U.S. foreign policy

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Does anyone here besides me get sick of both of the American Democrats and the Republicans pro war pro Israel neocon foreign policy it is bad for the United States in my view ?

The Israel lobby and U.S. foreign policy

John J. Mearsheimer, Stephen M. Walt

Macmillan, 2007 - Political Science - 484 pages
The Israel Lobby,” by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, was one of the most controversial articles in recent memory. Originally published in the London Review of Books in March 2006, it provoked both howls of outrage and cheers of gratitude for challenging what had been a taboo issue in America: the impact of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy. Now in a work of major importance, Mearsheimer and Walt deepen and expand their argument and confront recent developments in Lebanon and Iran. They describe the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel and argues that this support cannot be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds. This exceptional relationship is due largely to the political influence of a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. Mearsheimer and Walt provocatively contend that the lobby has a far-reaching impact on America’s posture throughout the Middle East—in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—and the policies it has encouraged are in neither America’s national interest nor Israel’s long-term interest. The lobby’s influence also affects America’s relationship with important allies and increases dangers that all states face from global jihadist terror. Writing in The New York Review of Books, Michael Massing declared, “Not since Foreign Affairs magazine published Samuel Huntington’s ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ in 1993 has an academic essay detonated with such force.” The publication of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is certain to widen the debate and to be one of the most talked-about books of the year.

http://books.google.com/books/about/The ... rFUBs7G6kC

Im talking about the US Foreign Policy that supports the Zionist State of Israel with military and economic aid and is bombing Afghanistan and Iraq and all these things are supported by both political parties Democrats and Republicans. Before the American Imperialism in the Muslim/Islamic World the Americans were attacking Nations such as Korea and Vietnam during the Cold War in the name of stopping Communism and the United States dropped two Atomic Bombs on two Japanese Cities during World War 2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%...ates_relations

The Myth of American Democracy


Sep 1, 2004


By John Gallup and Melissa Sanders


Politicians, the media, and our education system continually tell us the U.S. is the epitome of a free and democratic nation, that we have the "greatest democracy in the world." This lie was laid bare in the 2000 Presidential election where, of two evils, the loser was actually handed the presidency by the Supreme Court and Electoral College, despite the Bush brothers' racist hijacking of the Florida vote.


The entire U.S. electoral system is structured to ensure corporate control of politics. Rather than a democratic, participatory government, we have a government of, by, and for big business.


Huge sums of money are required to run competitive campaigns, meaning usually only candidates who are rich or able to attract wealthy backers can win. Career-oriented politicians quickly learn either to adopt the outlook and politics of their capitalist paymasters, or be sidelined.


Real democracy requires a free exchange of ideas, yet there is an abyss between our freedom of speech and the ability to be heard. Currently, five corporate conglomerates own practically all major media sources. This consolidation of all the major media into the hands of a few corporations gives the ruling class a powerful ability to shape mass consciousness by deciding what is news, limiting the scope of public debate, and drilling their ideology into our heads.


According to the Center for Voting and Democracy, less than 20% of congressional races are even considered "competitive," while the vast majority of districts are won by either "landslide" or "safe" margins (fairvote.org). Through patronage and gerrymandering, the Democratic or Republican Party is so firmly entrenched in most districts that choosing the next office-holder consists of the local party machine appointing their favored candidate and then presenting them to the public for a passive vote of approval.


This reduces voting to a meaningless, ritualistic exercise, an absurdity heightened by the common occurrence of candidates running unopposed in elections. No wonder only a third of eligible voters turn out for congressional elections, and barely half for presidential elections. Inspiring the 100 million Americans who feel their vote is too worthless to even bother voting will require a new party that offers a real alternative.


The most undemocratic aspect of our political system is that only one class viewpoint is represented: the capitalists' viewpoint. We have two parties, but they both are funded and controlled big business.


Many people point to the proportional representation, multi-party systems in Europe and elsewhere as a more democratic alternative to our two-party system. While such democratic reforms would represent a huge step forward in U.S. politics, more choices do not necessarily equal a qualitative difference. Witness the participation of virtually all major European political parties in attacking the living standards of working-class people. Our political participation will always be empty as long as we are limited to candidates who serve the needs of big business instead of working people.


For our vote to mean anything, we need to build a new political party under working people's democratic control to fight for our interests in the streets, our workplaces, our schools, and at the ballot box.


The Truth About the 2000 Election Scandal
The well-known scandals of the 2000 election highlighted the underlying corruption of our whole electoral system. Since then, the only substantial change has been a huge investment in electronic voting machines that would eliminate any paper trace of fraud perpetrated against voters!


The 2000 elections were no anomaly. They were a blatant manifestation of the corruption underlying this country's so-called "democracy." In the 2000 elections alone, voter abuse was reported not only in Florida but in 11 more states.


In California and Florida, police erected roadblocks, while African Americans in Missouri waited six hours in line at their polling places before the doors were slammed in their faces. Polling facilities in black neighborhoods nationwide closed illegally before 4:30 pm (www.blackstripe.com).


An ever-growing list of disenfranchised groups further exposes the fraud. How can an election be "close" when only 51% turned out to vote? Prisoners cannot vote in 47 states, and ex-felons cannot vote in 15 states. These laws have stripped over four million people, disproportionately people of color, of their right to vote (sentencingproject.org/issues).


Both parties work to dissuade the working class and people of color from voting. Both parties refuse to make election days paid national holidays, implement same-day voter registration, or seriously challenge the systematic electoral corruption employed by their local political machines.


The fundamentally undemocratic Electoral College was established to protect the system against "popular excesses." In normal times, the "electors" of each state go to whichever presidential candidate receives the highest vote. However, this is required in only 24 states. This means that if a radical insurgent like Ralph Nader hypothetically received 40% of the popular vote, beating both Democratic and Republican candidates, the electors could decide to coalesce behind one of the corporate candidates to block him, contradicting the popular vote!
In 2000, despite Gore winning the popular vote, he openly praised the Electoral College that handed the White House to Bush. As documented in Fahrenheit 9/11, not one Democratic Senator objected to Bush's theft of the election. Their silence proved that Democratic politicians cared more about preserving the system of corporate political domination than keeping Bush out of the White House.






http://www.socialistalternative.org/...10.php?id=1297
Lobbyists destined to fill a void left by democracy's failings. Voters are irrational, cannot be trusted to act without guidance from lobbyists.
Lobbyists are the new behavioral nudgers guiding America. Forget behavioral scientists, special interest lobbyists will do the real nudging.
Lobbyists must nudge voters to elect "friendly" politicians. Lobbyists must invest millions to elect officials favorable to special interests.
Lobbyists are the new "unseen hand" of American Capitalism. Capitalism's new "unseen hand" is the enlightened deals of 261,000 lobbyists
Lobbyists will guide economic recovery for special interests. Congress, the president and regulators all have a price, find it and pay it.
Lobbyists protect special interests using taxpayer money. The wealthy will have ready access to the assets and credits of the Treasury.
Lobbyists amass extra capital anticipating a new meltdown. Plan ahead for the next recession by stockpiling benefits for your clients.
Lobbyists hire new blood directly from inside government. The contacts of senators and congressmen are worth millions to clients.
Lobbyists reward politicians, treat them like co-lobbyists. Everyone in Washington wants to get rich off big government, help them
Lobbyists must defeat programs unfavorable to clients. Programs that weaken the power of the rich must be aggressively defeated.
Lobbyist clients' interests come before public interest. Principles of fiduciary duty mean clients take precedence over public needs.
Lobbyists must defeat or gut financial literacy programs. Intelligent, informed investors undercut special interests; Kill the CFPA.
Lobbyists give traders access to commercial bank assets. Investment banks switched to get access to deposits for high-risk trading.
Lobbyists never help mortgagees and credit-card holders. Helping failing homeowners and card holders means less for bank insiders.
Lobbyists want cap-and-trade derivatives for a new bull market. America needs a new bubble, new bull -- global warming trades will do trick.


Lobbyists must reward the rich, eliminate the "death tax." Eliminating inheritance taxes assures continuity of wealthy gene pools.


Democracy is Dead ... Lobbyists Rule America



by Paul B. Farrell
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=15038

What I think you need to understand about Mearsheimer and Walt is that, being realists (in the international relations sense), do not subscribe to the ideas of complex interdependence or democratic peace theory. As a result they tend to account for things in line with the three biggest forces within the school of realism; influence, bombs and territory. Their argument, while important, does not capture the nuance of the Israel-US alliance.

What you are actually reading when you get into that book is a battle between the realists (Walt, Mearsheimer, Jervis etc) against both the neo-cons (Wolfowitz and his stable of thinkers at Johns Hopkins) and the liberals (Nye, Keohane etc). Both the neo-cons and the liberals subscribe to democratic peace theory and believe that the international system when linked together through common underlying norms tends towards peacefulness. As a result, the support of Israel (which interestingly has the most Mearsheimer like foreign policy of just about any state) is seen as developing a support network of democratic states that respect international norms. A failure to support the development of those norms (like in Ukraine) is seen by these groups as stoking the more anarchic tendencies of the international system.

What Walt and Mearsheimer are both primarily pointing out is that the US does not have a realist foreign policy; in fact it has one dominated by the two opposites within the liberal stream; the liberals like Nye and the neo-cons who both essentially work from the same starting principles.

Sorry, I'm not going to sit idly by and let Iran attempt to cause a 2nd Holocaust.

Holocaust? It was the United States that first used nuclear weapons.

The US nuked Hiroshima Japan.

I hate the government of Iran for being a corrupt theocracy but I do not like Israel's government either. That being said, the Levant gets far too much focus for such a tiny part of the world when there are many areas that are far more populous and with about as much history (e.g. Nigeria or Burma, for example) and the reason it is the focus of so much media coverage is because Israel is basically a part of the Occident and the USA sees itself as part of the Occident and not a fusion culture like Latin America does. In addition, far worse things are going on in the CAR, the DRC and Uganda, for example, but they are not covered by the mainstream American media because most Americans are Christians and have a religious connection with the Levant and not the South Sudanese Wetlands.

And in my opinion, Turkey is the best country in the Middle East thanks to its stability and secularism.