The 'U.S. foreign policy establishment' in my phrasing includes the types of officials who have the most influence over U.S. foreign policy -- beginning with the President, the Secretary of State, the various advisory councils to the President, a number of more significant ambassadors, and so on; the legislative branch's more senior foreign policy officials such as the chairs and other committee heads of the Foreign Relations and related committees; and the most measurably influential policy planning & 'think tank' groups comprised typically of a rotating cadre of in and out of government big-names, wealthy funders, and selected academics & 'experts'. To a degree you can integrate a small number of highly welcomed pundits.

This isn't some sort of off-hand speculation -- go look up any empirically-based, record-using socio-political history of the origin of some U.S. foreign policy decision from far enough back that declassified records are available, and you find that those are the movers & shakers on foreign policy. Not the joint 'sense' of Congress or the American people or any other such nonsense.

There is no more top-down, arrogant, manipulative, and authoritarian sector of policy in this nation than its foreign policy. And that has very little to do with some 'politics end at the waters edge' fantasy.

And, no, they don't have to 'control' every Congressman and Senator. The policies currently being critiqued with regard to Israel would continue full bore, 100%, even if there was more dissent by less relevant Congressmen and Senators. Just like every Iraq-related policy was rammed straight through with nearly unanimous support among that 'foreign policy establishment'

I'm not saying that it's uninteresting to find out why so much of the Congress and Senate falls in line with the preferred policies of the pro-militarist front on Israeli policies.

I'm just saying that they aren't the determining factor in what policies are crafted and backed.

I would hope that no one believes any more that all you have to do is get some serious degree of Congressional or Senatorial dissent or barking or hearing about some foreign policy and it would change.

Say what you want about Iran-Contra; none of it, not the Boland amendment, not hearings, not protests, nothing we or Congress did seriously changed the direction of Reagan's aid to help the death squads slaughter civilians in order to undercut various rebellions or governments that the U.S. "FPE" didn't approve of. The Iran-Contra hearings themselves were designed to minimize the scope of investigation, mainly concerned about whether or not the President had maintained proper relations with Congress etc., and in the end were meaningless and the same murderous sub-villains returned to be in charge of U.S. foreign policy again -- e.g., Elliot Abrams, Negroponte, Poindexter.

Apply the same logic to questions about U.S. FPE support for Israeli militarism with that of its support for the Iraq war -- did anyone's dissent at any time interrupt for one moment the FPE's absolute commitment to carry out the war and keep at it? Did the 2006 elections change anything but prompt the Bush Jr. administration to launch one of the largest propaganda operations I've ever seen, which I refer to as "BUT YOU WILL ADMIT THE SURGE IS WORKING", otherwise known as "The SURGE"?

If we continue to allow the notion that the "interests" of the U.S. public are the same as the "interests" of the U.S. foreign policy establishment; if we continue to define "Israel" as meaning that which the U.S. and Israeli policy establishment want, then there really isn't a huge confusion.

It's good for the "U.S." (meaning its foreign policy establishment and pundit worshipers) to "support" that which we'll call "Israel" (meaning an overwhelmingly militarist Israeli establishment) because, well, shut up, that's why -- like so many things, what's good for the vast majority of the U.S. population is exactly what the powerful tell them is good for them, and also shut up.

Personally I'm not so mystified. I think there are some dynamics of this situation which make the elite establishment approach easier to propagandize and harder to critique, but in the end the U.S. foreign policy establishment supports what the Israeli militarist establishment does because the U.S. foreign policy establishment LIKES WHAT THE ISRAELI MILITARISTS ARE DOING.

They are paying them enormous sums to keep doing it. They are providing material and diplomatic support for the avoidance of any real settlement and an ongoing regional destabilization by an ultra-militarized local power. And that's the region that the U.S. establishment goes into absolute paroxysms of fear and hatred at the very very thought that some other regional power grow where all "our" oil lies ("our" meaning not what goes in your tank, they don't care about your gas tank, but "our" in the sense that the establishment wants to control & receive the supplies, destinations, and investments).

And in return, not only does the U.S. get the sort of regional militarist ally that the U.S. establishment likes, in return the Israeli militarist establishment gets farmed out to help arm & train whatever thugs and warlords around the world that the U.S. establishment wants to avoid hand-dirtying on. Central and South American thugs, African thugs, Central Asian thugs, it doesn't matter.

You and I might see decades of pathetic excuses of why this issue will not be settled with a negotiated settlement of a clearly illegal occupation, and think that this should have been settled like all other such issues.

Trust me -- were it ever to happen that the Israeli militarist establishment were somehow to be replaced by an entirely different set of leadership, the presumed 'lockstep' support of the "U.S." for "Israel" would change as rapidly.

Suddenly it would be the U.S. hawks freaking out at the irresponsible dovishness of the Israeli leadership.