Real Cost of War

What war does to people and nations. 'Cost' is much more than a monetary valuation. War really costs most of us our Humanity!

Wednesday, May 04, 2005
On this day:

Who's war this really Is

We have all heard lots of different explanations of why we have had to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, and probably pretty soon a few other countries. This does not mean we have heard anything approximating the truth about this.

Funny thing I have noticed though, the 'people' are never the ones to start any war, and if left to their own devices would hardly ever want to do any such thing?

That leaves only a 'few' suspects left who are the real Warmongers. The reasons they give to the populace are also hardly ever the reasons why they do what they do.

Read an interesting article at Signs of the Times. This is what it had to say:

"
A Zionist War
By Kristoffer Larsson

Some weeks ago I happened to watch Oliver Stone’s great production Born the Fourth of July for the second time. In the movie, Ron Kovic (played by the handsome as always Tom Cruise) signs up for the army. He wants to go to Vietnam to fight Communism. “Better dead then red” is his motto. He leaves for Vietnam as a well-trained, young, brave American standing up for democracy fully prepared to die in order to fight the Communist threat wherever it arises. When he comes back from Vietnam, he is paralyzed from the waist and down. But he’s not meet by his fellow citizens as a hero. Instead he is met by demonstrators in his own age setting American flags on fire. He doesn’t understand why. Expressing his hatred for the demonstrators when at the Bronx Veteran Hospital, he soon comes to realize the black nurses have quite another view of the war. As a male nurse explains to him, “Vietnam is the White man’s war, the rich man’s war.” Later, as many other Americans in Vietnam, Kovic came to realize that war was not about democracy at all. Young Americans like himself were sent there to oppress a people fighting for their own freedom.

Some decades later, the world’s biggest war-machine is now under way with genocide once again, this time in Iraq. The mass slaughtering is implemented by young boys who aren’t really sure why they’re there, but it’s ordered by the White House on behalf of a ruthless, powerful elite. It was no surprise that Iraq didn’t possess any weapons of mass destruction. After all the U.S. is not stupid enough to attack a state that actually so does – it could be dangerous! But although we for sure know that this war indeed was not a “preemptive war” or about “liberating” Iraq, the “war for oil”-theory - adopted by the greater majority in the anti-war movement - loses ground by the day. One ought to at least question if oil was the main reason for going to war. Oil tastes good, but the Americans want cheap oil, not expensive. The occupation of Iraq cost the American tax payers more then 5.8 Billion dollars a month. [1] Thus, it would have been cheaper to support dictators in the region instead of overthrowing them – with the result of almost no oil at all. But this is not a White man’s war. Nor is it the oil companies’ war. No, this is a Zionist war.

In his outstanding essay The Shadow of Zog, Israeli author Israel Shamir writes about what was probably the real reason for invading Iraq:

“As the head of the Occupation Administration, Jay Garner's task is to create a new Iraq, friendly to Israel. The Jerusalem Post, a hard-line Zionist daily published by Conrad Black, friend of Pinochet and Sharon, carried an interview with one of his wannabe Quislings, Ahmad Chalabi's right hand man, Musawi.

'Musawi talks enthusiastically of his hopes for the closest possible ties with Israel. There will be no place for Palestinians in the new Iraq, for the large Palestinian community is regarded by INC leaders (and presumably by their Zionist instructors) as a loathsome fifth column. Instead, an 'arc of peace'; would run from Turkey, through Iraq and Jordan to Israel, creating a new fulcrum in the Middle East.'

The Occupation Regime in Iraq was installed by the US army in the interests of Zionists, and it may be rightly called ZOG, Zionist Occupation Government if anything.”[2]

The war on Iraq – just like the U.S.-threats against Iran – can be traced to Israel’s interests in the region. Israel and its powerful lobby has for long been after the U.S. to deal with the Iraqi regime. The destabilization of the region is more favorable to Israel than it is to the U.S. After discussing “what is possibly the unacknowledged real reason and motive behind the policy” of going to war on Iraq, historian Paul W. Schroeder, in a footnote, wrote that if this is accurate

it would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state.”[3]

The Jews constitute no more then between 2% and 2.5% of the American population, a fact which seems hard to believe for most Americans. According to a pull, published in October 2002, the average non-Jewish American believed that no less then 18% of the population were Jews.

Every fourth American asked answered that between 10% and 19% of the Americans were Jewish, while almost every fifth guessed that the Jews constitute between 20% and 29%. Some 12% thought the number was between 30 and 49%! “Pretty wild?” Lenni Brenner comments, and continues:

“But why should gentile Americans know better? Their guesses are based on what they see. Turn on the TV, go to the movies, pick up a newspaper, follow an election, and in every case Jewish involvement is far above 2.5%. (...) Twelve percent of our Jews think they are 2% of Americans, 13% think Jews are 3%, and 11% say they don't know, which is also a 'proper' answer. But 7 % of America's Jews think they are 1% of Americans. Five percent of the Jews thought Jews are 4%. Ten percent of the Jews said they are 5%. Eighteen percent believed Jews are 6-10%. Six percent estimated our Jews to be 11-15%, and 18% of America's Jews projected themselves as over 15% of the population, a whopping margin of error of over 600%.”[4]

However, being a Jew does not make one a Zionist (although, unfortunately, almost all organized Jews are Zionists). In fact, the majority of the (non-organized) American Jews opposed the Iraqi War. But the way too powerful Israel lobby did support it. Its strong support for the war was definitely a major factor that shouldn’t be overseen. Still today Zionist Jews stands for a big share of the contributions to the two big parties in America. As the Swedish daily Aftonbladet pointed out,

“The Jews pump enormous amounts of money into American politics, 30 times more then the Arab Americans. They have power. They rule by the motto 'money talks'.”[5]

As a matter of fact, close to half the American billionaires are Jews (This phenomenon is however not limited to the United States. Six of the seven Russian Oligarchs are Jews![6]). In his foreword to late Professor Israel Shahak’s great book Jewish history, Jewish religion, the American dissident and author, Gore Vidal reveals a story which has affected the Middle East in a crucial way during the last sixty years:

“Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. 'That's why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.' As neither Jack nor I was an antisemite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to be just another funny story about Truman and the serene corruption of American politics. (...)

I shall not rehearse the wars and alarms of that unhappy region. But I will say that the hasty invention of Israel has poisoned the political and intellectual life of the USA, Israel's unlikely patron.

Unlikely, because no other minority in American history has ever hijacked so much money from the American taxpayers in order to invest in a 'homeland'. It is as if the American taxpayer had been obliged to support the Pope in his reconquest of the Papal States simply because one third of our people are Roman Catholic. Had this been attempted, there would have been a great uproar and Congress would have said no. But a religious minority of less than two per cent has bought or intimidated seventy senators (the necessary two thirds to overcome an unlikely presidential veto) while enjoying support of the media.”

Shahak himself translated an article which appeared in hebrew in Kivunim, the journal of The World Zionist Organization, in February 1982, and has become known as the Kivunim-plan. The article, written by a Oded Yinon, had the title A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties and its idea for the Middle East was “based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states,” as Shahak summarized it. Although he considered it way too optimistic, or in fact “pure fantasy,” Shahak added that

The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking. For example, Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha'aretz (and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes about the "best" that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: "The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi'ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part" (Ha'aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this aspect of the plan is very old.”[7]

As happens, in the New York Times in November 2003, an article appeared by former president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former editor of the Times, Leslie H. Gelb, with the headline The three-state solution. The idea presented was that the U.S. should consider dividing Iraq into three different states with “Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south.” Gelb writes that “This three-state solution has been unthinkable in Washington for decades... But times have changed.”[8] Thus, the plan conceived by Zionists is everything but dead.

While almost the whole world denounces Israel’s brutal treatment of the Palestinian people, the Zionists demonstrate their control over Washington. Not only do they finance a great deal of the presidential campaigns, they also have mainstream media in their control. “For the media is the nerve system of a modern state,” writes Shamir.

“Modern democracy in practice in a very complicated society can be compared to a sophisticated computer. Its machinery can function successfully on one condition: there is a free flow of information across the system. While every input is instinctively checked and sieved on one criterion, whether it is good for Jews, it is not odd that the machine produces such freak output as “revenge on Babylon for its destruction of Jerusalem in BC 586”. Indeed, in long-gone 1948 the first ruler of Israel, David Ben Gurion, promised: "We shall mete historic vengeance to Assyria, Aram and Egypt". Now it comes to pass, as Iraq, Syria and Egypt are targeted by Zog.”[9]

Three decades after the death of Ben Gurion, the Guardian reports that “troops from the US-led force in Iraq have caused widespread damage and severe contamination to the remains of the ancient city of Babylon.”[10] It took some time, but the prophecy has come true. But the late Ben Gurion did not just have dreams of meting revenge. He had dreams of creating a Greater Israel, too. In a speech in Knesset, on the third day of the Suez War, as then Prime Minister he recognized that the real purpose of fighting the war was “the restoration of the Kingdom of David and Salomon” to its biblical borders.[11] His successor Ariel Sharon has the same dream, and is fully prepared to fulfil it when given the opportunity. When the time is right, the mass slaughter and expulsion of the remaining Palestinians in the region will take place, no doubt.

Jeff Blankfort refers to Washington as the "the Zionists' Most Important Occupied Territory". He is right. Zionist Jews are more powerful then ever before. With the devoted support from Zionist Christians, Israel’s interests are secured. The Zionist grip over American foreign policy on the Middle East has become impossible to deny. It is not in the interest of America to always do what’s best for Israel. The U.S. is not ruled by the Americans, but by an elite and lobbies that finances (and threatens) politicians into obedience. Fighting wars in countries most Americans can’t find on maps are of course not in the interest of the people. Despite greedy capitalists, there is one major factor that has to be taken into consideration when finding the motives for war. Far too many underestimate the strong importance Zionism plays in American foreign (and, to a lesser extent, domestic) affairs.

The U.S. is a “lobbyocracy” – a state ruled by powerful lobbies. Politicians are dependent of financial support from them to even stand a chance in electoral races. So is the case with the contemporary regime in Washington. President Bush and colleague war criminals in the White house have stocks in the war industry and are financed by it. They personally gain from the war. However, the American foreign policy on the Middle East and the unreserved U.S. support to Israel cannot be explained simply by this fact. Control over the Iraqi oil supplies alone are not reason enough for sending 150 000 American Soldiers to Iraq, at a so high cost. It is important to acknowledge that there is devoted Zionists in leading positions fully prepared to do whatever necessary as long as it’s good for Israel. I’m speaking of the neoconservatives, shortly refered to as the neocons. Actually, Israel was the main issue for the neocons to leave the Democratic Party, where they once were to be found. Back in 1993, Professor of Political Science, Benyamin Ginsburg wrote:

“One major factor that drew them inexorably to the right was their attachment to Israel and their growing frustration during the 1960s with a Democratic party that was becoming increasingly opposed to American military preparedness and increasingly enamored of Third World causes. In the Reaganite right's hard-line anti-communism, commitment to American military strength, and willingness to intervene politically and militarily in the affairs of other nations to promote democratic values (and American interests), neocons found a political movement that would guarantee Israel's security.”[12]

The neocons’ commitment to Israel, the great influence of the Jewish lobby and the captivation of the Christian Communities by Zionism, is indeed the explanation for the constant U.S. support to Israel. It might seem foreign to some, but today it would be wrong referring to Israel as the client state of U.S. Nowadays it’s more correct to say it’s the other way around if anything. This was well put by Israeli born musician Gilad Atzmon, when interwieved:

“I think that originally Israel was there to support western colonialism (Balfour Declaration, etc.). It didn't stop there. American administrations realised in the late '70s and '80s that the only real danger to western globalization is Arab opposition and Islamic resistance. Israel was there to maintain a continuous conflict in the region. The Americans got involved in the peace process, not in order to push for peace, but rather to maintain the conflict forever. So, in a sense, at least historically, you are right. Israel was there to serve American interests, but things have changed. In the last ten years we face a shift in the balance of power. The new bond between Zionists, Republican, and right-wing Christian groups introduced a completely new phase in the American-Israeli relationship. I think that American people would do themselves a great favour if they start to scrutinise the acts of their government. Americans should ask themselves whether it is American interests that are looked after or rather Israeli ones. The war in Iraq is a good place to start such an intellectual exercise.”[13]

In the case of the war on Iraq, the interests of greedy politicians selling themselves to the highest bidder (or keeping their mouth shut if they disagree), and the interests of the devoted Zionists as the neocons are, goes hand in hand. Peace will not come to the Middle East until the Americans have liberated themselves from the Zionist’s grip over Washington and some peoples´ conviction of always doing what’s best for Israel over what’s best for America. Conservative Pat Buchanan well summarized what the neocons´ ideology is all about:

“What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel. They want the peace of the sword imposed on Islam and American soldiers to die if necessary to impose it.”[14]

Truer words have never been written. In the end the Americans, just like Kovic, will have to ask themselves the one crucial question: What is it all good for us?"

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