The difference between you, me, the poor black guy caught for shoplifting $50 worth of goods, Bin Laden, and The Sacklers is their connections to the Israeli ruling parties and intelligence services. In turn, those services are affiliated with AIPAC. AIPAC in turn heavily influences American politics.

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/03...

Steven Rosen, the former AIPAC official, illustrates AIPAC's power for the New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg by putting a napkin in front of him and saying, "In twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin." As Mearsheimer and Walt make clear, this is no idle boast, and they go on to say, "As will become clear, when issues relating to Israel come to the fore, Congress almost always votes to endorse the lobby's positions, usually in overwhelming numbers".

They note AIPAC President Howard Friedman telling the organization's members in August 2006, "AIPAC meets with every candidate running for Congress. These candidates receive in depth briefings to help them completely understand the complexities of Israel's predicament and that of the Middle East as a whole. We ask each candidate to author a "position paper" on their views of the U.S.-Israel relationship - so it is clear where they stand on the subject."

One congressional candidate (Harry Lonsdale) who went through this vetting process recounts that, "I found myself invited to AIPAC in Washington, D.C. fairly early in the campaign, for "discussions". It was an experience I will never forget. It wasn't enough that I was pro-Israel. I was given a list of vital topics and quizzed (read grilled) for my specific opinion on each. Actually I was told what my opinion must be, and exactly what words I was to use to express those opinions in public..... Shortly after that encounter at AIPAC, I was sent a list of American supporters of Israel..... that I was free to call for campaign contributions. I called, they gave, from Florida to Alaska."

AIPAC also keeps track of congressional voting records and direct funds to opponents of congressmen who don't follow their line.

Apart from Congress, Mearsheimer and Walt show successful Jewish activists in key government positions (particularly from the 1970's onwards), such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrahams, David Wurmser and Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the Clinton and Bush administrations. This political combination managed to steer George Bush, sideline Condoleeza Rice, and bully Colin Powell into the Iraq war . The authors show the enormous frustration of the CIA as their intelligence was distorted to support the lie of Iraqi WMD and start an unprovoked war that was not in the interests of the United States.

A feeble Congress votes record aid budgets to Israel (currently four billion dollars a year), with loans being converted to grants, and quick acquiescences to Israeli demands that aid be paid up front (which means the U.S. has to borrow it to give to them), and to the Israeli refusal to account for how it was spent, both necessary conditions for other aid recipients.

The whole process is supported by Jewish Think Tank activists such as Daniel Pipes, Michael Rubin, and Joshua Muravchik at the American Enterprise Institute, and prominent journalists such as William Kristol, Michael Ladeen and Norman Podhoretz who are now agitating for America to declare war on Iran (and subsequently Syria and Saudi Arabia although they are not so open about this).

In their conclusion, Mearsheimer and Walt ask what can be done about the outlandish failure of the American government to act in the interests of America. They doubt that the Israel Lobby will relinquish its power in the press, campaign finance or government, so they suggest pressure for more open discourse, which seems to be happening. It was initially impossible to publish this book in America but it did eventually see the light of day after an article in the London Review of Books and an unprcedented 275.000 downloads of the working paper on Harvard's Kennedy School of Government website.

The authors see the (remote) possibility of congressmen treating Israel like any other country and they also show that the majority of American Jews aren't Likudniks and opposed the war in Iraq. They didn't like the AIPAC / Wolfowitz group but of course they lost out to the activists, so its not clear where all this goes, apart from generating some rumbling at the other end of the spectrum (for example, Robert Griffin's, "The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds" ). At present, Israel is greatly favoured while congress directs America to carry the massive cost of her wars in addition to generous transfers of aid.