is it because of the Israel lobby, or because Israel serves some sort of strategic purpose?
Mearsheimer seems to think that it's mostly because of the lobby. I think I agree with him; I really can't think of any unique strategic purpose that Israel serves for the US. if Israel disappears tomorrow, the US still has colossal military bases in the Gulf states, it still has friendly governments in Jordan and Egypt, it occupies Syria and Iraq, it has ISIS to stage crazy terrorist attacks, etc. what exactly does Israel do that's worth all the negatives for the US?
I watched Finkelstein's recent interview on Al Jazeera and he mentioned he disagreed with Mearsheimer. just curious what everyone here thinks.
"The complicity of the United States with Israel does not arise solely from the Zionist lobby. Elias Sanbar has shown clearly how the United States rediscovered in Israel an aspect of its own history: the extermination of the Indians which, there as well, was only in part directly physical. It was a matter of emptying, as if there had never been Indians except in the ghettos which were made for them as immigrants from inside. In many respects, the Palestinians are the new Indians, the Indians of Israel. Marxist analysis reveals the two complementary movements of capitalism: constantly to impose limits, within which it develops and exploits its own system; and always to push these limits farther back, to exceed them in order to begin its own foundation once again on a larger and more intense scale. Pushing back limits was the act of American capitalism, the American Dream, taken up by Israel and the dream of Greater Israel on Arab territory, on the backs of the Arabs."