How bad is for the USA the 'special relationship' with Israel?

And by that I also mean, of course, the leading but rather secretive role of the Zionist Lobby in shaping US foreign policy and US public opinion.

An interesting article by Maidhc Ó Cathail has been published at Voltaire Net and also his own blog.

Citing various authors of all political tendencies, he argues that the Zionist Lobby has a decades-long stranglehold on the US media, Congress and Presidency, such a powerful grab that looks almost impossible to break. However, as the USA is the main effective actor in global politics, rather than tiny Israel, it gets blamed for all that, regardless that the main instigator is Israel or the Zionist International. Of course, the USA is not blameless... but in any case it is not good for this country to have its foreign policy so strongly under the diktat of the Zionists, because obviously, whatever Chomsky says, there is no identity of interests between Israel and the USA. And certainly it is not of use for any country to have its foreign policy controlled by a foreign actor with its own particular interests.

A good example of these divergent interests are the Iraq wars. It was not the interest of the USA nor of most of its allies to trick Iraq into attacking Kuwait nor in a war of any sort against Iraq. The only ones interested in that were Israel and (guess who?) Iran. Iraq had been working for long in favor of US interests by warring against Iran, it had the support of Saudi Arabia, France and Turkey (at least), all them key US allies. But it posed a potential danger for Israel in the long run, would Iraq become too powerful. So now it has been demolished to a shadow of what it used to be, divided in a de facto civil war, deprived of any meaningful form of government and ready for partition when the time is ripe.

He argues for US citizens to become aware of the overwhelming power of the Zionist Lobby, to create a constituency of people aware and concerned by this issue. I'd say that's fine but while the Lobby controls in fact the media and the economy, the options for standard politicians to work independently in favor of sovereign US interests are nil. What the USA needs is a revolution of some sort: one that takes the economic and media power from the rich, most of which are effective Zionists, by grade or force.

The Voltaire Net article includes a video interview with Grant Smith of the Institute for Research on Middle Eastern Policy, on newly declassified files showing massive media bribery by the Zionist Lobby: