Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2006, pages 70-71

Waging Peace

The Clean Break Plan

AT AN AUG. 29 presentation at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC, Grant Smith of the Institute for Research:  Middle East Policy (IRMEP) examined “The Clean Break Plan: A Conspiracy of Theories?” In 1996, he explained, leading neoconservatives—including Richard Perle, former adviser to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; David Wurmser, Mideast adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; and former Defense Department official Douglas Feith—prepared a strategic plan for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.”

“The title of this presentation deals really with the ‘Clean Break’ plan and whether it’s a conspiracy theory to think it’s affecting our [U.S.] policy or actually a conspiracy of theories,” Smith said. The overarching goal of the “Clean Break” plan, he continued, was to increase support and security for Israel by “rebuilding Zionism, rejuvenating the national ideal and shaping the regional environment” in favor of Israel.

A major objective of the plan was to “gain more support among members of Congress with little knowledge of Israel” by identifying “Israel with the U.S. and Western values,” Smith said. “We’ve all heard the reference of Israel being the Middle East’s only democracy and other statements.” In Smith’s opinion, this aspect of the plan has been a total success.

The plan also recommended the use of “Cold War rhetoric to make Israel’s case to the American people,” Smith noted.

A second “Clean Break” objective, he said, was to destabilize, contain and roll back regional challengers, publicly question Syrian legitimacy, assume that all treaties with Syria are in bad faith, even strike select Syrian targets directly, and reject land for peace on the Golan.

Other objectives Smith cited included redrawing the map of the Middle East, dismissing Arab countries as police states, fortifying regional analysis and—interestingly for a document written in 1996—emphasizing the weapons of mass destruction threat from Syria.

“The theory embedded in the destabilization strategy is clearly what we know about neoconservative approaches in general,” Smith said. “It’s about hard power. It’s about military strikes. It can be about isolation, containment and not talking to countries as a tool. There is also the theory that skillful public relations, no matter how outrageous, can dislodge and overcome a reality in the mind of key constituencies in the United States. And a theory, again dreamed up by this group, that emphasizing the threat of weapons of mass destruction could be a powerful motivator for U.S. action.”

“Time has now provided a test” to see if the plan is working in favor of those who support it, Smith stated. In August 2005, two American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbyists were charged with working in conjunction with a Pentagon official to pass classified information to those not entitled to receive it—”namely Israel,” Smith said. Federal Judge T. S. Ellis found that, in the case of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, hiding behind the cover of some person or organization in order to influence American political events and deceive Americans is in violation of Foreign Agents Registration Act. Judge Ellis’ opinion should worry Americans who are working as unregistered foreign agents.

”If you believe after studying carefully the “Clean Break” plan that it influences U.S. policy on the basis of a careful analysis, you cannot be accused of being a conspiracy theorist,” Smith concluded. “You can be accused of believing in a conspiracy of theories.”

A complete transcript of Smith’s talk is available at <www.thejerusalemfund.org>. Other sources include the books Deadly Dogma and Neocon Middle East Policy: The ‘Clean Break’ Plan Damage Assessment (available from the AET Book Club), and IRMEP’s Web site: <http://www.irmep.org>.

         —Miriam Wakim

SIDEBAR

Camp Democracy Comes to National Mall

Veterans for Peace, Gold Star Families, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and other anti-war organizations spent from Sept. 5-21 “camping out” on the National Mall near the U.S. Capitol. Poignant visuals, including tombstones, crosses and boots, made viewers think about the human cost of war. Many of the speakers over the 17-day event discussed ending the war, righting injustices at home, and holding the Bush administration and Congress accountable for their foreign policy.

—Delinda C. Hanley

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