Here's a quote from David Green's piece (I've clipped some details):
> Only the fanatical anti-Lobby can, in its clueless way, make actual
> Lobbyists appear to be more factual and convincing in their arguments
> than their doctrinaire opponents. Recently, at the Nixon Center, the
> contemptible Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East
> Policy debated Chas Freeman, recently celebrated as an anti-Lobby
> realist whose appointment by the current administration was subverted
> by the Lobby (as most certainly it was). Nevertheless, within the
> realist and elitist assumptions that structured the definition of
> “strategic interests” in this debate, Satloff got much the better of
> Freeman. While of course he understands American “interests” in crass
> terms, he also correctly understands Israel’s role as a strategic
> asset, especially in terms of innovation and testing of military
> technology....
>
> ...Freeman lamely and bitterly complained that out of hundreds of
> billions of dollars of military spending, we give Israel $3 billion,
> and that Israel is already rich anyway. Clearly, for U.S. planners,
> the truth is that Israel has always been a strategic bargain and
> continues to be so.
So we're supposed to believe that unlike Robert Satloff, Chas Freeman doesn't understand "the truth" that for "U.S. planners" "Israel has always been a strategic bargain"? Let me clarify something: Chas Freeman *is* is a U.S. planner! He was ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. He was about to be chair of the National Intelligence Council. And according to Wikipedia he has been "president of the Middle East Policy Council, co-chair of the U.S. China Policy Foundation, and vice-chair of the Atlantic Council." Chas Freeman, I dare say, knows more about the views of "U.S. planners" than David Green. And he does *not* believe Israel has been a strategic bargain.
And Robert Satloff, of course, is also a policy planner. And there are lots of other policy planners with (contrasting) views like those of Satloff and Freeman, respectively.
So, to resume the (incoherent) question that motivates so much of this debate, which side is "correct" about "true" U.S. elite strategic interests? The answer, obviously, is that there is no such thing as "true" US interests, there are only different opinions.
Now, presumably we can all agree that Satloff and Freeman (and others like them) are both "planners" yet have different opinions about US interests. But the Lobby-skeptics seem unwilling to make the crucial concession: that for people like Satloff, Indyk, Ross, Feith, Wolfowitz, etc., their "analysis" of the strategic value of Israel is *obviously* heavily colored by their cultural/emotional/ideological/personal ties to Israel and the Zionist project. (And all planners have emotional/ideological predispositions, including Chas Freeman.)
That still doesn't answer the *historical* question - why did it turn out that a contingent of policy planners emotionally tied to Israel have an important role in US policymaking? Such a contingent doesn't exist in, say, Russia or Lebanon. Again, that's a historical question and absolutely cannot be answered by referring to events in 2010 or 2001 or 1991. Any answer you arrive at from that angle won't be worth much. You have to actually do a historical analysis that goes back to the beginnings of the Israel issue in US foreign relations and politics. If your answer doesn't start at least as far back as 1948, it will be meaningless.
SA