A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing The Realm - Influence

Influence

Brian Whitaker reported in a September 2002 article published in The Guardian that "With several of the Clean Break paper's authors now holding key positions in Washington, the plan for Israel to transcend its foes by reshaping the Middle East looks a good deal more achievable today than it did in 1996. Americans may even be persuaded to give up their lives to achieve it."

In March 2003 Patrick J. Buchanan, referring to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the report, wrote that "Their plan, which urged Israel to re-establish 'the principle of preemption,' has now been imposed by Perle, Feith, Wurmser & Co. on the United States."

Ian Buruma wrote in August 2003 in the New York Times that:

"Douglas Feith and Richard Perle advised Netanyahu, who was prime minister in 1996, to make 'a clean break' from the Oslo accords with the Palestinians. They also argued that Israeli security would be served best by regime change in surrounding countries. Despite the current mess in Iraq, this is still a commonplace in Washington. In Paul Wolfowitz's words, 'The road to peace in the Middle East goes through Baghdad.' It has indeed become an article of faith (literally in some cases) in Washington that American and Israeli interests are identical, but this was not always so, and 'Jewish interests' are not the main reason for it now."

Buruma continues:

"What we see, then, is not a Jewish conspiracy, but a peculiar alliance of evangelical Christians, foreign-policy hard-liners, lobbyists for the Israeli government and neoconservatives, a number of whom happen to be Jewish. But the Jews among them -- Perle, Wolfowitz, William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, et al. -- are more likely to speak about freedom and democracy than about Halakha (Jewish law). What unites this alliance of convenience is a shared vision of American destiny and the conviction that American force and a tough Israeli line on the Arabs are the best ways to make the United States strong, Israel safe and the world a better place."

George Packer, in his 2005 non-fiction analysis of the Iraq war The Assassins’ Gate, explicates the Clean Break report "through the lens of Wurmser’s subsequent AEI-published volume, which argued (in 1999) that America’s taking out Saddam would solve Israel’s strategic problems and leave the Palestinians essentially helpless."

In 2006 commentator Karen Kwiatkowski pointed to the similarities between the proposed actions in the Clean Break document and the subsequent 2003 invasion of Iraq. Soon after Phyllis Bennis pointed to the similarities between the proposals in the Clean Break document and the subsequent 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict.

In 2006 Sidney Blumenthal noted the paper's relevance to potential Israeli bombing of Syria and Iran, writing that "In order to try to understand the neoconservative road map, senior national security professionals have begun circulating among themselves" the Clean Break "neocon manifesto." Soon after "Taki" of The American Conservative wrote that

"recently, Netanyahu suggested that President Bush had assured him Iran will be prevented from going nuclear. I take him at his word. Netanyahu seems to be the main mover in America’s official adoption of the 1996 white paper A Clean Break, authored by him and American fellow neocons, which aimed to aggressively remake the strategic environments of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. As they say in boxing circles, three down, two to go."