[howmayiannoyyou]

An anti-Semitic, inaccurate trope. Israel had no horse in the Afghanistan fiasco, no interest in seeing Iran consume Iraq's power elite (status quo now), no love for Assad's continued reign in Syria, and zero interest in US interventions in Kosovo, Panama, Grenada, Vietnam or Korea. By contrast, Israeli lives sacrificed in Lebanon & Syria & on behalf of Jordan have spared the US any need to intervene significantly (if at all) in those countries. Not to mention Iran's expenditures to undermine Israel limits its ability to undermine the Gulf States.

[_etyf]

The influence of the Israel lobby on the 2003 Iraq invasion is not an anti-Semitic trope, it is recorded and acknowledged history. The final decision to invade lay with George W. Bush, and the Israel lobby was far from the only factor in his decision, but their influence was significant and cannot be denied. From the London Review of Books on John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's "The Israel Lobby":

>Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure.

>According to Philip Zelikow, a former member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to Condoleezza Rice, the ‘real threat’ from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The ‘unstated threat’ was the ‘threat against Israel’, Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002. ‘The American government,’ he added, ‘doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.’

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the...

[joelbluminator]

You're quoting Mearsheimer as if it's established truth; he is controversial to say the least and is clearly one sided regarding Israel/Palestine.

"Former Director of the CIA James Woolsey also wrote a strongly negative review, remarking that "... Reading [Walt and Mearsheimer's] version of events is like entering a completely different world." Woolsey contends the authors "are stunningly deceptive", and feature a "commitment to distorting the historical record is the one consistent feature of this book", proceeding with a few examples.[53]"

"Benny Morris, a professor of Middle East history at Ben-Gurion University, prefaced a very detailed analysis with the remark: "Like many pro-Arab propagandists at work today, Mearsheimer and Walt often cite my own books, sometimes quoting directly from them, in apparent corroboration of their arguments. Yet their work is a travesty of the history that I have studied and written for the past two decades. Their work is riddled with shoddiness and defiled by mendacity"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore...

[sofixa]

Do you have non-biased ( former director of the CIA? The same guys that lied about WMDs in Iraq? Sure, they're reliable; and a professor of Middle East history in an Israeli university) sources disputing those claims? I haven't read the book in question, just asking.

[joelbluminator]

There's a hole bunch of criticisms in the link I shared from all kinds of people, feel free to read it if it interests you.