I just saw a tweet by Ben Norton (author of an article linked to below). It consists of two lists: "places bombed by the US" and "places where ISIS is growing." The lists are identical: "Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan." The only chance the US has of breaking that identity would be for the US to bomb more non-Muslim countries.
Some scattered links this week:
William D Cohan: How Wall Street's Bankers Stayed Out of Jail: "After the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, more than 1,000 bankers were jailed." However, after the much larger 2008 financial crisis? One, even though plenty of wrongdoing was uncovered:
Since 2009, 49 financial institutions have paid various government entities and private plaintiffs nearly $190 billion in fines and settlements, according to an analysis by the investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. That may seem like a big number, but the money has come from shareholders, not individual bankers. (Settlements were levied on corporations, not specific employees, and paid out as corporate expenses -- in some cases, tax-deductible ones.) In early 2014, just weeks after Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, settled out of court with the Justice Department, the bank's board of directors gave him a 74 percent raise, bringing his salary to $20 million.
The more meaningful number is how many Wall Street executives have gone to jail for playing a part in the crisis. That number is one. (Kareem Serageldin, a senior trader at Credit Suisse, is serving a 30-month sentence for inflating the value of mortgage bonds in his trading portfolio, allowing them to appear more valuable than they really were.)
The authors quote several sources arguing that, despite all those fines paid by companies, "the evidence does not show clear misconduct by individuals." What this suggests to me is that we as a country (at least our prosecutors, who are usually pretty vigilant about such things) have radically changed our view of individual responsibility for ethical behavior: either we consider things ethical now that were deemed unethical two decades ago (especially in pursuit of corporate and/or personal profits), or we think that individuals (extending up to corporate CEOs) no longer have sufficient autonomy to be considered responsible for their own actions. I suppose there is a third possibility (or factor), which is that the political system has become so corrupt that it's become all but unthinkable to prosecute the donor class. But no matter how you slice this, it speaks volumes about the moral rot that goes hand-in-hand with a world of increasing inequality and decreasing democracy.
Conor Friedersdorf: A Letter to Donald Trump Supporters With One Big Question:
Dear Donald Trump Supporters:
You're fed up. This much I understand. You're fed up with politicians who say one thing on the campaign trail, like that they're going to stop illegal immigration, and then do another in Washington; you're fed up with insiders who rig the system for their benefit at your expense; and you're fed up with coastal media elites and their insular subculture. [ . . . ]
What I don't understand is why you think a President Trump would treat us better. If you elect the billionaire, what makes you think that he will use whatever talents that he possesses to address your grievances rather than to benefit himself? After all, he's a man who has zealously pursued his self-interest all his life. [ . . . ]
Right now, Trump is telling you all the things you want to hear.
There was a time when his two ex-wives and the many former business partners he has since sued felt the same way. Those relationships didn't work out very well for them.
Why do you think that you'll fare better?
"Trump brags about making a lot of money in Atlantic City, then ditching the place as it slid into misery," Michael Brendan Dougherty observed in The Week. "Believing Trump will bring America back is as foolish as believing he would bring Atlantic City back. Unlike Rubio and Bush, he's a free man -- and perfectly willing to walk away and say it was your fault, but that he enjoyed the ride anyway."
Trump is a billionaire, you say, so he won't need to pander to special interests -- unlike other Republicans, he can ignore the business lobby and stop illegal immigration.
But that makes no sense. Granted, Trump has all the money he'll ever need, yet that's been true for decades, and he's continued to expend a lot of effort to earn still more money. Like other men with significant, diversified business holdings -- some of them hotels and golf courses, no less! -- a large supply of cheap immigrant labor is in his personal financial interests. If the business elite is for illegal immigration, he is the business elite! And he'll face the exact same political incentives as every other elected Republican from George W. Bush to John McCain. [ . . . ]
Instead you're just taking him on faith. Why? Does Trump strike you as a person who is unusually inclined to keep his word? Someone who never flip-flops? Come on.
On the other hand, there's already a Trump Fulfills Campaign Promise article out -- clearly, the bar's so low it doesn't take much.
Also see Stanley Aronowitz: The Real Reason Donald Trump Embarrasses the GOP:
At the debate and numerous public appearances, Trump has matter-of-factly stated that he is an equal opportunity donor to Republican and Democratic candidates -- not for the purpose of civic duty or altruism, but in exchange for influence. He has openly deemed his gifts to politicians a business expense. He went so far as to declare, before 24 million viewers at the debate, that he uses his donations to obtain favors from legislators who are all too eager to bow to his requests. He not-so-subtly implies that politicians are bought and paid for by him and other financial moguls. And he expects a fair return for those dollars, measured in policy rewards like zoning adjustments, subsidies for building projects and long-term tax relief.
In short, he lets the cat out of the bag about something the political system has spent more than a century to disguise.
Fred Kaplan: Shallow Jeb: Jeb Brush tried to burnish his foreign policy cred with a 40-minute speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Kaplan describes it as "a hodgepodge of revisionist history, shallow analysis, and vague prescriptions." The main revisionist claim is the assertion that the Petraeus "surge" in Iraq was a big success which gave the US a "hard-won victory," which was in turn squandered by Obama's withdrawal of US forces from Iraq in 2011. Every word in that claim is false, but it has already become gospel among Republican presidential aspirants. From such false premises, all sorts of insane inferences can be made.
Later in Tuesday night's speech, Bush said that the Iraq surge can serve as a model for how "Islamic moderates can be pulled away from extremist forces" in Syria. I doubt that he was proposing to send 100,000 U.S. troops to Syria, as his brother did in Iraq -- an idea that would appeal to almost no American generals or voters. But what he was proposing isn't at all clear. [ . . . ]
He did say, "In all of this," referring to the fight against jihadists, "the United States must engage with friends and allies, and lead again in that vital region." Which friends and allies does he mean? The Saudis try to rope us into a savage, fruitless war against the Houthi rebels, whom it portrays as Iranian proxies. The Turks lend us an air base to step up strikes against ISIS but then use the moment of goodwill as cover to attack their bigger enemy, the Kurds, who rank as the jihadists' most potent foe (and to whom Bush promised in his speech to send heavy armaments). ISIS derives much of its strength from the deep disunity of its natural foes, some of whom are our allies, some of whom aren't. "Action, coordination and American leadership," the solutions Bush calls for, are more complex than he -- and many other Republicans who have never held national office -- seems to recognize.
He criticized Obama for drawing a "red line" against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons, then failing to follow through. Many of Obama's defenders have filed the same complaint. But what would Bush do? "Under my strategy," he said, "the aim would be to draw the [Syrian] moderates together and back them up as one force . . . not just in taking the fight to the enemy but in helping them to form a stable moderate government once ISIS is defeated and Assad is gone." How would he do this? By replicating his brother's surge in Iraq. After all, he added with blithe confidence, "the strategic elements in both cases [Iraq circa 2007 and Syria today] are the same" -- thus demonstrating that he and his speechwriters have no understanding of the tangled politics in Syria or of what made the Iraqi surge work to the extent that it did.
The most malleable concept here is "Islamic moderates" -- the proper definition seems to be "Muslims who are willing to follow the US lead," which actually says less about them than about us. Following the Surge -- which if you recall at the time escalated the violence without any tangible results -- a number Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq made a deal with the US where in exchange for money and protection from Shiite militias and the central Iraqi government they turned against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, thereby becoming "Islamic moderates." When the US left, the deal broke down, and the same tribal leaders discovered they would be better off siding with ISIS than with the Maliki government. Clearly, for them becoming "radicals" or "moderates" is mere tactics.
I don't think I've mentioned this before, but for some insight into where Bush's money comes from, see Nomi Prins: All In: The Bush Family Goes for Number Three (With the Help of Its Bankers). You don't think he's running for president on brains or looks, now do you?
Matt Riedl: Kris Kobach comments on how GOP has done on six key issues: Kansas' Secretary of State is probably more wired into ALEC and its push to enact right-wing legislation at the state level, so it's interesting both what he considers the critical issues and how he measures progress. The six: "guns, abortion, elections, illegal immigration, taxation and spending, and courts." He likes what Kansas has done on the first three: "constitutional carry" means criminals as well as citizens don't have to get permits or have any training to carry guns; late-term abortions have been banished in Kansas, though he doesn't mention that the trick there was extralegal: the murder of Dr. George Tiller; and Kobach himself has been empowered to prosecute his imaginary "election fraud" cases. He's had more trouble pushing his anti-immigrant laws (hint: there are business interests in the state that profit from cheap labor). On taxes, he touts the Brownback cuts that have brought disaster, but bemoans this year's regressive tax increase that was needed to keep the state solvent. As for the courts, he complains about "no accountability" and says "we need to have a court that's not activist in striking things down." The main complaint Republicans have with the Kansas Supreme Court is that the Court has ruled that the State Constitution requires adequate funding of local schools, and that messes with their tax/spending cut agenda. But then Kobach has such a peculiar notion of constitutionality that he's constantly running into trouble with the courts.
Some Iran Deal links:
Abbas Milani/Michael McFaul: What the Iran-Deal Debate Is Like in Iran: Long story short, most Iranians -- especially the sort of people who westerners hope will moderate the Revolution -- support the deal, while many of those who are heavily invested in Iran's opposition to the west are opposed to the deal (much like their hawkish counterparts in the US and Israel -- indeed the rationales and tactics are almost equivalent):
Conservative opponents of the deal tend to emphasize its near-term negative security consequences. They point out that the agreement will roll back Iran's nuclear program, which was intended to deter an American or Israeli attack, and thereby increase Iran's vulnerability. They have denounced the system for inspecting Iranian nuclear facilities as an intelligence bonanza for the CIA. And they have issued blistering attacks on the incompetence of Iran's negotiating team, claiming that negotiators caved on many key issues and were outmaneuvered by more clever and sinister American diplomats.
And yet such antagonism appears to be about more than the agreement's clauses and annexes. The deal's hardline adversaries also seem concerned about the same longer-term consequences that the moderates embrace. For instance, IRGC leaders must worry that a lifting of sanctions will undermine their business arrangements for contraband trade. In a not-too-discreet reference to these concerns, Rouhani declared them to be "peddlers of sanctions," adding that "they are angry at the agreement" while the people of Iran pay the price for their profiteering. Over time, more exposure to the wider world of commerce is likely to diminish if not destroy the IRGC's lucrative no-bid government contracts for infrastructure and construction projects.
Perhaps more threatening for this coalition is the loss of America as a scapegoat for all domestic problems. The conservatives need an external enemy to excuse their corrupt, inefficient, and repressive rule. Some have even suggested that the United States is trying to do to Iran what it did to the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev foolishly trusted U.S. President Ronald Reagan and sought closer ties with the West. The result was the collapse of the Soviet regime.
Obviously, some conservatives like Ayatollah Khamanei are not too worried about the deal bringing down the political system, but he probably has a broader view of the system than the Revolutionary Guards do. Conversely, Reagan's opening to Gorbachev was opposed by nearly all of Reagan's cold war advisers, who were convinced to the end that the Evil Empire's reform efforts were just a feint to get the US to lower its guard. Deal critics who keep bringing up Iranian mobs chanting "death to America" are every bit as far estranged from reality.
Michael R Gordon: Head of Group Opposing Iran Accord Quits Post, Saying He Backs Deal: The group, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) was founded by Gary Samore several years ago to agitate for harsh sanctions against Iran over its suspected (alleged) nuclear program. However, Samore concluded that the deal does in fact address his concerns, so he's come out in favor of it, saying, "I think President Obama's strategy succeeded. He has created economic leverage and traded it away for Iranian nuclear concessions." UANI, in turn, rejected the deal, nudged him out, and replaced him with a more politically dependable flack, Joe Lieberman (you remember: McCain's favorite "useful idiot"). Samore, by the way, is still very anti-Iran.
He is also not convinced that Iran will continue to adhere to the accord once economic sanctions are lifted. Even so, he argues, the accord will put the United States in a stronger position to respond than a congressional rejection would.
"We will have bought a couple of years, and if Iran cheats or reneges we will be in an even better position to double down on sanctions or, if necessary, use military force," Mr. Samore said. "If I knew for certain that in five years they would cheat or renege, I'd still take the deal."
He'd take the deal because he seems to be one of the few people who was actually worried about Iran's "nuclear program" -- as opposed to the many who have cynically manufactured the spectre of an Iranian bomb to show off their own toughness. Had those people actually been worried, they would have been hard pressed to favor a strategy -- continued sanctions and threats of war -- that would only push Iran's efforts further underground over one that fully discloses whatever Iran is doing.
Richard Silverstein: Israeli Ex-Security Chiefs Endorse Iran Nuclear Deal: Thirty-six of them, although some appear more interested in the bonanza of military hardware Obama is offering Israel. The fact is that Israeli opinion at all levels is very divided on the deal, so you'd think that Americans -- especially those whose primary loyalty is to Israel -- would be equally divided. But Netanyahu has made a big deal out of rejecting the deal -- and I suspect this is for pure political reasons, as it benefits him to show his right-wing supporters that he can stand up to America and even kick her around a little -- and AIPAC is less an Israeli front than the Likud's Washington PAC.
Mel Levine: On Iran, a regrettable rush to judgment: A former congressman (D-CA 1983-93) and AIPAC board member comes out in favor of the Iran deal, arguing that "my friends in AIPAC and some of my friends in Israel have made a regrettable rush to judgment in immediately opposing the Iran agreement and doing so in ways likely to cause long-term harm to Israel, especially in terms of Israel's vital need for bipartisan support in the United States."
Daniel Levy: Israel's Iran Deal Enthusiasts: An authoritative summary of Israeli reaction to the Iran Deal, which roughly breaks down: against are the politicians and pundits, especially Netanyahu; in favor are the security and science czars (Uzi Even, a physics professor and former senior scientist at the Dimona nuclear reactor, concluded "the deal was written by nuclear experts and blocks every path I know to the bomb"). Levy goes on to explain Israel's strategly:
Israel led the push to isolate Iran via focusing on its nuclear program and the nonproliferation imperative. That took some chutzpah, given that Israel sits on the Middle East's only nuclear weapons stockpile -- but before milk and honey, Israel has always been a land flowing with chutzpah. Israel assumed that either its own Washington lobby could indefinitely hold U.S. negotiators to an unrealistically maximalist negotiating position or that Iran would never offer a pragmatic compromise or both. For as long as the deadlock held, Iran would remain at least a permanently sanctioned pariah; regime change was the preferred alternative, successful diplomacy was never the goal.
The bet paid off pretty well for the better part of two decades. Despite its size and lack of natural regional allies, Israel has enjoyed a degree of unchallenged regional hegemony, freedom of military action, and diplomatic cover that it is understandably reluctant to concede or even recalibrate. Israel's status has been underwritten by U.S. preeminence in the region, which offered other countries there a binary choice: Either side with the United States and, by extension, go easy on Israel or stand against it and be isolated or worse (see: Iraq).
Ben Norton: AIPAC spending estimated $40 million to oppose Iran Deal:
In the first half of 2015, AIPAC spent approximately $1.7 million lobbying Congress to oppose the deal. Yet this is mere chump change compared to what it has since funneled into advertisements and lobbying.
AIPAC created a new tax-exempt lobbying group in July called Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran. The sole purpose of the organization is to oppose the Iran deal -- which, in spite of the name of the group, will in fact prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons (weapons the Iranian government denies ever even seeking in the first place, and for which there is not a shred of evidence) in return for an end to Western sanctions on the country.
Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran is spending up to $40 million to place anti-Iran deal ads in 35 states, according to the Times, up from a previous estimate of $20 million. This figure may increase even more as the 60-day period in which Congress can review the deal draws to a close.
Part of AIPAC's lobbying effort involves flying members of Congress to Israel for some intensive Hasbara; for instance, see: AIPAC taking all but 3 freshmen Congresspeople to Israel in effort to sabotage Iran deal.
Gareth Porter: Don't Expect Much Change in Post-Vienna US Middle East Policy: That's basically because Obama is pushing the deal not as a diplomatic breakthrough which buries past sins and opens up a future of US-Iranian cooperation but as a narrow arrangement which reliably contains Iran's malevolent nuclear ambitions while changing nothing else. (Porter previously complained about this in Obama's Line on the Iran Nuclear Deal: A Second False Narrative. You can get a sense of Porter's take on Iran's nuclear program from his book title, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.)
There are obviously some differences between the administration and its pro-Israel and Saudi critics regarding Iran's regional role. Otherwise Obama would not even acknowledge the possibility of discussions with Iran in the future. But it would be a mistake to ignore the degree to which Obama's weakness in the face of the lobby's arguments about the regional dimension of the agreement reflects its acceptance of the basic premises of those arguments -- just as it has accepted the lobby's premise that Iran has been trying obtain nuclear weapons.
Obama and senior administration officials have repeated many times in the past two years the mantra that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism and that its regional role is destabilizing. Key US national security institutions also continue to reinforce that hoary political line on Iran as well. The well-worn habits of mind of senior officials and institutional interest will certainly continue to impose severe limits on the administration's diplomatic flexibility with regard to both Iran and Saudi Arabia through the end of the Obama administration.
As you should recall, Netanyahu has been harping about the Iranian threat since day one of the Obama administration. Most likely his real concern was to deflect any desire Obama might have to pressure Israel into a settlement with the Palestinians, but Obama seems to have taken Netanyahu's talk at face value. He then came up with a real solution to the hypothetical problem -- unlike Netanyahu's unilateral bombing fantasies, which would only have made matters worse -- so I suppose it makes sense that he's talking like his real solution addresses a real problem, but it also feeds the opposition's rhetoric. On the other hand, it's hard to believe that any of the deal's opponents ever thought Iran was serious about developing nuclear weapons -- otherwise, they'd embrace the real solution. (Indeed, there are a few such people.) Still, the real payoff of an Iran deal would come if the US and Iran could work together on diplomatic solutions, especially in Syria and Iraq (where both nations oppose ISIS).
Other Middle East links:
Omar Ashour: Rabaa's massacre: The political impact: After Egypt's military coup removed democratically elected president Mohammed Morsi and his government, the regime cracked down violently on protesters, killing at least 600 in one 10 hour stretch in 2013. The author compares this to other notorious government "crimes against humanity."
Michael Young: Talks suggest the endgame is afoot in Syrian crisis: Reports on Russian efforts to negotiate some form of resolution on Syria with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the US, aimed at a compromise between the old Syrian regime (with or without Assad) and whatever qualifies as "moderate" opposition -- supposedly Jaysh Al Fatah is involved ("including the Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat Al Nusra") but ISIS/ISIL is out. This occurs in the wake of a series of government defeats, weakening Assad's position. It also seems like a sane turn, unlike the US's schizo attacks both on Assad and ISIS, or Turkey's similar attacks both on ISIS and the Kurds.
Nancy LeTourneau: "The Obama Method" and Potential Realignment in the Middle East: The interesting news here is that Iran will hold talks with the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on Syria and Yemen. Iran supports Assad in Syria (GCC members have helped finance oppositions groups, including Salafist Jihadis) and has backed the Houthis in Yemen (Saudi Arabia is bombing the Houthis there), so this is a case where both sides should talk because the shooting has been intolerable. Such talks aren't tied to the US-Iran Deal, but the Deal makes them much more likely to happen, even to be productive.
Also see the author's President Obama on Finding Openings. Mostly quotes from journalists Obama recently engaged, he talked about how Nixon didn't know how his overture to China might work out at the time, but he saw that as an example of the sort of "openings" he looked to create. LeTourneau adds:
That is an incredibly wise grasp of how history works -- even for the most powerful person on the planet. It is a striking rebuke of much that we hear from would-be Republican leaders these days who presume that a President of the United States can control world events via military dominance. For those with some knowledge of history, it is especially important given that the discussion is taking place about a country where we tried that back in 1953 and paid the price for it via the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
She also quotes the rarely lucid Tom Friedman:
What struck me most was what I'd call an "Obama doctrine" embedded in the president's remarks. It emerged when I asked if there was a common denominator to his decisions to break free from longstanding United States policies isolating Burma, Cuba and now Iran. Obama said his view was that "engagement," combined with meeting core strategic needs, could serve American interests vis-a-vis these three countries far better than endless sanctions and isolation. He added that America, with its overwhelming power, needs to have the self-confidence to take some calculated risks to open important new possibilities -- like trying to forge a diplomatic deal with Iran that, while permitting it to keep some of its nuclear infrastructure, forestalls its ability to build a nuclear bomb for at least a decade, if not longer.
Also, a few links for further study:
Marshall Ganz: Organizing for Democratic Renewal: Essay written in 2007 (h/t Nancy LeTourneau: Balancing Private Wealth With Public Voice). Ganz starts off by quoting Sidney Verba ("Democracy is based on the promise that equality of voice can balance inequality of resources.") and Alexis de Tocqueville ("In democratic countries, knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others." I think his key insight is:
But only by joining with others could we come to appreciate the extent to which our fates are linked, gain an understanding of our common interests, and make claims on the political power we needed to act on those interests.
The notion of a public interest, which in pre-Bowling Alone days was taken for granted, has taken a beating over the last 30-40 years, reducing American democracy into a raw contest between private interests. Still, the public even now gets some lip service, as one politician after another asserts that the private profits they seek will somehow be good for everyone. (My favorite example remains Bush's giveaway to the timber industry, happily named the Healthy Forests Initiative.)
Christina Larson: The End of Hunting? Essay from 2006, arguing that "only progressive government can save a great American pastime." Good description of Kansas' open access program. (I'm not aware of the state's recent ultra-right turn endangering this program, but it has resulted in steep rises for hunting and fishing licenses. And the Republicans' lust to pre-emptively exterminate the lesser prairie chicken -- lest the species' endangered status cramps local oil interests -- is nothing short of shameful.)
Rick Perlstein: The New Holy Grail of GOP Primaries: Piece touches on several Republican presidential candidates, their benefactors, and the idiot press. Here's just one story, featuring Ohio Governor John Kasich:
"Randy Kendrick, a major contributor and the wife of Ken Kendrick, the owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, rose to say she disagreed with Kasich's decision to expand Medicaid coverage, and questioned why he'd said it was 'what God wanted.'" Kasich's "fiery" response: "I don't know about you, lady. But when I get to the pearly gates, I'm going to have to answer what I've done for the poor."
Other years, before other audiences, such public piety might have sounded banal. This year, it's enough to kill a candidacy:
"About 20 audience members walked out of the room, and two governors also on the panel, Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, told Kasich they disagreed with him. The Ohio governor has not been invited back to a Koch seminar."
Which is, of course, astonishing. But even more astonishing was the lesson the Politico drew from it -- one, naturally, about personalities: "Kasich's temper has made it harder to endear himself to the GOP's wealth benefactors." His temper. Not their temper. Not, say, "Kasich's refusal to kowtow before the petulant whims of a couple of dozen greedy nonentities who despise the Gospel of Jesus Christ has foreclosed his access to the backroom cabals without which a Republican presidential candidacy is inconceivable."
To see how consequential the handing over of this kind of power to nonentities like these is, consider the candidates' liabilities with another constituency once considered relevant in presidential campaigns: voters. Chris Christie's home state approval rating, alongside his opening of a nearly billion-dollar hole in New Jersey's budget, is 35 percent. While Christie has only flirted with federal law enforcement, Rick Perry has been indicted. Scott Walker's approval rating among the people who know him best (besides David Koch) is 41 percent, and only 40 percent of Wisconsinites believe the state is heading in the right direction. Bobby Jindal's latest approval rating in the Pelican State is 27 percent. Senator Lindsey Graham announced his presidency by all but promising he'd take the country to war; Jeb Bush by telling Americans they need to work more. Rick Santorum not so long ago made political history: he lost his Senate seat by 19 points, an unprecedented feat for a two-term incumbent.
Richard Silverstein: Transforming the US into Clone of Israeli National Security State: Article lists many points where techniques and technologies Israel developed for controlling the Palestinians have been promoted and often applied by the US, both in operations abroad (e.g., targeted assassinations) and at home (often by local police departments). One of the most alarming things about Israel is how eagerly many Americans follow its model for dealing with the world.