|
October 4, 2007
Freedom’s Watch:
A war mongering neocon outfit
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
“Big coffers and a rising voice lift a new conservative group.” This is how the New York Times reports establishment of a new group, the so-called Freedom’s Watch, envisaged by the Republican Jewish Coalition, dedicated to press the Bush administration to launch an attack on Iran. Founders of this group are the same people who supported the US invasion of Iraq.
To counter increasing demands for withdrawal from Iraq, Freedom’s Watch spent approximately $15 million on radio and television ads in August and September designed to maintain Congressional support for President Bush’s troop “surge” in Iraq.
Bradley A. Blakeman President of Freedom’s Watch says that those who want to quit while victory is possible have dominated the public debate about Iraq since the 2004 election. “Freedom’s Watch is going to change that.”
Freedom’s Watch commercials have already sparked controversy. They are seen an assault on the truth as some spots link the events of 9/11 with Iraq. Several of the group's spots suggested that Iraq, rather than Al Qaeda, was behind the Sept. 11 attacks, even though the independent Sept. 11 commission investigation and other inquiries found no evidence of Iraq's involvement.
In one ad, an Iraq war veteran states, "They attacked us, and they will again. They won't stop in Iraq." This looks the reminiscent of President Johnson and President Nixon era warnings that we had to stop the Communists in Asia so they wouldn't attack us here, or President Reagan’s suggestion that the leftists in Central America had to be stopped from coming north across the U.S. border.
The group is delivering a message of dire warnings to spread fear and encourage an overly simplistic “us vs. them” approach. Despite the fact that all investigations have shown that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and many Americans continue to believe in the linkage, thanks to spurious propaganda like this.
"Now these commercials appear, again preying on the patriotism (or gullibility) of Americans, and the creators are thinking, 'We fooled them once; how about again?'," Michael Goodson Post-Tribune Chicago columnist argues.
Why Iraq was invaded? It was not invaded because the executed President Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. We couldn’t any WMDs. It was not invaded to establish a secular democracy. Saddam was a secular leader, now we established a religious sectarian government in Baghdad.
Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman has now confirmed what critics of the administration have often argued that President George Bush was motivated by a desire to gain access to Iraq's vast oil reserves. In his book, released on September 17, 2007, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World Greenspan writes: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” What Greenspan was acknowledging casually has always been denied by the Bush administration and the news media faithfully ignored? "Blood for oil."
The same lobby that promoted Iraq war is now arguing for an attack on Iran. No doubt Freedom's Watch looks an outfit dedicated to keep thriving the war industry about which President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.”
Later this month Freedom’s Watch is sponsoring a forum of 20 experts on “radical” Islam that is expected to make the case that Iran poses a direct threat to the security of the United States. Several experts have been invited from the Washington-based think tank, American Enterprise Institute whose scholars have advocated a confrontational policy towards Iran.
The AEI is closely associated with the neoconservative movement in American politics. Irving Kristol, widely regarded as the movement's founder, is a Senior Fellow at the AEI. Other current or former AEI staff who are prominent neoconservatives include Michael Novak and Richard Perle. Interestingly, Mel Sembler, one of the major donors of Freedom’s Watch is on the board of directors of the AEI.
What is the mission of the so-called think tanks like the AEI? Naomi Klein, the author of Shock Doctrine is probably right when she says that a think tank means the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks.
With a roster of wealthy benefactors, Freedom’s Watch has emerged as a conservative answer to the nine-year-old MoveOn.org that has raised $25 million in the past 18 months and is helping spearhead an anti-war coalition.
The New York Times quoted an unnamed benefactor of the Freedom’s Watch as saying that the group was hoping to raise as much as $200 million by November 2008. Raising big money will be easy, the benefactor said, adding that several of the founders each wrote a check for $1 million. Since the group is organized as a tax-exempt organization, it does not have to reveal its donors.
The group's donors include Mel Sembler, a friend of Cheney's and longtime Republican fundraiser. Sembler was chairman of the legal defense fund for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff who was convicted of lying and obstruction of justice in the investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity. Another donor is Kevin E. Moley, a former U.S. ambassador to international organizations in Geneva and a senior aide to Cheney during the 2000 presidential campaign.
Other donors are Sheldon Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., who recently launched a new conservative newspaper in Israel, and several former Bush fundraisers who landed ambassadorial posts. They include Moley and Sembler, who was ambassador to Italy, as well as Howard Leach, former ambassador to France, and Anthony Gioia, former ambassador to Malta. Its board members include Ari Fleischer, the former White House spokesman.
Eli Pariser, the executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action, argues that Freedom's Watch may have money, but it doesn't have a base of support. "The main difference is that MoveOn is a group of 3.3 million," he said. "Freedom's Watch is a few mega millionaires." He described this group as nothing more than a big neoconservative slush fund.
The two groups have already clashed. Within days of MoveOn's ad questioning General Petraeus, Freedom's Watch ran its own ad denouncing it. The two also exchanged ads in a Washington state congressional district where MoveOn ran a commercial critical of Democratic Rep. Brian Baird's opposition to a swift withdrawal of troops from Iraq. MoveOn spent $20,000 on its ads, Freedom's Watch came to his defense with a $30,000 buy.
|
