I got about 60 pages into Aaron David Miller's book, The Much Too Promised Land, a couple weeks back and registered displeasure. The next 40 pages aren't an improvement. His book makes the claim that the close relationship between Israel and the U.S. is based on "common values and common enemies." Though the Israel lobby jumps in strongly, it doesn't define the relationship.
What follows is a quotation from Miller's interview of John Sununu about the lobby. Miller posted part of this interview as an audio on his book's website. But he didn't use the entire quotation when he put it in his book. The boldface strike-through is what he cut out in the hardback.
"It's like a handful of pebbles in the shoe. It's there all the time,
and this process of not permitting anything that's trying to tug in the other direction, to gain root and thrive, is almost automatic.And it's not just AIPAC, it happens all the time, everywhere. Every congressman, every senator, before they win, is being soft lobbied on the issue. Whether it's their friend that owns 40 acres down the street whose grandfather happened to have come from Kiev,goes in and talks to him about helping him, developing a social relationship on an issue that has nothing to do with the district, begins to communicate their interest. And rightly so-- pulling on their end of the rope.It happens almost invisibly. But across the board.There is nobody who has run for office in this country who has not been soft lobbied the day they announce that they are going to run and not been hard lobbied after they win."
Miller gutted three of the strongest statements in Sununu's quotation: the Not letting another point of view thrive, the Soft lobbying on an issue that has nothing to do with the district, and the Emphatic statement about being soft-lobbied before you run and hard lobbied after you win. In fairness to Miller, he does quote another paragraph from Sununu that makes the point that people in Iowa's third district have no interest in the Middle East, but I feel he neutered the strong ideas that Sununu, chief of staff under Bush I, was trying to express. Reporters make selections all the time; this was an unfair one.
The general problem with Miller's book is that while he is a hardworking author who has generated a lot of interesting quotations and facts, he fails to see the forest for the trees. And what is the forest? Miller notes the following:
--In 1989 Sec'y of State James Baker, a fair man, tried to pressure the Israelis to stop the settlements now. "[The] hardline Israeli prime minister... announced a new settlement almost every time Baker arrived in Israel."
The Prime Minister of a tiny state could thumb his nose at the White House for only one reason. Because, no one in American politics offered George H.W. Bush, John Sununu, and Jim Baker any cover on an important policy initiative. No, as Miller makes clear, Baker was savaged by the Jewish community for a highly-reasonable policy that would have saved us all a lot of trouble, and 20 years of dithering. Per Miller: "The U.S. Congress has not had one long-serving member with an anti-Israeli or pro-Arab agenda since Paul Findley in the 1970s." Findley was of course knocked off by the lobby.
Common values, common enemies? Wrong. As Ambassador Kurtzer (who epitomizes Richard Witty's standard of being a mediator) states in his book: "U.S. policy must never be defined anywhere but in Washington." Because, as Kurtzer shows, over and over our policy has been defined by Israel and its hardline supporters in the U.S.
I believe the power of the lobby has begun to recede this year for many reasons (Obama, Iraq, the neocons, and Walt and Mearsheimer, to start) . But let's not lie to ourselves about its effects. It confused Jewish-American loyalty, and confused the national interest.
"he fails to see the forest for the trees."
Gee whiz, and whose blog have you seen that quote on?
:-)
Anyway, this paragraph is the most powerful indictment, and eye popping of the lot:
"There is nobody who has run for office in this country who has not been soft lobbied the day they announce that they are going to run and not been hard lobbied after they win."
Got that?
The lobbying starts BEFORE actual election, and then REALLY PICKS UP after you are elected.
This is clearly a subtle hit piece, an "answer" to Walt and Mearshimer, which masquerades as anti-Lobby and is (subtly, for us masses of unwashed goyim) a fluff piece FOR the lobby.
Look, I know your disappointed that the the krauts didn't totally finish us off in your native land, ( with a lot of help from the natives in towns like Jedwebne ) but you really need to take a pill every once and a while. You'll get your chance again when the Iranians get the bomb.
I don't know Kurtzer.
Are you sure you understood the distinction I was making between the political mode (of pugnacious proponents, that ignore those that get caught in the crossfire, and ignore those not inclined to fight loudly), and the mediative mode that values the needs and voice of all affected and effecting.
Yes, he did, Richard. Your bell always rings the same.
"Posted by: the Sword of Gideon"
Yawn :-)
Anyway, I am off to Yad Vashem, and read all the polish names on it (hint – it is more than 70%, in my estimation).
Awwww, what the heck, I will really blow the minds of the megaphone crowd with this:
http://www.auschwitz.dk/kolbe.htm
Hmmm – crap.
"Anyway, I am off to Yad Vashem, and read all the polish names on it (hint – it is more than 70%, in my estimation)."
I meant to say in the RIGHTEOUS GENTILES section.
Although, of course, Poland had the largest population of Jews in Europe pre WW2, and so polish names are predominant in the victims section also…
Slithering holocaust minimisation from 'americangoy' on the one hand, and racist bigotry from bill pearlman on the other – way to go, phil, this is just a highbrow version of Xymphora.
For serious intellectual pleasure, which does still exist, check this jazeera session with finkelstein and mearsheimer (from 4 April):
No one has done more to draw attention to the issue of the "Israel Lobby," than Ruth Wisse:
"…The new United Nations, tribune of emerging post-colonial nations, did not protect Israel from assault, and over time the world body became a party to the Arab League's war against Jewish statehood.
Of course, Israel now had an army, and a formidable one at that. But the Israel Defense Forces did not change the Jews' existential condition as a minority; Israel was now a minority among the nations, contending with Arab states that sought to dominate or destroy it. Israel still lived by strategies of accommodation, trying to supply its neighborhood with useful services and goods such as medical, agricultural and technological know-how. In the 1990s, utopians such as Shimon Peres, now Israel's president, hailed a "new Middle East" of economic and political cooperation. When Peres and Israel's late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin installed Yasser Arafat as the head of a Palestinian proto-state, they began another doomed Jewish political experiment — making Israel, as best I can figure, the first country in the world ever to arm its enemy in hopes of gaining security."
from WP 11-04-07
Phil:
If the power of the lobby has BEGUN to recede as people gradually realize the enormous costs in blood and treasure it has inflicted on the American people what will happen when the public recognizes the outsized role played by mostly right wing Jewish financiers in promoting the biggest financial bubble in world history — a bubble that made more than a few of them billions at the expense of "dumb goy" home-buyers, investors, and savers.
Jews are GROSSLY over-represented at the top levels of the big Wall Street firms as well as the hedge fund industry. Alan Greenspan, Ben Sholem Bernanke and all the other currently serving Fed governors who did nothing to rein in the bubble before disaster struck are not exactly church goers.
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Crimson Ghost: unlike elected reps who cater to the Lobby and extort money for Israel, Alan Greenspan did not overtly serve Israel's cause (as far as I know). The main problem with Greenspan was incompetence, not religious affiliation. However, the MSM's uncritical lionizing of the "Maestro" might have been augmented by the notion that "he's one of us," not to mention that his wife is employed by the MSM.
For a guy who claimed to keep a quote screen on his desk, Greenspan had to be one of the worst traders in history. During the two brief years of cash-basis surpluses at the end of the 1990s, Greenspan extrapolated the fiscal beanstalk to the sky, ludicrously babbling about the problem of endless surpluses which would pay off all our debt and cause a shortage of Treasury bonds.
At the low point of short-term interest rates in 2003-2004, Greenspan advised home buyers to apply for ARM (adjustable rate) mortgages — yeah, the ones that are blowing up in their faces now, as they reset to disastrously higher rates. In fact, Greenspan yammered on throughout the period about rising household net worth, which was largely a function of the real estate Bubble. Greenspan didn't see it as a Bubble, just as he didn't see the Dotcom Bubble in the 1990s.
But Greenspan's worst crime was his constant praise for unsound derivatives as "financial innovation," as he completely failed to regulate them. The clueless Greenspan had no objection to investment banks and rating agencies creating AAA-rated silk-purse CDOs out of junk-quality sows' ears mortgages, and peddling them throughout the planet. He didn't have a freaking clue that this might cause problems. Or if he did, he skipped town before the train wreck.
Did Greenspan actually conspire with investment banks in the largest financial fraud in history — or is he merely the second-stupidest guy on the planet (after Douglas Feith)? Frankly, I lean toward the latter. But in any functioning system of justice, Greenspan would be under investigation by both prosecutors and Congress. Unfortunately, the corrupt, illegal $30 billion bailout of Bear Stearns and JP Morgan tells us that the fix is in, the foxes are running the henhouse, and Greenspan got away with gross negligence, if not murder.
Clearly, the Federal Reserve should be abolished, as the illegal banking cartel it is. But it is better attacked for its flagrant incompetence (the scandalous 95% depreciation of the currency during its 95-year reign of error) rather than for its current Jewish-country-club flavor. One might think that they would exercise a little prudent restraint; try to name a governing board that "looks like America." But overreaching and pig-out apparently are the names of the game, when you need to make your first billion in a hurry before the dollar swirls down the drain, or to help others to do so.
Ultimately, the Federal Reserve is the slatternly handmaiden of both war finance and kleptocratic plutocrats. But dismantling that globe-spanning Death Star of power and money is going to take superheros, to say the least.
This is going to surprise a Jew baiting anti-semite like yourself but I actually agree with you here. I always thought Greenspan was a political hack myself. A better way to go would be what Milton Friedman ( another Jewish guy ) advocated. Abolish the Fed and simply increase the money supply 4% a year. And forget about targeting interest rates.
Here's another surprise: I agree completely with Jim Haygood's comment above; I also agree with SOG re the first 100 names of the Boston white pages over the "best and brightest." One reason
I've supported Ron Paul is he has long wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve. I'm not sure about SOG's recipe that includes increasing the money supply 4% a year. I read in the local rag that the Federal Reserve reorientation gives it more power, but not to really curb fraud and greed on both ends of the mortgage spectrum, but merely give more power to the Federal Reserve to
have the masses guarantee more simple ignorant risky gambling on Main Street and predatory products and elan from Wall St.
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"I'm not sure about SOG's recipe that includes increasing the money supply 4% a year."
Friedman's concept was that 4% money supply expansion is needed to accommodate 1% population growth plus 3% economic growth. Otherwise you end up imposing deflation — as in the late 19th century, when prices fell about 1% annually for three decades, after the U.S. repegged to gold in 1871.
Unfortunately, once brute-simple metallic currency is superseded by Greenspandian financial "innovations," measuring the money supply becomes increasingly ambiguous. For instance, a couple of years ago, CDOs were the equivalent of a money market fund. Today, they are so illiquid as to be almost unmarketable at any price — they lost their "near-moneyness."
Even fractional-reserve banking is subject to periodic devastating contractions, as Friedman documented so vividly in his "A Monetary History of the United States" (with co-author Anna Schwartz). Friedman estimated that the U.S. money supply shrank by one-third between 1929 and 1933, as banks failed and demand deposits were converted to currency, engaging the "money multiplier" in reverse as a pestilential "money diminisher."
Unlike Greenspan, Ben Shalom Bernanke is no shallow fool. The tragedy of the Depression obsesses him; he knows the year-by-year economic history documented by Friedman the way you and I know the lines on our faces. But Ben, as a somewhat naive academic, was quickly co-opted by the System. Not for nothing was he taken into the White House for a few months, heading the Council of Economic Advisors, before being nominated to head the Fed. They got to him. His only previous political experience was on the school board in Princeton.
Ben has sacrificed his mortal soul to Satan in the Bear Stearns Treasury robbery. He's now a traduced sorcerer's apprentice, in thrall to a money-printing broomstick that dances faster and faster. Ben's lost his innocence; but he's unfairly going to get crucified for the manifold sins and wickedness of the mephitic Greenspan as well.
Run, Ben, run!
Damn, Jim, do you have your blog?