So how does that reshape your argument?
They vote overwhelmingly for Democrats every time. I agree that’s a very unique type of “swayability!”
By the way, this thread was originally about the invasion of Iraq. How did we get here?
[QUOTE=dontbesojumpy]
i’ve provided numerous quotes, links, articles, etc all supported the (now fairly obvious) fact that israel is a special ally for numerous complicated factors, none of which currently have anything to do with the cold war (you do realize it’s over now, right?)
[/QUOTE]
You’ve provided numerous LINKS, but they don’t actually show anything, unfortunately for you. They certainly don’t prove whatever case you think you are proving with them. As for the cold war, yeah, it’s over. And? The relationship the US has with Israel was forged during that period. It continues because, you know, the region that Israel is in is still of vital strategic importance to the US. Why you can’t see or understand this seemingly basic point is beyond me.
Saying that the US has a special relationship to Israel because of religion is beyond the pale, and will require extraordinary proofs to demonstrate. Saying that the US has a special relationship with Israel because the oil in the region is of vital strategic importance to not just the US but to the world, and that we need strong allies in the region is pretty much on par with saying water is wet. That YOU can’t seem to grasp it is, sadly, your problem, not mine. I have no intention of providing proofs that water is wet. If you don’t feel the need to provide more than some google glurge to backup your own assertions, well, that’s your lookout.
Hint…you seriously need to READ a history book, not take one part of Wiki out of context. Truman’s support was rather limp, as was the US’s support for Israel, and stemmed mainly because of the links between many Arab nations and the Soviet Union (ever notice how a lot of enemies of Israel use Soviet equipment? Think that MIGHT be an important piece of information wrt this hijacked discussion?). It wasn’t until the Middle East became more central to US strategic needs that the ‘special relationship’ between the US and Israel really took off, and this was, again, mainly due to cold war calculations. Israel was a friend…must of the rest of the Middle East wasn’t, and a lot of it was at least tacitly in the Soviets sphere of influence during that time period. Post cold war the Middle East actually became MORE strategically important to the US…thus the continuation of the relationship. Again, no hokey religions bullshit needed…just open eyed real-politic and geo-political maneuvering .
You disagree? Then PROVE it…lets see some actual indications that religious zionism is the sole or even main reason behind why the US has such a close relationship with Israel.
Oh, I agree…there ARE numerous complicated reasons and factors for why the US has close relationships with some of our allies and not with others. And Israel is no exception. But religious zionism is pretty far down the list…as I said, it’s somewhere around ‘there are lots of Jews in New York so that’s why we have a close relationship with Israel’. Just above ‘We have a close relationship with Israel to prevent tiger attacks in Alabama, since everyone knows tigers (tigers LOVE pepper…they hate cinnamon, see?) won’t attack there if we have a close relationship with Israel’.
Your ‘NUMEROUS links/articles provided already’, sadly, don’t demonstrate shit to anyone except you.
I’d say Marley is doing a wonderful job of cleaning your clock on this hijack issue. Again, it’s not up to me to prove your case…extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. And, thus far, you haven’t even given mediocre proofs of whatever the hell it is you think you are asserting.
Yeah, 'cause my own ‘ravings’ are so hard to believe. I mean, who is going to believe that oil is IMPORTANT? And that there is any of that oil stuff in the Middle East? I know…it’s a bit hard to grasp.
But I’m a ‘rabble rouser’ who knows knows how to use a caps lock key for more than just emphasis.
God of the gaps, ehe? I never claimed that there is 100% no connection. More like 98%, with the religious nutters tying with the anti-tiger movement for last place in actual reasons the US supports Israel. Well, perhaps the religious nutters are a BIT higher than the anti-tiger Alabama folks, but it’s pretty close.
-XT
it literally affects nothing whatsoever. it doesn’t affect the overall power of the jewish lobby and doesn’t diminish their influence on the scope of american politics.
What’s your point…? First you deny Jews have any voting power, now you want to bicker over how they vote. You’re just being contentious for the sake of it. You are not seeking to provide any kind of intelligent contribution, it’s just “you want to be right. About SOMETHING.”
Be careful how you interpret data. “majority” dem votes are on the threshold of 50% in all “majority” cases. In some years, the “majority” is under 50%, which means there’s a swayability of over 50% towards other parties. If some of the independents vote replubican (as has been known to happen), the majority shifts.
You really, really seem hellbent on arguing for the sake of winning. You’re putting up your stance, what you think and believe against cites and expert analysis. That’s how we got here.
Now you’re arguing against quotes from members of the center of Jewish affairs, and to what end? To be right? What’s your point anymore…? First you say Jewish influence is negligible, now you want to nitpick who they support. It’s just masturbatory debate for the sake of it on your side.
Have you considered the role of hubris or narrow-minded self-assuredness in your axiomatic beliefs?
Also, do you do know what you have been debating is simply your belief–you’re putting that up against cites and stats and experts and actual politics and…reality. What’s the point? What’s your interest in this…? This has become more of your unwillingness to concede on points than it is about, again, reality. Have you noticed I admit to errors and misinterpretation/misreading of facts…because that’s all this is for me? I have no interest in being “right.” I just want to understand the facts more.. I’m seeking knowledge and a better understanding. I am not seeking to be ‘correct’ at all costs as it seems with you, Marley.
I think that’s the major difference between you and I on this matter. I think that’s why I can admit to misreading cites while you, upon being proven wrong, just descend to the next thing you can find to keep arguing…anything to get the last word in, to debate until you win. This isn’t sport for me—it’s just learning.
I 'm done debating against your opinion and don’t really need to know what you believe or think. I posited the question “why is Israel a special ally” and have since taken it upon myself to research. I believe I’ve come up with a satisfactory answer based on a varying cross-section of citations and analysis by people much, much smarter than me: it’s a group of mitigating circumstances, not the least of which IS the Zionist religious aspect, which we support overwhelmingly in many degrees. it simply is a factor–as supported by numerous cites and documentations, a factor that is extenuated by the overwhelming role of both the Jewish-American lobbying, voting and financial influence as well as the American Christian influence on politics, election, and policy.
Both of these groups have specific biblical and religious interests that dictate their political motivations–and they have the power to influence entire election outcomes. So, as I sought to understand, I have come up with a clear answer: religion is a MAJOR factor into our special relationship with Israel. Ipso-facto, as supported.
That concludes this portion of the thread. Back to Iraq…
i’m sure you’re a qualified statistician and clearly you are an objective and unbias individual with no motivations to just “be right.”
we should all stand back and listen to your ideas and opinions as you are clearly unmotivated by anything but the facts and cites.
American Jewish population and demography
When a group is motivated my religious, zionistic ideals and has such political influence, and they push the relationship and support of Israel based on their religious motivations AND have the power of electorate to make or break a president–it’s simply connected.
we agree it’s a factor, if you somehow mathematically calculate all ^^^that to 2% over-all influence, i’d love to see your calculations.
at any rate, we agree, so i’m going to at this point say “that’s what i thought to begin with, it’s been fun confirming it with you guys” (who both agree it’s a factor) and process all i’ve learned.
i’m still not sure why both of you said flatly “it is not a factor,” argued for forever, then both say “ok it’s a factor.”
You said Jews were mostly Republican, so the Democrats had to be steadfast supporters of Israel to win their votes. When it turns out that Jews are overwhelmingly pro-Democrat, which means the Democrats don’t have to do any such thing, it turns out that it never mattered in the first place. What a fascinating twist!
Do you not understand that I am responding to your argument? You said Jews were a powerful and fluid voting bloc and that their support was crucial to Democrats because they can’t win the presidency without the support of Jewish voters. I was pointing out that that’s wrong on every level.
What? I have no idea what you’re trying to say here.
No, I haven’t noticed that. I’ve noticed that when you’re called on a mistake, you acknowledge the mistake and then say the mistake doesn’t matter because the point you were supporting with the mistake is still true.
Thought you were done with this hijack.
[QUOTE=dontbesojumpy]
i’m sure you’re a qualified statistician and clearly you are an objective and unbias individual with no motivations to just “be right.”
we should all stand back and listen to your ideas and opinions as you are clearly unmotivated by anything but the facts and cites.
[/QUOTE]
I am totally unmotivated to provide you with cites (especially your definition of what is or isn’t a cite) proving water is wet.
And? Again, WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS PROVES? Are California, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania or Florida lobbying hard for a close relationship with Israel? A cursory glance at that list seems to indicate that all of those states are ‘blue’ states (well, except Florida). Are you supposing that the Democratic Party is the one driving this ‘special relationship’ with Israel…or was this supposed to ‘prove’ something else? Or was it just more google glurge that you did a search and linked to the first thing that sounded vaguely like whatever point you are trying to make with all of this? Or are we to guess what it’s supposed to mean?
And when you use Occam’s Razor and see that the US has vital strategic needs in a region that go beyond all that bullshit, and when you look at how little real, actual impact religious nuttery of any type has on the real, actual running of our government it’s pretty easy to come to the conclusion that this isn’t really all that complicated…we have a ‘special relationship’ with Israel for the same reasons we have ‘special relationships’ with countries like the UK and South Korea/Japan…because they are in our mutual best interests.
It was a throw away line so that I could work in the tiger angle. That said, you seem to be equating raw numbers of voters with real, actual political influence both on the elected officials and, more importantly, on the entrenched bureaucracy.
Well, we can agree that enough has been said on this hijack anyway. And I suppose we can agree that it’s a factor, though obviously not on how much of a real factor it is. C’est la vie…
-XT
I didn’t say ANY of this. Bard, Helmreich, Mearsheimer, Walt, Vaught et al. said this.
I simply repeated their data.
I QUOTED the Democratic factoid to indicate their political influence in general, of which you diminished. My point was always “they are a viable and powerful lobbying group and have strong influence over elections.”
which remains true, regardless of their partisan leanings one way or the other (which is arbitrary).
so, to restate what i said before (as much as you have voraciously tried to convolute it): Israel is a special ally , in non-negligibly large portion, due to the religion, the least of which is illustrated by both the agenda and power of the israeli lobbiest in america and the christian groups who support israel.
if you want to continue to debate the percentage of this portion, feel free to lay out some math. bottom line is it IS a factor, which is what i said to start with (and you said “no it’s not” in no uncertain terms, the reneged, now just want to bicker).
point is, what i said initially is true.
you said it’s not, then said “ok it is true…” but still want to debate.
you agree.
stop trying to debate. jesus.
In other words, you said it. This is a silly attempt at nitpicking.
It remains true even though your arguments in support of that point were wrong. Got it. Anyway a lobby and a voting block are not the same thing. I think most people would agree AIPAC is a strong lobbying group. As a voting block, Jews don’t have a lot of influence: they’re a small group and in presidential elections they’ve gone Democrat by on overwhelming margin for gernations.
This contention mostly hinges on what “non-negligibly large portion” means. Leaving out the fact that it’s redundant (if something is large, it’s non-negligible by definition), I think you’re wrong. The religious element is fairly far down the list of reasons Israel is a special ally: it’s below the geopolitical and oil issues, for example.
uh huh…
^why didn’t you just concede way back then it factors in? could have saved this whole discussion.
Because you’re saying it’s an important reason and I don’t think it is. What am I conceding again?
odd, if you look up Israeli Lobby on wikipedia or the various other articles i posted, every single one gives the voting turn out and the power of voting OF THE GROUP as one in the same. oh, also, you say they don’t have a lot of influence, yet i’ve provided with the, you know, statistics about how they have high enough numbers and voter turn out in key electorate states to affect election outcomes.
i can’t help you accept reality.
it’s fine you don’t THINK it is.
it’s just what you think. you did say it was not a factor AT ALL now want to bicker over how important of a factor it is.
you’re backsliding…
it’s an important enough factor that there’s all this cited literature discussing the matter, discussing the power and interest of lobbist/christians/ etc, so it’s at least THAT significant.
whatever you think of it is moot.
[QUOTE=dontbesojumpy]
it’s just what you think. you did say it was not a factor AT ALL now want to bicker over how important of a factor it is.
you’re backsliding…
[/QUOTE]
This seems to be an Inigo Montoya moment here…what Marley wrote there doesn’t say what you seem to THINK it says. No backsliding here…you took what was a categorical denial of your assertion as a 100% denial of the entire religious influence on the process, which isn’t what he said. IOW, what we have HEEAH is a FAILYA TO COMMUNICATE…
The trouble is, you’ve yet to demonstrate the core position…which is, realistically, how influential ARE those lobbies? There are plenty of lobbies in the country, some of them more powerful than the Israeli lobbies or the Christian lobbies (both of which have divergent agendas depending on the issue…unless you are saying that Christian lobby groups are in lock step with Israeli lobby groups on all issues? :dubious:). You’ve yet to demonstrate a causal link between US foreign policy wrt Israel and said lobby groups…or supposed voter desire wrt the subject at hand. In short, you’ve provided some not so interesting data points (some of which have been shown to be wrong or that you are using incorrectly) and then used them to connect your own picture of dots to your own pre-determined conclusion.
-XT
Please explain why I’m supposed to care. Also, it’s “one and the same.”
And I’ve explained again and again that they are a small group of people who vote the same way in pretty much every presidential election. I think you’re assuming that the Jewish vote is fully up for grabs every election, and it isn’t. As evidence, I remind you again that Jews vote Democratic at a very high rate.
That’s not what backsliding means, and you’re trying to make this sound like an incredibly significant admission when it isn’t. I said (keeping things brief) that the religious issue doesn’t factor in at all. I’ve said since then that’s not important and way down the list of issues that really shape the relationship between the U.S. and Israel. You’ve made it out to be an issue of paramount importance, which it isn’t. That’s what we’re arguing about. If I’d typed a few more words the first time and said “It’s not an important issue and it ranks below several others,” it wouldn’t have averted this discussion. You also seem to think Israel is the overriding factor in how Jews vote, which it isn’t.
kaay.
like i said initially: it’s a factor. i never asserted how much of a factor. it’s a debatably significant factor, otherwise lobbyists would be ignored. as would the christian right, as would all zionist motivations. i don’t think anyone has a percentage or accurate statistical reading of how much of a factor, but it’s not something dimissive (simply because it’s NOT DISMISSED, not my politicians, not by lobbist, not by political analysists, not by anyone but you, really).
it’s fine if you think it’s not a very large or important factor, but you started out saying it wasn’t a factor at all, which means you don’t really know anyway.
like i said, it’s an important enough factor to garner all the literature and analysis by people (who actually matter–not just some internet forum debate hobbiest), so it matters at the very least that much.
don’t be petty and point out typos or errors. after all, wtf does “gernations” mean?
come on.
just grow up.
let this go.
it’s a factor. that’s all i ever said. and i was right. i pointed out in a very early post a long list of various factors, only one of wich was religion. your reply was “no it’s not a factor.”
you were wrong. it is. so are the others. that’s all that needs to be said. let it go now.
:smack:
Maybe you have no idea how your posts look to other people, but I think that you should realize that you do appear to be insisting that the religious element is a big deal. Just to quote your first post on that topic:
I realize there are two question marks in there, but you not only say it’s an important factor, you say it’s pretty much the only one. And when people talk about other factors, you’re always skeptical of those and come back to the religious element.
[QUOTE=dontbesojumpy]
like i said initially: it’s a factor. i never asserted how much of a factor. it’s a debatably significant factor, otherwise lobbyists would be ignored. as would the christian right, as would all zionist motivations. i don’t think anyone has a percentage or accurate statistical reading of how much of a factor, but it’s not something dimissive (simply because it’s NOT DISMISSED, not my politicians, not by lobbist, not by political analysists, not by anyone but you, really).
[/QUOTE]
It’s a factor in the same way that, say, Jupiter is a factor in the celestial mechanics of the Earth/Moon system. Which is to say that it’s a factor, but it’s a pretty small factor.
Let me ask you a simple question here. Those Christian lobbies…they would probably like to see abortion outlawed, right? Probably more than they would like to forward, say, our ‘special relationship’ with Israel…right? How’s that working out for them? How about prayer in school? Or any of the other touch-stone Christian lobby type hot button issues? At a glance they don’t seem to be doing all that well with their core issues…yet you are positing (such as you have posited anything) that they DO have some sort of large control over THIS issue, even though they don’t seem to have much over a lot of their other core issues. Why is that? What’s your theory there?
But you seem to be back-peddling here (and, since we are getting all splleign Nazi here, it’s ‘which’, not ‘wich’ :p). No one said it was no factor at all…most opposing you in this thread are saying that it’s a very small factor at most. Our real-politic aims in the region are a much, much larger factor. If there was no oil in the Middle East, if the region was of no interest to the US, if it wasn’t one of the large regions of contention during the cold war era between the US and the Soviets then our relationship with Israel would be much, much less than it is, whether there be lots-o-Jews there or not…whether the creation of a new Temple would bring about the end times or not. The fact that it IS in such a region, and we DO have the history we do with Israel is the prime reason we have that ‘special relationship’, not the fact that there are some lobby groups that support Israel for one reason or another.
-XT
yeah. i was asking.
that’s how questions work.
you immediately said it’s not a factor at all.
only, it is.
how important of a factor…? that’s up for debate. If it’s not an “important” factor, why do so many politicians pay attention to the desires of Zionists? Why do we allow Israel to make religious statements with the aid we provide…? Why is there so much literature discussing the role of religion in US/Israeli relations?
something no one wants to comment on is the fact we support a zionist nation with a religious agenda with money and military assets to use at their unchecked discretion.
how is religion not a pretty major factor in that…?
supporting israel as an ally–and they have called the US their "only real ally–when israel is a unilaterally religiously motivated nation, makes our relationship a religion one, no?
zionist judeo-christian sects have enough voting and lobbying power to, according to professional political analysts, determine election outcomes.
so are you saying you know better than professional political analysts? or is it you simply are unwilling to accept this data as it doesn’t jibe with your opinion?
you should read slower. because yes, Marley said explicictly it was not a factor.
i quoted it, so you have multiple chanced to read it.
YOU might not have said it was “no factor,” but *he *did.
and “most of who oppose your posts…”
there’s just two of you.
unless you have a mouse in your pocket…
and both of you agree with me, but you’re both too stubborn to just let it go…