to our civil liberties; MI5 holds secret
files on one in 160 adults in Britain along with files on 53,000
organizations.)
There it is straight from the
horse’s mouth.(2)
How does Emanuel, the man who
has screened and chosen the 2006 Democratic candidates for Congress,
feel specifically about the war on Iraq, the number one issue
on voters’ minds. Emanuel and Reed do not so much as mention
Iraq in their book except in terms of the “war on terror.”
Nor does Emanuel mention Iraq on his web site as among the important
issues facing us, quite amazing omission and one shared by Chuck
Schumer who is his equivalent of the Senate side, chairing the
DSCC (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee). However a very
recent profile in Fortune (9/25/2006), “Rahm Emanuel, Pitbull
Politician,” by Washington Bureau chief Nina Easton notes:
“On Iraq, Emanuel has steered clear of the withdraw-now
crowd, preferring to criticize Bush for military failures since
the 2003 invasion. ‘The war never had to turn out this way,’
he told me at one of his campaign stops. In January 2005, when
asked by Meet the Press’s Tim Russert whether he would have voted
to authorize the war-‘knowing that there are no weapons of mass
destruction’-Emanuel answered yes. (He didn’t take office until
after the vote.) ‘I still believe that getting rid of Saddam
Hussein was the right thing to do, okay?’ he added.”(3)
When Jack Murtha made his proposal
for withdrawal from Iraq, Emanuel quickly declared that “Jack
Murtha went out and spoke for Jack Murtha.” As for Iraq
policy, Emanuel added: “At the right time, we will have
a position.” That was November, 2005. In June, 2006, it
was obviously time, and Emanuel finally revealed his policy in
a statement on the floor of the House during debate over Iraq,
thus: “The debate today is about whether the American people
want to stay the course with an administration and a Congress
that has walked away from its obligations or pursue a real strategy
for success in the war on terror. We cannot achieve the end of
victory and continue to sit and watch, stand pat, stay put, status
quo and that is the Republican policy. Democrats are determined
to take the fight to the enemy.” The refrain is familiar;
more troops are the means and victory in Iraq is the goal.
The war on Iraq benefited Israel
by laying waste a country seen to be one of its major adversaries.
Emanuel’s commitment to Israel (4) and his Congressional service
to it are not in doubt. The most recent evidence was his attack
on the U.S. puppet Prime Minister of Iraq, Nouri al Maliki, because
Maliki had labeled Israel’s attack on Lebanon as an act of “aggression.”
Emanuel called on Maliki to cancel his address to Congress;
and he was joined by his close friend and DSCC counterpart, Sen.
Chuck Schumer, who asked; “Which side is he (Maliki) on
when it comes to the war on terror?” In terms of retired
Senator Fritz Holling’s statement that Congress is Israeli occupied
territory, Rahm Emanuel must be considered one of the occupying
troops. And he certainly is a major cog in the Israel Lobby
as defined by Mearsheimer and Walt. Nor is the idea that the
Lobby exists and has tremendous influence on Middle East policy
any longer a taboo in the minds of the general populace. According
to a poll just carried out by Zogby International for CNI (5),
39% of the American public “agree” or “somewhat
agree” that “the work of the Israel lobby on Congress
and the Bush administration has been a key factor for going to
war in Iraq and now confronting Iran.” A similar number,
40%, “strongly disagreed” or “somewhat disagreed”
with this position. Some 20% of the public were not sure.
But in some respects, Emanuel
is a mysterious fellow, as evidenced by his biography, which
is readily available on Wikipedia and in the piece in Fortune
(3). But there are a few things missing or not fully explained.
First, as is often pointed out, Emanuel’s physician father was
an Israeli émigré; but, according to Leon Hadar,
he also worked during the 1940s with the notorious Irgun, which
was labeled as a terrorist organization by the British authorities.(6)
Perhaps Rahm’s current interest in terrorism was first kindled
at his father’s Irgun knee.
Second, during the 1991 Gulf
War, Emanuel was a civilian volunteer in Israel, “rust-proofing
brakes on an army base in northern Israel.” (Wikipedia,
New Republic). This is peculiar on two counts. Here the U.S.
goes to war with Iraq, but Emanuel, a U.S. citizen, volunteers
not for his country, but for Israel. Moreover, here is a well-connected
Illinois political figure with a father who had been in the Irgun,
but he is assigned to “rust-proof brakes” on “an
army base.” Maybe.
Third, immediately upon his
return from his desert sojourn, Emanuel at once became a major
figure in the Clinton campaign “who wowed the team from
the start, opening a spigot on needed campaign funds.”(3)
How did he do that after being isolated overseas, and with no
experience in national politics? Fourth, after leaving the Clinton
White House, he decided that he needed some accumulated wealth
and “security” if he were to stay in politics. So
he went to work for Bruce Wasserstein, a major Democratic donor
and Wall Street financier.
According to Easton, “Over
a 2 1/2-year period he helped broker deals-often using political
connections-for Wasserstein Perella. According to congressional
financial disclosures, he earned more than $18 million during
that period. His deals included Unicom’s merger with Peco Energy
and venture fund GTCR Golder Rauner’s purchase of SBC subsidiary
SecurityLink. But friends say his compensation also benefited
from two sales of the Wasserstein firm itself, first to Dresdner
Bank and then to Allianz AG.” Again for a newcomer to haul
in $18 million in two years is almost miraculous. How did he
do it? Next Emanuel won a seat in Congress in 2002, and by 2006
he was chair of the DCCC. Another near miraculous rise.
But Emanuel and his fellow
hawks may yet fail to get their way. Major figures among the
rulers of U.S. empire, and their well-compensated advisors, from
James Baker to Jimmy Carter to Zbigniew Brzezinski to Mearsheimer
and Walt, see disaster looming unless the neocons of both War
Parties with their dual loyalties to the U.S. and Israel are
brought to heel. Second and more important, the people are fed
up with the war on Iraq and wary of other wars the hawks like
Emanuel have planned for us. The politicians who win office,
whether Rove’s Republicans or Emanuel’s Democrats, will have
to deal with this rising tide of anger or risk losing their sinecures.
That risk is offset by the machinations of Emanuel and others
to guarantee that there is no genuine opposition party or movement.
And that lack of a real opposition is a problem we must solve.
John Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com.
(1) http://www.counterpunch.com/walsh10142006.html
(2) Emanuel and Reed also refer
approvingly to Peter Beinart, the neocon warrior theoretician
for the Democrats, warehoused at Marty Peretz’s The New Republic,
thus: “In his recent book, The Good Fight, Peter
Beinart, explains why a tough new national security policy is
as essential to the future of of progressive politics as a united
front against totalitarianism and communism was to the New Deal
and the Great Society.” (This chapter of The Plan
is titled: “Who Sunk My Battleship.” Needless to say,
the battleship in question is not the USS Liberty.) Emanuel
and Reed also like Anne-Marie Slaughter’s proposal for “a
new division of labor in which the United Nations takes on economic
and social assistance and an expanded (!) NATO takes over the
burden of collective security.” In other words the UN can
do the charity work while the US-dominated NATO is policeman
to the world. Quite a vision. And their call for more troops
is shared by the Republican neocons, with William Kristol’s Weekly
Standard calling for 250,000 more for the army this past
week.
(3)http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/17/
(4) http://www.radioislam.org/islam/english/jewishp/usa/rahmzion.htm
(5) http://www.cnionline.org/learn/polls/czandlobby/index2.htm
(6) J. Palestine Studies, 23:
84(1994).