By John Grant
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (or AIPAC) is having its three-day annual meeting in Washington DC beginning Sunday March 4th. AIPAC is arriving in an atmosphere of beating war drums and rattling sabers against Iran.
Israel preemptively starting a war with Iran would be bad enough, but the assumption that the United States will be part of that war should be very disturbing to Americans -- who are just getting over one misguided, costly war in Iraq and are still involved in another in Afghanistan.
In an election year with such cynicism about government in the air, one might think more Americans would question the propaganda for war that AIPAC represents and that sadly goes so hand-in-hand with the uncritical pandering too many American politicians and mainstream journalists engage in.
Most Americans are sheep when it comes to criticizing Israel. A tax-paying American has to be a particularly willful contrarian -- be willing to be called “unpatriotic,” an “antisemite” or a “terrorist” -- just to raise even a reasonable question in the face of this PR juggernaut for Israel.
President Obama is to speak before the AIPAC meeting, and he has scheduled meetings with both Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As Peres told a New York Times reporter [1], while the prime minister rules, his role as president of Israel “is to charm.” He then lectured the reporter and Americans that we needed to be tough and establish “red lines" that Israel approves of.
“We need a total and clear commitment that the catastrophe of Iran will not create an impossible situation,” he said, ignoring the catastrophe of Israel. The US had to stop fooling around and gird itself to bomb Iran. As the reporter paraphrased Peres, “If the White House was not resolute, Israel might have to go it alone.”
But here's the catch: Implied in such Israeli bravado is the sure knowledge that when Israel does “go it alone,” its military will be inadequate to the task and the United States will be drawn in...
For the rest of this article by JOHN GRANT in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1086 [2]