,” The United States has been using Israel to fulfill its policy objectives for decades, from its role as a regional “pillar” (along with Saudi Arabia and Iran) in US containment strategies against the Soviet Union in the 1970s up until last summer, when the administration of President George W Bush encouraged a disastrous proxy war with Hezbollah as a way of testing the weapons and tactics of Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor, in the event of a US attack.”

If we believe US is following its interest: why US does not want to recognize Iran, a natural ally and regional power for centuries, as an important strategic ally in the middle east, central Asia and beyond not only for her natural resources but also for its influence in Muslim world, over a billion people, especially among Arab population in the middle east, Asia and Africa and cultural influence beyond Iran’s border in central Asia, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, ….. up to India where the largest community of Shiite is located? Why US does not want to recognize Iran, not Israel, as an ally that can be the most beneficial to American empire in the middle east and central Asia, the most important region in the world with the highest energy reserves against Russia since Iranian cultural influence is well alive among the Central Asian countries and Iran has close and natural relationship with the states in this region. Why is that?
Why George Bush is so foolish that can not see Iran and not Israel as an ally of the United States against natural enemy, Russia, since Iran has suffered and lost vast territories from imperialist Russia and Iran is the last country to trust Russia, for good reasons, why?
Russia and Israel are benefiting from the Zionist war not the United States or Iran. In fact, the United States has lost the most from the Zionist war so far and has lost its credibility beyond repairs. Do you think, as Mark Levine wants us to believe, is Iran or Israel which can bring stability to the region because Iran, contrary to the propaganda machine of the Zionists has been accepted by majorities of the Arab States as a peaceful nation, don’t listen to the lies of the Zionist media. You can listen to Amir of Qatar, Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani who said: “We have good relationship with Iran and Arab States and all Arab States are against any military aggression on Iran.” Mr. Smith who is the beneficiary of an attack on Iran?
As matter of fact Condi rice, servant of the Zionist interest spends a good deal of time to disturb the relationship of Iran with Arab states on Zionist behalf instead of searching for the interest of the American people.
The Zionists have tried so hard to present Israel as positive and promoter of American interest. This is not true at all. Articles after articles have criticized the foreign policy of the United States dealing with Israel and have exposed dangers that Israel and its Zionist Lobby have for American interest around the world but no one has listened to. Why?
When Mearsheimer and Walt’ paper was published, of course it could not be published in US a “democratic country” because of the Zionist Lobby, in Britain attracted attention not because these individuals are revealing something that no one knew, but because of who these people were. In fact the paper was very boring because we knew it all for years.
The reason behind Zionists pro Israel against Iran is that establishment of the Zionist state on the Palestinian
Land has brought nothing but bloodshed and violence and massacre of the indigenous population by the most brutal means and has been intensified by invasion of Iraq with the most destructive weapons based on lies and deception to improve the situation through “MAP CAHNGE” to eliminate “enemies” of Israel to “legitimize” the Zionist state because Israel has become illegitimate more than ever in the eyes of the population not only in the region but beyond. It is the existence of Israel, not the interest of US in danger. This fact cleverly has been hidden by the Zionists pro Israel including NOAM CHOMSKY from American people.
Last night on PBS, for the first time, a presidential runner – Mike Gravel, told us that “Iran war is pushed hard by the ISRAEL LOBBY and they are willing to use nuclear weapon to destroy Iran.” He was very alarmed and told American audience that this is not OUR interest.
Mr. Smith:
I want to know when a presidential candidate tells Americans this is not our interest, and then WHO’S INTEREST THIS WAR SERVES?

The Jewish Lobbies prowess became evident in the extortion episode of the swiss banks during Clinton’s era (Norman Finkelstein – The Holocaust Industry) . Also please note that many of the extremists organizations of the Jewish settlers are American born. Which tells me that much on the conflict is fueled by American zionists and their infrastructure in the US (not Israel).

Did you read the article? Quoting Greenspan is a means for confirming our entire argument that the war was for empire and oil. On the zionist lobby, I think you have it upside down and backwards. The US control middle east policy. The dog wags the tail, not the other way around. Check out the article below.

–Ashley

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II08Ak01.html

BOOK REVIEW
No, it’s the dog that wags the tail
The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt

Reviewed by Mark LeVine

Ever since the London Review of Books published the controversial findings of University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer and Harvard Professor Stephen Walt’s research into the power of the Jewish – or Israel – lobby in the United States, the two men have been demonized as anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic.

Now that the full product of their research has been published as The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, it has generated even more controversy because of its detailed, well-footnoted argument that unquestioning US support for Israel goes against core US strategic interests and continues because of the undue influence and power of the so-called “Israel lobby”.

The book is being severely criticized because it seems to confirm long-held anti-Semitic beliefs about undue Jewish political power. But in reality, the authors’ premise and conclusions are all wrong or, more precisely, backward.

Mearsheimer and Walt seem to know little about the Middle East, Israel’s role in US foreign policy, and what are core US goals and strategic interests in the region. They argue that this is a case of the “tail wagging the dog” – a small client state and its allies in the US leading the US government to engage in policies that are manifestly against its interests because of undue political power.

But this is nonsense. In fact, it is the other way around. The United States has been using Israel to fulfill its policy objectives for decades, from its role as a regional “pillar” (along with Saudi Arabia and Iran) in US containment strategies against the Soviet Union in the 1970s up until last summer, when the administration of President George W Bush encouraged a disastrous proxy war with Hezbollah as a way of testing the weapons and tactics of Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor, in the event of a US attack.

Mearsheimer’s and Walt’s book is also naive. It assumes that US political and economic leaders, especially those close to the Bush administration, want to build peace and democracy in the Middle East, and that therefore supporting Israel’s occupation of Palestine hurts this cause. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. As I showed in great detail in my last book, Why They Don’t Hate Us, and my new book on the Oslo peace process, An Impossible Peace: Oslo and the Burdens of History, the US has never supported democracy and peace in the region.

Instead, its strategic goals center on the perpetuation of continuous but manageable levels of conflict, punctuated every decade or so by major wars, as the way to ensure relatively high oil prices, control over key petroleum reserves or at least denying China uncontrolled access to them, a disproportionate level of arms spending across the region (by far the highest in the world, with the majority of funds spent on US weapons systems), and the continued survival of the authoritarian regimes that ensure the perpetuation of a system that has generated more than a trillion dollars in profits to US oil and arms companies just since September 11, 2001.

This pattern was made evident most recently by the announcement of a US$20 billion arms sale to the Saudis, which was naturally compensated for by a $30 billion sale to Israel (much of it paid to US arms companies by the US government in one of the largest corporate-welfare schemes in history, under the guise of “aid to Israel”) and at least $20 billion more to Egypt (much of that also in the form of aid paid directly to defense manufacturers) and other allies. That’s $70 billion for US weapons manufacturers in the next decade or so, just to keep the “balance of power” in the region.

Viewed this way, the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by all accounts one of the main fulcrums of the larger problems of the region, would be a strategic disaster for the United States. It would lead to lower oil prices, less spending on arms, and a loss of whatever slim levels of legitimacy is possessed by Arab dictators and monarchs, and open up the chance that the people of the region would decide to spend their money on other things than overpriced US weapons, consumer debt, and high-end real estate.

The authors have it wrong: it’s not Americans who are suffering from undue influence of the Jewish lobby; it’s Israelis and Palestinians along with Iraqis and the citizens of most every country of the region, and now the families of US servicemen and women deployed in the conflict zones of the “arc of instability” in the Middle East and Central Asia, who are suffering so that some of the most powerful and wealthy corporations in world history can continue to reap hundreds of billions of dollars in profits without anyone questioning why this system continues and whose interests it actually benefits.

One thing is for sure: aside from the “Jewish lobby” (for whom the book is a godsend of a fundraising tool), the two groups most happy about the publication of book are the oil and arms lobbies, unquestionably the most powerful, and invisible, lobbies in the United States.

The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (August 27, 2007). ISBN-10: 0374177724. Price US$26, 496 pages.

Mark LeVine is professor of modern Middle Eastern history, culture and Islamic studies, University of California-Irvine, and author of Why They Don’t Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil (Oneworld, 2005).

Again, Alan Greenspan lacks any real credibility on the issue of Middle East policy. See the recent article that debunk the Greenspan perspective on CounterPunch.

Why anyone on the left would want to embrace Greenspan is beyond me. Greenspan is one the biggest contributor to inequality in the United States.