uch is the figure of Patrick Clawson, Director of Research at
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as he appeared before his
fellows, his scholarly brethren seated silently in respectful adulation at
WINEP’s self-proclaimed international conference on near East policy. He
appeared as all clowns appear from the side curtains, an Ichabod figure from
Irving’s legend’s, lanky, thin, staccato stepping toward the podium, a believer
in mystical gods, historical covenants, justifications of actions found
encrypted in the yellow stained pages of ancient scrolls, called upon to deliver
his sacred yet startling message to his colleagues.
They after all exist as aborted children of the State of Israel,
a direct issue of AIPAC, a think-tank of intellectuals created for the sole
purpose of extolling the State of Israel while condemning all who would question
Israel’s policies or people.
They are guardians of G-d’s chosen, paid exorbitant
salaries to praise and justify Israel’s actions, a bastion of constant comment
to blunt the cries of the world’s communities to bring Israel to justice. They
labor hard and long to cloak their owners’ illicit behaviors, their illegal
wars, their deception and deceit that it may continue with impunity. They like
the clowns garb themselves in costumes to hide their true purpose; they create
icons that mask their true intent, lease a suite of offices in prestige towers
in the heart of Washington, ride in chauffeur driven limousines, dress in
Italian styled pin striped suits, sit at mahogany desks behind sophisticated
computers, and rest comfortably in cushioned chairs as the atmosphere is
regulated to apt comfort levels. All this splendor belies their reality as the
raucous romp of the clowns beneath the big top, surrounded by balloons and
cotton candy and parade music, belies their function to become the receptacle of
their audiences’ anxiety and frustrations.
Watch Clown Clawson amble to the podium, nonchalantly glancing to
his presumed peers who sit at either side of the podium awaiting his
intervention and words of wisdom as they face a crisis of apparent calamity, how
to force the United States to attack Iran. Obama’s intransigence against an
attack, while Netanyahu’s absolute determination to attack necessitates a swift
mental solution, a strategy heretofore not considered, one for the unencumbered
mental concentration of their Clown. “Send in the Clown” that he may perform
before all the fools that incestuously congregate at the Washington Institute
for Near Eastern Policy.
As he gathers his wits mumbling at the podium, he notes the
dilemma that confronts these masterminds of strategic planning, a stalled action
plan against the Iranian people. How to solve it? Clawson acts like the
trickster of Native myths, the buffoon brought forth to unveil the truth behind
the intellectual drivel that poured from the scholars as they pontificated on
the existential threat to Israel of the impending existence of an Iranian atomic
bomb, of the unfortunate limits to an Israeli unilateral response and the
consequent need for the United States to step into the breach, an act, indeed,
of moral significance.
Send in the clown to unmask the hidden agenda that lurked beneath
the recorded time of this conference, the unstated purpose of holding forth in
discourse for the public’s benefit that the occupant of the White House might
hear what his next step on behalf of the American people must be. After all,
these intellectual presentations become tomorrow’s news and their presenter
tomorrow’s expert guest on countless talk shows that all Americans might
understand that they too are under existential threat, that their fear level
should be rising to red, that there is no solution but the one afforded by these
brilliant minds.
Send in the Clown to utter in fool fashion the obvious, “be
nasty,” “after all people, we’re in the game,” it’s time to jump start the war
with Iran with a little imagination, follow the examples of prior American
Presidents, let Pearl Harbor happen, fix a Gulf of Tonkin attack, do something,
anything to “force” an American reaction in support of Israel, and since we know
the current President is not disposed to such actions, we need to take matters
into our own hands, “after all people, we are in the game,” we are already
undertaking clandestine action in Iran, and we do this even though we are not
appointed to be representing Americans, even though we do not engage ourselves
in real action, no boots for us on the ground, just type away at our computers,
comfortable with our Starbucks, a lunch with cocktail, and an opera in the
evening, “after all people, we are in the game” and if we don’t make it happen
it won’t, and think how grateful the American people will be as they shoulder
once more their responsibility to make the world safe for democracy, shield
their only friend in the mid-east, and kill and slaughter yet another people
that did nothing to them on behalf of Israel. Send in the Clown!
How cute the Clown who raises his eyebrows as his head bobs
forward to utter yet again “after all people, we are in the game,” and his
shoulders rise jerkily in step with his image of the submarine that just might
not rise from the oceans depths, it happens and “who would know why?” And that
sophisticated audience, scholars all, titter and clap at the clever solution
offered by their clown. So simple, so clever, so monstrous-- the diabolicalness
is masked in the jovial mannerisms of the Clown.
As he retreats from the podium, the viewer awakes to the
inhumanity of this figure, this Scholar, Researcher, this Clown. Perhaps it is
his lack of experience, his absenteeism from the battlefield, his life played
out in college, in fraternities, in business classes that teach the value of
loyalty to the company, in churches that teach devotion to a faith and the
comfort it brings in knowing one is on the right side of g-d, even in economics
where his expertise would recognize the necessity of success in the form of
wealth and the means to acquire it, that without it there is no “standard of
living” like that provided in the US, that one’s goal in life is self,
self-gratification, self-determination with your peers, self-aggrandizement, an
objectivism that drives roughshod over any and all who get in your way—the
American way of life that expunges from his mind what is “nasty” and excludes
from concern the lives of any not part of one’s personal club, indeed, it is his
job not to worry about those kinds of people. “After all people, we are in the
game.”
But what of the sailors on that submarine that disappeared, who
left port believing their nation was not at war, but who become, at the ravings
of a Clown, victims of faceless men who have determined that they must be
sacrificed to jump start their war while innocent men and women are blamed for
it, the virtues of impunity that attend “false flag” operations. Here lie the
vanquished beneath the never changing sea, lost in the darkness of its depths
and the absolute darkness of this soulless Clown who joked his brilliance before
his peers oblivious to the consequences of his jollity. No thought here of the
sailor’s mother or father, no thought here of the children of this man or of his
future snuffed out because this idiot vomited out of his mouth the way to move
forward with his agenda and that of his peers, “after all people, we are in the
game.”
|
But the consequences are far greater than the lost sailors in our
Clown’s descriptive false flag; “after all people,” this act will propel the
world into a catastrophic war, and we will “not be in a game.” Put this in
context; here’s the Clown, an appointed researcher for an exclusive think tank
the purpose of which is to push the Israeli agenda in the United States at all
costs. These un-appointed individuals draw up strategic plans for the US
government, maneuver them into strategic places in the Pentagon, the Congress,
the State Department, and into the Executive Branch in order to bring them to
action. This action is to force the US to go to war on behalf of Israel. That
the people of the US do not favor such a war, that hundreds and thousands of
their soldiers, the sons and daughters, the fathers and mothers of American
families will be the fodder for WINEP’s war is irrelevant to them since they
work for Israel and for AIPAC. The end purpose alone counts—their end purpose.
That is what Patrick Clawson told us in that released video, a video I suspect
WINEP wishes never saw the light of day. The absolute arrogance of his
presentation, the total commitment he uttered in his remarks tell of a man
incapable of human sympathy, oblivious to international law, uncaring,
bestial.
How does one contend with such affectation, such pedantry, such
charlatanism posing as enlightened man? How brutally ugly is this suggestion to
recommend slaughter of those who have done nothing illegal, nothing personal to
you or your family, who are to be but pawns in the hands of ruthless men, men
who hide themselves in the garb of others forcing blame on the innocent while
gaining impunity from dastardly crimes. How lacking in human sympathy the acts
designed by a nation willing and capable of carrying out such uncivilized acts
while it touts in advertisements across this nation, “In a war of civilized men
against savages, support the civilized men, support Israel.” How ironic that the
clowns have become the savages beneath their huge floppy feet, their bulging
bellies, their bulbous red noses, their rabbit like protruding eyes, and their
flopping ears, proclaiming to the world, this is what we really believe, deceive
all, destroy all, for the sake of Israel. “After all people, we are in the
game.”
__________________________________________________________________
William A. Cook is Professor of English at the University of
La Verne in southern California where he served for 13 years as Vice President
for Academic Affairs before assuming his faculty position in 2001. Prior to
coming to California, he served as a Dean of Faculty, Chair of Department of
English and faculty member at institutions large and small, public and private
in four eastern states. He is an activist and a writer for numerous Internet
publications including Counterpunch, Salem-News.com, Pacific Free Press
in British Columbia, Dissident Voice and Information Clearing
House, serving as senior editor for MWC News out of Canada, and
contributing editor at the Palestine Chronicle, the Atlantic Free Press
in the Netherlands, and the World Prout Assembly, his polemics against
the Bush administration and the atrocities caused by Ariel Sharon and Ehud
Olmert in Israel, now our 51st state, have been spread around the Internet world
and translated into French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Italian. Cook also
serves on the Board of the People’s Media Project, interviews on radio and TV in
South Africa, Canada, Iran and the United States and contributed for five years
yearly predictions to the Hong Kong Economic News. This volume follows
his Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied:
The Rape of Palestine and continues his scourge against the hypocrisy,
deceit, and destructive policies that have characterized American mid-east
policy and its destructive alliance with the Zionist forces that have turned
Israel into an apartheid state determined to destroy the Palestinian people.
In addition to his polemics, he
writes plays (The Unreasoning Mask, co-authored with his wife, D’Arcy,
and The Agony of Colin Powell), satires (see “Advancing the Civilized
State: Inch by Bloody Inch” in The Rape), and poetry (Psalms for the
21st Century). His most recent fictional work creates a morality tale based
upon real life figures that haunt our lives, The Chronicles of Nefaria He
can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or www.drwilliamacook.com..
The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of
Destruction is a collection of voices from around the world that establishes
in both theoretical and graphic terms the slow, methodical genocide taking place
in Palestine beginning in the 1940s, as revealed in the Introduction. From Dr.
Francis A. Boyle’s detailed legal case against the state of Israel, to Uri
Avnery’s “Slow Motion Ethnic Cleansing,” to Richard Falk’s “Slouching toward a
Palestinian Holocaust,” to Ilan Pappe’s “Genocide in Gaza,” these voices decry
in startling, vivid, and forceful language the calculated atrocities taking
place, the inhumane conditions inflicted on the people, and the silence that
exists despite the crimes, nothing short of state-sponsored genocide against the
Palestinians.
________________________________________
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!
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