Alan produced the following jaw-dropper: >> >As far as I know, the US has provided nearly > > > the same amount of foreign aid to both sides and has tried to remain a > > > position as a neutral broker to the conflict.
And David rightly responded: > >Wrong, again. You really should look things up before putting your foot in > >your mouthe. By now, I'd think you would have learned what an incredibly > >poor grasp of the facts you have. This one is particularly eggregious. > >Anyone who has been paying even the slightest attention over the last 40 > >years should be aware that Israel has always been one of, if not the, > >largest recipients of US aid. > And John rightly added: > Yes, awesomely ignorant. But pointing towards the fact that aid is > far from the end of the story: > > US media is solidly behind Israel, therefore Alan can be so taken in. > > Of course the US is behind Israel all the way, regardless of > administration. Take voting in the UN, as one example. David and John G. Absolutely correct. The US-Israel relationship is detailed in Mearsheimer and Walt's recent book "The Israel Lobby" (2007). This book follows up on an article the two produced three years back, which was oddly rejected by Atlantic magazine, which had originally commissioned it, but eventually published in the London Review of Books. The article sparked a huge controversy since it represented the most sophisticated and persuasive case ever made about the extent to which US policy towards Israel is completely dominated by the Israel Lobby, which, the authors are at pains to note, is not some secretive little cabal but rather a loose coalition of powerful interests, Jewish and gentile, who act broadly in concert to tilt US policy almost totally towards Israel. It would be hard to summarize the book here, but anyone interested in this subject would do well to read it, as it presents a wealth of solid empirical evidence and analysis by two highly seasoned political scientists. And in addition to predictabl e charges of anti-Semitism and the like against the authors, the article and book have also provoked serious debate in journals like the New York Review of Books, National Interest and Foreign Policy that is also well worth a read. In my own view, I still think oil is the primary US interest in the region and is an important independent determinant of the close US-Israel alliance (if the monarchy in Saudi Arabia were to totter like what happened in Iran in 1979, the US would need some way to intervene in the region, and Israel would likely serve as the base for that), but that there are of course lots of contradictions between the US-Israel strategic alliance and the desire to maintain US control of the world oil regime through a close alliance with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and so on. I should also add one thing I did not say earlier, namely that oil has generated a large number of additional interests with a stake in the Persian Gulf. Something everyone is aware of are the companies like Bechtel, Boeing and Haliburton that have lucrative construction, weapons and other contracts with the big oil exporting states in the Gulf. More importantly, though, the Gulf states (other than Iran, that is) have supporting the world economy for 30 years now by recycling their petrodollars (a crucial fact; oil purchases are basically paid for in dollars globally, though this is now changing, and will have huge negative consequences on the US when the final shift away from the US dollar occurs) through the money markets in New York and London. The fighting in Israel and Bernie Madoff and so on have unfortunately obscured important developments in this arena; here is a recent article on what is currently transpiring with losses sustained by the Gulf states due to the global financial crisis: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.21a790b26de73c80e4048954b0b52ce9.9d1&show_article=1 That is Arab losses of 2.5 trillion dollars, with a "T", in the last four months alone. The days of the de facto global oil-dollar standard are almost certainly numbered. John M. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Persons posting messages to not_honyaku assume all responsibility for their messages. The list owner does not review messages prior to posting, and accepts no responsibility for the content of messages posted. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
