This video of John Mearsheimer (available also in our video archive) is a good discussion of how to conceptualize not only Jewish involvement in the Iraq war but Jewish influence generally.



The argument is that :

1. The neoconservatives were the main force behind the war.

2. The neoconservatives are a key component of the Israel Lobby, are “deeply committed to Israel,” and are involved in a variety of pro-Israel organizations such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

3. Other components of the Israel Lobby, notably AIPAC, were also deeply involved.

4. The main Jewish groups were also major supporters of the war. Mearsheimer quotes a Forward editorial from May 7, 2004:

As President Bush attempted to sell the American public and the international community on the need for a war in Iraq, America’s most important Jewish organizations rallied as one to his defense. In statement after statement community leaders stressed the need to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. [The editorial goes on to state:] Some groups went even further, arguing that the removal of the Iraqi leader would represent a significant step toward bringing peace to the Middle East and winning America’s war on terrorism.

A similar scenario presented itself in the attempt to get the U.S. to bomb Syria, when the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center supported war (“ The Organized Jewish Community: Wall-to-wall Support for a Strike on Syria “).

5. Mearsheimer gives the neocons a pass on the issue of whether they really thought that the invasion of Iraq was good for the U.S. (which I would chalk up to deception or self-deception ), but does note that neocons believe that what is good for Israel is good for the U.S. and vice versa—a view that Mearsheimer (and common sense) sees as unreasonable.

6. The neocons could not pull this off by themselves. They needed allies, and that required a suitable context. 9/11 filled that need because it provided their cause with popular and elite (especially Bush and Cheney) support. (I suspect that this intuition of cui bono is behind a great deal of the suspicions of Israeli involvement or at least foreknowledge of the events of 9/11.)

7. The neocons were therefore a necessary but not a sufficient cause of the war in Iraq.

8. The Iraq War was not a Jewish war. Polls indicated Jews supported the war less than other Americans.

This is exactly the argument of The Culture of Critique—that the Jewish intellectual and political movements were necessary, not sufficient for the decline of White America. From Chapter 1: