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When you talk about the factors that drove the United States into the Iraq war, uh, back in 2003, or you talk about what factors drove us into this war against Iran, it's obvious that there are a variety of factors that mattered. The question is, which factors mattered the most?
Uh, and if you go back just to the Iraq war, uh, the basic argument that Steve and I made was that if there had not been pressure from the lobby and from Israel itself, and it's very important to emphasize, there was enormous pressure from Israel to attack Iran, and there was enormous pressure from the lobby, especially from the neoconservatives inside and outside of the lobby, our argument is that the war would not have happened. >> And I believe that that's true, and lots of people in effect said that at the time. But of course, once the war went south, the lobby went to enormous lengths to distance itself and to distance Israel from the causes of the war. And here in 2006, it's going to be much more difficult to do that because again, the lobby is out in the open. What's going on with Israel and the United States is out in the open, and it's so obvious that Israel and the lobby played a key role in pushing us into this war. And Norman Finkelstein was in effect saying exactly that, uh, about what's happening now.
Now, I want to directly address the question that you raise, uh, which is, how do I deal with people who say that Israel does our bidding? This is not a case of the tail wagging the dog. The dog gets the tail to do what it wants. Okay. My simple response to that is that if that were true, you would not need a lobby. You would not need this incredibly powerful group of individuals and organizations working overtime to influence American foreign policy. If Israel was such a strategic and moral asset, the government would just axiomatically support Israel, and you wouldn't need a lobby. The reason that you need the lobby is because Israel is a strategic liability, and it is a moral liability, and therefore the lobby has to work to get the United States to support Israel. It is the tail that wags the dog.
Israel is number one, interested in creating a greater Israel. Exactly where those borders are, we don't know. Uh, but it certainly includes the West Bank and Gaza. Uh, I would argue parts of southern Lebanon and parts of southern Syria as well, and maybe even parts of Jordan and the Sinai. But the Israelis are interested in expanding their borders, number one. And number two, they're very interested in expelling the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank and creating an almost purely Jewish state. And then their third objective is to make sure that all of the states in the region are either beholden to the United States. This would include countries like Jordan and Egypt, as you know well. And then the more powerful, the bigger states, the more threatening states are broken up or destroyed. Uh, and what they want to do, the Israelis, ultimately in Iran, is do what they did in Syria, which is break Syria apart, wreck Syria. Uh, what they're doing in Lebanon is trying to wreck Lebanon. And I think they've sent messages to the Turks that in the final analysis, they'd like to greatly weaken Turkey, as well as weaken Iran. Uh, and the idea here is that you will then have a benign threat environment or a benign security environment.
So, oftentimes I will say that Israel's goal and America's goal in Iran is regime change. And people will sometimes correct me and say that may be America's goal, but that's not really Israel's ultimate goal. Israel's ultimate goal is to wreck Iran, not simply to get regime change. And they are right. Of course, I focus on regime change because we focus, we, the United States, focus on regime change. And the Israelis talk about that. But their ultimate goal is to wreck Iran, to do to Iran what was done to Syria. And I believe they'd ultimately like to do that to Turkey as well. So that's really what's going on here. That's, that's the grand scheme. And Netanyahu has had that blueprint firmly emblazed in his brain, probably since his father first started educating him, uh, when he was a little boy. And there's nothing that moves him away from that blueprint.
So let me just start by talking about what the lobby is. The lobby is a loose coalition of individuals and organizations. You were talking about the influence of AIPAC, and I think there's no question that AIPAC is usually influential. But there are all sorts of other groups that wield a lot of power, and there are a lot of individuals, uh, who wield enormous power. Alan Dershowitz, for example. Uh, Bill Amann, for example. I could go on and on. So it's, it's individuals and organizations who work together in a very loose way, uh, to push the United States to support Israel unconditionally. >>
Now, it's very important to understand that it is not a Jewish lobby, and that there are a significant number of Jews who find what the lobby is doing to be reprehensible. Uh, I often point out that almost all of our defenders when we wrote the lobby article and then wrote the lobby book were Jews. They weren't the go. The go head down in the foxhole. We were defended by Jews. That included people like you, people like Glenn Greenwald, especially Tony Judt, and especially, especially Phil Weiss. Uh, so it's not a Jewish lobby, but there's no question that there are a large number of Jews in that lobby who wield enormous influence.
Furthermore, there are Christians or non-Jews who are powerful players in the lobby. Uh, and I would include Mike Huckabee in that category, or the Reverend John Hagee. Uh, these are very influential people who are basically Christian evangelicals who are profoundly committed to Israel. And in some cases, those Christian evangelicals are more supercharged about supporting Israel than Jews in the lobby are. It's really quite remarkable, and you see that when you listen to Mike Huckabee talk.
So the lobby, um, is this loose coalition of individuals, um, and organizations that is very effective at influencing US foreign policy. There's just nothing like it. And that's why Steve and I like to say that, uh, if you look at the historical record, there is simply no other case that even comes close to this one. And what I mean by that is because of the lobby, the United States effectively supports Israel unconditionally. No matter what Israel does, we support it. This is truly remarkable. This tiny country has this outsized influence in the United States. But moreover, even if it was a big country, we can't find a big country that's ever had this kind of influence in the United States. You just don't see it happen.
And then the $64,000 question is, why does it happen? And people in the lobby like to argue it's because Israel is a strategic asset. The fact is, as you well know, uh, Israel is, if anything, a strategic liability. And then when that argument fails, people will say, "We're doing it for moral reasons." That's an almost impossible to make today. And it was an almost impossible argument to make when we made the argument, uh, in 2006 and 2007. It's not for moral reasons or strategic reasons that we have this unparalleled relationship. It is in large part because of the power of the lobby, which is truly remarkable.
The United States recognizes that if it has a peer competitor in the international system that it should worry about, it's China. Right? And this is why Hillary Clinton annunciated in 2011 that we were going to pivot to Asia. China is seen as the most important threat to the United States inside of the national security community. Well, if you look at these various wars that we're fighting, uh, in the Middle East, and the first one, of course, was the 12-day war last June. And now you look at this conflict. It is seriously eroding our capability to contain China in East Asia. We're pulling THAADs and Patriots out of South Korea and Japan. This is truly remarkable. We have been shortchanging East Asia. We have been shortchanging our containment policy in East Asia for quite a while now because of Israel. And the situation is now only getting worse. From a strategic point of view, from a realist point of view, which of course is what Steve and I, uh, purvey in our writings, this makes no sense at all. So our relationship with Israel is a really cockamamie relationship that is not in the American national interest.
NATO is desperate to find a rationale for its existence. Uh, I think that NATO leaders like Mark Rutte fully understand that the United States would like to pivot out of Europe and pivot to East Asia. And furthermore, the United States is really more concerned about Israel in the Middle East than it is about Europe. So what Mark Rutte is saying is in effect that, uh, Europe is a giant aircraft carrier that the United States can use to project power into the Middle East. And I would note that Israel and its supporters fully understand this. It's important to emphasize, and this point is rarely brought up in public discourse about Israel and the lobby, that Israel and the lobby are deeply committed to the United States being militarily involved all over the planet and having a military that is a cocked pistol because Israel and its supporters want that military to be ready if Israel gets into trouble. The last thing they want is a policy of restraint where the American military comes back to the Western Hemisphere in large part and is not engaging in wars here, there, and everywhere, because then you don't have the cocked pistol, and if Israel gets in trouble, what are they going to do? So it's very important to understand that Israel and the lobby are very aggressive. They are very aggressive in their ambitions, and this includes towards NATO. So, Israel is perfectly fine with the idea of NATO expansion, perfectly fine with the idea that the United States uses Europe as a platform, as an aircraft carrier. And Mark Rutte understands this. Mark Rutte understands the power of the lobby in the United States. There's nobody you talk to in any area of the world who doesn't understand that. Uh, in fact, I've talked to some people from the Gulf States who say that if you want to have influence in Washington, you go through the lobby.
So, anyway, that's what's going on with Rutte. And with regard to Brad Cooper, who's the CENTCOM commander, he of course understands full well that he has to do Israel's bidding, that he has to understand that Israel's interests and America's interests are synonymous. And therefore, if Iran is a threat to Israel, it's a threat to the United States. People like us like to argue all the time that Iran does not represent a threat to us. It's not a threat to the American national interest. Our vital interests are not at stake here. But you can't say that. You have to equate our interests with Israel's interests. Therefore, we have a vested interest in making sure that Iran is defanged and has no power projection capability whatsoever in the Middle East. This is why the present war is a nightmare for us because it demonstrates that Iran has actually significant power projection capability [clears throat] and it's tying us into knots. This is bad news. This is not the way the world is supposed to work. The way the world is supposed to work is that no country in the Middle East except for Israel is allowed to have power projection capability. And any areas of the world like Europe or NATO that have power projection capability can have that as long as that power projection capability supports American and Israeli interests together. And of course, again, for the lobby and, uh, for many Americans at this point in time, uh, there's no daylight between Israel's interest and America's interest.
Just my final point on this. If you're Brad Cooper, or you're any American policymaker, and you try to put daylight between Israel's interest and America's interest, you're either going to be fired immediately or fired in a week. Uh, that's the only interesting question. You just can't make those kinds of arguments. You have to tow the line. And towing the line means saying that Israel's interests are synonymous with America's interests.
You know, I just want to make one other quick point here that I don't want to lose sight of, and that is that we talk about the strategic consequences of this. You know, getting involved in wars like the Iraq war and the Iran war and the genocide and so forth and so on. But it's also just very important to emphasize that what the lobby is doing, uh, threatens to undermine liberal values here in the United States. Just take the whole issue of free speech. I think a very important argument could be made that the greatest threat to free speech in the United States today, certainly on university and college campuses, is the Israel lobby. Uh, because the lobby goes to enormous lengths to shut down discourse on Israel. Uh, anybody who is critical of Israel today, uh, is likely to be smeared and have his or her career ruined. The lobby will go to great lengths to do that. So people self-censor. It's really quite remarkable. Shibli Talami, uh, at the University of Maryland, has done surveys of academics that show that, you know, around 80% of academics self-censor, uh, self-u, uh, they, uh, silence themselves. They, uh, on the issue of Israel. They're just afraid to speak up. Uh, it's really quite remarkable. And this situation is only likely to get worse because the lobby has to engage in smashmouth politics more and more. And this is going to undermine, uh, liberal values at home.