[Peace-discuss] More about The Lobby

[C. G. Estabrook]

Because reasonable people know it wouldn't get anywhere. US policy is determined
by the interaction of power centers within the American elite, not by the agents
of a Mideast state, working against those interests (= "the US national interest").


John W. wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 4:41 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu 
> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote:
> 
> Israel has its own vicious agenda, as Chomsky is among the first to point
> out. But it would not be able to enact it without the US.
> 
> Other people write well on this matter, but Chomsky has been doing it
> particularly well, for a long time.  It's hard to equal "Fateful Triangle:
> The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians" (1983), updated ten years
> ago, and that's only one among many.
> 
> Chomsky points out that the debates over the Lobby "are paralyzing. They have
> no implications for activism, except one. If the claims are correct, then
> I’ve been wasting my time for years in talking, writing, organizing,
> activism. I should instead put on a tie and jacket and go to the corporate
> headquarters of Intel, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, and a host of other major
> corporations investing in Israel, and should explain to them, politely, that
> they are harming their interests by doing so, and should use their political
> and economic power to put the lobby out of business, as they can do in five
> minutes. No one adopts that tactic. But why?"
> 
> 
> 
> Why indeed?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Brussel Morton K. wrote:
> 
> 
> You dodge the point that Ray McGovern, and others, are making in a kind of 
> obsession to  attack the U.S.—and now seemingly Obama policies— (which in 
> other contexts deserves your condemnation), overlook the influence of the 
> Lobby who the more astute (like McGovern) recognize as pernicious and 
> effective, and excuse Israeli policies by suggesting that they are simply 
> puppets of the U.S.  It's bait and switch, once more.
> 
> Your concluding paragraph leaves the impression that Israel does not have its
>  own vicious agenda relative to the Palestinians, Iraq, Iran, Syria, 
> Hezbollah, or Hamas, which seems to me arrant nonsense.
> 
> Stop worshipping Chomsky; even he has his blinders.. --mkb
> 
> On Mar 11, 2009, at 9:52 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
> If it weren't such an indication of pathological denial and refusal to note 
> the simple facts, it would be funny -- the insistence of American liberals 
> that the US crimes in SW Asia are the fault of the Bad Jews and their Lobby
> who have somehow manipulated and misled the Good Obama.
> 
> What will it take for them to recognize that the murderous policies that the
> US follows from the Mediterranean to the Indus are American (not Israeli)
> policies, pursued in the interest of American elites?  Obama had been
> feverishly auditioning to work for them for years: see "The Audacity of Hope"
> (an honestly self-referential title).  He's the jumped-up button-man of the
> American ascendancy, a Mob lawyer whose client is the greatest Mob of all --
> the American ruling class.
> 
> Israel sold its soul to the American Devil years ago -- ca. 1967 -- for the 
> mess of pottage (about $4B/yr) that the US provides. The result has been the
> corruption of Israeli government and society -- perhaps predictable, because
> of the roots of that society in what has been accurately termed a
> "settler-colonialist" ruling class.
> 
> --CGE
> 
> 
> 
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