Tag Archives: Israel lobby

Recantations Are All the Rage, by Philip Giraldi

Israel has an unmatched propaganda, influence, and retribution operation, but it’s losing ground, at least temporarily, on the Palestinian conflict. From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

Several things are happening simultaneously. Most important, Israel has lost the public opinion war in much of the world through its brutality during the recent attack on Gaza and it continues to lose ground even in the wake of a cease fire due to mass arrests of Palestinians and armed police intrusions in and around the al-Aqsa mosque. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is by its actions making clear that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine will continue at a time that he chooses. This in turn has produced a storm of criticism, including from Jewish groups and individuals, that is condemning the bloodshed and also sometimes explicitly seeking to distance Judaism the religion from Zionism, the political movement.

Some have suggested that we have finally reached a tipping point in which Israel has gone too far, evident in the Irish Government’s condemnation of Israeli “de facto annexation” of Palestinian land. Foreign Minister Simon Coveney told the Dial that “The scale, pace and strategic nature of Israel’s actions on settlement expansion and the intent behind it have brought us to a point where we need to be honest about what is actually happening on the ground …”

The Jewish state has even succeeded in alienating many who are normally supporters in countries like the United States, quite possibly leading to an eventual shift in policy in Congress and at the White House. That view might be exaggerated given the power of the Israel Lobby and its ability to make past atrocities go away, but it might obtain some back-handed credibility from the ferocity of the counter-attack being waged by Israel and its friends against the celebrities and politicians who have finally developed backbones and have spoken out in defense of Palestinian rights.

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To distract from Gaza slaughter, Israel lobby manufactures antisemitism freakout, by Max Blumenthal

Israel and its US lobby certainly know how to shape propaganda narratives. From Max Blumenthal at thegrayzone.com:

With deceptively edited videos and dubious allegations, the Israel lobby has manufactured an antisemitism epidemic to turn the media’s gaze away from dead children in Gaza.

Following an 11-day assault on the Gaza Strip in which the Israeli army killed over 220 people, including more than 65 children, and days of videotaped rampages of Jewish extremist mobs against Palestinian people and property inside Israeli cities, Israel lobbyists in the US and Canada have launched a carefully coordinated public relations campaign to deflect outrage.

Having failed to successfully defend massacres of entire families in their homes and the deliberate demolition of civilian residential towers and media offices in Gaza City, the US Israel lobby and the Israeli government it advocates for have manufactured an epidemic of antisemitic violence with the goal of portraying American Jewry as the true victim of the crisis.

Led by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Israel lobbyists have portrayed a series of street scuffles between supporters of Palestine and pro-Israel activists as anti-Jewish pogroms. In nearly every case, no evidence exists to substantiate claims that Jews were targeted as Jews for violent assault. There is ample proof of deception, however, as video and photographic evidence reveals pro-Israel elements provoking demonstrators, initiating violence and falsifying or embellishing their testimonies.

Since the Israeli government and Palestinian political factions signed a ceasefire, the media has provided Israel lobbyists with an uncritical platform to baselessly accuse Palestine solidarity activists of triggering a wave of antisemitic violence, and even claim without a shred of evidence that Jews are being hunted in their homes.


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The Zionists on the Defensive, by Philip Giraldi

One of the great under-reported stories, for reasons most of us are aware of, is Israel’s influence in Washington. There are far more stories about Russia’s alleged influence, although it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans compared to Israel’s. From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

Israel’s Friends overwhelm Capitol Hill

Yes folks, there is an international conspiracy and it is all about “protecting” Israel. It operates through front and lobbying groups that uniquely promote the interests of a foreign country, Israel, even when those interests do serious damage to the host country where the lobbyists actually live. In Britain, for example, there are a Conservative Friends of Israel and a Labour Friends of Israel, comprising together 216 members of parliament and party officials. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been silent about Gaza apart from expressing “deep concern” and blaming both sides while Labour leader Keir Starmer, who has also been under pressure to say something, has focused on how four car loads of alleged Palestinian supporters in London may or may not have driven around shouting out “anti-Semitic” comments. Starmer, one recalls, ran on a leadership campaign pledging to root out “anti-Semitism” in the party as a response to previous leader Jeremy Corbyn’s apparently ill-advised public recognition that Palestinians are human beings. Also in Britain, contesting details of the standard narrative of the so-called holocaust can result in a large fine and even some jailtime.

In 2017, Al-Jazeera ran an undercover operation directed against various Israeli front groups in Britain and in the US which determined that officers from the respective Israeli Embassies, presumably intelligence linked, were meeting regularly with members of the alleged non-government organizations that had been set up to provide support for the Jewish state. In Britain, the interaction included explicit discussions on how to destroy the careers of politicians who were deemed to be insufficiently pro-Israeli. In the US the objective has been to disrupt the activities of pro-Palestinian groups, most particularly the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The pro-Israeli and anti-Arab initiatives were coordinated with and sometimes initiated by the Israeli Embassy officers, suggesting that they were actually intelligence operations.

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The Israel Lobby’s Hidden Hand in the Theft of Iraqi and Syrian Oil, by Agha Hussain and Whitney Webb

You don’t hear much about where the Middle Eastern oil the US “secures” in its regime change operations ends up. From Agha Hussain and Whitney Webb at mintpressnews.com:

The outsized role of U.S. Israel lobby operatives in abetting the theft of Syrian and Iraqi oil reveals how this powerful lobby also facilitates more covert aspects of U.S.-Israeli cooperation and the implementation of policies that favor Israel.

IRKUK, IRAQ — “We want to bring our soldiers home. But we did leave soldiers because we’re keeping the oil,” President Trump stated on November 3, before adding, “I like oil. We’re keeping the oil.”

Though he had promised a withdrawal of U.S. troops from their illegal occupation of Syria, Trump shocked many with his blunt admission that troops were being left behind to prevent Syrian oil resources from being developed by the Syrian government and, instead, kept in the hands of whomever the U.S. deemed fit to control them, in this case, the U.S.-backed Kurdish-majority militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Though Trump himself received all of the credit — and the scorn — for this controversial new policy, what has been left out of the media coverage is the fact that key players in the U.S.’ pro-Israel lobby played a major role in its creation with the purpose of selling Syrian oil to the state of Israel. While recent developments in the Syrian conflict may have hindered such a plan from becoming reality, it nonetheless offers a telling example of the covert role often played by the U.S.’ pro-Israel lobby in shaping key elements of U.S. foreign policy and closed-door deals with major regional implications.

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Does Israel Interfere in American Elections? by Philip Giraldi

A barely perceptible smidgen of Russian involvement in the last US election generated three years of investigations and headlines, but Israel’s massive interference in US elections garners nary a peep. From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

Currently, the Russian threat is the enemy du jour. Even though we now know that “Russiagate” never existed in any serious form, it continues to be hyped by both the Democratic Party and by the accommodating media as the over-the-horizon threat to American democracy. It is now being claimed, minus any real evidence, that the Kremlin has a plan to ruin the upcoming 2020 election by way of nationwide tampering with the voting machines and the electronic tallying procedures. Oddly enough, the states, where the voting actually takes place, have not noticed any attempted Russian interference. As the story goes, if the Russians are successful, no one will have any confidence in the results and the American republican experiment will collapse in ruins.

No one is, of course, asking why Moscow would want to change a United States that, for all its power, is so politically inept and corrupt from top to bottom that it found itself unable to stage a coup in Venezuela. If the U.S. government collapses, it might well be replaced by something more authoritarian and, dare I say, more efficient, that would certainly pose a greater threat to Russia, so why would Putin want that?

Nevertheless, many people who should know better are hyping the threat. I sometimes peruse the Defense One website, a warmhearted place funded by defense contractors where all those people who want to blow up the world can share bon mots and grin about all the money they are making.

Last week I noted a particularly loathesome article on the site “Here’s what foreign interference will look like in 2020,” written by one Uri Friedman, who I presume to be – inevitably – an Israeli. Uri is very upset about all those evil countries that will be/might be interfering in the election, to include Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea and the United Arab Emirates – though he does exclude the one country that is most likely to interfere, which is, of course, Israel. Uri is described as a “a senior associate editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees the Global Channel.” The Atlantic is in fact a media black hole, where all semi-literate journos of a globalist persuasion go to die.

Uri begins with the sub-headline, “The incentives for foreign countries to meddle are much greater than in 2016, and the tactics could look dramatically different” followed by:

“Russia is ‘doing it as we sit here.’ This stray line, buried in seven hours of testimonyon Capitol Hill, wasn’t just Robert Mueller’s way of rebutting the charge that his investigation into the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 presidential election amounted to a two-year, $32 million witch hunt. It was also a blunt message to the lawmakers arrayed before him, the journalists hunting for a bombshell, and the millions of Americans monitoring the proceedings: We’re all here fighting the last war, when we really should be bracing ourselves for the coming one. The Russians ‘expect to do it during the next campaign,’ the special counsel continued, and ‘many more countries are developing capability to replicate’ Moscow’s model.”

Friedman states that “It’s unclear whether the Russian government will reprise most infamous and innovative act in 2016: the hacking and leaking of emails from the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign” before moving on to the details of Moscow’s alleged subversion. He considers all allegations about Russia to be truthful even when they were never proven. The Democratic National Committee never cooperated with the FBI after their supposed hack, but instead used their own very suspect firm to do the investigation. And the Mueller investigation took that report at face value in spite of the company’s very clear conflict of interest.

That about sums up Friedman’s rather lengthy and convoluted argument, though he does omit any consideration of how many foreign elections the United States government acting through its intelligence agencies interferes in each year. Or indeed how much CIA Director John Brennan and the FBI’s James Comey themselves interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Hillary Clinton. But he does speculate that “This is the shoe that didn’t drop in 2016. A Senate Intelligence Committee reportreleased in July found that while there’s no evidence that votes were altered or vote tallies manipulated during the past U.S. presidential election, the Russians likely targeted election systems in all 50 U.S. states, including research on ‘election-related web pages, voter ID information, election system software, and election service companies.’ In a couple of cases, the Russians succeeded in breaching state election infrastructure. Among the theories aired in the report about Moscow’s motivations is that it was cataloging ‘options or clandestine actions, holding them for use at a later date.’”

In other words, Friedman actually concedes that Russia didn’t do anything and the evidence that it is planning an attack for 2020 is thin to non-existent. But here in the United States, other foreign agents are hard at work to remove the two Muslim women elected to the House of Representatives in 2018 “for Jewish reasons.”

Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss reports how the tale of powerful Detroit region-based Jews raising money and pulling in political markers to try to defeat Rep. Rashida Tlaib has been circulating on the web. Per Weiss, Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on a gathering of Jewish power brokers in Detroit three weeks ago, arranged by a leading Jewish organization, at which they vowed to raise money to get rid of Tlaib because she supports a boycott of Israel. Tlaib is a Muslim woman and is a U.S. born and raised Palestinian-American.

Tlaib responded to the story on twitter: “This type of hate never succeeds when the truth is on our side. Palestinians *are* dehumanized. Those who want to suppress the truth by trying to discredit me can #bringit. My sidy [grandmother in Palestine] taught me of the days where everyone lived side by side in peace & that is what I will fight for.”

The meeting was held at Bloomfield Hills Michigan branch office of the Jewish Federation, the largest Jewish group in the United States. It included many local Jewish leaders and potential political donors who are clearly not bothered by dual loyalty, but it did not appear to include anyone who actually lives in Tlaib’s district. Nevertheless, consensus was quickly established that “the Palestinian-American freshman in the 13th District [Tlaib] has got to go.”

One participant declared “We in this community will go against Rashida Tlaib” while another described how there had already been an approach to Brenda Jones, the Detroit City Council president, who had been defeated in 2018 by Tlaib. Money was being raised for her campaign, according to another participant.

The thinking in the room was that the African-American community in the 13th Congressional District would support a single black candidate — likely Jones — and that candidate would also be able to draw on considerable pro-Israel support for funding and favorable media coverage.

There was some pushback, with a rabbi telling Kampeas that a Jewish organized effort to remove Tlaib would be “catastrophic.” He observed that it would be such an open and blatant demonstration of Jewish power that it would be a major setback to the effort to keep younger, more liberal Jews, who are suspicious of power politics, engaged.

The rabbi was being naïve. Removing politicians who are not fully on board with the Israel agenda is normal practice and has been for many years. Just ask Senators William Fulbright and Chuck Percy or Congressmen Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, and Cynthia McKinney. Criticizing Israel means not being reelected to Congress next time around, and it is not because Israel is greatly loved by voters. It is because Jewish-American citizens who are protective of Israel are willing to organize and collect money to support alternative candidates in any congressional district in the country, even where they do not reside, just as they plan on doing to Tlaib. Their goal is to defeat anyone who dares to say anything against Benjamin Netanyahu and his gang of war criminals or, even worse, suggest that Palestinians just might be human beings and might actually have rights.

Israel has the most powerful foreign policy lobby in Washington but it operates as freely as it does by pretending that it has no power at all, that American involvement in the Middle East is driven by U.S. interests. That is complete nonsense and has been so for over fifty years as the Lobby has tightened its grip. Until more congressmen like Rashida Tlaib get elected and begin to speak out, the corrupt status quo will, unfortunately, continue to prevail.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

 

Tulsi Gabbard: R.I.P., by Paul Craig Roberts

Has Tulsi Gabbard doomed herself by bowing to the Israel lobby? From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

It is unfortunate that Tulsi Gabbard succumbed to the Israel Lobby.  The forces of the Empire saw it as a sign of weakness and have set about destroying her.

The ruling elite see Gabbard as a threat just as they saw Trump as a threat.  A threat is an attractive political candidate who questions the Empire’s agenda.  Trump questioned the hostility toward Russia orchestrated by the military/security complex.  Gabbard questions the Empire’s wars in the Middle East. This is questioning that encroaches on the agendas of the military/security complex and Israel Lobby.  If fear of Israel is what caused Gabbard to vote the AIPAC line on the bill forbidding criticism of Israel, she won’t be able to stick to her line against Washington’s aggression in the Middle East.  Israel is behind that aggression as it serves Israeli interests.

But the Empire is taking no chances.  The Empire has sicced its Presstitute Battalion on her. Josh Rogin (Washington Post), Joy Reid (MSNBC), Wajahat Ali (New York Times and CNN), and, of course the Twitter trolls paid to slander and misrepresent public figures that the Empire targets.  Google added its weight to the obfuscation of Gabbard. 

Gabbard, who in the second “debate” between Democratic Party candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, took down the despicable Kamala Harris with ease, was promptly labeled “an Assad apologist” and a conspiracist with Russia to put herself as a Putin agent in the White House.  https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/08/01/crazed-democrats-now-claim-it-is-tulsi-gabbard-who-is-in-conspiracy-with-putin/ 

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Trump Is America’s First Zionist President, by Paul Craig Roberts

Has Donald Trump done even the tiniest thing that might piss Israel off since he became president? From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

It is impossible not to feel some sympathy for President Donald Trump.  His agenda to restore normal relations with Russia and to end Washington’s gratuitous wars has been frustrated by the “Russiagate hoax” that the military/security complex and corrupt Democratic Party used in the effort to remove Trump from the presidency.  He and his wife have been embarrassed by the fake “Steele Dossier” paid for by the Clinton campaign and used by a corrupt FBI leadership to illegitimately obtain spy warrants on Trump and his associates.  Accused of cavorting with prostitutes in Moscow and confronted with claims by a porn star of an affair in order to boost the recognition value of her name, Trump and his wife have experienced uncomfortable times.  Now that the lies the presstitutes have told since 2016 have been exposed by Mueller’s inability, despite his use of every dirty trick, to come up with any indictable offense connected to “Russiagate,” the psychopathic liars who comprise the presstitute media are on the verge of tears.  Mueller has betrayed them, they claim, by letting Trump off the hook. https://www.rt.com/usa/454550-mueller-media-reactions-trump-indictment/ 

In other words, there will be no apology to Trump.  Don’t be surprised to see the deranged accusation that Mueller himself was part of the Russian collusion and was appointed for the purpose of covering it up. 

Weakened by “Russiagate” accusations, Trump was forced to back off his agenda of ending the wars.  He put policy in the hands of neoconservative warmongers like John Bolton and Pompeo, and expanded the prospect of wars into Iran and Venezuela.  Trump in office bears little resemblance to Trump campaigning for the presidency.

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Israel Lobby Pays the Political Piper, by Jonathan Marshall

There are two open secrets about Israel that both journalists and people in government are reticent to talk about. Israel has a substantial nuclear arsenal, and it has a highly effective lobby in Washinton. Fealty to Israel has become almost a requirement for Republican politicians, but the Democrats have their share of kowtowers, too. From Jonathan Marshall at consortiumnews.com:

Exclusive: The Israel Lobby is so powerful that for years it insisted it didn’t exist – and Official Washington went along with the lie. Today, President Trump scrambles to secure the lobby’s blessings, Jonathan Marshall observes.

In this age of rancorous hyper-partisanship, getting members of Congress to agree on anything beyond the naming of a post office is a challenge. Yet in late April, all 100 members of the U.S. Senate signed a tough letter to the U.N. Secretary General, demanding that the organization end its “unwarranted attacks” on Israel’s human rights record.

Three months earlier, members of the House voted overwhelmingly to condemn a U.N. Security Council resolution critical of Israel’s relentless expansion of settlements on occupied lands. Like dozens of other Democrats, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland blasted President Obama for abstaining from the U.N. vote, saying it “sent the wrong signal to our ally Israel.” In the Senate, leading progressives like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders offered no support for President Obama, either.

Their votes and rhetoric did not simply reflect public opinion. Although Americans sympathize with Israel far more than the Palestinians, two-thirds of adults surveyed in in 2015 said the United States should not take sides in the Middle East conflict. Fewer than half say they consider Israel an ally.

Those congressional actions instead illustrated the power of the pro-Israel Lobby, a highly organized and well-funded coalition that works to give Israeli leaders freedom to operate with unquestioned U.S. diplomatic, economic and military support. Its influence helps account for the quarter trillion dollars in aid (adjusted for inflation) that the United States has given Israel since 1948.

When it comes to influencing American politics, Russia runs far behind highly motivated supporters of Israel. President Obama experienced that first hand when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, representing a state of just 8.6 million people, received rousing, bipartisan acclaim in no fewer than three addresses before Congress and nearly blocked approval of the Iran nuclear deal, perhaps the signature foreign policy initiative of Obama’s administration.

To continue reading: Israel Lobby Pays the Political Piper

 

Cynics, step aside: there is genuine excitement over a Hillary Clinton candidacy, by Glenn Greenwald

It’s All About Winning

Hillary Clinton is wired into the people she is going to need to be wired into for her 2016 election run. From Glenn Greenwald, at The Intercept (please refer to the original article, from the link at the bottom of this excerpt, to access links in that article):

It’s easy to strike a pose of cynicism when contemplating Hillary Clinton’s inevitable (and terribly imminent) presidential campaign. As a drearily soulless, principle-free, power-hungry veteran of DC’s game of thrones, she’s about as banal of an American politician as it gets. One of the few unique aspects to her, perhaps the only one, is how the genuinely inspiring gender milestone of her election will (following the Obama model) be exploited to obscure her primary role as guardian of the status quo.

That she’s the beneficiary of dynastic succession – who may very well be pitted against the next heir in line from the regal Bush dynasty (this one [Jeb Bush], not yet this one [George P. Bush]) – makes it all the more tempting to regard #HillaryTime with an evenly distributed mix of boredom and contempt. The tens of millions of dollars the Clintons have jointly “earned” off their political celebrity – much of it speaking to the very globalists, industry groups, hedge funds, and other Wall Street appendages who would have among the largest stake in her presidency – make the spectacle that much more depressing (the likely candidate is pictured above with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein at an event in September).

But one shouldn’t be so jaded. There is genuine and intense excitement over the prospect of (another) Clinton presidency. Many significant American factions regard her elevation to the Oval Office as an opportunity for rejuvenation, as a stirring symbol of hope and change, as the vehicle for vital policy advances. Those increasingly inspired factions include:

Wall Street

Politico Magazine, November 11, 2014 (“Why Wall Street Loves Hillary”):

Down on Wall Street they don’t believe (Clinton’s populist rhetoric) for a minute. While the finance industry does genuinely hate Warren, the big bankers love Clinton, and by and large they badly want her to be president. Many of the rich and powerful in the financial industry—among them, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, Tom Nides, a powerful vice chairman at Morgan Stanley, and the heads of JPMorganChase and Bank of America—consider Clinton a pragmatic problem-solver not prone to populist rhetoric. To them, she’s someone who gets the idea that we all benefit if Wall Street and American business thrive. What about her forays into fiery rhetoric? They dismiss it quickly as political maneuvers. None of them think she really means her populism.

Although Hillary Clinton has made no formal announcement of her candidacy, the consensus on Wall Street is that she is running—and running hard—and that her national organization is quickly falling into place behind the scenes. That all makes her attractive. Wall Street, above all, loves a winner, especially one who is not likely to tamper too radically with its vast money pot.

According to a wide assortment of bankers and hedge-fund managers I spoke to for this article, Clinton’s rock-solid support on Wall Street is not anything that can be dislodged based on a few seemingly off-the-cuff comments in Boston calculated to protect her left flank. (For the record, she quickly walked them back, saying she had “short-handed” her comments about the failures of trickle-down economics by suggesting, absurdly, that corporations don’t create jobs.) “I think people are very excited about Hillary,” says one Wall Street investment professional with close ties to Washington. “Most people in New York on the finance side view her as being very pragmatic. I think they have confidence that she understands how things work and that she’s not a populist.”

The Israel Lobby

Foreign Policy, Aaron David Miller, November 7, 2014 (“Would Hillary Be Good For the Holy Land?”):

Should she become president, on one level, better ties with Israel are virtually guaranteed. . . . Let’s not forget that the Clintons dealt with Bibi too as prime minister. It was never easy. But clearly it was a lot more productive than what we see now. . . . To put it simply, as a more conventional politician, Hillary is good on Israel and relates to the country in a way this president doesn’t. . . . Hillary is from a different generation and functioned in a political world in which being good on Israel was both mandatory and smart.

Let’s be clear. When it comes to Israel, there is no Bill Clinton 2.0. The former president is probably unique among presidents for the depth of his feeling for Israel and his willingness to put aside his own frustrations with certain aspects of Israel’s behavior, such as settlements. But this accommodation applies to Hillary too. Both Bill and Hillary are so enamored with the idea of Israel and its unique history that they are prone to make certain allowances for the reality of Israel’s behavior, such as the continuing construction of settlements.

Interventionists (i.e., war zealots)

New York Times, June 15, 2014 (“Events in Iraq Open Door for Interventionist Revival, Historian Says”):

But Exhibit A for what Robert Kagan describes as his “mainstream” view of American force is his relationship with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes.

Mr. Kagan pointed out that he had recently attended a dinner of foreign-policy experts at which Mrs. Clinton was the guest of honor, and that he had served on her bipartisan group of foreign-policy heavy hitters at the State Department, where his wife worked as her spokeswoman.

“I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table” if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”

Old school neocons

New York Times, Jacob Heilbrunn, July 5, 2014 (“The Next Act for Neocons: … Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton”?):

After nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the neoconservative movement is back. . . . Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy. . . .

Other neocons have followed [Robert] Kagan’s careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in The New Republic this year that “it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya.”

And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.

It’s easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton’s making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board. . . . Far from ending, then, the neocon odyssey is about to continue. In 1972, Robert L. Bartley, the editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal and a man who championed the early neocon stalwarts, shrewdly diagnosed the movement as representing “something of a swing group between the two major parties.” Despite the partisan battles of the early 2000s, it is remarkable how very little has changed.

So take that, cynics. There are pockets of vibrant political excitement stirring in the land over a Hillary Clinton presidency. There are posters being made, buttons being appended, checks being prepared, appointments being coveted. The joint, allied, synergistic constituencies of plutocracy and endless war have their beloved candidate. And it’s really quite difficult to argue that their excitement and affection are unwarranted.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/14/despite-cynicism-genuine-excitement-hillary-clinton-candidacy/

Nothing about the last election will have any impact on this kind of support, which transcends parties and is based on hard-headed, pragmatic calculations of interest and advantage. Add in the first-woman-president consideration and the Clinton political machine, and Ms. Clinton will be a formidable candidate. And if she wins, America’s further deterioration is all but assured.