By Jamal Kanj

In 1992 British-born American Zionist Bernard Lewis wrote in the Foreign Affairs journal an article entitled “Rethinking the Middle East” , which called for the “Lebanonization” of the Arab world because it was “vulnerable to such a process”. He suggested the weakening of central power in countries to the point where “there is no real civil society to hold the polity together, no real sense of common identity”.

The current Iraqi mini-dictator, Nuri al-Maliki, and the burgeoning Islamists are direct by-products of the 2003 US invasion.

Under the pretence of the “war on terror”, the Zionist neo-conservatives exploited America’s might to break up Iraq and the Middle East – as Lewis predicted – into “squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions and parties”, led by rulers with a parochial, sectarian outlook and lacking a national “common identity”, such as Maliki.

“Cauldronizing” the Middle East

This blueprint for the new Middle East was envisioned by Lewis more than 10 years before Israel firsters succeeded in steering the gullible George W. Bush to fight Israel’s wars in the Middle East. Instead of then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s promise of democracy, we got the Al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and similar groups.

Fearing such an outcome, Brent Scowcroft, a former US Air Force lieutenant-general and national security adviser in the first Bush administration, warned the Bush Junior administration in 2002 against getting entangled in another costly foreign adventure because it “could turn the whole region into a cauldron and destroy the war on terror”.

Michael Ledeen, a leading Zionist neo-conservative in the Bush team, dismissed Scowcroft’s warning, arguing that it was the US “mission in the war” to cauldronize the region. “If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today,” he said. He added that if the US waged the war effectively, it “will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran and Syria, and either bring down the Saudi monarchy or force it to abandon its global assembly line to indoctrinate young terrorists”.

Shady character with questionable loyalty

Unlike Scowcroft who served faithfully in the US army and as a senior national security official in several US administrations, Ledeen was an indoctrinated Zionist known for his role in getting the US embroiled in embarrassing scandals.

In the mid-1980s Ledeen was the key mediator between then Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Iranian intermediary Manucher Ghorbanifar to supply Iran with American weapons in what became infamously known as the Iran-Contra scandal.

Ledeen was also behind the fake documents of the supposed Iraqi purchase of yellowcake uranium powder from Niger. His lie was crucial in Tony Blair’s and Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings.

In addition, he was one of several Zionist neo-conservatives who were suspected of spying for Israel and had long been association with Israeli think tanks, and who infiltrated the dens of the Pentagon to advocate the “creative destruction” theorem for remaking the “New Middle East.”

Ironically Lewis, Scowcroft and Ledeen were right in their predictions or objectives. For Scowcroft, the Middle East has turned into a cauldron of conflict costing the US trillions of taxpayer money.

For Lewis and Ledeen, a US mission to “cauldronize” Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Libya has made Israel safer. It is an enterprise paid for by American money and cemented by hundreds of thousands of lives.

And the Zionist neo-conservative cauldronization is not yet over.

A version of this article was first published by the Gulf Daily News newspaper. The version here is published by permission of Jamal Kanj.