The "risk to American lives in the region" argument?

For the first time there are voices questioning Israel’s strategic value - Times Online: "As America becomes more deeply involved in the Arab and Muslim worlds, with nearly 200,000 troops in Iraq, the Gulf and Afghanistan, it will challenge anything that may threaten US lives".

This is an interesting argument but it seems erroneous because it treats the presence of American soldiers as settlers in the region. These soldiers are rather in the area to stand up for democracy and human rights. The argument was apparently also used as support for not calling the massacres of Armenians and others in 1915 a genocide by the Bush administration and perhaps also by the Obama administration since they tried to prevent the Congressional Committee to vote for the recognition of a genocide recently.

It might mean that there has been a shift from the presence of troops in the region short time to a long time perspective even if the rhetoric says otherwise. Such a change of opinion of the US government and military would be a disaster for Israel who naturally is a constant irritant for Muslims in the area and elsewhere. Whatever they do represents a risk to American lives. In the present dispute on Jerusalem settlements the AIPAC Jewish lobbying group (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is for Nethanyahu and the alternative lobbying group J-Street against. The dispute is taken seriously not only for the embarrassment for Joe Biden but also for Obama who is due visiting the largest Muslim country in the world, his childhood home, Indonesia.

However, trying to understand Nethanyahu in this debacle it seems like he is operating from the point of view of his own reality. Obama currently, with his friendliness towards non-democratic, poor human right respecting Muslim countries, is regarded very poorly in Israel. Nethanyahu's reality in the US is AIPAC and others sympathetic with the quest and history of Israel. These are people that unlike the UN Security Council Resolution 478 from 1980 think winning against aggressors in the six-day war entitled Israel morally to keep certain areas for their future defence. Jimmy Carter's administration abstained from the vote in the resolution. Things have changed.