"The American Jewish community, typically a source of much of the pacifist and internationalist sentiment in foreign policy, was surprisingly cordial to vigorous military action on this occasion."
You are quite mistaken. NYC and environs, LA, both Jewish strongholds, had the highest numbers in the country opposing the Iraq war.
Jewish liberals and spokespeople are vociferous opponents of the Iraq war.
Nonetheless, big MSM, heavily influenced by Jews such as Tom Friedman, more or less went along with this war.
Admittedly, this is beyond proof, but my lifetime observation of the NYT and Washington Post is that that they are quite dovish. But on this dubious enterprise, there was a green light. I think Jewsish sympathy toward Israel was decisive in the sense that it was the component of the intellectual coalition that probably would have sided with interminable U.N. foolishness had Israeli intersts not been on the table.
I used to read The New Republic a lot, considering it a liberal magazine and joyously reading occasional harsh critiques of liberal interest. Now, I suppose it is regarded more as Neocon. Still, I have heard publisher Marty Peretz say that he thought that his hand would shrivel if he ever reached for a Republican voting lever. Marty is an important player in opinion journalism. He puts out an unpredictable publication that is open to conservative ~and~ to liberal thought.
But when the subject of Israel arises, Marty is a completely lunatic hawk. He seems to me representative of a significant part of the Jewish intellectual media elite that goes into a whole altered state when the subject of Israel is on the table.
I can't prove it. You read, you weigh it. Sometimes you come to some small conclusions.
A close friend of my childhood, whom I now see about once a year, is a lawyer in Manhattan. My friend is a lifelong liberal Democrat, the sun of an ACLU chapter president. My friend is NO ANTI-SEMITE.
The last time I saw him we were talking over the war and I gingerly expressed my opinion that the perception among many Jews that Israeli interests were on the table was a important factor in building an adequate concensus at home to go after Saddam.
My friend -- to my considerable surprise -- said that he had recently been at a diner in NYC with a couple of hundred people who were connected to an Israeli business which my friend's firm represented. In other words, this was a Jewish dinner in New York.
My friend said that someone at the head table made a remark about the Iraq war (then still in its first year) and the entire room rose as one to give thunderous applause.
It is only an annecdote, but it was pursuasive to me.