The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel [Hardcover]

Stephen J. Sniegoski (Author), Paul Gottfried PhD (Preface), Paul Findley (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2008

Although it is generally understood that American neoconservatives pushed hard for the war in Iraq, this book forcefully argues that the neocons' goal was not the spread of democracy, but the protection of Israel's interests in the Middle East. Showing that the neocon movement has always identified closely with the interests of Israel's Likudnik right wing, the discussion contends that neocon advice on Iraq was the exact opposite of conventional United States foreign policy, which has always sought to maintain stability in the region to promote the flow of oil. Various players in the rush to war are assessed according to their motives, including President Bush, Ariel Sharon, members of the foreign-policy establishment, and the American people, who are seen not as having been dragged into war against their will, but as ready after 9/11 for retaliation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is a riveting book."  —Paul Craig Roberts, PhD, syndicated columnist; former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury; and former associate editor, Wall Street Journal

"The time is right for an unvarnished examination of the origins, history, and agenda of the neoconservative policy bloc in Washington and in Tel Aviv. The Transparent Cabal helps to provide one."  —Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, USAF (ret.), PhD

"The timing of Dr. Sniegoski's book could not be better. The only aspect of U.S. Middle East policy not in controversy is that no one knows what to do; Sniegoski's book may help the debate break through this barrier."  —Joseph Douglass Jr., PhD, author, America the Vulnerable: The Threat of Chemical/Biological Warfare and Red Cocaine: The Drugging of America

"I have known Dr. Sniegoski for many years. He is a thorough researcher with a capacity for independent thought and the courage to advance and defend his analyses."  —Wayne S. Cole, PhD, professor emeritus, University of Maryland

"Sniegoski leaves no stone unturned in exposing the Israeli-neocon alliance and its catastrophic consequences in the Middle East. Timely and important, his book should provoke a much-needed debate about who truly benefits from current US policies in the region."  —Jonathan Cook, author, Israel and the Clash of Civilisations

"That the security of Israel has been central to the foreign-policy worldview of the neo-conservatives is one of the least discussed and most taboo aspects of the movement. Sniegolski has long been among the most dogged researchers who have tried to bring this to light."  —Jim Lobe, Washington Bureau Chief, Inter Press Service (IPS).

"Sniegoski breaks new ground and pulls no punches in his analysis of the neocon-driven policies that brought about war with Iraq. He broadens the inquiry into many areas that desperately need sunshine and clarity."  —Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer, partner in Cannistraro Associates, national security consultants, and contributing editor, The American Conservative

"Telling the truth in America today is more professionally risky than ever before, but happily Sniegoski couldn't care less. His rendition of recent American history is utterly absorbing."  —Thomas Woods, Ph.D., New York Times bestselling author, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History

About the Author

Stephen J. Sniegoski is the author of many articles on political philosophy, World War II, communism, and the American war in Iraq. His essay "Neoconservatives, Israel, and 9/11: The Origins of the U.S. War on Iraq" is included in the anthology Neoconned! Again. He holds his doctorate from the University of Maryland, where he studied American diplomatic history under Dr. Wayne S. Cole, whose papers are now part of the Hoover Presidential Library Research Collection. He lives in Adelphi, Maryland. Paul Findley is a former congressman from Illinois and a cofounder of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington advocacy group. He is the author of They to Dare Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby. He lives in Jacksonville, Illinois. Paul Gottfried, PhD, is the author of Conservatism in America. He lives in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Ihs Press (September 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932528172
• ISBN-13: 978-1932528176
• Product Dimensions: 1.5 x 6.3 x 8.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #760,008 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 52 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gift to the American People November 24, 2008

By Roberta Gilbert

Format:Hardcover

Stephen Sniegoski's book, The Transparent Cabal, is a great gift to us all. A scholar of history, almost nothing he asserts is undocumented. In this shocking expose of events and actions that may turn out to be the undoing of America, he shows, among other things:
1. How a "figurehead" leader who is not really a leader and his administration, can be taken over by other interests, to our own detriment.
2. How not everyone in high office has the best interest of the USA at heart.
3. How a political party can be inflitrated and taken over so that its foundational viewpoints are not heard or listened to
4. How name-calling and smear can be very effective at stifling honest debate and the truth
5. How taking sides with other countries, surrendering our neutrality in world affairs is not a good idea
6. How national security has been threatened by the takeover.
This book should be read by every American. We cannot afford not to know what is in its pages.

96 of 108 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars History will always link the Iraq War with the term 'neoconservative' August 28, 2008

By Dennis R. Jugan

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Stephen Sniegoski, a diplomatic historian, is uniquely qualified to write about the neoconservatives' involvement in the prolonged Iraq War originating in 2003. He accurately predicted their activities and allegiance in this entanglement in 1998, three years before the acts of 9-11 and two additional years before a traumatized nation yielded to a nescient, misdirected President, his Vice President/administration, and an ostensibly compliant bi-partisan House and Senate.

The author presents a tight outline which he cogently expands in intelligible detail, maintaining that the origins of the American war on Iraq revolve around the adoption of a war agenda whose basic structure was conceived in Israel to advance Israel's interests. The pro-Israel neoconservatives and a powerful Israel lobby in the United States fervently pushed its agenda. Ironically, he extracts his most persuasive evidence from an extensive neoconservative paper trail that's been clearly recognized by a discreet cadre of vigilant Americans for years. Thus the title, "The Transparent Cabal."

Dr. Sniegoski asks the appropriate question: "Who are the neoconservatives?" He provides insightful answers on their pertinent activities since 1972, those who shaped and mentored them, their immediate family/interconnected family networks, their prominent periodical publications, their past and present leadership, non-Jewish minority members, their persistent rise to positions of political influence and authority, their embrace of Christian Zionists, and their close ties to the extremely conservative Likud Party in Israel.... He reveals their tactical affiliations with key, heavily endowed influential think tanks, and a vast number of powerful Israel-centric lobbying organizations that reactively finance and nurture their continued success.

Many readers will recognize his references to writers of previous books, articles and columns -- many of Jewish heritage -- who bravely fight against well financed, mainstream media-dominant opponents and their psychological surrogates active on the Internet. These opponents perniciously engage in personal attacks and retribution, indiscriminately applying irrelevant anti-semitic labels. They persist at attempting to sway public discourse by spreading misinformation, disinformation, and mostly NO RELEVANT INFORMATION to the public.

In various places throughout the book, the author notes curious relationships with current and former elected and appointed officials. He writes about the ongoing 2008 presidential campaign in a postscript, citing past and existing direct influences on specific candidates by the neoconservatives, the Israel Lobby and its supporters.

The book concludes with a summary of the paucity of benefits compared to the predictable losses of the American people over recent years. These are the real consequences of the Israel-inspired plan to "drain the swamp" (a euphemism for destabilizing perceived enemies then establishing precarious nominal democracies) that began with our misadventure in Iraq and was to proceed with subsequent U.S. military interventions in Iran and Syria. The few meager benefits and the enormous losses to the United States are compared to the strategic advantages that the State of Israel derives directly from our five-year induced military involvement in Iraq and our concomitant departure from past, longstanding policies of diplomacy and stability in the Middle East.

Sniegoski counsels, "it is hardly controversial to propose that elites, rather than the people as a whole, determine government policies, even in democracies."

Yet this war has a supporting cast of middle Americans. Many of them were traumatized by the events of 9-11 and reactively saw an act of patriotism in supporting retaliation against a falsely perceived enemy in Iraq. It's time to reconsider false arguments preceding the Iraq War that have only been cosmetically modified until the present day. It's time to dismiss incongruous ideas formed in the cauldron of confusion after 9-11.

Given today's realities, it DOES take patriotism and courage to insist on formally normalizing an entangled, unreciprocated military alliance with an Israeli government that burdens the taxpayers of the United States, promotes angst among its people, and imperils its military forces worldwide.

Know and embrace Thomas Jefferson's ideal of 'eternal vigilance' as citizens of the United States.
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Facts in this book are reinforced in adjacent paragraphs and referenced in nearly 50 pages of notes. Readers are encouraged to read: The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy by Murray Friedman -- Spy Trade: How Israel's Lobby Undermines America's Economy by Grant F. Smith -- The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal & American Foreign Policy -- The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by Mearsheimer and Walt -- World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability by Amy Chua -- "Israeli Surveillance of the Future Hijackers and FBI Suspects in the September 11 Attacks and Their Failure to Give Us Adequate Warning: The Need for a Public Inquiry" **a 166 PAGE LEAKED REPORT** documenting foreign espionage activities surrounding 9-11, available on the Internet (although rarely in COMPLETE UNEDITED FORM **WITH 5 EXHIBITS AND 4 MAPS**).
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54 of 59 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Sober and devastating September 5, 2008

By W. Thomas McPherren

Format:Hardcover

Over the past 12 years, I have been the primary Net publisher of Dr. Sniegoski's extensive writings on foreign and war policy, posting them at my Website, The Last Ditch. I celebrate the appearance of his masterwork, THE TRANSPARENT CABAL, on the Bush-neocon adventure in Iraq and its historical and political background. (I am not connected with the print publisher in any way.)

Dr. Sniegoski has relentlessly mined public sources to make his case, and I urge the reader to focus on two words I've just used: "relentlessly" and "public." If he were investigating, for example, the causes of the Second Punic War, much less evidence would be expected; but in light of the taboos, doublethink, and nonthink deployed to hamper analysis of the Bush War, he has had to be relentless in marshaling his evidence. The result is a case that is armor-plated and triple-riveted. As for the "public" part, it is fascinating that the neocons were able to manipulate and maneuver their way to war in plain sight -- but largely unseen, because so many people found it convenient (or just safer) to look the other way. Nevertheless, the war partisans established an immense public record of their motives, ambitions, and tactics. Rarely has a title succeeded so brilliantly in conveying the thesis of a book; it was, indeed, a transparent cabal.

Dr. Sniegoski, for his part, is a transparent scholar, telling the story of the cabal calmly, methodically, with restraint -- and with devastating effect. My advice: Buy it (many copies), read it, give it, quote it, and talk it up.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Neoconservative Cult and the Fragility of American Democracy January 26, 2010

By Paul Sheldon Foote

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

On January 27, 2005, [...] posted the remarks of Seymour Hersh (The New Yorker contributor) at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York that a neoconservative cult had taken over the American government. Hersh hoped that future historians would document the fragility of American democracy by explaining how eight or nine neoconservatives were able to overcome easily the bureaucracy, the Congress, and the press. Stephen Sniegoski, in The Transparent Cabal, has provided a detailed history of how the neoconservative cult achieved the takeover.
Other books have stressed how the neoconservative ideology is contrary to traditional American values: Reclaiming the American Right (Justin Raimondo), America the Virtuous (Claes Ryn), Where the Right Went Wrong (Patrick Buchanan).
"Memoirs of a Trotskyist" in Neo-conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (Irving Kristol) provided a neoconservative account of the origins of neo-conservatism. Sniegoski noted correctly that the term neoconservative originated with leftists critical of their former comrades for attempting to infiltrate the Democratic and Republican parties. Thanks to leftists who call neoconservatives the ultra-right and to conservative dupes who think that anyone using a conservative label is a conservative, the neoconservative cancer has spread through the fragile American political body.
The neoconservatives do not represent the only case in American history of a small group attempting to take over America. The Plot to Seize the White House (Jules Archer) provided a detailed account of General Smedley Butler's testimony to Congress about a secret plot to overthrow President Franklin Roosevelt. Butler, a Republican, authored War is a Racket....
Unlike earlier secret plots to take over the American government, Sniegoski explained how it was possible for the neoconservatives to operate as a relatively transparent cabal. However, he observed that the neoconservatives used a Trojan horse technique to take over the American conservative movement. The goal of the neoconservatives is to promote endless wars regardless of whether the Democrats or the Republicans are in power.
The neoconservatives do not represent a popular mass movement in America. Instead, the neoconservatives rely upon the co-operation of other groups. Sniegoski provided extensive documentation of which groups enabled the neoconservatives. For example, the Christian Zionists duped their followers into sacrificing money and soldiers. Zionism originated with the writings of Moses Hess (who helped Karl Marx write The Communist Manifesto, was nicknamed the Communist Rabbi, and who is buried in Israel). In 1862, Moses Hess published Rome and Jerusalem. Moses Hess: Prophet of Communism and Zionism (Shlomo Avineri) provided a detailed explanation of the relationship between Communism and Zionism.
The reason for the fragility of American democracy is the failure of many Americans to understand the most basic aspects of the American political system and of their religions.
The Transparent Cabal is an important starting point for understanding how a neoconservative cult opposed to traditional American political and religious values is able to destroy America with endless wars. Read more ›