Jewish support for the war against Iraq is significant only if you consider the following to be Jewish: George Will, Ann Coulter, Gary Bauer, Bill Bennett, evangelical pastors and churches throughout America, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Thomas Sowell, and The Wall Street Journal editorial page -- not to mention British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spain's President Jose Aznar.
Second, Jews are some of the leading opponents of the war, especially in academia and the media.
Aside from being a lie, the libel that Jews have somehow pushed the Bush administration into war against Iraq is based on two other odious beliefs.
One is that support for the war is un-American, or even anti-American, and therefore if a particular group of Americans can be identified with promoting the war, that group must be un-American. The other belief, or at least inevitable implication, is that the vast number of non-Jewish Americans who support the war have no values or ideas of their own, but are playthings in the hands of Rasputin-like Jews.
Given that neither facts nor logic support what is simply an attack on American Jews' patriotism, what needs to be explained is not why some Jews (like members of every other faith and ethnicity in America) support a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. What needs to be explained is why some people see Jews behind a war initiated by non-Jews.
Alas, the explanation necessitates writing a book, since the reason people blame their troubles on the Jews is complex. So let us focus on the best known American who has made this argument, Pat Buchanan.
Buchanan has seen himself and his brand of conservatism -- which, in its isolationism and amoral view of America's role in the world, more often coincides with leftist positions -- rejected by mainstream conservatism. He has been rejected by William F. Buckley, the National Review, The Wall Street Journal, the Republican Party and just about every other conservative publication and institution. And he has decided, as millions have for millennia, to blame the Jews for his problems.
Let it be shouted from sea to shining sea: America is uniquely great and uniquely blessed because more than any other country it asks, "What is right?" when making foreign policy and because it has always blessed its Jews. Should Americans become like Europeans and remove morality from their foreign policies and start to blame Jews for their problems, it will cease to be America and cease to be great. That is why, as always, anti-Semitism threatens good non-Jews as much as it threatens Jews. If not confronted, Americans who blame the Jews will bring ruin to America, just as the Germans who blamed Jews brought ruin to Germany.