[lbo-talk] Israel, Ireland, and South Africa

[Jerry Monaco]

I am not sure there is much more to say:

Josh said:
"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 said:
"All in all, in my view, it was politically "irrational" for the U.S.G. to
oppose the ANC for as long as it did.  But these kind of
politicalirrationalities are  standard problems that crop up in
powerful systems of
domination, such as U.S. imperialism. When at all possible imperial
domination is maintained by funding a thin ruling group that usual resorts
to violence.  This was true of every empire I have ever learned about and it
is true of the U.S.  Thus trying to co-opt the ANC, what the state
department labeled a "terrorist organization," was only a last resort and
not the preferred solution."

I'm not sure what you are objecting to in the above statement.....

Systems of political and economic dominance tend to produce an extreme form
of "short term" rationality and "long term" irrationality.  This is
particularly true of competitive systems.  It is also true of "imperial
systems" where the system is motivated by competition with other imperial
systems, rebellion from within, or has spread as a result of internal
competition between various ruling coalitions, persons, groups,
corporations.  (Rome, circa 100 BCE, for example, the European nation-state
system 1600-1945, etc.) This is just a general observation so it is only a
rule of thumb.

But I'm still curious about the "Holy Land 2000" sidelight and what in your
view makes it relevant to the debate on the pro-Israel lobby.

P.S. This is off topic but -- There are some people, I have met, who are
deeply religious and believe in the literal truth of the Bible (a form of
irrationalism or subservience to authority in my view) who are "left" in all
of their political views.  Engagement with the African-American church and
with the religious members of the Central American Solidarity movement
enlightened me to this side of "left" religion.  I consider my self
anti-organized religion, but just because a person has been indoctrinated
into a particular religion doesn't mean that they have come to reactionary
political conclusions.

But I'm trying to figure out what all of this has to do with the debate at
hand, which was about the relative weight of the pro-Israel Lobby on U.S.
foreign policy and elite planning.

Jerry
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