A "FLASHBACK' from WHATREALLYHAPPENED.COM
November 17, 2003 issue
Copyright 2003 The American Conservative
[You and me both! I never thought I'd reprint from a conservative
source either! But it's a definite MUST READ! LOL! -v]
Most Favored Democracy
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies goes on offense.
By Daniel McCarthy
The images on the screen show American flags on fire, children dressed as suicide bombers, Saddam Hussein triumphantly addressing a throng of Iraqis, and grainy footage of the destruction wrought by a terrorist attack. These arresting pictures and the voice-over narration tell viewers that the war in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and al-Qaeda's attacks against the United States are all part of a larger war that Israel and the U.S. must fight together.
Congressmen and senators, White House aides and Pentagon officials, lobbyists and journalists are seeing the ad, which has been running on cable television in the Washington D.C., area. It is just one tactic used by an aggressive new neoconservative think tank, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), to shape American thinking on war, terrorism, and the Middle East. The Foundation is only two years old, but already the group is making its influence felt on the nation's policymakers.
In early 2001, a tightly knit group of billionaire philanthropists conceived of a plan to win American sympathy for Israel's response to the Palestinian intifada. They believed that the Palestinian cause was finding too much support within crucial segments of the American public, particularly within the media and on college campuses, so they set up an organization, Emet: An Educational Initiative, Inc., to offer Israel the kind of PR that the Israeli government seemed unable to provide itself.
At first, Emet floundered, without an executive director or a well-defined mission. But that changed after Sept. 11, and Emet changed too, into what is now the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The name is different, but the goal of influencing America's opinion-forming classes remains.
CONTINUE, by all means!