On 2010-08-07, at 11:14 AM, SA wrote:
> You seem to be saying that on one side there's the Israel Lobby; on the other side there's "US military and political leaders"; and the influence of the former depends on the fact that the latter largely agree with it. The US leaders seem to be all of one mind - their view is that "Israel is a strategic asset"; but current events are "shaking that perception"; and the Lobby would surely lose its influence "if Israel came to be viewed as a strategic liability rather than an asset." Their views may change, but they all move in unison.
I don't believe classes and groups ever move in unison. There are always policy differences within them, sometimes deeper and more widespread than at other times.
> As I see it, the Lobby *itself* is made up in large part of US military and political leaders.
I would say the lobby is more narrowly defined as AIPEC and other Jewish organizations supported by Christian fundamentalists, all deeply committed to the Jewish state for ethnic and religious reasons and who devote much of their time to lobbying the administration, Congress and the media on its behalf. While there are undoubtedly some political and military leaders who identify with these organizations and their lobbying efforts, I wouldn't say this is true of the "large part" of the US defence and foreign policy establishment whose views of Israel are not shaped by Christian or Zionist doctrine but by more practical considerations of whether Israeli policies and actions help or hinder the wider regional and global interests of US imperialism.
> In the Lobby-skeptical view, the Lobby itself never seems to have an opinion of its own about whether Israel is a strategic asset…
The purpose of the lobby is to shore up support for Israel as a strategic asset to the US. By its very nature, it can have no "opinion" other than that Israel is an asset.
> But it seems to me that the denizens of the Lobby are just as often the ones who make the decisions…
Abe Foxman, Pat Robertson, and Lee Rosenberg, the current head of AIPAC, try to influence US Middle East policy but they do not decide it. Even staunchly pro-Zionist administration officials like Rahm Emanuel have been forced to distance themselves from the lobby when the most egregious Israeli actions, which the lobby ferociously defends, have been regarded as at variance with US interests.
> So given that the pillars of the US foreign-policy establishment are themselves divided over whether Israel is a strategic asset (and always have been), why do the pillars who are *in* the Lobby always seem to get to make policy, while the pillars who *oppose* the Lobby always seem to lose the policy battles? Couldn't it be because the pillars in the Lobby have more political influence in America than the pillars outside the Lobby?
My point is that the lobby's fortunes are tied to how central Israel is to US foreign policy, and that the influence of both appears to be waning. To paraphrase Keynes, when facts change, so can the dominant ruling class opinion. From its foundation and certainly since 1967, Israel has been a reliable gendarme supporting US strategic interests in the Middle East against both left-nationalist and Islamist movements and regimes. But Iran's growing regional influence and nuclear ambitions, the spread of Islamist terrorism and insurrection beyond the Middle East, Israel's pariah status occasioned by its brutal occupation of the Palestinian territories, the strain on US alliances, and the growing disaffection from Israel of liberal Jews and other Americans, have invariably been shifting the balance within "the pillars of the US foreign policy establishment" between those who remain unconditionally aligned with the lobby and those who think the US needs to spread its strategic net more widely and that if Israel needs to be pressured to conform to this overriding US interest, so be it and the Israel Lobby be damned.