from 2003 on DU - "Egypt is the prize". The sweet irony that the neo-cons must be in fits of rage

[underpants]

This is a great article from The Nation in 2003. Yes this is my thread from the time (sorry) but it is worth another look I think.

The Neo-Cons were just sure that they could reshape the Middle East and the world at the end of a gun when it turns out that it was Wikileaks (Tunisia), increases in communication technologies, the willingness of the PEOPLE to act against corruption and peacefully initiate class warfare, and the inability of concerns like the Neo-Cons to do anything about it other than keep the American people away from the root causes that we also share.



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=128839&mesg_id=128949
Tue Sep-23-03 02:50 PM


"Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot Egypt as the prize."

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest&c=1

On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war--not just with Iraq, but "total war," as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last year. For this crew, "regime change" by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents--be it Colin Powell's State Department, the CIA or career military officers--is committing heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East--a hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints, force, clientism and covert action.

For example, the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board--chaired by JINSA/CSP adviser and former Reagan Administration Defense Department official Richard Perle, and stacked with advisers from both groups--recently made news by listening to a briefing that cast Saudi Arabia as an enemy to be brought to heel through a number of potential mechanisms, many of which mirror JINSA's recommendations, and which reflect the JINSA/CSP crowd's preoccupation with Egypt. (The final slide of the Defense Policy Board presentation proposed that "Grand Strategy for the Middle East" should concentrate on "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot Egypt as the prize.") Ledeen has been leading the charge for regime change in Iran, while old comrades like Andrew Marshall and Harold Rhode in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment actively tinker with ways to re-engineer both the Iranian and Saudi governments. JINSA is also cheering the US military on as it tries to secure basing rights in the strategic Red Sea country of Eritrea, happily failing to mention that the once-promising secular regime of President Isaiais Afewerki continues to slide into the kind of repressive authoritarianism practiced by the "axis of evil" and its adjuncts.

[leveymg]

1. KSA has always been The Prize. It is enough to just keep Egypt in chains.

Egypt is strategically important for two reasons to the Neocons - it's next to Israel and has the Suez Canal. It's enough to keep Egypt under the thumb of a friendly dictator, forever. Otherwise, they couldn't give a shit what happens there.

Israel is the biggest loser when Hosni Mubarek climbs into that jetliner and makes his exit, stage west. The entire Neocon grand design -- the Clean Break http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm -- has come unhinged.

What now? The Oil Kingdom, next? Israel, itself, seems to be poised on the edge of internal conflict.

[loudsue]

3. Israel is NOT worried about a damned thing. Not now. Not ever. The USA is their

puppet. Someone throws a spit ball at Israel and the USA will be there with all of our young men and women bleeding war, all of our assets (infrastructure money, teacher money, health care money) bombing the shit out of whomever threw the spit ball at Israel.

Israel has a rightwing asshole government run by the worst war criminals since the bush team. Many of them ARE part of the bush family business. They're so arrogant they've already dissed Joe Biden, and acted like babies toward Obama. I'm sick to death of the group Israel keeps choosing to run their government.

[shanti]

4. you're so right

but many du'ers don't like to hear this kind of talk about israel.

[slipslidingaway]

2. knr nt