Britain’s Inquiry into the Iraq War and the Israel Lobby Taboo

Stephen Sniegoski

Government investigations of controversial events are invariably whitewashes to protect the government and eliminate the truth. So it is to a large degree with Britain’s Iraq Inquiry, which Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced on June 15, 2009 for the stated purpose of identifying lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict. The Iraq Inquiry was officially launched on July 30, 2009 but did not begin its deliberations until November. It is being run by a committee of five persons chaired by Sir John Chilcot, and thus is commonly dubbed the Chilcot Inquiry.

The Inquiry Committee is stacked against truth since one of the five members of the committee, Sir Lawrence Freedman was a foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair and another member, Martin Gilbert (Churchill’s biographer) is very pro-Israel and idealizes Tony Blair as a great leader. But despite the fact that the board was stacked against truth, some element of truth has been able to seep through. And recently it has been reported in the mainstream press in the UK and even in the US that testimony at the Inquiry revealed that Blair and Bush had agreed upon military action against Iraq as early as April 2002 though this decision on war was never revealed to the US people or to Congress. In fact, the October 11, 2002 Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq did not expressly spell out war and President Bush claimed at that time that it was not a mandate for war but could be used to bring about a solution by peaceful means.

Barely mentioned in the mainstream US or UK media, however, were statements made by Tony Blair in his testimony before the Inquiry referring to the involvement of Israel in the decision for war. This is brought out in a piece by Stephen M. Walt, the co-author along with John J. Mearsheimer of the bombshell work, “The Israel Lobby.” Walt points out that Blair stated that in his meeting with Bush in Crawford, Texas in April 2002 the issue of Israel loomed large:

http://tinyurl.com/yachex3

“As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this."

Walt points out: “Notice that Blair is not saying that Israel dreamed up the idea of attacking Iraq or that Bush was bent on war solely to benefit Israel or even to appease the Israel lobby here at home. But Blair is acknowledging that concerns about Israel were part of the equation, and that the Israeli government was being actively consulted in the planning for the war.

“Blair's comments fit neatly with the argument we make about the lobby and Iraq. Specifically, Professor Mearsheimer and I made it clear in our article and especially in our book that the idea of invading Iraq originated in the United States with the neoconservatives, and not with the Israeli government. But as the neoconservative pundit Max Boot once put it, steadfast support for Israel is ‘a key tenet of neoconservatism.’ Prominent neo-conservatives occupied important positions in the Bush administration, and in the aftermath of 9/11, they played a major role in persuading Bush and Cheney to back a war against Iraq, which they had been advocating since the late 1990s...."

So, in short, Blair did reveal an Israel connection to the war, that the official gatekeepers of the US (and UK) media have sought to deny, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It should be pointed out, however, that even Walt tends to downplay somewhat the actual extent of the Israel connection. For while it was the neocons who from the late 1990s onward pushed the strategic plan to first attack Iraq before moving on to Iran and Israel’s other Middle East adversaries, their entire plan paralleled earlier schemes developed in Israel, especially by the Likudniks (e.g. Oded Yinon), to destabilize Israel’s enemies by war, starting with a war on Iraq. In short, the neocons were hardly original and the overall destabilization through war strategy originated in Israel for the purpose of advancing Israeli geostrategic interests.

Now the Sharon government did see Iran as its fundamental enemy, but it is not completely certain to what degree Walt is correct in saying: “Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other Israeli officials were initially skeptical of this [neocon] scheme, because they wanted the U.S. to focus on Iran, not Iraq.” Most studies on Israeli Cabinets going back to Ben-Gurion have indicated differences of opinion regarding exactly what foreign policy strategies to pursue. Ben-Gurion supposedly used the saying: “Two Jews, three opinions.” With this in mind, I would think that some Israelis in high places probably subscribed to the neocon Iraq war position from the beginning, especially since they would know (even if they relied solely on what the neocons said publicly) that Iran would be a future target.

And some Israelis did push the neocon line at a very early date, as I bring out in “The Transparent Cabal.” For example, Rafi Eitan, former head of Mossad .... echoed the neocon line in September 2001 by claiming that Saddam was the “mastermind” of the 9/11 attacks. (TC, p. 146) And Walt illustrates that by June 2002, after the supposed Crawford agreement, leading Israeli officials were actively pushing for an attack. It is difficult to see evidence of previous opposition to the neocon agenda. It would really seem that if there had been a strong preference to attack Iran, Israeli officials would not have so quickly gotten on the bandwagon for war on Iraq.

Walt acknowledges that the supporters of Israel will continue to make an effort to suppress the truth about the role of Israel and its supporters in bringing about the war on Iraq but Walt does not think it will work. Walt writes: “This campaign won't work, however, because too many people already know that Israel and the lobby were cheerleaders for the war and with the passage of time, more and more evidence of their influence on the decision for war will leak out. The situation is analogous to what happened with the events surrounding the infamous Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964. The Johnson administration could dissemble and cover its tracks for a few years, but eventually the real story got out, as will happen with Iraq.”

Obviously, the analogy with the attempted Vietnam cover-up is totally fallacious and one would think that Walt would recognize this. In regard to Vietnam, much, if not most of the media establishment, became opposed to the war by the tail end of the 1960s and the mainstream media (and the academic community) was quite willing to present any information to discredit the war. In contrast, the willingness to mention pro-Israel involvement in the war on Iraq is virtually non-existent in the mainstream media.

Walt actually concedes the mainstream media’s ability to cover-up the Israel issue but holds that the “internet and the blogosphere is allowing the word to spread. Thankfully, we no longer have to rely on the mainstream media to get the story straight.”

This faith in the internet is overrated. People in important positions know it is not career enhancing to quote the non-PC items from the Internet. And while the number of individuals who peruse the Internet is large, the number who actually read material critical of Israel and its lobby is rather small. Mostly, the critics of the Israel lobby are preaching to the choir, not making new converts.

Most Americans still get their news from the mainstream media (including mainstream Internet sites) and thus don’t really know much about the role of Israel and its lobby in influencing US policy. In short, the impact of the Internet dissidents on Israel is rather meager. Again, this is quite a contrast to the impact of the Vietnam war dissenters, who by the end of the 1960s had their views publicized in the mainstream media. While numerous elected officials opposed the Vietnam war, only a very rare elected official will ever dare mention the role of Israel’s supporters in influencing US policy, and usually those officials are about to retire (e.g., Senator Fritz Hollings) or later recant (e.g., Congressman Jim Moran).

Perhaps an even more serious phenomenon is the fear of the critics of the Israel lobby to identify with others who express similar views on the grounds that such an association will lead to charges of anti-Semitism. This observation is based on personal experience concerning the virtual disregard of my book, “The Transparent Cabal,” by anti-war outlets that dare to mention the Israel lobby....  a significant number of individuals who deal with the Israel lobby topic refuse to mention my work and this includes Mearsheimer and Walt... my work on the neocons and their connection to Israel is more extensively documented than any other work on the subject and thus provides solid proof for a number of often disputed points... I guess that when taboo issues are involved the possibility of getting into trouble causes people with something to lose to be exceedingly cautious in being identified with writers lacking mainstream sanction.

I don’t think that I am alone in being ignored in this manner. So if even people such as Mearsheimer and Walt shy away from non-PC authors or from books lacking the imprimatur of big name publishers, it is hard to see how any significant number of people will gain an understanding of the power of the Israel lobby.

Returning to the Chilcot Inquiry, I must mention that the issue of Israel and its supporters has already been touched upon in England and largely silenced with the charge of anti-Semitism. On November 22, 2009, as the Inquiry was preparing to convene, a former British ambassador, Oliver Miles, wrote an article in “The Independent” newspaper expressing concern at the fact that two out of the five members of the Inquiry Committee, Martin Gilbert and Lawrence Freedman, were “strong supporters of Tony Blair and/or the Iraq war”. He also pointed out that both Gilbert and Freedman were Jewish, and that Gilbert was a very strong Zionist. http://tinyurl.com/yz6q55f

Writing in “The Independent” on November 28 and December 12, columnist Richard Ingrams wondered whether the Zionists' links to the Iraq invasion would be brushed aside. His comments on this issue on December 12 included a favorable reference to my book—“The Transparent Cabal.” (“Richard Ingrams’s Week: Ian Fleming's creations are preferable to reality,” December 12, 2009, http://tinyurl.com/yb4p7ms )

After these contentions, a number of other commentators from the mainstream media, along with Inquiry Committee member Martin Gilbert, trotted out the lethal charge of anti-Semitism...

The stated purpose of the Chilcot Inquiry is to learn lessons from the Iraq conflict. Obviously the ignoring, or even downplaying, of the role of Israel and its sympathizers will prevent the fundamental lesson from being learned. And it is this lesson that needs to be learned immediately since the Israel and its supporters are the main factor pushing for war on Iran. The hand of Israel is even more explicit in the build-up for war on Iran than it had been in the war on Iraq. In fact, the expressed justifications for war on Iran usually only involve Israel and Jews—allegations about Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial, “wiping Israel off the map,” aiding terrorists against Israel. In fact, most of the expressed reasons for the US to take a militant line against Iran have little to do with any particular danger to the United States.

Despite the obvious role of Israel and its supporters in the move toward war on Iran, however, it is still taboo to claim that the war would be fought for the interests of Israel not the United States. Most likely, with the new revelations limited largely to the Bush administration’s early decision for war, the view of the war will only be revised to the extent that it will be seen as resulting from the aberrant views of Bush and Blair, and perhaps Cheney. The role of Israel and its lobby will remain largely unknown. And no connection will be made between the motivation for the war on Iraq and the build-up for the war on Iran, which will continue to be driven by Israel and its lobby unimpeded by any significant criticism.  Full story