I find it difficult to comprehend, but I have to conclude that  a significant segment of the American population wants continuous war. It’s not just the Neoconservative movement, although they are the most obvious – and the most influential. And I refuse to blame “the Jews” as so many do. American commentators seem to forget that many Israelis and American Jews oppose the hawkish policies of the current Israeli government.

I have heard respected commentators suggest that Americans accept perpetual war because there is no draft. And that must be part of it. With a volunteer military, the wretches who are killed and maimed come mostly from the poor and minorities, not from families with political clout.

While I am not blaming Jews in general,  there seems to be compelling evidence that a pro-Zionist element is involved in stoking the fires of war – especially the looming conflict with Iran.

The Iranians are threatening to blockade the Straits of Hormuz in retaliation for sanctions proposed by the West, and war looks frighteningly close at the moment. (Of course, you wouldn’t know it from American television, preoccupied as the boob-tube pundits are with the Republican primary circus.)

Writing in Consortium News, Robert Parry reports:

There is now a cascading of allegations regarding Iran, as there was with Iraq, with the momentum rushing toward war.

Just as with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the U.S. news media treats Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a designated villain whose every word is cast as dangerous or crazy. Even left-of-center media personalities, like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow, talk tough against Ahmadinejad, just as many “liberals” did regarding Hussein.

Also, as happened with Iraq – when harsher economic sanctions merged with a U.S. troop build-up, making an escalation toward war almost inevitable – tougher and tougher Western sanctions against Iran have pushed the various sides closer to war.

In turn, Iran has threatened to retaliate against the West’s economic warfare by blocking the Straits of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil flows, thus driving up oil prices and derailing the West’s already shaky economies. That threat has led to even more bellicose language from many U.S. political figures, especially the Republican presidential hopefuls who have denounced President Barack Obama for not being tougher on Iran.

In Salon today, Matt Duss, policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, blames Neoconservative commentators for stirring up media frenzy against Iran – just as they did with Iraq.

He identifies these prominent pundits as the major warmongers among us:

• Bill Kristol,  Editor, the Weekly Standard
• Charles Krauthammer, columnist, the Washington Post
• Reule Marc Gerecht,  senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
• Danielle Pletka, vice president, the American Enterprise Institute
• Max Boot,  Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies, Council on Foreign Relations
• Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent, the Atlantic
• Harold Rhode, senior advisor to Hudson Institute

The question that haunts me is why?

What do these trouble makers have to gain from more war? I realize that they make their living by writing and that they are designated “conservatives” so they are obliged to take preordained positions on the issues of the day. But that seems to be a poor excuse for warmongering.

I have this nagging feeling that there’s more to this than meets the eye.

Somewhere behind the scenes, powerful forces could be pulling the strings. There is so much money to be made from war.

So many people work for – or profit from, one way or another – the military-industrial complex.

And the Israeli hawks are so influential in America.

Somewhere a hidden explanation must be lurking.

And I suspect it might be something terribly frightening.

Click here to read Parry’s article.

Click here to read the Salon piece.

(Reuters photo above shows a U.S. naval ship during the Velayat-90 war game on the Sea of Oman, near the Straits of Hormuz in southern Iran December 29, 2011.)