The rise of Barack Obama as the next potential US President (highly unlikely, in my opinion, but anything can happen in the next 18 months) has already upset our poor Prime Minister:
“If I were running al-Qaida in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama but also for the Democrats.”
Once again, John Howard’s allegiance isn’t to the US/Australian alliance, but to the Bush administration alone. If a Democrat does win in the 2008 US election, and John Howard is still Prime Minister, our relationship with Washington will be decidedly cool, and rightly so.
There is also talk that a win for Obama will shift the US relationship with the Middle East. While I don’t fully agree with the idea that, “if Obama succeeds, Zionism will lose its hold on Jewish-American intellectual life“, the US establishment is undoubtedly experiencing a welcome examination of the ways in which Zionism has skewed its priorities in the region. American Jews – the savvier ones, anyway – are starting to wake up to this fact.
Dissenting Jews are having an effect like never before.