While there are some who would argue that our entire foreign policy since 9/11 has been run out of Israel, others have argued that 9/11 has been used as a pretext for Big Oil to expand its hold on Middle East oil reserves, primarily in Iraq and Iran. Still others might find that each of these interests has run interference for the other, with the oil companies using Clean Break as the perfect vehicle to ensure America’s appetite for cheap gas.

Clean Break, of course, is the plan of the right wing Israeli party, Likud, to finish the colonization of Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, without the interference of hostile Arab neighbors, in order to achieve the promised Davidic Empire, which at the same time would dissolve Palestinian aspirations for their own independent or sovereign nation on what is left of their ancestral lands.
Whatever the reality, the potential consequences have been and are not good for the United States, indeed for Israel or the Middle East in general. This article by Chris Hedges, of roughly the same title, was posted at Truthdig on July 6, 2007, and subsequently on Alternet, from which it is reprinted here with permission.

Chris Hedges is the former New York Times Mideast bureau chief. In this article he warns that,

 America’s foreign policy, particularly under the Bush administration, has been subverted by an aggressive and dangerous Israeli agenda that could launch a nightmarish regional war.

We already know about the living nightmare that the incompetent Iraq invasion has created for America as well as the Iraqi people. But who hasn’t heard about the most recent and ominous drumbeats against Iran, which could have even worse consequences. With the Neocon Tony Blair’s recent assignment to the region, a resumption of the Catholic crusades against Islam could be in the making.

The last page of Chris Hedges’ long article is as follows:

Israel is currently lobbying the United States to launch aerial strikes on Iran, despite the debacle in Lebanon. Israel’s iron determination to forcibly prevent a nuclear Iran makes it probable that before the end of the Bush administration an attack on Iran will take place. The efforts to halt nuclear development through diplomatic means have failed. It does not matter that Iran poses no threat to the United States. It does not matter that it does not even pose a threat to Israel, which has several hundred nuclear weapons in its arsenal. It matters only that Israel demands total military domination of the Middle East.

The alliance between Israel and the United States has culminated after 50 years in direct U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. This involvement, which is not furthering American interests, is unleashing a geopolitical nightmare. American soldiers and Marines are dying in droves in a useless war. The impotence of the United States in the face of Israeli pressure is complete. The White House and the Congress have become, for perhaps the first time, a direct extension of Israeli interests. There is no longer any debate within the United States. This is evidenced by the obsequious nods to Israel by all the current presidential candidates with the exception of Dennis Kucinich. The political cost for those who challenge Israel is too high.

This means there will be no peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It means the incidents of Islamic terrorism against the U.S. and Israel will grow. It means that American power and prestige are on a steep, irreversible decline. And I fear it also means the ultimate end of the Jewish experiment in the Middle East.

The weakening of the United States, economically and militarily, is giving rise to new centers of power. The U.S. economy, mismanaged and drained by the Iraq war, is increasingly dependent on Chinese trade imports and on Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury securities. China holds dollar reserves worth $825 billion. If Beijing decides to abandon the U.S. bond market, even in part, it would cause a free fall by the dollar. It would lead to the collapse of the $7-trillion U.S. real estate market. There would be a wave of U.S. bank failures and huge unemployment. The growing dependence on China has been accompanied by aggressive work by the Chinese to build alliances with many of the world’s major exporters of oil, such as Iran, Nigeria, Sudan and Venezuela. The Chinese are preparing for the looming worldwide clash over dwindling resources.

The future is ominous. Not only do Israel’s foreign policy objectives not coincide with American interests, they actively hurt them. The growing belligerence in the Middle East, the calls for an attack against Iran, the collapse of the imperial project in Iraq have all given an opening, where there was none before, to America’s rivals. It is not in Israel’s interests to ignite a regional conflict. It is not in ours. But those who have their hands on the wheel seem determined, in the name of freedom and democracy, to keep the American ship of state headed at breakneck speed into the cliffs before us.

The full article can be read here:

http://www.alternet.org/stories/55827/

My own estimation is that, with Paris Hilton out of jail and CSI in reruns, any attack on Iran will wait until the fall TV season, when the American public’s attention is fully diverted. The Democratic presidential candidates (minus Kusinich) will claim as usual, “Israel has a right to defend itself.” And our involvement? God, through the Whitehouse, has preordained it. Israel has preordained it. It will happen, somehow.