Much was made in the last few days by the anti-coalition appeaseniks in the media of the abuse heaped on the war effort by US General Zinni, the latest useless American apparatchik to try to cover his record of failure by kicking his political masters in the head. Some of his criticisms were, it has to be said, well made, such as the fact that too few troops were sent to Iraq after the fall of Baghdad, and the dismissal of the Iraqi army. But as Richard Baehr points out, Zinni's real agenda is rather more dubious:

'But Zinni is not comfortable just with criticism of how the war or post war effort was run. He needs to blame people, and he wants heads to fall. And he names names -- in particular the group he calls the “neocons”, naming five men: Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, Richard Perle, and Ellot Abrams, as the key ideologues who caused this war to occur. And their real justification for pushing the US to war, we learn from Zinni, were not the three stated by the Administration -- weapons of mass destruction, terror links, or gross human rights violations.

Rather, it was to secure Israel, and to remake the Middle East in our image, a noble but unrealistic vision, according to the General. The fact that the named neocons are all Jewish, Zinni says, is accidental. He says this is irrelevant to him. But if it is irrelevant, why does he only provide the names of Jewish neocons? Are there no others? How Jewish is Jeanne Kirkpatrick or Bill Bennett? And what evidence does he have for his charge that the war was fought for Israel? Zinni never even touches on the three justifications the Administration offered for the war in the 60 Minutes segment. But Steve Kroft repeats the neocon slander, and the link to Israel, and names the Jewish names. This after all is the important part of the story.'

Indeed it is, and in Britain too. Scratch any apparently intelligent, educated anti-war person and they will tell you the whole thing was cooked up by the Jews -- not that they would actually use that vulgar word, now that 'neo-con' is the euphemism of choice. The shock whenever I hear this modern mutation of the old Jewish global conspiracy libel is only deepened by its demonstrable irrationality, as Baehr observes:

'The absurdity of the charge that the Jewish neocons led us to war requires one to believe that Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld, and Condoleeza Rice are push-overs, without real views of their own, and they were therefore easily manipulated by the nefarious neocons. So Lewis Libby is the power behind Cheney, and Elliot Abrams the man behind Condoleeza Rice (how un-feminist to make this charge). Feith and Wolfowitz need only whisper in Rummy’s ear, and he marches soldiers off to war. And masterminding all of it from afar, is the Prince of Darkness, Richard Perle. Now we have all learned these last few years that Dick Cheney tells George Bush what to do, so there is no need for Zinni to link any of the neocons directly to Bush.'

Where this is all heading is only too depressingly plain:

'None of this Jew-baiting is accidental. The road is being prepared for an ugly smear campaign against Jews and Israel. If the war is lost, then the American dead, and all the money spent, will be laid at the feet of a few Jewish political writers and government officials, most of whom are completely unknown to the vast majority of Americans, who can rarely name their Senators or Congressman.'

And all this from people who wear their anti-racist credentials on their sleeve.

Posted by melanie at May 26, 2004