Tom Barry: The "peace through strength" vision of spreading pax Americana and ensuring Israel's security has proved illusory and wrong-headed. Rather than ridding the region of an anti-Israel and anti-US regime, the invasion and occupation of Iraq supported by Abrams and other neo-con ideologues have created a new breeding ground for non-state Islamic terrorists and a state that shows signs of becoming part of a new anti-Israel bloc in the region.

Meanwhile, the US-backed Israeli campaign to hunt down other declared monsters - Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran and Syria - may indeed lead to a new Middle East, but one in which Israel is much less secure and the United States still more hated.