And supporting the interests of the U.S. Merchants of Death. Is this what Petras spent 50 years of the class struggle for? Whom are the Saudis going to use all those weapons against? What happened to such things as putting teenaged girls in prison for 6 months because they got raped for the crime of comingling? I guess we’d better not talk about those matters lest we take jobs from American workers. A real socialist talking! A real man of principle!

for more on the SPC (Saudi Power Configuration) see
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/04/jrm-pubnote-20070417

p.s. I would have expected Comrade Petras to have done a better job in writing about Bosnia. “Support of breakaway Bosnia”? Does he know the first thing of the region’s history? How about “support of breakaway Ukraine” or “Support of breakaway Kazakhstan?” His Muslim friends, it so happens, didn’t want to live under Serb domination, and the feeling was mutual with the Serbs. The country approved independence in a referendum in March 1992 under Serb threats, after Yugoslavia itself was in a state of collapse. The Saudi game was to spread their form of wahabism in the country and I must admit they have been successful. But acting as a U.S. agent? Maybe we have an SOG (Saudi Occupied Government).

So, I gather that you are a right wing zealot who thinks that the US is an occupied country. How interesting.

It is not generally claimed that Israel’s friends have no influence. That is in your head.

What is claimed, among other things, is that such groups (a) are not the dominant influence on policy (i.e. they do not control US policy) regarding the Middle East, (b) Israel’s friends very often do not get their way (e.g. they have, in the past, opposed the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia), (c) Israel’s friends do not have a single policy agenda about Israel other than the view, shared, in any event, by the vast majority of Americans – in part for religious reasons and in part for cultural reasons – that Israel is a legitimate country that deserves American support and (d) that Israel did not lead the US to war with Iraq (because, in fact, that was not Israel’s policy issue).

Kudos to Petras for calling segments of the left to task for their totally discredited and insane view that the Zionist lobby exerts little or no power over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East (which most sane people acknowledge it does—to the detriment of the U.S.).

Seriously it’s some poison Kool-Aid that my left colleagues are drinking from. I really don’t think that acknowledging the HUGE amount of power that the Zionist lobby exerts, it will cause another another holocuast (if that is the fear driving the Lobby Denialists).

I showed Mr. Petras’ article to one of our patients here at Seabrook House Treatment Centre in Seabrook New Jersey, and he thought it made a lot of sense.

Of course, he hadn’t taken his meds yet this morning, so we may get a different opinion later.

http://www.seabrookhouse.org/

And for anyone who thinks it’s easy running a Zionist Power Configuarion, they should think twice before trying it. I’m so busy processing Christmas weapons orders for Columbian druglords and the Myanmar junta that the Israeli takeover of Mauritania ( for their copra industry) has been put on hold at least until after New Year’s.

How does one explain, by propaganda, the fact that President Wilson was an ardent restorationist? There was no pro-Israeli lobby at the time. There was no pro-Zionist lobby to speak of either. And, the top Jewish adviser and chief fundraiser for Wilson, Ambassador Morgenthau, was an ardent anti-Zionist. Notwithstanding Morgenthau’s assertive views to the contrary, Wilson thought restorationism to be important. Why? It was part of his Christian upbringing.

How does one explain, by propaganda, that President Lincoln said, in 1863, “restoring the Jews to their homeland is a noble dream shared by many Americans”? It was his Christian upbringing as well, if you are interested. How does your theory explain that John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, Charles Scribner and President William McKinley were known restorationists? Again, it was their Christian upbringing. How does your theory of propaganda explain that President Truman was a restorationist? The same answer.

It is nice for people to throw out theories to explain things. It is another thing to explain the strong support that has existed for more than 200 years in the US for the restoration of Israel.

As for the Iraq war, if we go by what Mr. Mearsheimer admitted when interviewed on the ON POINT radio show, in fact, Israel did not want the US to invade Iraq. Israel was concerned primarily with Iran, first, second and third. However, Israel was not going to tell the president it would not back him up, most especially when the President indicated that Iran was also a problem for the US that he hoped to deal with. How do we know this? There was a meeting well before the war in which the Israelis were told that the US would invade Iraq and representatives of the Israeli government argued against the idea and for dealing, instead with Iran. So much for your theory and that of Mr. Petras.

Both the U.S. and Israel are colonist settler states. What Petras has identified is the the invasion on Iraq was not a “War for Oil” that the “left” has embraced. It is Zionism that seems to be dismissed. Your assumption that “American strongly supports Israel” is only due to the propaganda that that been promoted over the years. However folks like Petras, Walt, and Carter are opening up cracks in that facade and getting their perspectives critical of Israel and Israeli Apartheid out to the public. 10 years ago you’d get ridiculed for making such a comparison today you are now engaged in a heated debate. That huge progress.

You write: “By blackmail and deceit, the Israelis got their additional $30 billion dollars over the next ten years and they double-crossed ‘their’ president by unleashing their Fifth Column to block his military sales to the Saudis. And if Bush dares a complaint, he will be added to the list of ‘anti-Semites’ — the only honorable list in his entire 8 years in office.”

Those are pretty strong words. And, it all assumes that the US supports Israel because of lobbying and the like, not out of ideological affinity, religious affinity and the need for the US to take into consideration a strong country, Israel, which if the US adopted a hostile attitude could very readily make life in the Middle East even worse than it already is. Perhaps, it would even jump the US ship and make buddy, buddy with Russia or China. That, after all, is where your noxious ideas could well lead.

Consider, however, that the very idea of restoring historic Palestine to Jewish rule was popular among American Christians long before it was popular among Jews. Perhaps, Mr. Petras, you might look into a doctrine called restorationism, a doctrine held by numerous US presidents going back to the early years of the US.

I gather that your way of thinking does not allow for other explanations. It must be, on your thinking, lobbying. No matter that most Americans strongly support Israel. No matter that such has its roots in American forms of Christianity. No matter that Israel, like the US, is a state born of immigrants. Etc., etc.

In a word, your theory is BS.