Leaving Semitism pro- and anti- out of it, there's still a real puzzle here: how do we account for apparently irrational behavior on the empire's part? Maybe the invasion of Iraq was rational from an imperial point of view -- but I have yet to see a convincing explanation of just how and why it was rational. What did the empire get that it didn't already have? What danger did it avert, or hope to avert?
The Israel lobby was right out there in public, pushing the war for all it was worth, and as far as I could see, nobody else was quite so conspicuously invested. It's hard for me to believe that the tail could possibly wag the dog to this extent. But why then? This is not a rhetorical question. I really wonder. I wasn't in any of the meetings where the thing was decided, and presumably none of us was. So we can all only speculate. But my own speculations have come up empty-handed, and it would be nice to have some better ones.
I've toyed from time to time with the idea that the ruling class is not a unitary entity. Maybe components of it maybe really can succeed in hijacking -- or better, joyriding -- the ship of state, for a while, with some pet project of their own, unless and until the project comes to be seen as problematic in an immediate way by a larger elite consensus. May some such dawning awareness not now be under way a propos Israel and the Middle East perplex generally?
They may be smart, as Doug likes to remind us, but they're not omniscient and maybe they're not even always that wide-awake. Et aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus.
This is not to say that they're ever pacific or benign. But maybe they're not always crazy -- or always sane.