barking_iguana | Dialog on Reddit re AIPAC and Neoconservatives

tazrek:	Can anyone explain how a 'single interest group' can control the most powerful country in the world - and its army? It can't just be bribing politicians to vote their way, they're genuinely afraid of not complying. How did this phenomenon come about? And why has it (ridiculously) stayed stayed that way for dozens of years?
BarkingIguana:	> Can anyone explain how a 'single interest group' can control the most powerful country in the world - and its army? It can't. AIPAC is a small part of the problem. And though most of its critics aren't anti-Semetic (and some, like me, are Jewish) there are enough traditional conspiracy-oriented antiSemites on the one hand and as-slanted-as-AIPAC Moslems on the other to make a lot of noise about how AIPAC's role is much bigger than it actually is.
jeffh:	> AIPAC is a small part of the problem. AIPAC is one piece of a complex puzzle, although it is highly influential with regards to votes in the Congress and Senate -- that is where its influence is highest. Three other puzzle pieces with regards to the overall situation (outside of congress/senate resolutions on Iran) are (1) Cheney tends to prefer war over diplomacy on all issues it seems, (2) Bush is overall an incompetent and impressionable leader, and (3) the Neoconservatives are also pushing in this way.
mcarlin:	True, except point (3) isn't a new point. The Neoconservatives are thoroughly intertwined with AIPAC. On foreign policy, they are almost if not entirely in lockstep with eachother.
BarkingIguana:	It's a tight alliance, but they're coming at it for very different reasons. The Neoconservatives, though many of them are Jewish, see Israel as a side issue. They're much more concerned with the US as the agent that can prevent global chaos and/or tyranny. And for all their faults and the responses I can already imagine about the chaos of Iraq, etc., WWI, WWII, and the height of Stalinism in the USSR was much worse. The initial problem with the neocons is not greed or lust for power, though people get corrupted by both of those once they have an ideology that demands power. The problem is an excessive focus on Risk-board type threats while ignoring how societies--both our own and our potential adversaries--actually work and develop.