I agree here almost entirely with Gerson’s points.  Israel is not the reason we invaded Iraq or want to reorder the Middle East .  This is a bunch of conspiracy mongering.  Yes, there is no doubt that the Israel lobby is strong and it is true that no sensible politician would ever appear too far out of step with Israeli interests.  However, I believe (and this I take much from my own personal views) is that Americans support an existing democracy in a region full of authoritarianism and what, for many Americans, is alien extremism.  We respect Israel ’s toughness and still have regret for what happened to them under the Nazi regime.  Simply put, we respect and sympathize with the Israelis in a way we don’t for others in the region because we feel a stronger kinship, after all, we are still a largely Christian nation and Christianity’s roots in Judaism are obviously strong. 

All this “Jewish Neocon Cabal” garbage is the sound of desperate people seeking simplistic answers to complex questions.  We took out Saddam because we were concerned somewhat (though less than advertised) about WMD, we realized he was still a regional threat (since at the time the UN sanction regime was breaking down), and so we could make a strong show of force in the heart of the Middle East, not on the periphery like in Afghanistan .  Yes oil was somewhere in the mix, but so was optimism (perhaps, as I often argue, naïve optimism), and hope. 

Another point when looking at this entire situation is the simple fact that Israel probably would have preferred us to take out Iran as it is a much more existential threat than Iraq was.  There is anecdotal evidence that this was, in fact, the view of then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.  It’s getting old hearing how evil the Jews are, sadly it’s a narrative that always seems to reemerge whenever someone has to scapegoated.

To be fair, here is an interview with the authors of the book that generated the controversy referred to in the Gerson article.  I have not read it and some of the comments in the interview seem reasonable from a realist perspective (Mearsheimer in particular is associated with this school of thought).  That said, it is articles and books like that that are then taken by extreme, and yes, anti-semitic people to validate the conspiracies.  Consequently, even if they themselves are not making the most absurd of claims, they are affording intellectual shelter and I am troubled that legitimate scholars would give even the hint of a patina of integrity to those kinds of views.