by Dukasaur on Mon Dec 17, 2018 10:40 pm
It's not a question of Israeli "influence", it's a question of Israel being indispensable to the U.S. long-term plans in the region. Sure, the U.S. has Arab allies, but it doesn't really trust any of them. Israel is the one inherently pro-Western nation in the Middle East that the U.S. can count on if the shit really hits the fan.
In WWII, the Americans referred to Britain as their "unsinkable aircraft carrier" on the coast of Europe. That's what Israel is today, America's unsinkable aircraft carrier on the edge of Western Asia, as is Japan in Easter Asia. What's more, it's a nuclear-armed unsinkable aircraft carrier. If the Americans decided to nuke Damascus or whatever, I can very well see that the political repercussions of doing it themselves would be too serious to contemplate, but getting the IDF to do it for them would get the job done while allowing them to keep their own hands clean.
“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
― Voltaire