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False Flag: Leading Analyst At Pro-Israeli Think Tank Publicly Discusses How U.S. Can Be Forced Into War With Iran

Many critics have argued that there is a concerted effort to push the United States into a war with Iran by supporters of Israel. Patrick Clawson, director of research for the highly influential pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) think tank, seemed intent to prove those rumors true this week in comments as a luncheon on “How to Build US-Israeli Coordination on Preventing an Iranian Nuclear Breakout.” Clawson casually discusses how to create a false flag operation to push the U.S. into war to overcome any reluctance by the public. We have been discussing how many leaders like Senator Joe Lieberman had begun to use the same rhetoric that led to the last two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how the suggest timing of an attack has been tied to the presidential election.

In his remarks, Clawson helpfully lists a series of historical events used to push the country into war like the Gulf of Tonkin incident that gave us the Vietnam War. Clawson expressed his frustration in acknowledging that it is “[v]ery hard for me to see how the United States President can get us to war with Iran.” However, there is hope. Clawson explains that the “traditional way” to get the country into a war is through false flags or manufactured incidents where Americans are killed. Thus, he observes, “we are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians, we could get nastier about it. So, if in fact the Iranians aren’t going to compromise, it would be best if somebody else started the war.”

The fact that one of the leading analysis for the WINEP would feel comfortable in making such comments is itself quite chilling. It indicates that such discussions have become sufficiently regular that it has creeped into public discussion. It is a measure of the secret pressure building to push this country into a third major war despite our crippling economic conditions and losses in military personnel. The assumption in Washington is that neither Romney nor Obama could oppose such a war. Even if Obama does not publicly support Israel, the assumption is that political allies of Israel in Washington can guarantee that we would offer extensive military loans and intelligence. Even if there is a delay in such military loans and support, the assumption is that Israel can go to war with the understanding that the United States will cover a significant portion of the costs. Moreover, in his remarkably candid remarks, Clawson shows how the U.S. can easily be forced into direct combat by pushing Iran to simply kill some Americans or sink a few of our ships. Then members would be clamoring for revenge. Notably, the Israelis have been ratcheting up the war rhetoric in pushing Iran, which predictably has now reserved the right to engage in a preemptive strike not just against Israeli but U.S. interests. We would then, again, find ourselves in a war without any public debate or collective decision.

While Clawson adds a passing caveat that he is not advocating such an approach, his remarks are clearly designed to show how the group can get the United States into a war for Israel if only we can get Iran to kill some of our citizens or soldiers. Those people are of course expendable props in Clawson’s realpolitik.

By the way, Clawson has been enlisted to give his insightful analysis at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He is also a member of the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies. The World Bank connection is particularly interesting given the history with Paul Wolfowitz who pushed the U.S. into two disastrous wars in the Bush Administration and was rewarded with being made the head of the World Bank.

It is the callous disconnect that is most chilling in these remarks. Thousands of U.S. soldiers have died or have been crippled for life in these wars that have left the country near bankruptcy (and increasingly hostile “allies” in Afghanistan and Iraq). Those casualties and costs, however, appear immaterial in the discussion of supporting Israel in a war against Iran.

125 thoughts on “False Flag: Leading Analyst At Pro-Israeli Think Tank Publicly Discusses How U.S. Can Be Forced Into War With Iran”

  2. Swarthmore mom-

    President Obama has morphed from “Hope and Change” into Bush 44.

    Romney wants to be “Gipper II” but only has the potential to be Bush 45.

    I’m looking, hopelessly in vain, for someone who wants to be Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson without the flaws and without the wars.

    I can’t settle for any more establishment party hack candidates and I won’t lower my standards. This is a condition known as “Disenfranchisement”.

    I’m HenMan and I approve this message.

  4. SwM,

    Any proof that Bush’s torturers left? Seriously.
    We know only what they tell us. Do you believe them?
    Really, really?
    They have been lying to us since 7 December 1941, Don’t believe it has stopped.

    So if they have not gone, then what does that tell us?
    Rhetorical? No, seriously.

    Is Obama the lesser of two evils. Yes, for me it is because he is putting up a certain fight against neo-conservative starvation for us all.

    We can exist on rice, but not on air.

  5. HenMan, Charlie Savage is the go to reporter on these matters, and if he is issuing a warning about Romney and the return of the Bush torturers, I will take it very seriously.

  6. Swarthmore mom-

    Your 2:48 p.m. comment by quotation on Obama is hardly a ringing endorsement of his record on civil liberties. You might ask Bradley Manning about the effectiveness of Obama’s “abolition of torture”. Basically, what you are saying is “Obama stinks, but the other guy stinks more”. That old “lesser of two evils” thing again.

    The Guantanamo prisoner who committed suicide a week or two ago, who had been ordered to be released by a Federal judge in 2010, might have given you some insights on what constitutes torture of a non-physical kind. The mental torture of an innocent man held for a decade under gulag conditions- nearly four years of it under Obama, who ignored the order of a United States Federal judge to release him. The blood of this man is on Obama’s hands, not Romney’s.

  7. Come, come, Professor. The mention of ‘Leader’ and Joe Lieberman in the same sentence is truly oxymoronic!

  9. GeneH,
    Do you surf too. Is the clear red line like the one which was written about. I think it was our blood then too.

    Malisha,
    Then as Cheney said: There are also the things that we don’t know that we don’t know….”

    Obama supporters, including myself
    Executive orders, executive order—-those are to ignore. As has been quite often demonstrated.
    What is the difference between an executive order and a boldfaced lie? None. Ask yourself what is going on in Bagram.

    1. ”Maybe Netanyahu’s for [Republican candidate Mitt] Romney. And he’s making a mistake if he is,” [Rep. Barney] Frank told The Hill when asked why he thought Israel had leaked the news of a perceived ”snub” to the Reuters wire service.'”

      SwM,

      Thanks for the link which this is quoted from. Barney Frank is being polite, because it is a fact that Netanyahu was put in power with American Republican Money and some of his top advisers are American Republican operatives. The man is a shill for things that will ultimately harm his country.

  14. “The last four years are a trail of broken promises on civil liberties, from warrantless surveillance to indefinite detention. However, one of President Obama’s most uncompromising accomplishments was banning torture through executive order on his first day in office. Still, the administration’s use of the state secrets doctrine to shield both the legal architects and corporate enablers of the Bush torture program, and its refusal to prosecute those who went beyond the “legal” torture sanctioned by the Justice Department have left open the possibility that torture could again become US policy. A future president could simply reverse Obama’s executive order and bring back Bush-era coercive interrogation techniques, which is exactly what the Romney memo proposes to do.” Adam Serwer, Mother Jones

  16. Thanks ap, I read it just before you posted. Romney: “We’ll use enhanced interrogation techniques which go beyond those that are in the military handbook right now,” he said at a news conference in Charleston, S.C., in December.” I think I will stick with Obama.

  17. OT:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/us/politics/election-will-decide-future-of-interrogation-methods-for-terrorism-suspects.html?hp

    “The Romney campaign document, obtained by The New York Times, is a five-page policy paper titled “Interrogation Techniques.” It was a near-final draft circulated in September 2011 among the Romney campaign’s “National Security Law Subcommittee” for any further comments before it was to be submitted to Mr. Romney. The panel consists of a brain trust of conservative lawyers, most of whom are veterans of the George W. Bush administration.”

    “Interrogation Techniques”

    http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/441318-romney-campaign-interrogation-policy.html

  18. Bomb, bomb, bomb,
    Bomb, bomb, Iran..

    Oh Bomb Iraaan,
    I’ll take my staaaand,,,

    Rockin and a rollin,
    Rockin and a reeling Bomb Iran.

    [to the tune of Barbara Ann by the Beach Boys]
    -Saturday Night Live 1980.

    When the eyeatolla gives a nuclear bomb to some “students” to play around with then you all will wish we were bombing Iran daily.

  19. Smell that? You smell that? The smell of budding Saudi Arabia theocratic hegemony riding on the backs of Neoconservatives and right wing fundamentalism, son! I love the smell of transparent brazen political manipulations geared for unnecessary wars in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn’t find one of ’em, not one stinkin’ body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like . . . the fall of empire and the rise of Caliphate.

    Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain.

  20. I saw the video. Clawson was not suggesting an incident, but letting the Iranians know it is not off the table. He did not once recommend such a tack, but simply reviewed our history, observing that typically some excuse is used, like the Lusitania, like Gulf of Tonkin, like WMD. Poor gullible freaks that we are, we always take the bait.

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