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Oct. 13, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Happiness Quotient

Jonathan Rosenblum: Ignore the Grandchildren

Oct. 10, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The limitations of scientific miracles

Caroline B. Glick: Lebanon on the brink --- and why it matters

Oct. 8, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: The day when the sane talk to themselves

Ana Veciana-Suarez: Many nonobservant Jews are finding religion

Oct. 7, 2008

Gary Rosenblatt: Of politics and prayer

Caroline B. Glick: The ironies of the West's collusion with the Arabs and Iran

Oct. 6, 2008

Rabbi Yitzchok R. Rubin: Mamma to the masses

Jonathan Tobin: Ahmadinejad Isn't Too Impressed

Oct. 3, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The 'living dead' are all around us

Caroline B. Glick: Olmert's parting blows

Oct. 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Often customers looking for our competitor accidentally enter our store. Can we just serve them without comment?

Jonathan Tobin: Jewish pundit quiz on next year's news

Sept. 29, 2008

Rabbi Eli Gewirtz: Lehman Brothers and the Day of Judgment

Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Apples, Honey and You

Sept. 26, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The shofar and the Echo of Sinai

Caroline B. Glick: A road paved on reality

Sept. 24, 2008

Greg Crosby: Home for the Holy Days

Ethel G. Hofman: Rosh Hashanah Favorites: Old-fashioned taste, reduced calories

Sept. 23, 2008

Caroline Glick: Liberalism or lives!?

Michael Ledeen: Dear President Ahmadinejad

Sept. 22, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I gave a check to a local merchant, but it hasn't been cashed in months. Probably they lost it. Do I have to tell them?

Diana West: We are losing Europe to Islam

Sept. 19, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: On harvesting success

Caroline B. Glick: It is time to act

Sept. 18, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Is camping the panacea to save Jewry from self-destruction?

Craig Gordon: Was SNL hilarity too much for Hillary?

Sept. 17, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: The Whole World Is Watching

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: East meets Southwest in this quick meal: MEXICAN-ASIAN TOSTADOS

Sept. 16, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. : Into the fire

Everything's Relative : Your Official Jewish Guide to the 2008 USA Presidential Election

Sept. 15, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Enabling risky behavior

Diana West: A day that will live in ... accommodating Islam

Sept. 11, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The skeleton in my closet

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein: Persecution and systematic destruction of Christians in the Middle East must be stopped

Sept. 10, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: There's Something About Sarah

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Who needs Chili's when you have these? Recipes for Mexican that taste great and are dietetic! Our commitment to freedom

Sept. 9, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Must counterinsurgency wars fail?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.:

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review August 24, 2004 / 7 Elul 5764

Is Bush an Israeli shill? Or a Saudi one?

By Bret Stephens


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Will the Bush-bashers make up their minds already!?


http://www.jewishworldreview.com | Pretty soon, the Anyone But Bush crowd is going to have to decide: Is the American president an Israeli shill or is he a Saudi shill? Does he do the bidding of the insidious pro-Israel neocons or of the insidious pro-Arab oil lobby? Is his foreign policy everything his father's was not — and therefore disastrous — or is it an extension of it — and therefore equally disastrous?


A long time ago — this would have been 2002 and the early months of 2003 — the first set of views held sway. "The Bush administration paints a rosy scenario for the upcoming war in Iraq," wrote University of Chicago professor Fred Donner in the Chicago Tribune. "It is a vision deriving from Likud-oriented members of the President's team — particularly Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith." On MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews observed that the war party consisted of "conservative people out there, some of them Jewish, who... believe we should fight the Arabs and take them down. They believe that if we don't fight Iraq, Israel will be in danger." In the pages of The Nation, the venerable organ of Leftist certitude, writer Jason Vest spun elaborate theories about the nefarious influence of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, or JINSA, on administration policy.


At the same time, alarms were being sounded about some of the lunatic ideas making the rounds at Club Neocon. In July 2002, Rand Corporation analyst Laurent Murawiec gave a briefing to Mr. Perle's Defense Policy Board, in which he called Saudi Arabia "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" of American interests in the Middle East. Tom Ricks, the Washington Post reporter who broke the story about the briefing, noted the anti-Saudi line was gaining traction in such magazines as The Weekly Standard and Commentary, which, he helpfully added, "is published by the American Jewish Committee."


The president's critics went into a tizzy. Crown Prince Abdullah had only recently proposed an Arab-Israeli peace plan, and the Saudis were still in pretty good odor. Mr. Murawiec, wrote Jack Shafer in Slate, "lights out for the extreme foreign policy territory," and sounds like "an aspiring Dr. Strangelove."


Finally, 2002 was the year when administration critics rediscovered the sublime genius of Bush pere and his foreign policy team. Former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, former Secretaries of State James Baker and Larry Eagleburger, and retired General Norman Schwarzkopf all cautioned against the rush to war. Invidious comparisons were made between their statesmanlike prudence and the callow impetuousness of Bush fils.


HOWEVER, THAT was then. These days, everyone knows that President Bush is nothing if not his father's son — not to mention Prince Bandar's poodle.

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"The links between the House of Bush and the House of Saud," wrote Michael Steinberger in the October 2003 issue of the American liberal monthly, The American Prospect, "are deep, overlapping and notoriously opaque: The Saudi investment in the Carlyle Group, the private equity firm whose rainmakers include George Bush Senior; the Saudi bankrolling of Poppy's presidential library; the lucrative contracts the Saudis doled out to Halliburton when Dick Cheney was at the company's helm. The main law firm retained by the Saudis to defend them against the 9-11 families is Baker Botts — as in James Baker, the Bush family consigliere. And, of course, there's oil, the black glue connecting all the dots."


These arguments were picked up in Craig Unger's bestselling House of Bush, House of Saud, and amplified in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. For Mr. Unger, the point of departure is the White House's post 9-11 decision to allow members of the bin Laden clan to leave for Saudi Arabia, while Mr. Moore makes much of the $1.4 billion Saudi Arabia paid over the years to Carlyle-connected enterprises.


True, the guy who gave the go-ahead for the flight of the bin Ladens was Richard Clarke, neither pere nor fils was ever shown to have profited from a Carlyle-orchestrated/Saudi-connected deal, and Carlyle is run by Carter administration official David Rubenstein. Also, the Clinton administration, like every administration since Franklin Roosevelt's, had been close to the House of Saud: In his memoirs, Bill Clinton reports that in February 1994 "We got a piece of good news when Saudi Arabia agreed to buy $6 billion worth of American planes, after intense efforts by Ron Brown, Mickey Kantor and Transportation Secretary Frederico Pena."


But never mind. What's really interesting is how much Messrs. Moore, Unger and Steinberger sound like those scary neocons of yesteryear. "The desert kingdom leads the way in financing and inciting Muslim holy warriors the world over," wrote Mr. Steinberger in his American Prospect article. So what's the difference between him and Mr. Murawiec? Answer: politics.


"It wouldn't take much for the Democrats to turn [the Saudi] issue into a political bonanza...." Steinberger writes. "The Saudi issue is a winning one on every count for the Democrats, and they need to take advantage of it — now." Which is just what Mr. Moore has done.


Of course, Mr. Steinberger is right — as Mr. Murawiec was right — that Saudi Arabia is no friend of the United States. He is also right that the Bush administration hasn't formulated a muscular or even coherent policy toward the Kingdom, and so is vulnerable to criticism on the subject.


Then again, wasn't one of the main points of the war in Iraq to remove US military bases from Saudi Arabia, and therefore extricate America from an entanglement begun during the first Bush administration? And don't the shortcomings of administration policy stem in part from the neuralgic reaction by the Arabist wing of the State Department to Mr. Murawiec's ideas and the ideology he represents? Presumably, if the neocons had been allowed to run the show in the Bush White House, the 82nd Airborne would now be stationed in Mecca selling tickets to the next Hajj. Maybe that's something we can soon look forward to in the Kerry presidency.


In its review of Fahrenheit 9/11, al-Jazeera.net noted "the implicit suggestion that the Saudi government is somehow driving the Bush administration's policies toward the region flies in the face of Washington's unprecedented support for Israel as well as strong regional opposition to the invasion of Iraq."


It's a good thing at least some people have got their stories straight. Because either you believe the Jews are behind it all, or you believe the Saudis are. But not both. This is one conspiracy theory on which flip-flopping is not allowed.

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© 2004, Bret Stephens