You were the one who brought up they hung on to South Africa after a dispassioned calculation would have suggested otherwise. I tried to credit this to the minds of the elites in a rut.
> I am not sure what your point is about United States citizens being most
> receptive to "Holy Land 2000". It seems to me obvious that the dregs of
> fundamentalist religious culture will combine with imperial culture in many
> ways expected and unexpected by U.S. rulers and elites. Perhaps you can
> explain the relevance.
The Dregs? 40% of Americans believe in the literal truth of the Bible. As a racist population would support elites who support Apartheid, a predominantly religious population will turn on elites who abandon the stomping ground of their, and I can't emphasize this enough, DEITY. God. The comfort for their afflictions. The masses' opium.
I'd argue that human attachment to racism is far less consquential, and it was therefore easier for US elites to consider alternatives to the status quo in South Africa.
A simply rational US dictator would cut the Israelis loose, the cost/benefit ratio is simply wrong.
(I'm against anyone invading anyone, so, I would prefer to defend a "cut loose" Israel from foreign armies).
> The U.S.G., generally used South Africa in the southern cone of Africa in
> the same way that it uses Israel in the Middle East. This doesn't mean that
> the South African Apartheid regime didn't have its own agenda. Generally,
> my conclusion from the history is that Apartheid South Africa was relatively
> more independent of the U.S.G. than any given Israeli regime.
>
> Further, from the internal evidence of the U.S.G. it seems that the best
> solution as far as U.S. rulers were concerned was for the Apartheid regime
> to come to some compromise with its dissidents and yet to maintain their
> power. In hindsight it was probably completely unrealistic to think that
> the Apartheid regime could be maintained for very long. Elites and rulers
> can be stupid but they do generally consider how to maintain and increase
> their power.