David Frum hs been blogging through the New Woodward book State of Denial, and noticed something Harvard Professor Stephen Walt and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer should contemplate. They are worried about the influence of the Israel Lobby. They should check out the power of the Saudi lobby. After excerpting the text, Frum summarizes and wonders.

So let's recapitulate: The ruler of an American client state, whose throne was saved by American fighting power from a foreign danger barely a decade before, who relies wholly on American military power to preserve himself even now, sees something on television he does not like. He writes a letter to the president of the United States threatening to sever all political relations. And the response is, whammo, a complete surrender to his point of view in just 48 hours. Who needs a lobby?

Ed Lasky   10 07 06