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'US support for Israel spurred 9/11'
All right, who let these guys out again?
 US support for Israel was a "major cause" of the 9-11 attacks, according to University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer and Harvard Professor Stephen Walt, who appeared at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week to promote their book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
| It's the reason I'm so fat, too. |
"A critically important issue when talking about America's terrorism problem is the matter of how US support for Israel's brutal treatment of the Palestinians relates to what happened on September 11," said Mearsheimer, who played the role of attack dog, while Walt set the stage.
| And it made my hair fall out. |
Mearsheimer suggested that the notion of payback for injustices suffered by the Palestinians is perhaps the "most powerfully recurrent in [Osama] Bin Laden's speeches," who, he said, had been deeply concerned about the plight of the Palestinians since he was a young man.
| Yasss... I've been deeply concerned about their plight since last Black September... |
He said that Bin Laden's concern had been reflected in his public statements throughout the 1990's - "well before 9-11." Citing the 9-11 Commission report, Mearsheimer and Walt argued that Bin Laden wanted to make sure the attackers struck Congress because it is "the most important source of support for Israel in the United States," adding that Bin Laden twice tried to move up the dates of the attacks because of events involving Israel. Mearsheimer and Walt went on to argue that 9-11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences in the United States as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with US foreign policy favoring Israel. "Its hard to imagine more compelling evidence of the role US support for Israel played in the 9-11 attacks," said Mearsheimer. "In short, the present relationship between Washington and Jerusalem is helping to fuel America's terrorism problem," he went on to say.
| I knew all along it was our fault. |
They said that US support for Israel motivates some individuals to attack the United States and "...serves as an important recruitment tool for terrorist organizations," according to Mearsheimer. He said that US support for Israel generates huge support for terrorists in the Arab and Islamic world.
| Just as, for instance, the U.S.' misguided support for Britain in 1940 generated huge support for fascists. It's obvious, isn't it? |
Suggesting that Israel had outlived its usefulness to the United States, Walt added that "Israel may well have been a strategic asset during the Cold War," but that "...the Cold War is now over."
| "Time to dump them. Who the hell needs a bunch of Jews? After all, 'right' and 'wrong' are just theoretical constructs, aren't they? And the Paleostinian concepts of 'right' and 'wrong' are much closer to the concepts us professors use when we need such theoretical constructs." |
He said that America's unconditional support for Israel in the Middle East is "one" of the reasons "we have a terrorism problem, and it makes it harder to address a variety of problems in the Middle East."
| "There are others, but we don't have to address them until we've dumped the Israelis." |
At the same time, Walt admitted the US's problems in the Middle East would not disappear if it had a different relationship with Israel, and that the US "does benefit from various forms of strategic cooperation."
"But we should dump them anyway. They ucky. Got big noses, and they take German leftist girls to their rooms and bang them. They use all the nooky up, so there's none left for lefty professors. We think it's a human rights violation." |
Walt also noted that Israel's human rights record was not "significantly better than that of the Palestinians," adding that any reasonably fair-minded look at the history of the conflict shows that "neither side owns the moral high ground."
| "As we all know, it's all shades of gray. Some are darker than others, but it's all gray. Only us professors have the true black or white positions. Israeli tactics of zapping bad boyz from helicopters and occasionally blowing away an innocent bystander or two is the exact equivalent of raiding a house and killing four year olds in their little kiddy beds. No difference at all." |
Mearsheimer and Walt argued that Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in the United States were two of the main driving forces behind the decision to invade Iraq. "It is hard to imagine that war happening in their absence," said Mearsheimer, who added that Israel was the only country besides Kuwait where both "the government and the majority of the population favored the war."
| Lemme see, here. In 1992 Kuwait was liberated from Iraqi occupation, so they obviously had a tainted interest in seeing Sammy go bye-bye. Sammy launched SCUD after SCUD at Israel, even though it wasn't a belligerent, but they deserved it because of the brutal way they treat the Paleostinians, right? So their interest would also stink. The lefty professors made the case during the original Gulf war that there was no practical difference between Kuwait's regime and Iraq's, and that establishes that there's no practical difference between Israel and Kuwait, except that Israel's worse, of course. And if that's so, that means there's no practical difference between Israel and Iraq under Sammy, except that he was being picked on by the Jews. I'm getting this Lefthink down pretty good, I think. Or maybe I Lefthink. |
He said that the Israeli government pushed the Bush administration hard to make sure that it did not lose its nerve in the months before the invasion. Mearsheimer said there was "no question" that the "neo-conservatives were the main driving force behind the war, but they where supported by the main constituents in the [Israel] lobby, such as AIPAC."
| "They're all the same, liars and thieves, the lot of 'em!" |
Citing a 2004 editorial, Mearsheimer said that as President Bush attempted to sell the war in Iraq "America's most important Jewish organizations rallied as one to his defense. In statement after statement, [Jewish] community leaders stressed the need to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. Concern for Israel's safety rightfully factored into the deliberations of the main Jewish groups."
Posted by: danking70 2007-10-11 |
