Star tribune : Tom Maertens: Has Our Aim Been True?

Tom Maertens: HAS OUR AIM BEEN TRUE?

So much has gone wrong since jets hit the Twin Towers.

Tom Maertens | September 10, 2006

The neocons' next target is Iran. The pretext is Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program, for which there is no more evidence than there was for Saddam Hussein's nukes. But Tehran, of course, backs Israel's nemesis, Hezbollah.

You'd think the neocons would have learned something from the disastrous invasion of Iraq, an occupation that has already lasted longer than the U.S. fight against Germany in World War II. In the single-minded world of the neocons, however, attacking Iran is an "opportunity" to remake the Middle East. There is apparently no end of such opportunities: They also encouraged Israel to attack Syria during its incursion into Lebanon.

Everybody in government knows that the terrorists hate us because of our blind support for Israel, not because they "hate our freedom." The Bush administration has abandoned any pretense of even-handedness, the honest broker role we used to have, and now blindly backs every action Israel undertakes -- whether bombing a power plant in Gaza or civilians in Lebanon -- no matter how damaging to our own interests.

The neocons are constantly pressing the government to ally the United States with Israel against much of the Islamic world (and its oil) in a "battle for civilization." Such a wider war would further inflame the Middle East and provoke an even greater terrorist threat in response, with higher costs than we can now imagine -- including domestic costs.

James Madison once warned: "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." The Bush administration has already exploited the war in Iraq and fears about terrorism to stampede the American people into accepting an astonishing curtailment of their freedoms and growing lawlessness by the government. If the administration chooses to engage in the neocons' endless, global War for Civilization, American democracy will ultimately be one of the casualties.

Tom Maertens served as National Security Council director for proliferation and homeland defense in the George W. Bush White House, and as deputy coordinator for counterterrorism in the State Department on 9/11.