Moved by Roger Cohen's great piece in the Times today to reflect on the horrors of Gaza, Andrew Sullivan has now been utterly converted to the theory of the corruption of our discourse by the Israel lobby. He says, and wisely, that the only thing that explains the Congressional blank check given to the Gaza slaughter–even in the face of American Democratic opinion against it–is Walt and Mearsheimer.
No doubt. Welcome, Andrew. We meet most nights here. Maybe you should introduce yourself. Do you mind if I prompt you?
Hello. My name is Andrew. I worked at an important Washington magazine for many years. I was the editor. My boss was a guy I'll call Marty. He was really big on Israel. I think he cared more about Israel than anything else. He would work behind the scenes to make sure that Israel was supported by major politicians with whom he was friendly. He had influence in a number of ways. I'll never forget this one time, the phone rang, and it was Al Gore. He said…
C'mon Andrew, you can do it.
This is completely off-topic, but I know you sometimes talk with Saifedean Ammous and he just had an article appear at TakiMag. Unlike the more free-wheeling AmConMag, Taki's seems to be exclusively righties (albeit non-mainstream ones). Does Ammous actually consider himself a conservative?
You sound euphoric. Perhaps you should be. I remember when you were a one-man army, still at the Observer. It must be nice not to be so alone anymore.
I don't remember which pill that Neo took in Matrix. The blue or the red pill. Sullivan has finally taken the right one. I'm glad. He has always been a smart observer. It'll be interesting to see how he integrates this new awareness in his writings.
BTW, do you know of Reem Banna? I just discovered that Palestinian singer. This is rather sad.
Commentary's blog Contentions announce:
Today it was announced that a group of investors, among them Laurence Grafstein and the magazine’s guiding light for the past 35 years, Martin Peretz, has purchased TNR. This is very good news for everyone who believes in the future of the serious magazine.
TNR has always been a liberal, Democrat supporting rag. Tilting to the left except for one area. I wonder why the conservative neos at Commentary are so positive about this. These dots aren't hard to connect.
Circle the wagons.
Meanwhile Blair is next up for attack for not dumping Chas.
"The blue or the red pill. Sullivan has finally taken the right one."
Sullivan took the wrong pill in his advocacy in early 2009 of the position that Sarah Palin probably faked her most recent pregnancy.
"the position that Sarah Palin probably faked her most recent pregnancy."
That was so obviously stupid that I still cannot understand why so many really smart people bought it.
The result of Phil's success is that decision-makers must make fully informed decisions, same as it ever was.
I read this well and passionately written blog because it tells me good news of the turning of the tide on Israel-Palestine. With that said, I disagree with the enormous importance Phil places on the Israel lobby, and hence also with his frequent praise for Walt and Mearsheimer.
The United States government has been faced with national liberation struggles against racist settler colonialism in Kenya, Algeria, Vietnam, Tibet, Angola, Mozambique, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South West Africa (now Namibia), Guatemala, South Africa, Chiapas, Bolivia, and possibly other places that I've forgotten. So far as I know, the U.S. government sided with the colonizers against the indigenous people in every single case I just listed except Tibet, which was colonized by a Cold War enemy, China. I would guess this has mostly to do with racism, anti-communism and a desire for stability, but the reasons aren't all that relevant here.
My point is that I don't worry about, "Why is the U.S. government siding with the colonizers against the indigenous people in the case of Israel-Palestine?" For me the question simply does not arise. You don't need to invoke a lobby to explain why the American government is dead set against a national liberation movement in the Third World because this is the customary posture of the American government in virtually all such cases. The lobby pushes the American foreign policy elite to implement a somewhat more horrific version of the policy they would enact if left to their own devices. I think I once heard someone who works for one of the lobby organizations quoted as saying his job was like "pushing on an open door." Additionally, the lobby has of course proven extremely effective at slandering critics of Israel and stifling public debate on the subject. That's about it. As the Chas Freeman case has shown, when push comes to shove the Zionists can't stop the president of the United States from doing something he wants to do.
It would be extremely naive to assume that in the absence of the lobby American policy in the region would be motivated by altruism and a sense of solidarity with the oppressed, so I hope no one here harbors any tincture of that absurdity, "Oh we'd be all right if it wasn't for that dratted AIPAC." American foreign policy is set by a small, bipartisan, imperialist elite in and around government, according to their conception of what the country's "national interests" are and with minimal regard for the suffering our foreign policy causes beyond our borders. That's the way our system works unless popular pressure compels it to work in some other way, as it did in the Vietnam War and the sanctions against apartheid South Africa.
So don't blame the Israel lobby for everything. The Zionists are very happy to exploit U.S. imperialism for their own ends, but they didn't create it.
Andrew,
You do know your thesis conflicts with Chomsky's analysis which concludes that not that Zionists exploit US imperialism but that US imperialism exploits Israel, as in a puppet.
I disagree with both analyses as of primary importance.
That Phil ever concluded that the "Iraq War was for Israel", I find to be an odd gullibility, a discredit to his intelligence.
AIDS seems to be eating away at Sullivan's brain.
I discuss the flaw in Mearsheimer and Walt's analysis in Ziobots Attacking Walt and Mearsheimer.
both israel and the united states, mainly because of a relationship established by their intelligence agencies long ago in a much more dangerous world, use each other to both nations detriment. The drivers are the paranoid operational wings of both of their agencies.
cut access to the money that fuels these paranoid wingnuts within both govts and part of the problem will evaporate.
while the zionist may not have created colonialism, the facts on the ground here in the u.s is that our politicos and our press has been silenced by the non existent israel centric lobby.
the proof that the lobby is fear inspiring is seen by the silence surrounding any subject that breaches the protocol establised by the non existent lobby.
the silence of our msm on anything related to the non existents lobbys power is deafening.
I wonder if the "mainstream" journalists (any other names besides Sullivan?) will be reporting increased intimidation and physical threats towards Jewish students on certain American campuses.
C'mon Andrew, you can do it…even if you have to use the hated "anti-semitism" term. haha!
You won't actually see any of Phil's phools post anything like that in the comments section. Balanced is not part of their agenda. Allowing Joachim to link is proof of that.
On the otherhand, this gaza subprotest is really going nowhere as mainstram America knows the fault is with Hamas.
BTW–Andrew, you sound libertarian. You've been labeled traditional conservative and lefty left…but I'm going to guess libertarian. A noble (albeit loosely developed) ideology in many ways, but like socialism, a government (especially a dominant global power) couldn't ever successfully function under libertarian principles.
Your indignation over a so-called "imperialist" elite suggests you think otherwise.
Andrew's opinion on the Lobby is that it "pushes the American foreign policy elite to implement a somewhat more horrific version of the policy they would enact if left to their own devices."
So, we're to believe the Lobby spends inordinate amounts of time and money in order to accomplish something that is, for all intents and purposes, going to happen anyway because it's in the interests of the "U.S. foreign policy elite". The Lobby just wants to see that it's a little bloodier?
With all due respect, this is ridiculous.
Andrew, who are the "U.S. foreign policy elite"?
Where does the role of finance come in?
For example, Chomsky's analysis is flawed because he fails to admit, whether unwittingly or intentionally, that finance trumps industry. Industrialists can’t function if it is withheld.
The Military Industrial Complex IS subservient to the “defense” dept. Israel-firster honchos that direct contracts their way. Real power lies with capital now as ever. Empires come and go while finance is enduring and mobile.
The contention that the military industrial complex (which is what the "foreign policy elite" is usually understood to be working on behalf of) is preeminent is completely baseless. Who holds the purse strings that the industrialists rely on, both in finance and DOD purchasing?
Chomsky never investigates this, whereas writers such as Jeffrey Blankfort and James Petras, among many, have done excellent work in this regard.
Please read them, Andrew, along with Stephen Sniegoksi. Read what oil executives have said about the Lobby – how it's caused them to essentially focus only on domestic issues for the last three decades or so, because they know they have no sway if their interests collide with the Lobby (which so often they do, because the oil interests want peace and stability in oil-producing regions, while the Lobby wants instability and often war, in the interest of Israel).
Dan, you do know paranoia is a personality disorder, right?
I'd get that checked out if I were you. :-)
Was the Andrew in this thread Andrew Sullivan? I doubt it, but just wondered.
Anyway, I agree with the Andrew in this thread–though the Israel lobby has some power (mainly the power to accuse Israel critics of anti-semitism and make it stick, at least with some), the US government has never needed a lobby to persuade it to support a brutal government if it perceives its interests lie in that direction. I've never known for sure how US officials see Israel/Palestine, but certainly most of them probably don't lie awake at night worrying too much about what B'Tselem has said in its latest reports.
"Obviously stupid"…maybe, maybe not.
link to palindeception.com
the US government has never needed a lobby to persuade it to support a brutal government if it perceives its interests lie in that direction.
That's the whole point. Unwavering support for Israel is NOT in U.S. interests. The writers I listed above, as well as many others, have shown how the Lobby has time and again defeated what otherwise would be the rational route the government would have pursued, vis a vis typical "military-industrial" interests. The Lobby itself has boasted of its power in this regard.
Suzanne,
Could you be more specific? What intimidation and threats are you referring to?
Dan, I don't quite agree with you there. The theory of 'military keynesianism' is in my opinion linked most logically with the marxian theory of the falling rate of profit, as follows: because high-tech is politically (and civilisationally) essential, but by definition it employs a very low proportion of fresh labour in comparison to the vast amounts of automated machinery with which it works, and because only fresh labour — not the 'congealed' labour embodied in the machines — yields fresh profit, high-tech has to be subsidised by a process of taxation levelled upon low-tech, highly-labour-intensive industries (both within any given national economy and globally), or it simply will not occur. A socialist society is able to comprehend this and act upon it directly, but a society saturated with capitalist brainwashing needs to use the military industries for this purpose, and hope that the spin-off in terms of both employment and high-tech development compensates for the destructive and ultimately useless nature of the purely military product.
Rowan, your analysis doesn't account for the enormous rise of finance capital over the last 30 or so years, particularly the last 15. Finance capital is now completely its own entity. I believe that Marx anticipated this as well.
Incidentally, what does the statement "only fresh labour — not the 'congealed' labour embodied in the machines — yields fresh profit" mean exactly?
Only "fresh labor" yields "fresh profit"? I don't understand.
You should see the intimidation done by Team Zio on the campus paper's online comments. Everyone not sufficiently pro-Zionist is a Nazi. Everyone who tries to add some historical context to the conflict is the next Hitler. Every professor who supports the academic and cultural boycott should be fired. The "180 rule" is in full force as anonymous posters claim that the anti-Israel side posts only anonymously.
More encouraging though is that some have stated a deepening pride in their institution because professors have joined the boycott and students groups protest the slaughter in Gaza.
Dom–here are some reports–including CNN. Seems like the California campuses are the biggest concern.
link to cnn.com
rel=”nofollow”>CNN report
Canada is North America, so I'll include it: York University Intimidation
harrassment of Jewish students at University of Chicago
Andrew is right of course. But it doesn't make the battle against the Israel lobby any less urgent. This is a sick lot that will bring down America if it isn't restrained.
And you wouldn't have much hope of changing U.S imperialism without marginalizing the Israel lobby…
Read the findings on this CA complaint: link to normanfinkelstein.com
The complaint alleged that Jewish students at the University [of California, Irvine] were subjected to harassment and a hostile environment based on their national origin…. regarding the following incidents, and that the University failed to respond promptly and effectively to the hostile environment.
@ Andrew: "The United States government has been faced with national liberation struggles against racist settler colonialism in…You don't need to invoke a lobby to explain why the American government is dead set against a national liberation movement in the Third World because this is the customary posture of the American government in virtually all such cases."
Does the US government finance the supposed opposition to all those national liberation movements to the tune of billions per year in capital and military aid, and routinely veto UN resolutions on their behalf? Does the opposition to those national liberation movements have thousands of ideological comrades acting as an apparatus in the US government, in American media, and in the business community giving millions per year to US politicians, and probably billions per year in free positive media coverage and influence peddling?
The only way we will ever really know what the US government would or would not do without the Zionist fifth column influencing the course of events is to monitor, measure and record the Zionist fifth column's influence on a daily basis (an impossible task, given the severity of its penetration and its often secretive nature) or arrest the most powerful players in the Zionist fifth column and deport them to Israel for treason, and then see what impact that has on the US government’s behavior.
Homicidal Ed:
You're big & brave…why don't you perform a citizen's arrest? :-)
"That's the whole point. Unwavering support for Israel is NOT in U.S. interests."
This is true, but it wasn't always so – or perceived to be. Actually until 9.ll the policy was working just fine for elites. And it was working quite well in Iran until the revolution. Keeping the natives down works. It keeps them as Chomsky notes from entertaining and ideas of their own independence and freedom from U.S imperialism.
He does however underestimate the power of the Lobby, when it's has now become apparent to alot of the previously sleeping hordes that stomping all over other peoples lands and politics tends to upset those peoples. Elites don't think in terms of long-term interests to the nation.
Nor do elites bother themselves with the widespread suffering their crimes entail, unless it effects them personally ala' politically.
So until support for Israel affects them politically expect it to continue.
stevieb,
You seem to be parroting a lot of typical Chomsky talking points. I used to do the same.
Who are these "elites" you speak of? That's a bit too general, no?
Unlike the Western oil majors, the militant Zionist proponents of greater Israel view stability and peace in the Middle East as inimical to their goals. Chaos and strife create the “revolutionary atmosphere” (as Ben Gurion one of the key founders of the state of Israel put it) in which more land and water resources can be taken under their control. This fact explains the motive behind the ceaseless provocations and destabilization that the Israeli military and secret services perpetrate.
The “iron wall” policy established by Ze’ev Jabotinsky prior to the founding of the Jewish state requires the expulsion of Christian and Muslim Arabs from Palestine. Such a goal requires war or other violent means. David Ben Gurion stated, “What is inconceivable in normal times is possible in revolutionary times; and if at this time the opportunity is missed and what is possible in such great hours is not carried out . . . a whole world is lost.” This reality, of the necessity for violent upheaval to achieve Zionist aims, exposes which party is the true aggressor in the Middle East.
Ralph Schoenman writes that the goal of capturing the “promised land” requires “Israel to bring about the dissolution and fragmentation of the Arab states into a mosaic of ethnic groupings.” This strategy has been put forward by Oded Yinon (an Israeli journalist with links to the Israeli Foreign Ministry) in 1982 in the World Zionist Organization’s publication Kivunim. Here’s what Oded Yinon had to say on Iraq:
“The dissolution of Syria and Iraq into ethnically or religiously unique areas, such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front. Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run, it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel.”
Militant Zionism and the Invasion of Iraq and Ismael Hossein-Zadeh – Are they REALLY Oil Wars?
In the slow evolution of US relations with Israel since 1948, as the latter mutated from a strategic liability to a strategic asset (and back to a liability again), Israel and its Jewish allies in the United States have always occupied the driver's seat.
President Truman had shepherded the creation of Israel in 1947 not because the American establishment saw it as a strategic asset; this much is clear. "No one," writes Cheryl Rubenberg, "not even the Israelis themselves, argues that the United States supported the creation of the Jewish state for reasons of security or national interest."(1) Domestic politics, in an election year, was the primary force behind President Truman's decision to support the creation of Israel. In addition, the damage to US interests due to the creation of Israel – although massive – was not immediate. This was expected to unfold slowly: and its first blows would be borne by the British who were still the paramount power in the region.
Nevertheless, soon after he had helped to create Israel, President Truman moved decisively to appear to distance the United States from the new state. Instead of committing American troops to protect Israel, when it fought against five Arab armies, he imposed an even-handed arms embargo on both sides in the conflict. Had Israel been dismantled [at birth], President Truman would have urged steps to protect the Jewish colonists in Palestine, but he would have accepted a premature end to the Zionist state as fait accompli. Zionist pressures failed to persuade President Truman to lift the arms embargo. Ironically, military deliveries from Czechoslovakia may have saved the day for Israel.
Chomsky on Oil and the Israel Lobby
The ballooning of fictitious capital serves to disguise the transfer of control over real resources, and it does so extremely effectively, so I for one spend a lot of time guessing where the real control actually is.
To understand the marxian theory of profit, you have to start from the labour theory of value (excuse my english spelling, I know you usually write 'labor').
The labour theory of value is an objective, not a subjective theory of value like the liberal one. However, both Adam Smith and Ricardo supported it, and it says a lot about the brainwashed way people nowadays are taught to read Adam Smith, that they don't see this.
The theory is objective in that it holds that goods have a real and fixed value determined by the quantity of labour 'congealed' or 'condensed' in them. Admittedly, Smith and Ricardo hedged this by allowing that land, for instance, already had value before it was even worked, but this in my view (and Marx's) was just a necessary subterfuge to avoid arriving at a pure labour theory of value, because to do so is to trap oneself for better or worse very publicly with a revolutionary set of conclusions.
Obviously the prices at which things sell will vary above or below their real value, and it is this variation that the liberal or subjectivist economists seize upon with their 'supply and demand', as if there was nothing else behind it.
Now, the point is, suppose I am starting a factory: I will have to pay the full value of my machinery and raw materials, on average and over time, though individual industrialists are constantly gaining momentary advantages over one another, and again these short term competitive effects are what the liberal economists see and celebrate, but I am talking about the underlying structures of value as such.
Each industrialist makes his profit, in the simple model I want you to consider with the competitive effects averaged out, by selling his product at its true value, in terms of the total amount of labour 'congealed' or 'condensed' into it. And he buys his machinery and raw materials from other industrialists who do exactly the same thing, selling to him, on average and over time, at true values in terms of labour 'congealed' or 'condensed' in those machines and raw materials.
So where is the profit? It comes from the one item which the industrialist can buy at less than its true value: labour power. Quite simply, the wage paid to the labourer is not enough to buy the products of a full day of his own work. He works eight, or ten or twelve hours, and his wage allows him to buy the equivalent of four, or five, or six hours of average labour product. So he gets in this example half the value of his labour – and that is the only real source of profit. All else is smoke and mirrors.
Thus, a completely automated factory, employing only an infinitesimal proportion of labour to run a vast assembly of automated equipment, actually yields virtually no real profit at all, it has to be subsidised by the govt., which raises the money by taxing the low-tech highly-labour-intensive industries heavily – and this is exactly what we see – governments begging entrepreneurs to buy up their telecoms systems for instance, all the time.
Thus, a completely automated factory, employing only an infinitesimal proportion of labour to run a vast assembly of automated equipment, actually yields virtually no real profit at all, it has to be subsidised by the govt., which raises the money by taxing the low-tech highly-labour-intensive industries heavily – and this is exactly what we see – governments begging entrepreneurs to buy up their telecoms systems for instance, all the time.
This isn't what we see in America. There isn't a different tax code for "low tech, labor-intensive" industries versus "high tech, virtually labor-free" industries. All corporations pay next to no taxes in this country (as compared to individual wage earners).
Are you referring to multi-national corporations versus small and mid-sized businesses?
Andrew: I think it's a bit simplistic to state the the U.S. has opposed national liberation movements in all times and all places, so therefore the Israel Lobby is not important with respect to Palestine. First, by extention from your note of the Tibet exception, the U.S. does in fact support national liberation movements where it's geostrategically in our interests. We supported the anti-Soviet (nee Russian) "national liberation" movements in all kinds of places starting with Afghanistan, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Poland, Georgia, Ukraine. Technically, we supported the national liberation of Kuwait, then later the Kurds, and then the Shi'a against Saddam, Bosnian Muslims against Serbia, etc.
In addition, even where we do not support a national liberation movement, the extent of our opposition to it differs according to how it plays out in domestic and international politics. So we supported S. Africa, and then we didn't. We opposed national liberation movements in Central America, and then it became technically illegal to do so, then we didn't and for the most part peace returned to that region. We're opposed to indigenous and socialist movements currently in Latin America, but we don't do much about it because the domestic support for major military action against a Venezuela or Ecuador is just not there.
So, the issue with the Lobby is the extent to which it affects a change in our policy in comparison to what would normally be expected given non-Jewish domestic politics and realpolitik geostrategic interests. I think it's easy to make the case that outside of the Jewish/Holocaust backdrop, a large majority of Americans would be appalled by the situation there vis-a-vis the Palestinians, and that our geostrategic interests are strongly tied toward making peace with the Arab/Muslim world in the interest of maintaining a reliable energy supply.
Great points, David.
Rowan, this appears to be what is happening:
The pattern of deficit spending is not expansionary. We are not dealing with a Keynesian style deficit, which stimulates investment and consumer demand, leading to an expansion of production and employment.
The "bank bailouts" (involving several initiatives financed by tax dollars) constitute a component of government expenditure. Both the Bush and Obama bank bailouts are hand outs to major financial institutions. They do not not constitute a positive spending injection into the real economy. Quite the opposite. The bailouts contribute to financing the restructuring of the banking system leading to a massive concentration of wealth and centralization of banking power.
A large part of the bailout money granted by the Us government will be transferred electronically to various affiliated accounts including the hedge funds. The largest banks in the US will also use this windfall cash to buy out their weaker competitors, thereby consolidating their position. The tendency, therefore, is towards a new wave of corporate buyouts, mergers and acquisitions in the financial services industry (note that Merck and Schering, two already mammoth pharmaceutical companies, just announced a merger today).
In turn, the financial elites will use these large amounts of liquid assets (paper wealth), together with the hundreds of billions acquired through speculative trade, to buy out real economy corporations (airlines, the automobile industry, Telecoms, media, etc), whose quoted value on the stock markets has tumbled.
The mainstream media suggests that the banks are being nationalized as a result of TARP, In fact, it is exactly the opposite: the State is being taken over by the banks, the State is being privatized.
With the markets for US dollar denominated debt (both domestically and internationally) in crisis, further pressure will be exerted on the Treasury to slash (civilian) public expenditure to the bone, exact user fees for public services and sell off public assets, including State infrastructure and institutions. In all likelihood, this crisis is leading us to the privatization of the State, where activities hitherto under government jurisdiction will be transferred into private hands.
Who will be buying State assets at rock bottom prices? The financial elites, which are also the recipients of the bank bailout.
America's Fiscal Collapse
This is all being engineered by finance capital, which is able to do so because it is an entirely separate entity from the normal business cycle, as I stated initially.
How this will end up, I don't know, but it is surely happening right before our very eyes.
Well it looks like my post set off a good discussion on the extent to which the Israel lobby is responsible for U.S. support of Israel. It turns out I'm not the only one here who thinks that the lobby is real and a bad thing but not the main reason our tax dollars support state terrorism in Palestine. First I just wanna say that I agree completely with stevleb's post that this "doesn't make the battle against the Israel lobby any less urgent…And you wouldn't have much hope of changing U.S imperialism without marginalizing the Israel lobby." Whether or not you think the lobby is principally responsible for U.S. policy in the region (and I don’t), we have to beat it politically if we're gonna get our government to stop supporting Israeli state terrorism. With that said, people said several things I'd like to respond to. Sorry in advance, these specific responses got pretty long, so feel free to stop reading now.
Suzanne, you guessed that I'm a libertarian. I think libertarians are admirably rational but are generally devoid of compassion for their fellow human beings, so I guess I feel complimented and insulted simultaneously. Being a glass if half full kind of guy I'll take it as a compliment. I'm just a lefty.
Several people seemed to be trying to argue against what I said by pointing out that the Israel lobby acts to silence critics of Israel and stifle debate. I agree completely and said so in my initial post.
Dan Kelly, you asked who I meant by the foreign policy elite. Sorry, I really should have specified that in my initial post. I mean the staff of the State Department, the National Security Council, the intelligence community, former imperial high officials like Kissinger and Brzezinski and so on, the Council on Foreign Relations, and influential mainstream think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation during Republican administrations or the Brookings Institution and the Center for American Progress during Democratic administrations. I *think* that about covers it, though I'm probably forgetting something. Of course people circulate among these institutions over the course of their careers, moving in and out of government as the political winds dictate
David, you wrote that “it's a bit simplistic to state the U.S. has opposed national liberation movements in all times and all places, so therefore the Israel Lobby is not important with respect to Palestine.” I agree that that would be too simplistic, but it’s not what I said. I said the U.S. opposes national liberation movements not always and everywhere but as a very rarely broken general rule, and I said not that the Israel lobby is not important but rather that it is not decisive or determinative, that in its absence U.S. policy in the region would not be identical in all respects but would have the same general thrust that it presently does.
From your list of counter-examples, I think I have to clarify what I meant by national liberation movement. The term doesn’t just apply to any political group that opposes its own government. It comes out of the struggle against colonialism. I’d say a national liberation movement is a movement of indigenous people in a colonized society who struggle to take control of their country back from foreign settlers and their descendants. By that definition none of your counter-examples really fit except Afghanistan sort of, minus the settlement part. I mean Jesus, you included our support of Nicaragua, and I can only conclude you meant the Contras, who were an anti-communist death squad.
Finally you said, I think rightly, that “a large majority of Americans would be appalled by the situation” in Palestine if they knew about it. Yes, and had they known they also would have been appalled at Ford’s and Carter’s support for the genocide Indonesia carried out in East Timor, or by Clinton’s support for the ethnic cleansing of Kurds by Turkey, or by Bush’s alliance with that Uzbek dictator who boiled dissidents alive and so on and so forth. As a general rule, mainstream media do a terrible job of reporting atrocities carried out by our allies and client states. Israel is unexceptional in this regard, but may become less so if Phil’s right about the winds shifting.
Ed, you ended up arguing creepily that everyone belonging to a "Zionist fifth column" should be deported, to which I’d say simply that I don’t see a moral difference between that position and Avigdor Lieberman’s drive to deport disloyal Arabs from Israel. But you started out by asking an extremely relevant question:
"Does the US government finance the supposed opposition to all those national liberation movements to the tune of billions per year in capital and military aid, and routinely veto UN resolutions on their behalf?"
In brief, the U.S. government has materially supported settler colonialism in many cases, but usually not to the extent it does in Israel. The United States has vetoed more Security Council resolutions than has any other country. A small majority of these were resolutions critical of Israel, but about a third were resolutions critical of South African apartheid. In Vietnam, by the time of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 I believe the United States was paying for virtually the entire French military effort, and then of course we replaced them afterwards. In Guatemala Reagan armed a genocide that the UN Truth Commission found to have murdered 200,000 indigenous people. (Interestingly, when support of state terrorism got too hot politically in this country the Reagan administration rerouted the armaments through Israel: he gave the guns to the Israelis and then the Israelis gave them to the death squads. For example that's how the bullets used in the El Mozote massacre got from the States to El Salvador.) In a Zapatista community in Chiapas I saw the Mexican army drive by most days to intimidate people, and they did it in American Hummers. So yes, the U.S. government has often put teeth into its opposition to national liberation movements, but usually not to the same extent as it does in Israel-Palestine. Why? What's so special about Israel?
I would explain it in three ways.
1) Israel, unlike Angola or Guatemala, happens to be located in the most strategically important region in the world. George Kennan called Middle Eastern oil "a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history." This also led to alliances with Turkey and with Iran under the Shah in which we also supported and ignored horrific human rights violations.
2) During the Cold War, Israel was an ally of the United States at a time when many Arab states tended more towards the Soviet bloc. Today the Israeli and American governments both see Islamic terrorism as the main threat to their security and thus continue to see each other as natural allies.
3) The Israel lobby.
Andrew, thank you for your response. I see you quoted George Kennan – the same quote that Noam Chomsky cites ad nauseum. The material prize that Kennan refers to would be much more manageable without Israeli interference in the region, as many authors have shown.
Arab states "tended toward the soviet bloc" BECAUSE of the close alliance between Israel and the U.S., fostered by the Lobby. This hampered Soviet AND Arab policy.
The relationship between the US and Israel is not only a client one.
Both the Chomsky and neo-Walt/Mearsheimer thesis is innaccurate.
The relationship is thick, economically in both finance, intellectual property, and in direct value-added activity. And, it is thick in Israel's participation in the integrated European mostly Mediterranean community and economy. And, it is thick in many social relationships with many Americans residing in Israel, and many Israelis residing in the US.
It is also a security partner in general, and relative to common alliances, potential alliances, and common enemies and potential enemies.
Those are NOT dismissable, by right-wing "wishful thinking". Its also a misrepresentation of the Walt/Mearsheimer thesis to suggest that that alliance be severed or even materially diluted. Definitely, they suggest change in the relationship, which is obviously occurring, strengthening it in fact but in different ways.
Andrew–I think I meant it as a compliment…although more from neutral curiosity. I don't favor any ideology.
Anyway…I don't agree with your stance on things as I support Israel and see both Israel and the Arabs being at fault for the current situation… but I admire your lucidity, organized thought process, and apparent sanity. It's a breath of fresh air around here. :-)
That's interesting – the bit about 'intimidation' at York U. At Ryserson U (also in Toronto) I attended (or attempted to) a lecture as part of Israeli Apartheid Week.
The entrance to the auditorium (which was quite small and between two buildings) was crowded with pro-Israel zealots with huge flags and bellowing(with a megaphone) about Hitler, the need for jews to be militant freaks to avoid another Holocaust and how the entire week of events was a 'hatefest'. The brought with them a hoard of police as well and media – which seemed quite ridiculous for such a relatively small gathering.
But I can understand that zionists who are quite delicate and sensitive when you get right down to it, have a different threshold for what they consider harrassment and intimidation.
Poor buggers.
Andrew – no mention of corporate elites?
If you are the Sullivan type of Andrew – than I'm not surprised…
The labor theory of value was thoroughly refuted by Bohm-Bawerk. Value is subjective. You can labor to your heart's content recording an album of industrial oom-pah-pah rap, but if nobody wants to listen to it, it has no value. A meteorite made of gold that falls of the sky and requires negligible labor to pick up off the ground has high value, merely because people want it and as soon as they change their mind it will have none.
The article at Taki's now says it is by Adam Kharij. The only google result for that name in quotes is the article. Is that pseudonym of Saifedean Ammous?
Thanks, TGGP. The labour theory of value is a nice, utopian idea, but does not describe reality in even a moderately free market. Your counterexamples were nicely chosen.
Marx is fascinating, but anything associated with radical leftism has a terrible, foul stench for me.
Having read on a little further I see our Andrew is not a Sullivan.
My humble apologies to all concerned.
The labour theory of value as such is not normative at all, but purely descriptive and analytical, so it cannot be called utopian. The normative consequences that can be drawn from the corollary of the theory, which is the prediction that higher and higher degrees of automation will lead to lower and lower profits (in the aggregate), is also in itself not normative, and marxists have tended to complain that appealing to it, in order to say that eventually capitalism would founder on its own contradictions, merely encourages fatalism.
On colonialism, the question is not whether the US is in favour of it as an ideological "ism", but whose empire is involved. Historically, the US has used anti-colonialist rhetoric in its attempts to dismantle other colonial systems, such as those of Britain and France, and earlier that of Spain, but it is all, as Lenin said, a matter of "who, whom"(and when).