One Sucker's Saga, Part X: Further Modified Considerations

[peristaltor]

Some time has passed since my last entry simply because new information came available. Some of it was surprising in its newness (to me, at least); some of it surprised me because I had never considered it myself (for personal reasons I hope to outline).

For the new stuff, let's think back to the post-Vietnam period in our nation's history. This was an incredibly transitional time. Millions had been invested in our military to execute the somewhat mysterious debacle across the Pacific. Rupert's revelations of the money elements in our intelligence services -- either rogue or clandestine but sanctioned -- made trafficking in Southeast Asia's heroin makes some sense in retrospect. Also, our country has fallen so far behind embracing the old Domino Theory describing communism's supposed spread that it's sometimes quite difficult to remember how I myself subscribed to this mental doctrine.

After Vietnam, we had choices about how to proceed with our nation's military. Should it be downsized? Many thought so, if only for purely economic reasons. Others realized that the original Domino had the chance to drop more of its neighbors. Russia was still supposedly amassing weapons, all of them aimed straight toward what we now call America's "heartland" (an awkward phrase taken straight out of Nazi Germany's Fatherland and Soviet Russia's Motherland). It was best in the '80s to build our military, cost be damned, simply to avoid losing out in some future mine shaft gap. Thus the military grew exponentially, if I recall correctly.

But that this decision was self-evident proves not to be accurate. That surprised me.

It turns out the Director of Central Intelligence William Colby had placed top analysts on the task of determining what threat the Soviet Union posed. Not happy with his analysis, a group of conservatives within President Ford's staff proposed a more dire assessment. Colby noted of this group's findings that it was hard "to envisage how an ad hoc independent group of analysts could prepare a more thorough, comprehensive assessment of Soviet strategic capabilities than could the intelligence community." Those elements in President Ford's staff then determined Colby's analysis was too soft on the threat the USSR posed:

As part of the Halloween massacre Rumsfeld and Cheney pushed out CIA director William Colby and replaced him with George H.W. Bush, then the U.S. plenipotentiary to China. The CIA had been uncooperative with the Rumsfeld/Cheney anti-détente campaign. Instead of producing intelligence reports simply showing an urgent Soviet military buildup, the CIA issued complex analyses that were filled with qualifications. Its National Intelligence Estimate on the Soviet threat contained numerous caveats, dissents and contradictory opinions. From the conservative point of view, the CIA was guilty of groupthink, unwilling to challenge its own premises and hostile to conservative ideas.

The new CIA director was prompted to authorize an alternative unit outside the CIA to challenge the agency's intelligence on Soviet intentions. Bush was more compliant in the political winds than his predecessor. Consisting of a host of conservatives, the unit was called Team B. A young aide from the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Paul Wolfowitz, was selected to represent Rumsfeld's interest and served as coauthor of Team B's report. The report was single-minded in its conclusion about the Soviet buildup and cleansed of contrary intelligence. (I emboldened.)

Recognize any of those emboldened names? Throughout this saga, they just keep popping up.

So the military build-up I and millions of Americans had thought a necessary response to a corresponding Soviet build-up was based -- like the Iraq invasion, like the threat posed by Al Qaida before 9/11 -- on bad intelligence . . . bad intelligence from the some of the same sources in every case.

So, that's the new info. In part of that information I found something, a pattern that so many claim critical; involvement by prominent Jewish thinkers. From the Team B Wiki, we learn that Richard Pipes headed the report. Not surprising, really. Prominent people who just happen to have been born Jewish rise through the ranks of academia, business and government all the time. Why, then, has so much been made of Jewish and Israeli involvement in the so-called "neo-conservative" movement?

For example, in an interchange between albionwood in the comments in the last Sucker's Saga, I noted the involvement of a mysterious third party contractor supposedly on scene during the London Tube Bombings. I quoted only a portion of a synopsis from the link, ending where I read:

On ITV, Power suggested that the unnamed partner in the terror exercise was concerned about Jewish buildings and banks being targeted.

AFP contacted Visor Consultants, the mayor of the City of London, Scotland Yard, and the transportation authority to ask about the identity of the unnamed partner in the terror exercise.

A likely candidate is an Israeli company called International Consultants on Targeted Security (ICTS) International N.V., an aviation and transportation security firm headed by "former [Israeli] military commanding officers and veterans of government intelligence and security agencies."

Then, of course, we have the American Israel Public Affairs Committee scandal, where two of its staffers were accused of spying for Israel. At least one familiar name there:

On August 27, 2004, CBS News broke a story about an FBI investigation into a possible spy in the U.S. Department of Defense working for Israel. The story reported that the FBI had uncovered a spy working as a policy analyst under Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

What possible connection could Israeli interests have with the architects Cheney and Rumsfeld? Then I remembered the singularly vulnerable position in which Israel finds itself and I realized there is actually a historical parallel in its situation and that of another beleaguered underdog; Cuba.

Think about Israel and Cuba. Prior to the fall of the USSR, they were pretty similar. Cuba had an enemy in the United States and all of Latin America's more right-wing countries; Israel had enemies in the Islamic countries that to this day express disgust at its founding as an exclusively Jewish state and the subsequent treatment of its Islamic and Palestinian residents. Cuba had a sugar daddy called Russia; Israel has a sugar daddy called the United States.

There were some differences, of course. Cuba had (and may still have) a policy of training doctors for free. Go to Cuba, get trained as a doctor, and the only tuition you owe is a term of service (a few years, IIRC) where you have to provide medical care for free somewhere in Latin America. After that service ends, you can go and practice as you please. Hey, Che Guevara was a doctor after all. His daughter, also a doctor, today heads the Cuban government health department. A snippet from the article I quoted in Saga #II caught my eye: "While Cuba has only two percent of the population of Latin America, it has almost 11 percent of the scientists." With stats like that, I suspect their medical program is not the only progressive education they provide. This kind of educational program must do wonders to their reputation with their Latin neighbors.

Israel, however, hasn't quite acted in ways that endear it to its neighbors. I don't think I need to elaborate on that.

Let's get back to that "sugar daddy" comment. Cuba was untouchable (not that the US didn't try to touch) thanks to its support from the USSR. Russia's regular shipment of arms, fuel and food kept that island Communist to this day. Likewise, arms and supplies from the US, as well as veto power support in the United Nations, keep Israel Jewish.

And I suppose that's the problem I have with the so-called conspiracy theorists regarding Israel. Many of them are fairly openly anti-Semitic. As one with a Jewish wife and family, that bothers me to no end. I cannot see how one's family history or choice of religion matter in any way.

Commander Adama sums it up for me quite nicely.

That said, what if one ignores the Jewish question implicit in the accusations and simply focuses on Israel's fate? One can learn a lot about what happened when Cuba lost its sugar daddy. No, it was not invaded, largely because it had by that time fallen off of the US's hate radar. It held no immediate threat to the US. Its near-collapse and subsequent readjustment was simply observed.

Should the US collapse, Israel probably won't be so lucky. That country has acted as if its US support can be guaranteed forever, pissing off just about everyone that isn't in the US and most of us who are.

Israel has an arid climate; Cuba is a lush sub-tropical paradise. Where Cuba has enough streams to support an extensive micro-hydro installations, Israel has the Dead Sea. Consider what this means in terms of growing food.

Bottom line: If the US declines in military and economic strength, the State of Israel is likely quite, well, fucked.

Would it come as a surprise then to learn that Israel and/or people interested in maintaining that state's status might be involved in plans to protect the US's military dominance? That might be seen as an act of simple self-preservation.