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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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Foreign lobbying from any given country could be banned any time they wanted to, of course, and they do so when it suits US imperial interests. Much of the money that does come through is just recycled US "aid" and US NGO directed.
And if legalized bribery is corruption (it is of course) then every major US politician is corrupt (they are of course).
It shows how much more interested the US state is in maximalist imperial domination than in helping its people domestically. If we start doing a full accounting of who is really paying for what, it will be a grand transfer from the global south to the north at gunpoint. Israel is one of those guns.
Israel is fully dependent on US and other Western funding. Historically it has only taken a threat to withdraw support for it to immediately cease whatever depravity that was too overt for imperial PR to spin. The tail cannot wag the dog, the dog is by far dominant. It is the global superpower. What it can do is attempt to negotiate its interests right up to where its master balks.
The Zionist lobby is largely domestic. Most Zionists are Christian and the largest funders are business interests tied to the MIC, fossil fuels, finance, tech, etc. The usual players. The ruling class. They understand their class interests, they know that they will lose money and positions if Iran is not undermined, if Syria doesn't play ball, if Yemen does something as simple as a blockade.
Saudi Arabia is also a US asset for the petrodollar and its own part in destabilization, though it often plays more of a "both sides" role. They carried out a proxy campaign for the US against Yemen, for example. That is another genocide, one that Westerners are usually completely unaware of. Paralleling Gaza, initial statistics showed mass death of children, largely due to malnourishment due to US blockade and US-backef Saudi bombjng of civilian infrastructure. Paralleling Gaza, the statistics stopped updating because the people collecting them were targeted and killed.
Re: 9/11, the US found use in the Saudis' support for Salafist militancy, leveraging it against governments and liberation movements across the region. The US literally funded the "mujahideen" in Afghanistan, built the foundations of al Qaeda. 9/11 was just blowback for US foreign policy that it then ramped up. For example, Daesh and FSA are tightly interwoven and the US has elevated Daesh commanders to important ranks. Nobody really wonders why Daesh never attacks Israel.
The US invasion and heavy bombing campaign in Vietnam and Cambodia was not the tail wagging the dog. It was an anticommunist, pro-colonial effort done in perceived US interests and with the expectation of victory via their scorched earth tactics. It replayed much of the US invasion of Korea, which happened along virtually identical lines for the same rationale. The greatest difference was the scale of US ground troops' involvement, and just like the brigadier generals of the IDF, imperialists could not handle their task, they began to fall apart domestically due to having to pay literally any cost whatsoever for their crimes - even just PTSD.
The Domestic Christian Zionist movement is not 100% Republican. Not at all. There is bipartisan consensus among the haute bourgeoisie and their facilitators in the political class and academia. The upper echelons are not wholly partisan, either, that is something taught to the masses they attempt to manipulate. The richest donate widely to Dems and GOPers depending on the issue and timing. Yass is a libertarian that donates to both GOPers and Dems as well as several Zionist and islamophobic orgs, for example.
The global, US-based haute bourgeoisie benefit from the petrodollar and US dominance. They make their money from super-profits generated by these arrangements and fiscal manipulation via the dollar.
The political class serves bourgeois interests and the deep state is the most aware of this. Not the InfoWars absurd idea of the deep state, just your run-of-the-mill careerists in the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, US State Department, the Fed, and so on. They are tied together through their knowledge and advocacy for US supremacy as the global seat of capital. They don't all need to fully understand it, they only need to hear from "industry" and "finance" about how badly things will go if X country takes independent action. But they do, along with the largest monopolies, hire experts in the hopes of answering questions like, "what do US economic interests depend on?" And they get answers like, "dollar dependency, debts and surpluses denominated in dollars, and egficient 'market access' for US companies to buy up peripheral assets". Those experts are also largely credentialed through a well-maintaining imperial system, they come from think tanks and academia funded by the same people that run The Atlantic Council and so on.
The political class and the state bureaucracy are of course subordinate to capital, but they are truly on the same team. You don't gain or stay in those positions if you oppose the interests of US-dominated capital. You are filtered out. You lose your election with a lack of donors and party support, with "your" party supporting your "opposition" party candidate! You lose your job for not being a "team player", quietly losing promotions for unknown reasons, losing security clearance, and simply not being kept on when parties bring on their own people. The political class and bureaucrats learn this early in their careers and they, accordingly, exude smarmy careerism. They lash out dramatically if you threaten their ascendancy, too. They are vehemently reactionary towards sentiments for liberation movements because they care more about their own run for city council than any number of dead Palestinian kids.