Look, I don’t blame them. As I can testify from personal experience, telling the truth about the lobby is dangerous. And by the lobby I mean not only AIPAC but all its satellite organizations, journalists, flacks, bloggers, rabbis, etc, who will come after anyone who talks about the lobby’s role in determining U.S. policy on Iran.
But come on.
Every piece of legislation dealing with Iran, including all the sanctions bills, were written in AIPAC’s offices and then handed over to favored senators and representatives for introduction. For the last decade, every AIPAC annual conference, attended by the President and half the Congress, has had as its centerpiece the need to confront Iran. Just this week, as negotiations began in Baghdad, the Vice President met with the ultra-right Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, which is led by this guy. (Watch the youtube, you will fall off your chair laughing). And the next day the Senate Majority Leader met with the same group. The message to the Conference in both cases: trust us, we will not deviate from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s policy that sanctions not be lifted no matter what Iran offers. And we didn’t!
To put it simply, there would be no Iran hysteria was it not for the lobby. After all, was there hysteria over North Korean nuclear weapons? The North Korean regime is insane which the Iranian regime is not. And we have over 100,000 troops in South Korea, not to mention that Seoul, the South Korean capital, is virtually on the border with the crazy north.
But Iran is different. And that is because of the lobby. (If groups other than the lobby cared much about Iranian reprocessing, would not Biden and Harry Reid have met with them. Of course, they would have. But they know Iran is strictly an Israel lobby issue. And that means it is enmeshed in the question of who will or will not receive campaign contributions from PACs and individuals who take their marching orders from the lobby.
Imagine if there was no lobby. (Such a lovely thought).
Then the United States government could work to either prevent the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon (or to contain it afterwards) without hectoring from its political opponents and without a super-powerful special interest lobby (and the donors it controls) breathing down its neck. If the lobby did not exist and if Obama had not been forced to cater to Netanyahu’s every whim for three years (which utterly undermined his credibility), he would be able to resolve this issue through normal diplomacy. I have no doubt that he would have normalized relations with Iran by now, as he started to do in his first months in office until the lobby went ballistic. And the nuclear issue would have been resolved.
America needs an American policy on Iran. Once the Iranians know that we are speaking for ourselves and not for Netanyahu and AIPAC, they might understand that we are acting in good faith, which we are not doing now.
I don’t want to see Iran develop nuclear weapons and I understand why Israel worries about that possibility (although they aren’t exactly in a strong position to argue against nuclear proliferation).
And that is among the many reasons that I wish the timid MSM and bloggers would start telling the truth to the American people. This whole issue is not about us. It’s about Netanyahu and AIPAC. And, largely due to them, we may never be able to resolve it.
George Washington is spinning in his grave, waiting for Rachel Maddow to address this issue. Fat chance.
Neither Maddow or the other “progressives” want to risk offending people who might slow their advance to the heights. That is why this is the ONLY issue that the wise don’t touch with a ten foot pole.
Career comes first. And last.
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