Elliott Abrams, at Council on Foreign Relations
The other day Alex Kane linked a piece by Jim Lobe explaining the role of the core Israel lobby and the neoconservatives in the push for war with Iran. It’s such a great peeling of the onion, I needed to excerpt it. Lobe:
There’s an important point that I’ve been wanting to write about for some time and still hope to at some greater length: while the Iraq invasion was an adventure championed by neo-conservatives, as well as aggressive nationalists and the Christian Right, the conventional Israel lobby, led by AIPAC, did not play a leading role in the drive to that war (although Netanyahu, who is very close to neo-conservatives, was quite enthusiastic and even testified before Congress in its favor). What I think happened was that then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who had long asserted that Iran was far more dangerous to Israel that Iraq, was quite skeptical of the idea. But, after becoming convinced that Bush was bound and determined to invade, he got on the bandwagon and told AIPAC to do the same in order to preserve his close ties with and influence on Bush. But AIPAC and other major lobby actors never fought for the war with the nearly same conviction and enthusiasm as the neo-cons.
With respect to Iran, I think we see a different dynamic, one in which the main impetus for war is coming from the political leadership of Israel and the lobby here, with the neo-cons acting for now as the most visible point of the spear. And because the lobby enjoys much more influence with Democrats than the neo-cons ever have, it’s a significantly more formidable force, as recent votes in Congress make clear.
While neo-conservatives and the lobby overlap and often share common goals, they do not always agree. Neo-cons typically think they know better than the Israeli government (and the U.S. government, of course) what is in its interests, while organizations like AIPAC tend to defer more (however reluctantly, given the increasingly right-wing sympathies of its leadership) to Jerusalem’s judgment. You can see this in the contrasting attitudes of the two groups to the situation in Syria: the neo-cons are united, as they have been for years, in wanting to see Assad deposed by any means necessary… AIPAC, while it clearly prefers such an outcome, seems much less committed to it, no doubt reflecting the ambivalence on the issue that exists in Jerusalem.
Keith Weissman’s “confession” kind of confirms this – he says “What the Jews’ war will be is Iran,” he says. “Not Iraq.”
https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2011/06/keith-weissman-says-american-jewish-community-is-pushing-war-with-iran-not-iraq.html
How to challenge the 10.000 AIPAC activist invading Capitol Hill in three weeks? Would it help at all?
It’s time for Occupy AIPAC.
One thing is for sure – this story and a thousand more like it will not sway so called liberals away from the democratic party. “rachel maddow politics” are much more important than being anti-war/anti-imperialist.
My version of Maddow:
Wiki leaks today revealed that US soldiers executed an Iraqi family in cold blood…….now on to our top story, our continuing coverage of Uganda’s anti-gay legislation….
Say what you want, you know im right
Israel wants to destroy Iran because it has judged that Iran may at some point in the future be a threat to Israel. This throws 60 years of international law out the window and will be enough to condemn Israel to unwarranted attack in the name of vague undefined threats in the future. Only one of these these needs to work for Israel to collapse. Israel really should operate within the law. It doesn’t make sense for 5.5 million Zionist Jews to think they’ll have the whip hand in the region forever.