Dick Cheney's warped vision of the world (via AIPAC speech)

[ProSense]

TUESDAY MARCH 13, 2007 09:38 EST

Dick Cheney's warped vision of the world

(updated below)

In his speech to the AIPAC convention yesterday, Dick Cheney laid out his thirst for literally endless war -- and his equally intense aversion to war-avoidance -- as unabashedly as can be. The towering question which America faces is whether it wants to continue to embrace this bloodthirsty and truly crazed vision (which many leading presidential candidates seem to share), or whether we want to repudiate it fundamentally. This is what lies at the core of Cheney's world view:

An enemy that operates in the shadows and views the entire world as a battlefield is not one we can fight with strategies used in other wars. An enemy with fantasies of martyrdom is not going to sit down at a table for negotiations. Nor can we fight to a standoff -- (applause). Nor can we fight to a standoff, hoping that some form of containment or deterrence will protect our people. The only option for our security and survival is to go on the offensive, facing the threat directly, patiently and systematically, until the enemy is destroyed. (Applause.)

Snip...

UPDATE: Speaking of endless war, Dick Cheney and AIPAC, Congressional Quarterly reported last week that AIPAC and its Congressional allies were "pushing to strike a provision slated for the war spending bill that would, with some exceptions, require the president to seek congressional approval before using military force in Iran." As BooMan documents today, they succeeded: "key language mandating that Bush get Congressional approval before going to war with Iran has been taken out."

For awhile, many people were resisting the notion that right-wing Israeli-centric groups like AIPAC (as absolutely distinct from the majority of American Jews generally) were "agitating for a U.S. war with Iran," but the evidence proving that becomes clearer all the time (one commenter here, Gator90, was insistent that there was no evidence of such a connection, but to his great credit, acknowledged that there was in the wake of the CQ story). The AIPAC-type agitators combine with the Cheney-type paranoid militaristic hysterics to ensure that the U.S. continues with its warmonger posture in the world.

The Hill is pushing endless war via AIPAC:

Pelosi hears boos at AIPAC

By Ian Swanson
March 13, 2007
Members of the main pro-Israel lobbying group offered scattered boos to a statement by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that the Iraq war has been a failure on several scores.

The boos, mixed with some polite applause, stood in stark contrast to the reception House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) received minutes earlier. Most of the crowd of 5,000 to 6,000 stood and loudly applauded Boehner when he said the U.S. had no choice but to win in Iraq.

Pelosi and Boehner were speaking at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual meeting. AIPAC has not taken a position on the war in Iraq or the supplemental spending bill to be considered this week by the House Appropriations Committee, but much of Boehner’s speech was about the future of the Iraq conflict.

Boehner sought to link the fight in Iraq to the future of Israel, as he said a failure in Iraq would pose a direct threat to Israel.

Pelosi said the U.S. military campaign in Iraq had to be judged on three accounts: whether it makes the U.S. safer, the U.S. military stronger and the region more stable.

more...

A reminder from Juan Cole:

In Iran, former President Mohammad Khatami urged the Iranian government to find a way of allaying North Atlantic fears over Iran's civilian nuclear research program, which Khatami said is not aimed at producing a bomb. He said he recognized legitimate concerns about all this in the West, but believed that they could be allayed if handled properly. Many Iranians are worried about UN Security Council sanctions, since they saw how such measures turned Iraq into a fourth world country in the 1990s. Khatami was president for 8 years and tried to reach out to the US and Europe, but was consistently blown off, including by Cheney in 2003.

[ProSense]

1. It comes down to the kind of fight the Democrats are willing to mount

and what the Congress as a whole is willing to do to stop Cheney's madness.

[Crunchy Frog]

2. Why do Democrats keep pandering to that obviously RW organization?

Aren't there any pro-Israel groups that aren't so militaristic and RW, that Dems could associate with, rather than AIPAC? Almost makes me just want to give up on voting.:banghead:

[Clark2008]

3. And what's even more bizarre is that most Jewish PEOPLE -

outside of this right-wing group - are against the wars in Iraq and Iran.

Makes absolutely no sense to me.

Maybe all the Jewish folks who are for peace and pro-Israeli folks who are for peace should start their own "AIPAC" group.

[Crunchy Frog]

4. And despite that, if we voice any criticism of that group

or the excessive influence it has over our governments policies, we'll get called anti-semites as often as not.

Did you get a look at John Hagee's speech at AIPAC? http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x19198 I would imagine most US Jews would find that horrifying, and the ones who don't are never going to vote Dem anyway. Our party needs to cut the ties with this organization.

[Tom Joad]

5. Yet Sen Schumer can say the aclu (!) has too much influence...

or had.. i guess...
But it seems its okay to say... that this venerable civil liberties group has undue influence... or that the big oil has too much influence... or that the Sierra Club has too much influence... anything else and people may disagree with you... but they don't say you are a racist, they usually just try to debate on the merits of the case, not attack you personally.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16785556/page/7/
Senator Schumer on Special interest groups....

SEN. SCHUMER: Well, all of them. Left, right and center. I bring up, in my book, talk when I got to Congress in 1980, for instance, and that was—that was about crime was ripping apart my district. I come to Washington, and I find out that the ACLU is writing crime legislation, has a veto over any piece of crime legislation. Now, they should be at the table. Their views should be considered. But our job, whether we’re Democrat or Republican, is not to just take what the interest groups want and just make it into legislation, it’s to balance their needs against others’. I believe in the environment, but there’s the issue of jobs. I believe in civil liberties, but there’s the issue of security.

[Tom Joad]

6. Exactly. two groups try to imagine that aipac and Jewish people are

of "one mind"... aipac and the david dukes of the world.

Instead, we need to understand the diversity of Jewish opinion and thought
e.g.
www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org

No one political organization can speak for any ethnic/religious group...

[Crunchy Frog]

7. I very much fear that US Jews are being set up by organizations like AIPAC

to take the fall and be the scapegoats when this country finally truly sours on the neocon foreign policy. That's a pretty neat trick when one considers that a large majority of US Jews oppose those policies. If I were Jewish, I think I would see AIPAC as my number one threat in this country at this time.