Who wags whose tail?
2 AM here in Tokyo. It's been a busy day and I'm tired . I spent much of the day working on the Special Article. Researching and thinking.
Events taking place today on the world stage raise a lot of questions.
Good analysts must always question their assumptions and the information they're working with—so questions, questions, questions.
I don't know how good an analyst I really am – but I have to try.
One question is: why we always talking about democracy in the "West"when we've never really devised one that works?
Why is that Chinese single party "consultative democracy" seems to work better than our Uniparty system?
Why is it when I Google "Chinese democracy" the AI gives me the Guns And Roses album . Artificial "intelligence"? I fear for the future.
More questions arose when I ran across Gilbert Doctorow suggesting that it is the US waiting the tail of the Israeli dog rather than the other way around as most people seem to think -- that is,he thinks that the US is using Israel as a proxy to attack Iran just as it used Ukraine is a proxy to attack Russia.
Doctorow is definitely against mainstream opinion including Mearsheimer and Larry Johnson who dismissed the idea out of hand calling it “nonsense”.
MSAM. A new acronym for you – Main Stream Alt Media.
As you know I don't always agree with Doctorow— but he is a informed and careful analyst of considerable experience who deserves respect . He never writes “nonsense”.
As it so happens, at the same time I ran across this little dispute, I was researching Mackinder's 1904 Asian "Heartland" or Pivot theory which survives to this day and has been a mainstay of Western imperialistic policy for over a century now. He who controls Central Asia controls the world.
It explains a lot and dovetails well with what Doctorow is talking about.
I will have to think more about his and write about it later when I am fresh.
In the meantime , look at Doctorow's argument here.
And Larry Johnson's argument here. Larry doesn't really explain much -- mostly talking about his Rottweilers which I loved. Nothing of substance in this article — but the doggy stuff is a must-read. Woof!
The Doctorow v Mersheimer argument is best addressed in a video by Dmitri Lascaris interviewing Matthew Hoh starting at 31 minutes.
https://youtu.be/61lEPnxwG_0?si=YI2Z8tHumtkuA7Mq&t=1911
Dmitri Laskaris is an accomplished interviewer and Matthew Hoh a knowledgeable ex military guest. In the video, Laskaris set up an ongoing debate between Mersheimer and Doctorow with Col Doug MacGregor as third participant as follows.
Doctorow believes the US controls the Israeli’s and that the US admin is fighting a proxy war in the ME to regain imperial hegemony after humiliating defeats in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and to avenge itself against adversaries. This analysis is seconded by Finkelstein, Chomsky, and others. Mersheimer believes roughly the opposite, that Israel controls the US President and Congress through legalized bribery. MacGregor on the other hand believe the US is rudderless, reacting chaotically to events. This is a hard and useful framing of an important debate among the pundits I follow.
Having posed the two sides of the debate, Laskaris said he was on the Doctorow/Finkelstein/Chomsky side. But Hoh finds all 3 sides valid, and adds it’s in part a “chicken v egg” issue. Hoh brings up the change in the 1990s when the neocons took over foreign policy with Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the Ziocons, Perl, Wolfowitz, etc. Hoh says Cheney wanted ME wars because they were good for Halliburton and the MIC, Rumsfeld wanted wars to assert US Imperial dominance, and the Zios wanted wars for Israel. Hoh went on to say it was never the case that money was always and only the key, or that ideology always/only the key, or that any one factor was ever dominant. Hoh ad libbed an analogy of a family going to a restaurant. The husband likes the pasta, the wife the desserts, the kids the prizes, the teenage son the waitresses ass.
Also, Hoh described the errand boys of empire like current “US ME negotiators” Hockstein (an IDF soldier and dual citizen) and McGurk as people who are hired only by approval of the Israel lobby, their MIC bonifides, and elite resumes. Equally important, the US system is corrupt to the core with many interests paying for access and power. The pharm industry controls medicine, Big Ag controls farm policy, the MIC controls the defense budget, Wall Street controls finance and the economy.. and Israel controls US Mideast policy. So.. it’s not one or the other of the three arguments above, its all of them combined in a gigantic, deadly shitfest.
I began agreeing with Doctorow, and ended agreeing with Hoh that a jumble of motives and causal factors is the best explanation for the danger we’re all in.
I feel that this discourse is, peculiarly among so many highly intelligent people usually able to evaluate and consider nuance, quite unhelpfully black and white. Because there is some evidence that does not entirely support one theory, they suggest the complete opposite must be true. If some in the US structure of power do see Israel as a tool to be used for their agendas, this means that Israel is purely a puppet with no meaningful influence over the US; if Israel is able to influence the US to accommodate its agenda, this means that the US is a hapless passenger. Is it really so difficult to imagine the truth is somewhere in the middle?
As Professor Doctorow concedes in his post, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson appears to be the only one among these commenters to recognise the nuance, that both arguments are partially true. Israel does exert huge influence upon the US, and does ‘use’ the US for its own ends, but there are many coldly calculating neocons within the US structure of power who are only too happy to allow and encourage this, who view Israel as a useful tool in enacting their own agendas even if they believe it may be destroyed in the process. There are also those who do not wish to do as Israel wishes but are indeed being forced by political pressures and other factors, and there are foolish ideologues motivated by religious fervour.
I believe if Professor Doctorow had framed his thesis in these more nuanced and less absolutist terms, then other commenters like Professor Mearsheimer would likely not have so quickly dismissed them. Indeed, it would also mesh with Larry Johnson’s argument that the US structure of power is fractured and disorganised, which I believe is true.