Retired US generals blunder into Israeli politics, seek Florida-style recount for losing hardliner

by: Salaam

Wed Oct 15, 2008 at 23:41:05 PM EDT

Salaam writes: Weirdest foreign policy initiative of retired US military personnel since Aaron Burr went to Mexico.

Jim Lobe at Lobelog.com writes:
Check out a bizarre story in the current issue of The Forward about a U.S. group called "Stand Up America" led by two retired U.S. generals who have retained a U.S. attorney to represent former Israeli defense minister Gen. Shaul Mofaz in any legal effort to reverse his defeat last month in the Kadima primary election by Tzipi Livni. Mofaz, of course, represents the right wing of the centrist party, although, historically, his views are virtually indistinguishable from Netanyahu's, Mofaz' former mentor in Likud. (It was Mofaz whose threats against Iran last spring contributed substantially to the biggest daily spike in the global price of oil in its historic rise through the summer.)

The two generals are Thomas McInerney and Paul Vallely who have long advocated a military attack on Iran and have been members of the Iraq Policy Committee, a group that has lobbied hard (and so far unsuccessfully) for taking the cultish Mujahadin-e-Khalq (MeK) off the State Department's terrorism and for providing it with loads of assistance as leader of the "democratic opposition" to the theocracy. Stand Up America, according to McInerny, is to "protect America and let people understand the danger of radical Islam and the seriousness of global jihad."

"We do not want a government in Israel that will support appeasement," McInerney told The Forward. "...We believe it is 1938 and everyone is going on, in denial."

Story here.