In helping Israel we help ourselves

In Front Page Magazine Martin Kramer takes on the question of whether the United State's alliance with Israel is truly in our best interests. Here is his conclusion:

United States support for Israel is not primarily the result of Holocaust guilt or shared democratic values; nor is it produced by the machinations of the "Israel Lobby." American support for Israel -- indeed, the illusion of its unconditionality - underpins the pax Americana in the eastern Mediterranean. It has compelled Israel's key Arab neighbors to reach peace with Israel and to enter the American orbit. The fact that there has not been a general Arab-Israeli war since 1973 is proof that this pax Americana, based on the United States-Israel alliance, has been a success. From a realist point of view, supporting Israel has been a low-cost way of keeping order in part of the Middle East, managed by the United States from offshore and without the commitment of any force. It is, simply, the ideal realist
alliance.

In contrast, the problems the United States faces in the Persian Gulf stem from the fact that it does not have an Israel equivalent there, and so it must massively deploy its own force at tremendous cost. Since no one in the Gulf is sure that the United States has the staying power to maintain such a presence over time, the Gulf keeps producing defiers of America, from Khomeini to Saddam to Bin Laden to Ahmadinejad. The United States has to counter them, not in the interests of Israel, but to keep the world's great reserves of oil out of the grip of the West's sworn enemies.

Go read the rest.

The people who lament our support for Israel and claim that our foreign policy has been "hijacked" by neo-cons (a code word for Jews) fail to understand this fundamental point. The Judeo Christian culture, our values, our "way" is superior to the Islamic way as it was superior to the communist way and the Nazi/fascist way before. If you deny that we have a moral duty to civilize the world then you must at least admit that we have a selfish one.