[Peace-discuss] WHAT accounts for the US' mindless support for Israel???

[John W.]

Well said, Carl.  One of your more cogent and balanced posts, in my
not-so-informed opinion.

John Wason


On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 9:06 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:

I think it's important to realize that the USG's support for Israel isn't
> mindless at all.  It's perfectly in keeping with the long-standing US policy
> in the Middle East, which -- because of its energy resources -- is the most
> important region of the world for US foreign policy.
>
> "Since WWI, when the world began to move onto an oil-based economy, the
> Middle East has become central in world affairs, for the very obvious reason
> that it has, by far the largest and the most accessible petroleum resources
> -- primarily in Saudi Arabia, secondarily in Iraq, and thirdly in the Gulf
> Emirates, and elsewhere. As the State Department described it during the
> Second World War, when the US was taking over, 'It's a stupendous source of
> strategic power and the greatest material prize in world history.' In the
> 1950s President Eisenhower called it 'strategically the most important part
> of the world.'"
>
> It's become even more important to the US as economic rivals arose in the
> world -- Europe and northeast Asia.  The US doesn't need Mideast energy for
> its own purposes, but control of it gives the USG a strangle-hold over these
> competing economies.
>
> The greatest threat to US control has been what the State Department calls
> "domestic radicalism" -- the unconscionable demand of the people of the
> region to control their own resources.
>
> In the post-WWII period of decolonization, this threat was borne by
> (secular) Arab nationalism, led by Nasser of Egypt.  The defeat of this
> threat by Israel in 1967 solidified the adoption by the US of Israel as its
> chief client (and by far the largest recipient of US foreign aid,
> particularly military).  It became the bulwark against threats to "our" oil
> -- the "local cop on the beat," in the words of the Nixon-Kissinger
> administration.
>
> It's recently become fashionable to ignore the long-term geopolitical
> reasons that make the US Israel's patron, and to suggest that it's all
> matter of lobbying, of bribing congress with campaign contributions, or of
> malign and occult influence by the Israeli government over successive US
> administrations. At its worst (as in the case of the recently-departed head
> of the CIA, George Tenet) -- and not just on the Right -- this view becomes
> a sort of higher anti-semitism, the notion that crimes that the US has
> committed in SW Asia are the Jews' fault.
>
> As Noam Chomsky argues, "The thesis ... is that the lobbies have
> overwhelming influence, and the so-called 'national interest' is harmed by
> what they do. If that were the case, it would be, I would think, a very
> hopeful conclusion. It would mean that U.S. policy could easily be reversed.
> It would simply be necessary to explain to the major centers of power, like
> the energy corporations, high-tech industry and arms producers and so on,
> just explain to them that their interests are being harmed by this small
> lobby that screams anti-semitism and funds congressmen, and so on. Surely
> those institutions can utterly overwhelm the lobby in political influence,
> in finance, and so on, so that ought to reverse the policy."
>
> But it doesn't happen, and the reason is that USG support for Israel isn't
> mindless at all; it's an important part of fundamental US geopolitical
> strategy, notably its control of the Mideast energy.  --CGE
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