> Not really, since they'd be "special interests" in the classic sense.
> They're not "constitutive" of the U.S. except insofar as the U.S. is
> constituted of a series of interests. But if the "Israel lobby" is at
> the heart of things in some constitutive sense than it's not a
> special interest but a core concern of the U.S. foreign policy elite.
But who's making that claim? Isn't this a straw man?
I can't speak for anybody else. But my own view (and this is how I read M-W too) is that the Israel lobby is among the most successful and influential "lobbies" -- or to use a different term, elite factions -- that there are. This is not to say that it calls all the shots, or gets everything it wants. In that sense it's just one faction among many. But in M-W's view -- with which I agree -- it swings a great deal of weight.
The thought experiment is, what would American foreign policy look like if there were no Israel lobby? For one thing, there very likely wouldn't be an Israel. Would there have been an Iraq war? Hard to say, but it seems pretty clear that the Israel lobby formed a significant and influential part of the war constituency.
An analogous question is, what would US policy toward Cuba be if there were no gusanos in Florida?
All hypothetical, of course, but to the extent that they make us look back at the record, and weigh the various causes as best we can, such questions may be enlightening.
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Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com http://cars-suck.org