This kind of reasoning I find flawed. On simillar reasoning there is no objective material interests for U.S. support of Indonesian dictatorship and of Turkey, etc. Or what of the objective material interests for us supporting the House of Saud or the Egyptian Regime since Sadat. They are the same interests that we have in supporting Israel. What the "objective" material interests for the U.S. to support a death-squad democracy in El Salvador? There were many other policies the U.S. could have chosen, many of the better in the long run for U.S. imperial interests than the policy of massive murder.
Quote "In brief: If US intense support for Israel is so bloody inevitable, someone needs to tell the army of pro-Israel lobbyists, slanderers, professional smearers and liars in academia, on network TV, in the newspapers - because clearly they did not get the memo and simply need to retire!"
Similarly, one can paraphrase, "If U.S. intense support for big corporations is inevitable, someone needs to tell the army of pro-Corporate lobbyists, slanderers, professional hypers, psudeo scientists, and liars in the advertising industy, academia, .... & etc." We live in a corporate business dominated society and yet corporations still need their lobbyists if for no other reason than to make sure that there is no room for democracy and protest. Besides these lobbyists are the ones who actually write the bills and come up with the policies of the government, because for the most part they are an auxillary to the government. Another function of a lobbyist is to make sure that other rent-seekers don't have the inside track. The rest is to produce the usual propaganda and fog so that the general public is marginalized. All of this is as true of "the Lobby" as it is true of all lobbyists.
The author of the above post is not arguing against anything Chomsky has said. Chomsky never said that "the Lobby" has no effect. Like any other rent-seeking organization, it does have marginal effect. But the basic motor for U.S. foreign policy is elsewhere, in the need for international political dominance in order to support the owners of our economy.
The policy of U.S. support of Israel is simply another aspect of U.S. foreign policy. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20060330/1369afb8/attachment.htm>