America is not Israel.

Another Jewish-American political pundit makes the mistake of confusing Israel's national security concerns with our own.

I think she mistakes non-Jewish-American's appetite for unending wars to fix Israel's growing problem in their region.  If the only persuasive tools you have are American-financed weaponry, perhaps it's time to reign in your own extremists and work in other ways for justice for all.

Something tells me,
what was missing in action in the analysis that led us into the hot wars in Middle East will not be forgotten this time around:  an honest cost-benefit analysis as to what this is going to cost America, and whether it will pay off for us in the long run to commit U.S. dollars in this way. 

Attack Iran if you must, but please, no more confusing what is good for our alleged ally Israel with what is good for our country as a whole.  (Let's learn from the Cuban-Americans about financing the fight for freedoms in your alleged ancestral homelands?  Of course, we didn't have such a large Cuban lobby, comparatively, -- just enough personal lobbying to distort reasonable foreign policy objectives all these years later).

Also, I can't remember a time when so many Cuban-Americans were so over-represented in US media in analysing foreign policy objectives.  If there's a run up to war with Iran (now that would be the big macro-economic event needed to stimulate the US economy, eh?), I like to think the American people will be wiser this time around in evaluating the need to "protect" our allies from their own actions, and that not all of us buy into the "Might Makes Right" mentality we're all being exposed to and culturally conditioned to accept as the new normal.

Personally, I think I liked it better when the Jews were a less militaristic minority (thanks US taxpayers) and were forced to rely on their wits and creativity to safeguard their own futures.  Nevermind playing the ultimate-victim Holocaust card either -- too many ethnic cleanse killings since then to make us wise up that neither this victim group nor that trumps one another, despite all the special classes, movies, books and political columns dedicated to that speciality.

Do Unto Others... and don't whine too loudly when the killing consequences of what you do gets done unto you and yours.

ADDED:  The pushback continues in the comments...
I think outside of New York and the East Coast, Jewish-Americans seriously overestimate the support out here -- outside of fundamentalist religious circles -- for continuing to provide protection for Israel.

Plus, as we become more and more anti-religion and anti-Christian, this notion that the Jewish people have some promised birthright, and are somehow more special in the eyes of G-d, is likely to fall.  We are against predominately religious states in the Middle East, where religious extremists dictate family policy, womens' rights, or the rights of the non-respected religious majority.  Why give Israel's religious extremists a pass?

For those reasons, I expect American and Israeli interests to further part in the coming years.  It might take some time though, for these Jewish-American pundits to catch on, being isolated in their own communities, as some of the more religiously observant, like Rubin I suspect, are.

Perhaps that's why so many conservative voters are frightened by the prospect of an independent, non-fundamentalist Christian, moral Mormon leading the United States, particularly if he is able to think independently once elected and separate himself from the overrepresented lobby interests who have been so costly to our nation, of late.