Catastrophe Still Awaits

A Region-Wide Civil War?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch

"The real difficulty in changing any enterprise lies not in developing new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones."

John Maynard Keynes

".........A minority of Americans still believe the US can defeat the Iraqi insurgency if only the US would use enough force. Americans hear this from neoconservatives and from the right-wing crazies of talk radio. These are the same Americans who believe the US could have won the Vietnam war by invading or nuking North Vietnam.......

.......Many Americans have the absurd notion that the only limit to US power is the will to use it. This absurd idea provides the Israeli lobby with a vocal American minority that is easy to exploit in behalf of "standing tough" in the Middle East. The main reason that neither Republicans nor Democrats can come to their senses about Iraq and America's disastrous Middle East policy is that the Israeli Lobby will not let them.

Right-wing Israeli governments suffer the same delusion as neoconservatives about limitless US power. They believe that the power of their lobby can ensure that American power will be used to destroy all of Israel's enemies.

The US is likely to remain mired in Iraq until Israelis cast out this delusion. No amount of US power can make it possible for Israel to both steal Palestine from Palestinians and have peace. No number of US invasions of Islamic countries can win "the war on terror." As long as right-wing extremism prevails in Israel and as long as the US interferes in the internal affairs of Muslin countries, the formula for calamity remains in place."