In 2007 Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer wrote a book entitled The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. The book asserts that the Israeli lobby forced the U.S. into war with Iraq. While many of the neo-cons were Jewish and the Israeli lobby certainly viewed a war with Iraq favorably, it is abundantly clear from everything we know about the Iraq war that it would have been carried out with or without the support of the Israeli lobby. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld had very personal reasons for wanting to go to war with Iraq and were even hell bent on doing so before 9/11. Thus, it wouldn't be totally unfair to label Walt and Mearsheimer's book as a ZOG conspiracy theory.
Unfortunately, it is getting to the point where our politicians in some sense are lending credence to this theory. In the summer of last year Bibi Netanyahu humiliated our President in the oval office, which was summarily followed by U.S. Congressmen giving Bibi 29 standing ovations (lest a congressman be caught by a political opponent of giving an insufficient amount of adoration to the Israeli Prime Minister).
And now it seems the Israeli lobby is using this influence to push us into a war with Iran. Laura Friedman of Peter Beinart's brand new blog, Zion Square, points out that Walt and Mearsheimer's theories could be aptly applied to the Iran debate:
Don't Prove Walt and Mearsheimer Right
[snip]
[The Saturday Night live sketch] brings back memories of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s infamous book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. In it the authors asserted that AIPAC and other American pro-Israel organizations (referred to collectively, and to many, objectionably, as the “Israel lobby”) led the push for war with Iraq. Walt and Mearsheimer were mistaken. While many of the people supporting the Iraq war were Jewish, anyone working these issues in Washington during the relevant years can confirm that AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations weren’t the driving force behind that war.
Regrettably, in making a direct link between Israel and a war with Iran, Samberg’s Santorum is not similarly mistaken. For more than a decade the same forces that Walt and Mearsheimer erroneously blamed for America’s Iraq debacle have openly led efforts to convince Washington and the American people that war with Iran is necessary and inevitable.
These efforts have included a ceaseless stream of warnings, breathlessly hyped by AIPAC and others in talking points and policy memos to lawmakers and voters, to the effect that Iran is on the verge of getting a nuclear bomb – warnings that have become no less alarmist even as they have proven wrong, year after year. They have included AIPAC-led pressure, backed by nearly every Jewish organization, for ever-increasing sanctions on Iran...
Michael Koplow writes
an interesting response to Friedman's article:
Irrespective of whether this view of history is correct (and I think it’s entirely absurd), the situation now with Iran is very different because AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups are making no secret about their motivation – they loudly and publicly have been telling anyone who will listen that Iran presents an existential threat to Israel’s existence. This is not some shadowy lobbying effort behind the scenes, but a very public p.r. campaign. It doesn’t get much clearer than Bibi Netanyahu telling the AIPAC conference that Israel reserves the right to protect itself and can’t afford to wait much longer. This type of rhetoric from the Israeli government or from AIPAC spokesmen was very hard to find in the run-up to the Iraq War, which is why Walt and Mearsheimer’s arguments about Iraq sound like conspiracy-mongering. If the U.S. ends up attacking Iran, nobody will question that Israel or pro-Israel groups pushed for it because they have not been pretending to do otherwise.
