2006-03-28
Hitchy: Isreal doesn't dictate US policy
Here's Hitchy's take: US policy often counters the wishes of zionists, and US policy no more matches the wishes of zionists than it does anti-castro Cubans or the current govts in Pakistan and Turkey. He also points out that people upset by the internal and external actions of Isreal's govt should be equally appalled -- and for the same reasons -- by the actions of Pakistan and Turkey's govts. Why aren't they?
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The pro-Israeli lobby exerts disproportionate influence over US foreign AND domestic politics. I wouldn't say that it "controls" it, but Jewish/Israeli dollars speak very loudly.
It's much more than AIPAC. It's Hollywood. It's the music industry. It's the media. The finance industry. The military industrial complex.
And it's happens in more countries than the US.
For Hitchens to point out a couple of isolated incidents where US policy was counter to Israeli interests is disingenuous. It doesn't begin to touch the political rangling that has occurred from the bombing of the USS Liberty to the defeat of Cynthia McKinney in Atlanta a few years ago. The Liberty's sinking still hasn't been investigated, and even though McKinney regained her congressional seat, she was denied her seniority by the Democratic party. There are so many other examples, I don't have time to go into.
I am completely appalled by Pakistan's actions, but that country's government is a military dictatorship that operates outside the will of the Pakistan people. Those people are vehemently anti-American.
I am also appalled at Turkey, though the Turks are fighting an internal struggle over the secularism of Islam there. I don't know a lot about Turkey's internal politics, but I know that they seem to stradle an ideological fence between the desire to Westernize (by entering the EU among other things) and the desire to retain an Islamic identity.
Nadir: I agree with you about Isreal having a very effective lobby in the US, and about the USS Liberty. I also agree with you that the world would be better off today if Isreal had not been established in Palistine; I consider this to have been an enormous mistake, the biggest lasting mistake from from the 20th century.
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