[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Another Obama appointment: Middle East neocon Dennis Ross

[Patrick Bond]

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/01/obama%E2%80%99s-neocon/

 

Dissident Voice                                                        
January 9th, 2009

 

Obama’s Neocon

 

by Gary Leupp

 

It’s been reported that Dennis Ross has accepted an invitation to become 
Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton’s “top advisor on a wide 
range of Middle East issues, from the Arab-Israeli peace process to 
Iran” and to serve as Special Envoy to Iran.

 

As one blogger wrote: “Appointing extremely anti-Iran Dennis Ross as 
‘Special Envoy to Iran’ is like appointing a pedophile as kindergarten 
teacher.”

 

Ross is co-founder of AIPAC; neoconservative ideologue; big-time 
supporter of the Iraq War; foreign affairs commentator for Fox News; 
fellow with Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), sister 
organization of AIPAC described by one distinguished scholar (Columbia’s 
Rashid Khalidi) as “the most important Zionist propaganda tool in the 
United States;” a man who has stated (in defiance of the U.S. 
intelligence consensus) that Iran will “be a nuclear power, if not a 
nuclear weapon state” by April 2009 if not forcibly deterred.

 

The only reason to make him envoy to Iran is to have him repeat the 
Bush-Cheney ultimatum: cease enriching uranium (something the 
Non-Proliferation Treaty allows all signatory nations to do, and which 
Iran does under tight IAEA monitoring) or face a U.S. strike.

 

As the leader of the U.S. negotiating team during the 
Israeli-Palestinian talks in 1999-2000, Ross was described by fellow 
U.S. diplomat Aaron David Miller (also Jewish) as “Israel’s lawyer” and 
criticized for not “critically examining” what following “Israel’s lead” 
would mean for U.S. interests. He is widely believed to have authored 
Obama’s fawning AIPAC speech presented last June.

 

In short his appointment does not mean CHANGE or HOPE for any so naïve 
as to suppose that an Obama presidency might bring either. It likely 
means more war, based on more false pretexts, to further reconfigure 
Southwest Asia.

 

On Oct. 2, 2002, Barack Obama told an antiwar crowd in Chicago that he 
opposed “the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and 
other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their 
own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in 
lives lost and in hardships borne.”

 

Now he’s in bed with the neocons. His supporters ought to ask, “What 
happened”?

 

Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of 
Comparative Religion at Tufts University, and author of numerous works 
on Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp at granite.tufts.edu.