[THS] James Petras: General Petraeus: Zionism’s Military Poodle

[Peter Webster]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19865.htm


General Petraeus: Zionism’s Military Poodle

From Surge to Purge to Dirge

By James Petras

General Petraeus: “President Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders
promised to end their support for the special groups but the nefarious
activities of the Quds Force have continued.”

Senator Joseph Lieberman: “Is it fair to say that the Iranian-backed special
groups are responsible for the murder of hundreds of American soldiers
and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians?” General Petraeus: “It
certainly is
That is correct.”
           General Petraeus testimony to the US Senate, April 8-9, 2008.

“The Israeli flag is proudly displayed above the Sacred Ark alongside the
American flag
”( in an orthodox synagogue in wealthy Georgetown,
Washington DC. The entrance fee to the synagogue is $1000 for a single
holiday.) “On each Sabbath the prayers include the benediction for the
Israeli Jewish soldiers and the prayer for the welfare of the Israeli
government and its officials. Many Jewish American Administration pray
there. They not only don’t try to conceal their religious affiliation, but go to
great lengths to demonstrate their Judaism since it may help their careers
greatly. The enormous Jewish influence in Washington is not limited to the
government. In the Washingtonian, medias a very significant part of the
most important personages and of the presenters of the most popular
programs on the TV are warm Jews
and let us not forget,in this context,
the Jewish predominance in the Washingtonian academic institutions.”

                               Avinoam Bar-Yosef (the Israeli daily newspaper)
Ma’riv September 2, 1994 (translated by Israel Shahak)


05/05/08 ICH" -- - - When President Bush appointed General David
Petraeus Commander (head) of the Multinational Forces in Iraq, his
appointment was hailed by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal
and the Washington Post as a brilliant decision:  A general of impeccable
academic and battlefield credentials and a warrior and counter-insurgency
(terrorist) intellectual.  The media and the President, the Republicans and
Democrats in the Senate and Congress, described his appointment as
‘America’s last best hope for salvation in Iraq’.  Senator Hilary Clinton joined
the chorus of pro-war politicians in praise and support of Petraeus’
‘professionalism and war record’ in Northern Iraq. In contrast, Admiral
William Fallon, his predecessor and former commander, had called
Petraeus’ briefings ‘a piece of brown-nosing chicken shit’.

In theory and strategy, in pursuit of defeating the Iraqi resistance, General
Petraeus was a disastrous failure, an outcome predictable form the very
nature of his appointment and his flawed wartime reputation.

In the first instance Petraeus was a political appointment.  He was one of
the few high military officials who shared Bush and the Zioncons’
assessment that the ‘war could be won’.  Petraeus argued that his
experience in Northern Iraq were replicable throughout the rest of the
country.  Moreover Petraeus, unlike most military analysts, was willing to
ignore the heavy costs of multiple prolonged tours of duty on US troops.
Petraeus willingness to ignore the larger costs of prolonged military
engagement in Iraq has weakened the capacity of the US to sustain its
world-wide imperial interests.  For Petraeus, sacrificing the overall cohesion
and structure of the US military in Iraq, the global interests of the empire
and the US domestic budget were worth securing Bush’s appointment as
‘Commander of the Forces in Iraq’.  Shortly after taking office and in the
face of massive domestic, international and Iraq demands for the
withdrawal of US troops, Petraeus took the path dictated by the US and pro
Israeli militarists in the Bush Administration and their powerful ‘Lobby’.  He
escalated the war, by calling up more troops, what he euphemistically
referred to as ‘the surge’ – a massive call-up of 40,000 more mission-weary
infantry and marines.

An analysis and critique of the failure of military-driven imperialism and its
militarily dangerous consequences requires an objective critical analysis of
Petraeus’ media-inflated military record prior to taking command.  Equally
important Petraeus close ideological and political linkages with Israel’s
militarist approach toward Iran (and the rest of the Middle East countries
opposing it) dates back to his close collaboration with Israel’s (unofficial)
military advisers and intelligence operatives in Kurdish Northern Iraq.


Petraeus’ Phony Success in Northern Iraq

           Petraeus’ vaunted military successes in Northern Iraq – especially in
Nineveh province in Northern Iraq was based on the fact that it is
dominated by the Kurdish warlord tribal leaders and party bosses eager to
carve an independent country.  The relative stability of the region has little
or nothing to do with Petraeus’ counter-insurgency theories or policies and
more to do with the high degree of Kurdish ‘independence’ or ‘separatism’
in the region.  Put bluntly, the US and Israeli military and financial backing
of Kurdish separatism has created a de facto independent Kurdish state,
one based on the brutal ethnic purging of large concentrations of Turkmen
and Arab citizens.  General Petraeus, by giving license to Kurdish irredentist
aspirations for an ethnically purified ‘Greater Kurdistan’, encroaching on
Turkey, Iran and Syria, secured the loyalty of the Kurdish militias and
especially the deadly Peshmerga ‘special forces’ in eliminating resistance to
the US occupation in Nineveh.  Moreover, the Peshmerga has provided the
US with special units to infiltrate the Iraqi resistance groups, and to provoke
intra-communal strife through incidents of terrorism against the civilian
population.  In other words, General Petreaus’ ‘success’ in Northern Iraq is
not replicable in the rest of Iraq.  In fact his very success in carving off
Kurd-dominated Iraq has heightened hostilities in the rest of the country
and provoked Turkish attacks in the region.

Petraeus: Armchair Strategist

           His theory of ‘securing and holding’ territory presumes a highly
motivated and reliable military force capable of withstanding hostility from
at least eighty percent of the colonized population.  Petraeus, like Bush and
the Zionist militarists ignore the fact that the morale of US soldiers in Iraq
and those scheduled to be sent to Iraq is very low.  The ranks of those who
are seeking a quick exit from military service now include career soldiers
and non-commissioned officers – the backbone of the military (Financial
Times,  March 3-4, 2007 p.2)  The soldiers being recruited include
convicted felons, mentally unstable young men, uneducated and
impoverished immigrants and professional mercenaries.  Unauthorized
absences (AWOLs) have shot up – 14,000 between 2000-2005 (FT ibid).  In
March 2007, over one thousand active-duty and reserve soldiers and
marines petitioned Congress for a US withdrawal from Iraq.  By April 2008,
a record 69% opposed Bush’s war strategy and economic policy (USA
Today, April 22, 2008). The opposition of retired and active Generals to
Bush’s escalation of troops percolates down the ranks to the ‘grunts’ on the
ground, especially among reservists on active duty whose tours of duty in
Iraq have been repeatedly extended (the ‘backdoor draft’).  Demoralizing
prolonged stays or rapid rotation undermines any effort of ‘consolidating
ties’ between US and Iraqi officers and certainly undermines most efforts to
win the confidence of the local population.

If the US troops are deeply troubled by the war in Iraq and increasingly
subject to desertion and demoralization, how less reliable is the Iraqi
mercenary army.  Iraqis recruited on the basis of hunger and
unemployment (caused by the US war), with kinship, ethnic and national
ties to a free and independent Iraq do not make reliable soldiers.  Every
serious expert has concluded that the divisions in Iraqi society are reflected
in the loyalties of the soldiers.  The attempt by Petraeus and US puppet
Prime Minister Maliki to invade Basra in Southern Iraq turned into a military
fiasco as thousands of Iraqi soldiers joined the insurgents.

            General Petraeus could not count on his Iraqi troops, because
scores were defecting and perhaps thousands will in the future. An empty
drill field or worse a widespread barracks revolt is a credible scenario.  The
continued high casualty rates among US soldiers and Iraqi civilians, during
his 18 months as Commander suggests that ‘holding and securing’ Baghdad
failed to alter the overall situation.

            While the addition of 30,000 US troops saturating Baghdad initially
reduced civilian and military casualties there, fighting intensified in other
regions and cities.  More important, the decline of violence had less to do
with Petraeus’ ‘surge’ and had more to do with the temporary political
cease-fire reached with the anti-occupation forces of Muqtada al Sadr.  This
was clear when the US and its client Prime Minister Maliki launched an
offensive against Sadr’s forces in March-April 2008 and casualties shot up,
and even the US ‘Green Zone bunker’ came under daily rocket attacks.
After 18 months under Commander Petraeus, the Iraqi troops showed little
willingness to fight their own compatriots engaged in resistance.
Thousands turned their arms over to the anti-colonial popular militias and
several hundreds joined them

            Petraeus ‘rule book’ prioritizes “security and task sharing as a
means of empowering civilians and prompting national reconciliation.”
‘Security’ is elusive because what the US Commander considers ‘security’ is
the free movement of US troops and collaborators based on the insecurity
of the colonized Iraqi majority.  They continue to subject the civilian Iraqis
to arbitrary house-to-house searches, break-ins and humiliating searches
and arrests.

While the death toll of civilians declined from ‘hundreds a day’ to ‘hundreds
a week’, it demonstrated Petraeus’ failure to achieve his most elementary
goal.  ‘Task Sharing’ as defined by Petraeus and his officers is a euphemism
for Iraqi collaboration in ‘administrating’ his orders.   ‘Sharing’ involves a
highly asymmetrical relation of power: the US orders and the Iraqis comply.
Petraeus defines the ‘task’ as informing on insurgents.  The Iraqi population
is supposed to provide ‘information’ on their families, friends and
compatriots, in other words betray their own people.  The concept sounded
more feasible in his manual than in practice.  US troops still are ambushed
on a daily basis and insurgents, operating among the population, bomb
their armored carriers.

            ‘Empowering civilians’, another prominent concept in Petraeus’
manual, assumed that those who ‘empower’ give up power to the ‘others’.
In other words, that the US military cedes territory, security, financial
resource management and allocation to a colonized people or to the local
armed forces.  During his 18 months in command, it is the ‘empowered’
people who protect and support insurgents and oppose the US occupation
and its puppet regime. In fact what Commander Petraeus really meant was
‘empowering’ a small minority of civilians who were willing collaborators of
an occupying army.  They were frequently the deadly target of the
insurgents.  The civilian minority ‘empowered’ by the Petraeus formula
requires heavy US military protection to withstand retaliation.  In practice no
neighborhood civilian collaborators have been delegated real power and
those who were delegated authority, are dead, hiding or secretly allied with
the resistance.

            Petraeus’ goal of ‘national reconciliation’ has been a total failure.
The Iraqi regime is paralyzed into squabbling sects and warlords.
Reconciliation between warring parties is not on the horizon.  What
Petraeus fails to recognize, but even his puppet allies publicly state, is that
US colonization of Iraq is a blatant denial of the conditions for reconciliation.
Commander Petraeus and his army and the dictates of the Zionist White
House play off the warring parties undermining any negotiation toward
‘conciliation’.  Like all preceding colonial commanders, Petraeus fails to
recognize that Iraqi popular sovereignty is the essential precondition for
national reconciliation and stability.  Military imposed ‘reconciliation’ among
warring collaborator groups with no legitimacy among the Iraqi electorate
has been a disaster.

            Former Clintonite, Sarah Sewall (ex-Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense and Harvard-based ‘foreign affairs expert’) was ecstatic over
Petraeus’ appointment.  Yet she claimed the ‘inadequate troop to task ratio’
would undermine his strategy (Guardian March 6, 2007).  The ‘troop to task
ratio’ forms the entire basis of Israel and the Zioncon Democratic Senators’
Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer’s’ ‘critique’ of Bush’s Iraq policy.  Their
solution is ‘send more troops’.  While Petraeus did increase the troops with
the surge, it is militarily and politically unable to mobilize 500,000 more to
meet Sewall’s ‘troop to task ratio’.  This argument begs the question:
Inadequate numbers of troops reflects the massiveness of popular
opposition to the US occupation.  The need to improve the ‘ratio’ (greater
number of troops) is due to the level of mass Iraqi opposition and is directly
related to increasing neighborhood support for the Iraqi resistance.  If the
majority of the population and the resistance did not oppose the imperial
armies, then any ratio would be adequate – down to a few hundred soldiers
hanging out in the Green Zone, the US Embassy or some local brothels.

           Petraeus’ prescriptions borrowed heavily from the Vietnam War era,
especially General Creighton Abram’s, ‘Clear and Hold’ counter-insurgency
doctrine.  Abrams ordered a vast campaign of chemical warfare spraying of
thousands of hectares with the deadly ‘Agent Orange’ to ‘clear’ contested
terrain.  He approved of the Phoenix Plan – the systematic assassination of
25,000 village leaders to ‘clear’ out local insurgents.  Abrams implemented
the program of ‘strategic hamlets’, the forced re-location of millions of
Vietnamese peasants into concentration camps.  In the end Abram’s plans
to ‘clear and hold’ failed because each measure extended and deepened
popular hostility and increased the number of recruits to the Vietnamese
national liberation army.  Israel’s brutal occupation policies in the West Bank
have followed the same strategy with equally disastrous results, which
doesn’t prevent its advisers from selling it to the US military.

            Petraeus is following the Abrams- Israeli doctrine with the same
disastrous civilian casualties.  Large-scale bombing of densely populated
Shia and Sunni neighborhoods has taken place since he took command.
Mass arrests of suspected local leaders accompanied by the tight military
encirclement of entire neighborhoods.  Arbitrary, abusive house-to-house
searches turn the poor sectors of Baghdad into one big shooting gallery and
concentration camp.  Paraphrasing his predecessor, General Creighton
Abrams, Petraeus wants to ‘destroy Iraq in order to save it’.  In fact his
policy is merely punishing the civilians and deepening the hostility of the
population.  In contrast, the insurgents blend into the huge slum
neighborhood of Sadr City population or into the surrounding provinces of
Al-Anbar, Diyala, and Salah and Din.  Petraeus was able to ‘hold’ a people
hostage with armored vehicles but he has not been able to rule with guns.
The failure of General Creighton Abrams was not due to the lack of ‘political
will’ in the US, as he complained, but was due to the fact that ‘clearing’ a
region of insurgents is temporary, because the insurgency is founded on its
capacity to blend in with the people and then re-emerge to fight the
occupation army.

           Petraeus’ fundamental (and false) assumptions are based on the
notion that the ‘people’ and the ‘insurgents’ are two distinct and opposing
groups.  He assumed that his ground forces and Iraqi mercenaries could
distinguish and exploit this divergence and ‘clear out’ the insurgents and
‘hold’ the people.  The four-year history of the US invasion, occupation and
imperial war, including his 18 months in command, provides ample
evidence to the contrary.  With upward of 170,000 US troops and close to
200,000 Iraqi and over 50,000 foreign mercenaries, Petraeus has failed to
defeat the insurgency. The evidence points to very strong, extensive and
sustained civilian support for the insurgency.  The high ratio of civilian to
insurgent killings by the combined US-mercenary armies suggests that US
troops have not been able to distinguish (nor are interested in the
difference) between civilians and insurgents.  Even the puppet government
complains of civilian killings and widespread destruction of popular
neighborhoods by US aerial bombing.  The insurgency draws strong
support from extended kin ties, neighborhood friends and neighbors,
religious leaders, nationalists and patriots: these primary, secondary and
tertiary ties bind the insurgency to the population in a way which can not
be replicated by the US military or its puppet politicians.

           Early on General Petraeus’ plan to ‘protect and secure the civilian
population’ was a failure.  He flooded the streets of Baghdad with armored
vehicles but was quickly forced to acknowledge that the ‘anti-
government
forces were regrouping north of the capital’.  Petraeus was
condemned to play what Lt. General Robert Gaid un-poetically called
‘whack-a-mole:  Insurgents will be suppressed in one area only to re-
emerge somewhere else’.
General Petraeus made the presumptuous assertion that the Iraqi civilian
population did not know that the ‘special operations’ forces of the
Occupation, which he directed, is responsible for fomenting much of the
ethno-religious conflict.  Investigative reporter Max Fuller in his detailed
examination of documents, stressed that the vast majority of
atrocities
attributed to ‘rogue’ Shiite or Sunni militias “were in fact the work
of government-controlled commandos of ‘special forces’, trained by the
Americans, ‘advised’ by Americans and run largely by former CIA agents”
(Chris Floyd ‘Ulster on the Euphrates: The Anglo-American Dirty War’,
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17048.htm

Petraeus’ attempt to play ‘Good Cop/Bad Cop’ in order to ‘divide and rule’
has been unable to weaken the opposition and has instead destabilized and
fragmented the Maliki regime.  While Petraeus was able to temporarily buy
the loyalty of some Northern Sunni tribal leaders, their dubious loyalties
depends on multi-million dollar weekly payoffs.

In theory Petraeus recognized the broader political context of the war:
“There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq, to the
insurgency
 In Iraq, military action is necessary to help improve
security
but it is insufficient.  There needs to be a political aspect” (BBC
3/8/2007).  Yet the key ‘political aspect’ as he put it, is the reduction, not
escalation, of US troops, the ending of the endless assaults on civilian
neighborhoods, the termination of the special operations and assassinations
designed to foment ethnic-religious conflict, and above all a timetable to
withdraw US troops and dismantle the chain of US military bases.  During
his 18 month tenure, Petraeus increased the number of troops, increased
the bombing of the very people he was supposed to win over and fortified
the 102 acres of US bases.  General Petraeus was not willing or in a position
to implement or design the appropriate political context for ending the
conflict because of his blind implementation of the Bush-Zionist ‘war to
victory’ policy.

The gap between Petraeus’ ‘theoretical’ discourse on the centrality of
politics and his practice of prioritizing military victory can be explained by his
desire to please the Bush-Zioncons in Washington in order to advance his
own military career (and future political ambitions).  The result was an
exceptionally mediocre military performance, underwritten by dismal
political failures and the achievement of his personal ambitions.

In April 2008, the Bush Administration named Petraeus as head of the US
Central Command, overseeing the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and
the reast of the Horn of Africa.  Petraeus replaced Navy Admiral William
Fallon who was forced to resign his command by the White House and the
Zioncons over his opposition to their war plans against Iran.  Even prior to
his retirement Fallon had expressed his contempt for Petraeus’ shameful
truckling to the Zionists in Northern Iraq and the Bush ‘ Know Nothings’ in
charge of Iraq and Iran policy planning.  It is clear that Petraeus ensured
his promotion on April 16, 2008, through his senate testimony, one week
earlier (April 8-9, 2008) with his bellicose speech implicating Iran in the
fighting deaths of US troops in Iraq.  With the purge and intimidation of
military officials not willing to act as White House/Zionist poodles, Petraeus
had few competitors.   Petraeus’ promotion to the top military post, just
days after his senate testimony pointing to war with Iran could not be
attributed to his( failed) military performance, but to his slavish adherence
to Bush’s and Israel’s push for heightened confrontation with Iran.  Blaming
Iran for his failed military policies served a double purpose – it covered up
his incompetence and it secured the support of leading Zionist Senators like
Joseph Lieberman.

Petraeus reference to the “need to engage in talks with some groups of
insurgents” fell on deaf ears.  His proposal was seen by the insurgents as a
continuation of the divide and conquer (or ‘salami’) tactics. The only ‘talks’
Petraeus secured were with tribal leaders who demanded millions of dollars
up front. Otherwise he failed to attract any sector of the insurgency.
Petraeus proved to be an armchair tactician, wise on public relations
‘techniques’, but mediocre in coming to grips with the ‘decolonization’
political framework in which tactics might work.


Petraeus Double Discourse


            Commander Petraeus was quick to grasp the difficulty of his
colonial mission.  Just a month after taking command, he engaged in the
same sophistry and double discourse of any colonial general confronted
with an unwinable war.  To keep the flow of funds and troops from
Washington he talked of the “reduction of killings and discontent in
Baghdad”, cleverly omitting the increase of civilian and US deaths
elsewhere.  He mentioned ‘a few encouraging signs’ but also admited that it
is ‘too early to discern significant trends’ (Aljazeera 3/8/2007).  In other
words the ‘encouraging signs’ he expressed to the White House were of no
military importance!

           From the beginning Petraeus gave himself an open-ended mission
by extending the time frame to secure Baghdad.  He shifted the goal posts
from days and weeks to ‘months’ and years.  Playing with indefinite time
frames in which to evaluate his performance , was a coy way to prepare the
US public for prolonged warfare – with few positive results.    There is
nothing like a failed general acting as a political panderer covering his ass in
anticipation of military defeat.

           As a military intellectual Petraeus surely has read George Orwell’s
‘1984’ because he was so fluent in double-speak.  In one breath he spoke
of “no immediate need to request more US troops to be sent to Iraq’, on
the other he called for 30,000 additional troops as part of what he called
‘the surge’.  In March 2008, he spoke of big advances in security and one
month later he demanded a ‘pause’ because the puppet regime and army
were not capable of defending themselves without US backing.

Petraeus’ political manipulation of troop numbers and his blatant lies about
the security situation in Iraq prepared the ground for a greater military
escalation in the region.  “Right now we do not see other requests (for
troops) looming out there.  That’s not to say that some emerging mission or
emerging task will not require that, and if it does then we will ask for that
(my emphasis)” (AlJazeera, 3/8/2006).  First there’s a ‘surge’ then there is
an ‘emerging mission’ and suddenly there are another fifty thousand troops
on the ground and in the meat-grinder that is Iraq, seven battleship and
aircraft carriers off the Persian and Lebanese coasts, thousands more troops
in Afghanistan and $175 billion dollars in military spending added to the
2008 federal budget.


Petraeus Political Ambitions


The General is a fine master of ‘double speak’.  Yet despite superb media
performances before his colleagues in the White House and Congress,
Petraeus’ military strategy is doomed to go down the same road of political-
military defeat as his predecessors in Indo-China.  His military police have
jailed tens of thousands of civilians and killed and injured many more.  They
were interrogated, tortured and perhaps some were ‘broken’.  But many
more took their place turning the Green Zone into a war zone under siege.
Petraeus real security policy through intimidation ‘held’ only as long as the
armored cars patrolled each neighborhood, pointing their cannons at every
building. That proved to be a temporary solution.  As soon as the troops
moved on, the insurgents returned.   The insurgents re-emerge after a
week because they live and work there, whereas the Marines do not and
neither do the Iraqi collaborators dare.  Petraeus ran a costly colonial army,
which suffers endless casualties and, which is not politically sustainable.
Petraeus knows that, so he chose a political route upward and out of
immediate command in Iraq, shifting the burden for failure to his
replacement Lieutenant General Ray Odierno.

  General Petraeus realized his long-term political ambitions exceeded his
military abilities.  Militarism is a stepping-stone to a higher post in
Washington.  Since only winning generals or draft dodgers are elected
President, Petraeus, like McCain, must present failure as success.

In his Senate testimony of April 8-9, 2008, Petraeus lied to Congress and
the American people about the US military failures, fabricating accounts of
progress, in order to bolster the sagging fortunes of his political patron,
President Bush.  His Senate testimony and press conferences were
designed to bolster Bush’s total loss of credibility: he claimed that the war
was being won, Iraq was stabilized, security and peace were ‘around the
corner’ and that we should go to war with Iran.

If the media uncritically swallowed Petraeus testimony, the public didn’t and
a host of former generals and admirals were chagrined, embarrassed and
outraged that he was advancing his career by sucking up to President Bush
and Israel at the expense of the troops serving under him.

Petraeus Panders to Israel’s Fifth Column:  The Iran Threat

By the spring of 2008, as the war turned from bad to worse, as the
insurgency grew in power and his leadership and strategy was
transparently a sham, Petraeus played his last formidable political card.  To
sustain his position and cover up his defeats in Basra, and his inability to
lower US casualties or even defend the Green Zone, he blamed Iran.  It
was Petraeus who charged Iranian weapons were blowing up US armored
carriers; Iranian agents were training the Iraqi resistance and defeating his
army of 200,000 Iraqi collaborators.  Petraeus could not face the fact that
he was losing Iraq.  He deflected attention from the failure of his entire
military-political strategy in Iraq by dragging in Iran as a key military player.

In pointing to Iran, Petraeus played the dangerous game of echoing the
Israeli line and providing support for a military attack on Iran promoted by
the leadership of the Major American Jewish Organizations.

Even while Petraeus was covering up his failure by blaming Iran, the Iraqi
puppet government was praising the Iranian government for helping to
stabilize the country, using its influence on the Shia militias to hold their
fire.  Puppet Prime Minister Maliki invited the Iranian President to Baghdad,
signed trade agreements and praised their co-operation and efforts to
stabilize the country.

The only organized group, which took up Petraeus’, campaign to blame
Iran for the US defeats was the Zionist Power Configuration in the US.  In
the Congress, media and public forums, Zionists amplified and backed
Petraeus.  They see him as a critical ally in countering the National
Intelligence Report absolving Iran of having a program to develop nuclear
weapons.  No other high military commander, in Europe or the US, took up
Petraeus call to arms against Iran
except the Israeli military command.  It
is a sad commentary on the state of the US military when generals advance
to the highest posts by flattering and propagandizing for the most
discredited American president in memory and advance the agenda of
power brokers for a foreign power.

General Petraeus, in his advance from Commander of US and ‘allied’ forces
in Iraq to head of the US Central Command overseeing current US wars in
Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and overseeing future wars with Iran, Lebanon
and Syria, has left behind a bitter legacy of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
civilian deaths, an unreliable Iraqi ‘quisling’ army, a failed client regime and
a vast US bunker under constant attack.  Every military official and most
experts know that he was ‘Bush’s man’ and his advances were very much a
product of the White House and its pro-Israel backers in the Congress.


Conclusion


The advance of Petraeus is a victory of the Zionist Power Configuration in its
quest for American military leaders willing to pursue Israel’s agenda of
sanctions and war against Iran.  That is why the ZPC was a factor in the
ousting of Admiral William Fallon, and why the main propaganda bulletin
(the Daily Alert) of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
worked for and hailed his promotion to military overseer of the Middle East
wars.  AIPAC and their bought and bonded Senators ensured Petraeus an
easy time during his confirmation hearing and his unanimous endorsement.
His appointment marks the first time that the Zionist Power Configuration
has trumped the views and opinions of the majority of active and retired
American military officers.  How far Petraeus will go in ‘paying back’ his debt
to his long-term Zionist backers for his meteoric rise remains to be seen.
What is certain is that they will demand that he line up with the State of
Israel in pushing forth toward a war with Iran.

It is neither military honor, nor patriotism, which will restrain Petraeus from
pursuing the Zionist War for Israel agenda – but his future presidential
ambitions.  He will have to calculate whether a second Middle East war,
which will please Israel and billionaire American (?) Zionist political
fundraisers can offset voter discontent resulting from a war in which  the
price of oil will rise  to $300 dollars a barrel and cost several tens of
thousands of American casualties, will further his political ambitions.

The US has degenerated into a sorry state of affairs when its future course
depends on the political calculus of a feckless General, a failed counter-
insurgency ‘expert’ and ambitious politician pandering to billionaire political
contributors working for a foreign colonial power.

James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University,
New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser
to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of
Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest book is "The Power of Israel
in the United States" (Clarity Press, 2006).