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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
Nope. But the U.S. and Israel tend to get all pre-emptive about it. Along those lines, the ever-chauvinist JPost offers a spin on the recent shake-up of U.S. Air Force leadership that the U.S. press (I guaran-damn-tee you) will not touch with a ten-thousand-foot pole. Frankly, I'm shocked that even the scrappy Israeli press would stick their collective toe into these murky waters:
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US Defense Secretary Robert Gates launched the US Air Force in a new direction Monday by announcing an unusual choice as the service's next uniformed chief. Gates recommended that President Bush nominate Gen. Norton Schwartz, a Jewish 35-year veteran with a background in Air Force special operations, as the new Air Force chief of staff, replacing Gen. Michael Moseley, who has been sacked.
When the Jewish Community Centers Armed Forces and Veteran's Committee presented its Military Leadership Award to Schwartz in 2004, he said he was "Proud to be identified as Jewish as well as an American military leader."
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Now to the 64,000-shekel question. With the U.S. and Israel locked in an escalating confrontation with Iran -- the Israeli minister Mofaz last Friday having described armed conflict with Iran as "unavoidable" -- is it antisemitic to ask whether Schwartz can be objective? To ask whether he is a Jewish neocon?
I mean, we don't want a rerun of the Dreyfus affair or anything. But was Moseley fired for resisting the rush toward aerial intervention, and replaced by "attack Jew" Schwartz who is onboard with Olmert's proposed sound-and-light show over Tehran?
[Note that Bush is in Europe today, urging that Iranian bank assets in Europe be frozen. This is not unlike Roosevelt's policy during 1941 of isolating and starving out Japan, to provoke it into a military attack.]
For perspective, consider a hypothetical case: the U.S. is in an escalating war of words with mainland China; a Taiwanese minister describes armed conflict as "unavoidable." And in the midst of this, the U.S. fires its air force chief and replaces him with a Taiwanese-American. Would Americans be entitled to question the advisability, objectivity and timing of such a choice, without being labeled as "yellow peril" reactionaries?
If the Israel Lobby succeeds in pushing the U.S. into armed aggression against Iran, it will be a crime that -- unlike their insider-cabal maneuvering to goad on the Iraq attack -- they will be unable to deny. Sanctioning Iran has been the noisy headline theme of the last several AIPAC policy conferences.
Posted by: Jim Haygood | June 10, 2008 at 01:49 PM