The Position Of Neo-cons.

There is a power-struggle in Washington between the neo-cons and "realists" seeking to influence President Bush's stance on the Israel-Lebanon crisis. The neo-cons still seem to have the upper hand.

Former and current administration officials say Bush is more engaged in support of Israel's military assault on Hizbullah than on any other question. They say Bush feels passionately that the US should support Israel in what he sees as the frontline in the global battle between democracy and terrorism. Since July 12, his language has toughened from talking about the "war on terror" to stronger terminology in which he refers to the war against "Islamic fascists" and "Islamo-fascism" - terms long in currency among neo-cons.

In response to a question about Hizbullah at his ranch in Crawford recently, Bush said: "As young democracies flourish, terrorists try to stop their progress. They try to spread their jihadist message - a message I call, it's totalitarian in nature, Islamic radicalism, Islamic fascism - they try to spread it as well by taking the attack to those who love freedom".

Bush is said to be motivated by two instincts in guiding America's diplomatic approach. The first is his visceral instinct to support Israel against its enemies, which he sees in terms of democracy versus totalitarianism. The FT on Aug. 12 quoted Reuel Marc Gerecht, a prominent neo-con who formerly served as a senior official at the CIA and now is at the neo-con American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, as saying: "People should not under-estimate just how strongly the president feels in support of Israel and in his anger towards Iran and Syria [because of their sponsorship of Hizbullah]". The second is Bush's belief that the fighting between Israel and Hizbullah is a proxy war between the US and Iran's Shi'ite theocracy, which Washington sees as the most serious threat to stability in the region and beyond. The FT quoted US officials as saying they had intercepted communications between Tehran and Hizbullah showing Iran continued to supply arms to the Shi'ite group.

Although Washington has not released evidence that Iran instructed Hizbullah to cross the "blue line" into Israel to capture two Israeli soldiers on July 12 - when it also killed eight Israeli troops in ensuing clashes which sparked the current crisis - the FT said US officials insisted the Shi'ite movement was doing Tehran's bidding. The paper added: "They say it is no coincidence the Hizbullah raid occurred the day after Tehran effectively turned down Washington's conditional offer of talks over its alleged nuclear weapons programme".

The FT said Bush believed the US and Israel could not afford to compromise in their demands that Hizbullah eventually be disarmed. The FT quoted "a senior European diplomat who is closely involved in the UN negotiations" as saying: "We get clear indications the Bush administration sees this crisis in black and white terms".

Asia Times Online (ATO) on Aug. 16 said: "There is strong evidence that as the Bush administration is mulling over plans to bomb Iran, the simmering conflict between high-ranking military professionals and militaristic civilian leaders is bursting into the open. The conflict, festering ever since the invasion of Iraq, has now been heightened over the US administration's policy of an aerial military strike against Iran. While civilian militarists, headed by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, are said to have drawn plans to bomb Iran, senior commanders are openly questioning the wisdom of such plans".

So far, ATO added, "the jingoistic civilian leaders do not seem to have been swayed by the expert advice of their military experts. And the discord over Iran policy continues. Some observers have attributed the conflict to Rumsfeld's uneasy relationship with the military hierarchy... Evidence shows that business or economic beneficiaries of war, who do not have to face direct combat and death, tend to be more jingoistic than professional military personnel who will have to face the horrors of warfare. Furthermore, military professionals tend to care more about the outcome of a war and 'military honor' than civilian leaders, who often represent some powerful economic interests that benefit from the business of war.

"Calling such business and/or ideologically driven warmongers 'civilian militarists', military historian Alfred Vagts points to a number of historical instances of how civilian militarists' eagerness to use military force for their nefarious interests often led 'to an intensification of the horrors of warfare'. For example, he points out how in World War II, 'civilians not only anticipated war more eagerly than the professionals, but played a principal part in making combat...more terrible than was the current military wont or habit'".