| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 6:07 pm Post subject: |
| From: "Jeff Blankfort"
Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 15:58:30 -0700
Subject: FT: Europe warns US on Iran sanctions
So now we will see a battle on Capitol Hill between the reigning champ, the Jewish Zionist lobby vs. that of the governments of Western Europe and the European-based oil companies. I wonder who the Las Vegas oddsmakers would pick to win and by what odds? Will the Zios, after likely pleading my the Bush White House, release the members of Congress to vote in the US public interest? If so, it would be a first. -JB
http://www.ft. com/cms/s/ c87fa5ba- 411a-11dc- 8f37-0000779fd2a c.html
Europe warns US on Iran sanctions
By Daniel Dombey and Javier Blas in London and Francesco Guerrera in Detroit
Published: August 2 2007 18:45b
European governments are warning Congress that US legislation aimed at Iran
could hit European energy groups, undermine transatlantic unity on Tehran’s
nuclear programme and provoke a dispute at the World Trade Organisation.
Diplomats from France, Germany and the UK, among other countries, have
stepped up a lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill against moves that would
mandate sanctions on energy companies that invested more than $20m (€14.6m,
£9.9m) in Iran.
Among such companies – already marked out by a US campaign to disinvest in
energy companies that trade with Iran – are Royal Dutch Shell, Total of
France and Repsol of Spain.
Royal Dutch Shell and Repsol, which are both looking for oil in US
territorial waters in the Gulf of Mexico, are involved in a project worth up
to $10bn to produce Iran’s first liquefied natural gas. The companies are
due to take a final decision about their investment in 2008.
“It’s paradoxical that the targets of this effort are companies from
countries that are making an effort to strengthen sanctions against Iran,”
said one European diplomat, referring to the European Union’s support for a
new wave of United Nations sanctions on Iran.
“The House of Representatives will decide on this bill some time this autumn
so you have to try to talk to everybody [in Congress],” said another EU
diplomat. “We are telling them that if it became a law as it stands now, it
would be a breach in WTO rules and we would not accept that.”
President George W Bush has the power to waive sanctions on third parties
doing business with Iran, but a bill introduced by Tom Lantos, chairman of
the House foreign affairs committee, would remove his ability to do so. The
bill has 322 co-sponsors, enough to overcome a presidential veto.
Diplomats stress that a parallel bill being considered by the Senate would
leave Mr Bush’s waiver intact while seeking to introduce other measures
against Iran.
But European officials say they are unsure what would emerge from efforts to
hammer out a deal between the House of Representatives and the Senate and
are worried that it could make some sanctions mandatory.
“Which do we fear more?” asked Jon Kyl, Republican senator from Arizona,
last week. “A trade dispute with Europe or China or what Tehran will do with
the revenues of a fully reconstituted energy sector?”
In principle the Iran Sanctions Act, a successor to a 1990s measure,
requires the president to impose at least two out of six possible sanctions
on foreign companies investing more than $20m in Iran, although in practice
both Mr Bush and former President Bill Clinton have always exercised the
waiver.
These sanctions include denial of Export Import Bank loans, denial of US
bank loans exceeding $10m, prohibition of US government procurement and
restrictions on imports from the company concerned.
This week, the House of Representatives backed a separate piece of
legislation, that would oblige the federal government to keep a record of
energy companies violating the $20m threshold and make it easier for state
pension funds to disinvest in them.
Some states have passed or are considering legislation to move towards
disinvestment in such companies.
Public sector pension funds such as Calpers and Calstrs, the giant
California pension plans, are opposed to any forced divestments of companies
involved in Iran. They have argued the move would be counterproductive as it
would hurt their returns and restrict their ability to provide for billions
of dollars in pension liabilities.
Caution has been urged from unexpected quarters. “If we go forward and we
begin to sanction foreign companies through more stringent sanctions in the
Iran Sanctions Act, I think there will be serious repercussions for our
multilateral effort,” said Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise
Institute, the conservative Washington think-tank. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 7:00 am Post subject: |
| http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1188197167860&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Hard-hitting critique or deadly lies?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 27, 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bad for the US, bad for Israel
On the eve of its publication on Monday, the book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt appeared set for strong sales, already featuring at No. 1 in Amazon.com's Israel History ranking and No. 10 in the US History ranking.
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the book is an expansion of themes that first appeared in an article entitled "The Israel Lobby," written by Mearsheimer (of the University of Chicago) and Walt (of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government) in the London Review of Books last year.
In essence, the authors argue in the book that a loose coalition of individuals and organizations shape US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction and that this lobby has pushed policies that are neither in America's national interest nor Israel's long-term interest. No other "ethnic lobby," the authors claim, has so diverted US policy away from the American national interest.
"The Israel lobby is the antithesis of a cabal or conspiracy," they state. "What sets it apart, in short, is its extraordinary effectiveness."
The authors stress that supporters of Israel "have every right to advocate their positions, and it is wrong to question their loyalty when they do. Yet it is equally legitimate for critics to point out that organizations like AIPAC are not neutral, or that the individuals ... are motivated by an attachment to Israel that is bound to shape their thinking about many foreign policy issues."
They allege that groups within the lobby "try to marginalize anyone who criticizes Israeli policy or challenges the 'special relationship'" between the US and Israel, and that they attempt to deprive such critics of getting "a fair hearing." At times, the authors claim, "heavy-handed tactics" are employed to silence critics, including the leveling of accusations that such critics are anti-Israel or anti-Semitic.
"Smearing critics of Israel or the lobby with the charge of anti-Semitism works to marginalize them in the public arena," the book states, asserting that the charge of anti-Semitism is "a widely used weapon."
Although the authors state that the US should support the existence of Israel, they add that Israel's security is "ultimately not of critical strategic importance to the United States."
The book claims that broader US policies in the Middle East - on Iran, Iraq and the Palestinians, for instance - reflect Israel's preferences.
Israel and the lobby have pushed US policy in a "strategically unwise" direction over Iran for the past 15 years, they state, thwarting the possibility of detente. Only because of this pressure is there contemplation of the notion of a military strike against Iran. And if this "dangerous policy" were followed and such a strike were to take place, the US would be attacking "in part on Israel's behalf."
On Iraq, the book says that pressure from Israel and the lobby was "not the only factor behind the decision" to invade, "but it was a critical element." The war stemmed in large part from "a desire to make Israel more secure," and were it not for Israel and the lobby, "America would not be in Iraq today."
The writers claim that "many policies" that the US follows on Israel's behalf "now jeopardize US national security." Moreover, it charges, the lobby's influence "has not helped Israel either."
The lobby, it contends, makes it "difficult to impossible for the US government to criticize Israel's conduct and press it to change some of its counterproductive policies," and in so doing, "may even be jeopardizing" Israel's long-term future.
"The United States has enormous potential leverage at its disposal for dealing with Israel and the Palestinians," the book states. "It could threaten to cut off all economic and diplomatic support for Israel. If that were not enough, it would have little difficulty lining up international support to isolate Israel."
Absurd, laughable and an attempt to delegitimize
Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham H. Foxman seeks in his new book, The Deadliest Lies, to refute the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis.
The self-proclaimed goal of Foxman's book is to "demolish the claims of an all-powerful Israeli lobby and a global Jewish conspiracy, revealing their historic roots in the most virulent forms of bigotry."
Here are some excerpts from the ADL head's book, which is published by Palgrave Macmillan:
Of course, the fact that there is a lobby (lower-case L) made up of Americans who believe that US interests are best served by a strong alliance with Israel is obvious and non-controversial. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) bills itself as "America's Pro-Israel Lobby."
It is registered as a domestic lobby, is supported by donations from over l00,000 individual members, and receives no financial backing from Israel or any other foreign entity. There is nothing unusual about this. Spend ten minutes on Google and you can easily find similar advocacy groups that represent the interests of Irish Americans, Mexican Americans, Indian Americans, Italian Americans and practically every other imaginable ethnic and national group in the United States. Only the American lobby for Israel seems to be subject to such intense critical scrutiny and even demonization by people like Mearsheimer and Walt.
The authors recognize that they are on shaky ground here. They acknowledge that, in a democratic America, pro-Israel activists have every right to lobby their government. They are also careful to state that they are not suggesting any conspiracy by Jews aimed at world domination, like that depicted by the notorious anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Mearsheimer and Walt clearly regard themselves not as bigoted, but as serious scholars attempting to make a responsible argument.
But their claims of even-handedness and objectivity, in the end, are merely lip service, because of the nonstop one-sidedness of their presentation, their gross exaggeration of the power of the lobby, their disregard for the consistently broad-based American public support for Israel, their omission of the very many interests that the US has in a strong and safe Israel, and their overriding theme that policy-makers are controlled by the lobby. No matter how the authors protest, all of this adds up to an effort to delegitimize the work of pro-Israel activists.
Unfortunately for the authors, the idea that colleges and universities in the United States are dominated by pro-Israeli voices is absurdly laughable, even more so than their claims that the Lobby controls Congress, the State Department and the White House. Thus, Mearsheimer and Walt are forced to do a lot of hedging and filling in their discussion of the Lobby and academia. They admit that "the Lobby has had the most difficulty stifling debate about Israel on college campuses," and in mild desperation they list many instances in which pro-Israel advocates merely criticized or disagreed with specific faculty members or university programs. For example, the fact that writings by the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said provoked "hundreds of e-mails, letters, and journalistic accounts that call on [Columbia University] to denounce Said and to either sanction or fire him" is cited as evidence of the power of the Lobby on campus. The fact that Said never was denounced, sanctioned or fired is apparently irrelevant.
The truth is that American college campuses are enormously diverse from almost every point of view - and that includes ideologically. In fact, many campuses have become hotbeds of anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian, and, in a few cases, outright anti-Semitic activism. Jewish organizations are working hard to try to hold their own, but their voices are often being drowned out by those of militant anti-Israel groups. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 12:46 am Post subject: |
| Two JINSANs (in Woolsey and Ledeen) 'building' the case for an attack on Iran for Israel..
-----Original Message-----
From: AEI Events <event@aei.org>
Sent: Mon Aug 27 13:31:36 2007
Subject: AEI Invitation: The Iranian Time Bomb, September 10, 2007
Please register for this event online at www.aei.org/event1565 <http://www.aei.org/event1565> .
The Iranian Time Bomb
BOOK FORUM
Monday, September 10, 2007, 2:00–3:30 p.m.
Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
Iran has now taken its rightful place at the center of our debate on the war. Hardly a day goes by without new revelations about Iran’s penetration of Iraq either by supplying weapons, money, guidance, and intelligence to both Sunni and Shiite terrorists, or, in some cases, sending soldiers from the Quds Force—an elite unit within Iran’s Revolutionary Guard—to confront American and Iraqi forces. And in the background we hear the leitmotif of the Iranian nuclear program, which continues apace despite international sanctions and negotiations.
An intensified debate has resulted: Is our current strategy adequate? Should we be more vigorous in confronting the Islamic Republic or should we—as under secretary of state for political affairs R. Nicholas Burns has recently argued—continue to use diplomacy as the primary component of our Iran policy? If we decide to take more active measures, what should they be?
In his latest book, The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction (St. Martin’s Press, September 2007), AEI Freedom Scholar Michael A. Ledeen reviews the history of Iran’s long-standing war against the West and discusses American policy toward Iran from the fall of the shah to the present. He analyzes the Iranian regime’s treatment of its own citizens, presents a detailed assessment of the mullahs’ vision of the future, and proposes an effective strategy for thwarting their global ambitions.
Former CIA director R. James Woolsey and General Jack Keane, U.S. Army (retired), will join Michael A. Ledeen in discussing these and other questions upon which so much of America’s future depends.
1:45 p.m.
Registration
2:00
Speakers:
General Jack Keane, U.S. Army (retired)
Michael A. Ledeen, AEI
R. James Woolsey, former CIA director
3:30
Adjournment
_________________________________________________________________________________
___ I will attend the Iran event on Monday, September 10.
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Please register online at www.aei.org/event1565/ <http://www.aei.org/event1565> or by faxing this form to 202.862.7171. Shortly after the event occurs, a video webcast will be available on the AEI website at www.aei.org/eventvideos/ <http://www.aei.org/eventvideos/> .
For more information, please contact Charlie Szrom at charlie.szrom@aei.org <mailto:charlie.szrom@aei.org> .
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___ I do not plan to attend this event, but please e-mail me related event materials.
If you do not wish to receive e-mail notifications or invitations in the future, please contact Charlie Szrom at charlie.szrom@aei.org <mailto:charlie.szrom@aei.org> to request removal from our e-mail lists. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 9:43 pm Post subject: AEI Sets Launch for All-or-Nothing Campaign to Get US to Bom |
| Subject: AEI Sets Launch for All-or-Nothing Campaign to Get US to Bomb Iran (for Israel)
AEI Sets Launch for All-or-Nothing Campaign
David Horowitz “Declares” Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week for October 22-26 »AEI to Roll Out “The Iranian Time Bomb” Sep 10
Just four days after the American Enterprise Institute will launch its September 6 “All or Nothing” campaign to save the Surge, it will debut “Freedom Scholar” Michael Ledeen’s forthcoming book, “The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction” (St. Martin’s Press), a rehash of neo-con arguments for “regime change” – by military force, if necessary – in Tehran. Judging by the excerpts that have been released to date, Ledeen’s latest tract will be entirely predictable, although, in addition to emphasizing, as he has for much of the last several years, the urgent need to support and fund the regime’s domestic opposition, he concludes that “[t]his presidential administration or the next will likely face a terrible choice: appease a nuclear Iran, or bomb it before their atomic weapons are ready to go. While a sad exclamation point at the end of nearly thirty years of failed policy, confrontation may be virtually inescapable. Like other ideological wars of the twentieth century, this war will likely only end when one side has lost.”
Joining Ledeen at the afternoon panel will be former CIA director James Woolsey, the long-time Iran hawk who still believes Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were tight and no doubt agrees with Ledeen’s analysis that Iran and al Qaeda have been even tighter, and – this is most interesting – ret. Gen. Jack Keane, one of the architects, along with Fred Kagan and other AEI scholars, of the Surge. Perhaps Keane is being brought in in order to echo the recent crescendo of charges regarding Iran’s alleged supply of explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) to Shi’a militias, but I will be interested to see whether he promotes the increasingly fashionable idea among hawks in and outside the administration in favor of cross-border raids into Iran, something that the Pentagon, I am told, is definitely against. Keane, of course, is regarded as close to Gen. David Petraeus, and whatever he says on the subject of Iran should be listened to closely for evidence if a widening split between the Joint Chiefs, on the one hand, and Petraeus, the neo-cons’ Caesar, on the other.
The chronological juxtaposition of the Surge panel September 6 and the roll-out of Ledeen’s book September 10 underlines the balance that AEI and other hawks (including the vice president’s office) are trying to achieve between their two top priorities at the moment – sustaining the Surge well into next year and rallying Congress and the public behind an attack on Iran before the end of Bush’s term, if by then “diplomacy” does not achieve the desired results of 1) freezing its nuclear program and/or 2) halting Tehran’s support for its Shi’a allies (including the Maliki government) in Iraq. To their dismay, they have been forced to spend far more time, effort, and, above all, ink, on defending the Surge over the past eight months than on laying the groundwork for an attack on Iran, although they are showing signs in recent days of trying hard to make up the difference. If it becomes clear by late September or early October that Democrats and uneasy Republicans will indeed acquiesce in the continuation of the Surge at least until next spring (when troop numbers will almost certainly have to be reduced anyway), I think it’s very likely we will see a much bigger focus by AEI and the neo-cons, as well as their allies within the administration, on Iran and the necessity of a military confrontation before Bush leaves.
Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that AEI continues to go great guns on the Iran-divestment front, although its vice president of foreign and defense policy studies, Danielle Pletka, has an interesting op-ed on the subject in Tuesday’s Washington Post. While the column helps explain her somewhat surprising comment to the Financial Times earlier this month about the possible “serious repercussions for our multilateral effort” if Congress added sanctions to the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA), it also appeared to contain a number of contradictions. While, on the one hand, Pletka suggests that additional ISA sanctions risked alienating the European Union just when it is ‘’doing more to withdraw support from the Iranian economy,” she lauds pending measures both in Congress and a growing number of state legislatures that would either encourage or compel pension funds and other institutional investors to divest their holdings in companies that do business with Iran. Why Europeans would be offended by ISA’s expansion and not similarly offended by the divestment movement, she fails to explain. (The EU has been actively lobbying on Capitol Hill against the divestment-related legislation for at least two months. Her failure to address this distinction between the ISA and the divestment legislation is particularly notable in light of another column published by the Washington Times and National Review this week by her new AEI colleague, Michael Barone. His op-ed, “Divest Iran,” points that the “(f)irms that do the most business in Iran” – and hence will presumably be hit hardest by a successful divestment campaign – are European, as well as Asian and Russian. I just don’t understand the logic underlying Pletka’s column. Perhaps someone can explain it to me.
http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=58 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 5:02 am Post subject: Walt and Mearsheimer Arrive in Hard Covers |
| Walt and Mearsheimer Arrive in Hard Covers
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/
Mondoweiss
Iraq comes home: the war of ideas, by Philip Weiss
August 30, 2007
Serious. Cold. Stunning. Walt and Mearsheimer Arrive in Hard Covers
Some time in the next few days the website israellobbybook.com will be activated--right now it's a blank--and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, will be published by FSG. This is a historic book. The authors' LRB paper last year created an intellectual sensation I've never witnessed, and notwithstanding the desire of the lobby that the book disappear, I imagine the splash this time will be mainstream. Walt and Mearsheimer will be on television. That likelihood is increased by David Remnick's flat assertion, in an advance piece on the book that generally threw water on the scholars, that they are right to say that the lobby bears responsibility for the Iraq war.
I've been reading the book this August and have three preliminary impressions: Serious, cold and stunning. The seriousness of the book is conveyed on every page. The arguments are calm and earnest, stripped of metaphor and coyness. These are mature men engaged in every sinew with a giant squid of an issue; and their 106 pages of endnotes are overwhelming, and give the lie to anyone who accuses these scholars of "shoddy scholarship."
Cold. The authors are conservative realists at heart. They see states as amoral and a little vicious, and they don't overheat their arguments. There is no joy in the book, and the fervor is hidden beneath mountains of cold logic. They are reserved, and tactical. They refuse to really take on the dual-loyalty problem (just as Tony Judt refused in his speech at NYU last year) but you sense that they believe it's a problem (as I do). They generally say that the lobby has every right to do what it does, but their underlying zeal comes out--I think, admirably--when they state that the suppression of free speech on this issue is inappropriate and undemocratic. David Remnick's anger at the authors--he accuses them of wanting Israel to disappear-- seems to me a response to that zeal, and though he misdescribes it, the reader can feel the great molten energy underneath the icy words.
As for stunning, the argument they present is towering and clear and about time. The revision of Israeli history is stirring. The ways that the lobby has diminished the suffering of the Palestinians and enabled the occupation and settlements are starkly and even emotionally described. Most stunning is the argument that Remnick accepts: the authors' description of the Iraq disaster as arising from the lobby's pressure. I study this issue, and yet I turned the pages of this chapter with my mouth open, especially the pages dealing with the manipulation of intelligence, and evidence of Israel's hand in the WMD lies. It is this section that should and must stir national debate, and now.
"How did we get here? Our first guest is Dr. John J. Mearsheimer."
My main problem with the book is the one others have raised, that the word "lobby" is imprecise. How do you define this collection of forces and devotions? It is more a culture than a concerted lobby, an aspect of Jewishness and also an element of the American meritocracy and leadership that I am part of as a media Jew, but which that leadership has been absolutely incapable of examining. For instance, when the authors describe the neocon cipher Scooter Libby as part of the lobby, they don't really have the evidence as to the workings of his mind. I am sure they are right about Libby. But they don't prove it and I can do so only by speaking poetically, about the cipher's emails to his friend Judy Miller about the shared roots of the aspens in their summer retreats. Something is going on here, but you don't know what it is...
This is where true insiders need to come forward and explain what befell us. When Thomas Friedman shows up in this book, quoted in Ha'aretz, amazingly, as saying the Iraq war originated among 25 neocons within a mile or two of his office; and when Remnick accepts Walt and Mearsheimer's argument re the neocons--well, honey, the pro-Iraq liberal camp is falling apart. And explaining the Jewish rightwing klatch's actions to the world is important journalistic work that awaits this country in the nightmare of the next few years. But J.J. Goldberg refuses to talk about Walt and Mearsheimer's findings. Put on your spurs, J.J., the country needs you.
I said there's no pleasure in the book. The one exception is the book's dedication, to the scholar Samuel P. Huntington, whom the authors have known for 25 years. "We cannot imagine a better role model. Sam has always tackled big and important questions, and he has answered these questions in ways that the rest of the world could not ignore. Although each of us has disagreed with him on numerous occasions over the years--and sometimes vehemently and publicly--he never held those disagreements against us and was never anything but gracious and supportive of our work. [my emphasis] He understands that scholarship is not a popularity contest, and that spirited but civil debate is essential both to scholarly progress and to a healthy democracy." Beautiful and deeply moving, that is the credo of an American faith. Those words should be studied more than W&M's descriptions of Israeli history.
The Jewish meritocracy has always been about ambition. Worldly ambition mainly; we traded our ghettoized tradition of learning for position in the information age. Let us honor the grand intellectual leap of this book with an open discussion.
Posted at 06:34 AM in Books, Israel, Journalism, Meritocracy, Politics, Culture, Religion, The Assimilationist, U.S. Policy in the Mideast | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack (0)
August 29, 2007
'New Yorker' Editor: Israel and Lobby Bear Responsibility for Iraq War
In a remarkably-fair piece about Walt and Mearsheimer in the latest New Yorker, the magazine's editor, David Remnick, summarizes part of the scholars' argument:
Israel and its lobby bear outsized responsibility for persuading the Bush Administration to invade Iraq and, perhaps one day soon, to attack the nuclear facilities of Iran.
And then accepts it. "They were also right about Iraq."
I find this statement staggering. Remnick's piece is hard on Walt and Mearsheimer, saying they are hysterical and have put together a "prosecutor's brief" against Israel, and are indifferent to its possible disappearance. But this statement, that Israel and its lobby bear outsize responsibility for the invasion plans, is alive to the common sense of recent history and--as Fritz Hollings put it-- to what 'we all know." Bravo to the New Yorker, for good sense and honesty.
And again, I say: There must be a soul-searching within the Jewish community if the country is going to move past Iraq. Why were the "best and the brightest" of this disastrous war rightwing Jews? Why did DLC Jews join them in banging the drum? And why have progressive Jews given these war supporters cover, rather than exposing them? What are Israel's regrettable policies toward the Arab world doing to our identification and citizenship? | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 5:12 am Post subject: |
| US Support for Israel's brutal oppression of the Palestinians PRIMARY MOTIVATION for tragic attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and on 9/11:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/08/05/the-gorilla-in-the-room-is-us-support-for-israel.php
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2007/08/remnick-writes-.html
August 29, 2007
'New Yorker' Editor: Israel and Lobby Bear Responsibility for Iraq War
In a remarkably-fair piece about Walt and Mearsheimer in the latest New Yorker, the magazine's editor, David Remnick, summarizes part of the scholars' argument:
Israel and its lobby bear outsized responsibility for persuading the Bush Administration to invade Iraq and, perhaps one day soon, to attack the nuclear facilities of Iran.
And then accepts it. "They were also right about Iraq."
I find this statement staggering. Remnick's piece is hard on Walt and Mearsheimer, saying they are hysterical and have put together a "prosecutor's brief" against Israel, and are indifferent to its possible disappearance. But this statement, that Israel and its lobby bear outsize responsibility for the invasion plans, is alive to the common sense of recent history and--as Fritz Hollings put it-- to what 'we all know." Bravo to the New Yorker, for good sense and honesty.
And again, I say: There must be a soul-searching within the Jewish community if the country is going to move past Iraq. Why were the "best and the brightest" of this disastrous war rightwing Jews? Why did DLC Jews join them in banging the drum? And why have progressive Jews given these war supporters cover, rather than exposing them? What are Israel's regrettable policies toward the Arab world doing to our identification and citizenship?
Posted at 04:45 PM in Books, Israel, Journalism, Religion, U.S. Policy in the Mideast | Permalink
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Comments
I don't share Phil's optimism that Mr. Remnick (or his boss the Newhouse brothers) has suddenly seen the light. Given the context, that isolated "and they were right about Iraq" almost certainly refers only to M&W's opposition to the war, not to their explanation of why it occurred.
Mistakes:
1. The U.S. has employed it's Security Council veto on behalf of Israel 42 times, not 34.
2. To imply that M&W do not worry about the "disappearance of Israel" is exactly like claiming Ahmadinejad is calling for the wiping out of the Jews.
3. Remnick claims M&W overlook "myriad cases of suicide bombings; and other spectaculars." But the first suicide bombing happened only after 25 years of bone-crushing occupation.
4. Remnick implies Barak's "generous offer" was indeed generous.
5. Remnick tries one more time to sell the line that 9-11 was not primarily motivated by an Arab sense of injustice at what is being done to the Palestinians. Those who denied Americans the right to know the reasons behind their tragedy are the lowest of the low, and Remnick is among them.
Posted by: David | August 29, 2007 at 05:50 PM
Phil - It's a complex world, and those who attempt to reduce it to simplicities such as the Jewish Lobby is responsible for our foreign policy problems are doomed to eventually look, well for lack of a better word, simple. Your argument that the American Jewish community is in lock step with one another is somewhat laughable when you actually spend time in this community. Many of the Jews that I know were against the War in Iraq, even while they are supportive of the existence of Israel. That right wing conservative Jews should be any different in their stance on the war than the vast majority of conservative right wing non-Jews seems rather strange and counter to the general laws of politics. It's quite easy for you and your zealous commentors to cherry pick selective information and paint a distorted picture of a more complext reality, but perhaps you and they are in the service of a higher purpose where such actions are justified in your own mind.
Posted by: DavidM | August 29, 2007 at 06:24 PM
"Many of the Jews that I know were against the War in Iraq"
... but they just kept quiet about it.
Posted by: anon | August 29, 2007 at 06:48 PM
To DavidM, on the subject of "complexity": It is you I think who is trying to over-simplify things. No one has ever claimed that the Israel lobby was the only force behind the Iraq war, but only that it was an essential ingredient without which the war could not have happened.
Posted by: David | August 29, 2007 at 07:03 PM
I have bad news. A Harvard professor has been crushed in a freak accident. http://homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com/2007/02/harvard-professor-crushed-in-freak.html
Posted by: liberal white boy | August 29, 2007 at 07:18 PM
It is true that a greater percentage of American Jews were opposed to the Iraq war back in 2003 than the general American populations. But, the actions of the lobbying groups such as AIPAC that claim to represent them were (and still are) far more supportive of the Iraq invasion and further American adventurism in the region.
Are most of America's gun-owners as opposed to reasonable gun laws, such as limiting gun purchases to 1 or 2 a month? Probably not - but the NRA is opposed to it. Are most teachers opposed to the idea of merit pay or longer school years? The NEA won't allow a discussion.
That lobbyists run Washington is part and parcel of every candidate's stump speech. So why should the lobbying done on behalf of one tiny nation, with which we trade less with than Mexico, has never sent troops to fight alongside Americans, and thumbs its nose at successive American presidents urging them to stop building settlements be off-limits for discussion?
Posted by: KXB | August 29, 2007 at 07:29 PM
David wrote:
"No one has ever claimed that the Israel lobby was the only force behind the Iraq war, but only that it was an essential ingredient without which the war could not have happened."
I would like to juxtapose this statement with one Tony Judt made in his NYT Op-Ed on Mearsheimer and Walt:
"Prominent Israeli leaders and their American supporters pressed very hard for the invasion of Iraq; but the United
States would probably be in Iraq today even if there had been no Israel lobby."
Posted by: Arie Brand | August 29, 2007 at 07:39 PM
So at least we're all agreed that the Israel lobby WAS pushing for a war? And we can proceed to discuss it's effectiveness, and motives?
Posted by: David | August 29, 2007 at 08:30 PM
It might depend how one defines the Israel Lobby. I include Hollywood which has demonized Arabs and Muslims almost continuously since the 1950s. Melani McAlister argues in Epic Encounters that popular culture determines perception of interests which then determine foreign policy.
Back in the 80s some of work that I did in modeling film investment would suggest that producing 16 Hollywood-style Palestinian-sympathetic or Palestinian-POV films for the American audience in the proper mix of genres would create conditions for an American attack to abolish the Zionist state and probably be profitable.
I am using gross ticket receipts as an indicator of changing opinion and basing my hypothesis on some of the studies of the effects of Schindler's List and the TV series Holocaust, in which Meryl Streep starred.
It is not the best copy of the lecture and the videoclips do not work, but you can find some of my preliminery study of Hollywood and Palestinians in http://www.vtjp.org/articles/Historiography_of_Pre-State_Zionism.htm in the section entitled "The Consequences of Zionist Historiography."
Posted by: Joachim Martillo | August 29, 2007 at 08:43 PM
BTW, KXB, the polls just don't support your claim that "a greater percentage of American Jews were opposed to the Iraq war back in 2003 than the general American population." In fact, just the opposite--
http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=838459&ct=1051619
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/07/opinion/polls/main535547.shtml
But anyone who had been reading a newspaper or watching a talking head back then already knows that. Jewish voices in opposition to the war were like hen's teeth. We've got Paul Krugman, Sen. Levin, Rabbi Lerner and who else? This at a time, remember, when the general population was highly skeptical of the idea -- hence the "mushroom cloud" campaign.
On the other hand, there WAS one nation where the general population needed no persuasion--
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=269674&contrassID=2&subContrassID=5&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y&itemNo=269674
Posted by: David | August 29, 2007 at 08:48 PM
The AJC poll was depressing in some ways--namely, that only giving up "some" West Bank settlements was relatively popular compared to giving all of them up. This from research subjects, the majority of whom had never been to Israel. Then there was the "don't divide Jerusalem" stance; again, from subjects the majority of whom had never been to Israel.
Posted by: freespeechlover | August 29, 2007 at 09:07 PM
Ironically the Israeli establishment (except for the Likudniks around Netanyahu) were AGAINST the invasion of Iraq because they saw Iran as the greater threat, and they predicted pretty well what would happen. But the Neocons had become like the Golem, writing their own agenda. They saw the weakness of Iraq as an invitation to occupy it and institute their goal of transforming the Middle East, while the Israelis saw its weakness as a good reason to give it a pass. There's an article at antiwar.com: "Source: Israel Told U.S. to Target Iran, not Iraq."
http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=11520
Posted by: Montag | August 29, 2007 at 09:10 PM
David,
I did not say that a majority of American Jews were against the war in 2003, but the 36% opposed to the war that (from the first poll you cite) is probably a greater percentage than the general American population opposed to the war. Jewish voters are still largely left-leaning in American elections, which is why AIPAC's devotion to Likud policies seems so out of whack.
Posted by: KXB | August 29, 2007 at 09:10 PM
freespeechlover,
George Orwell called this, "transferred nationalism." You champion a country not your own about which you have only an idealized conception. This allows you to talk absolute rubbish that you'd never do about your own country. You can say that the roads are first rate in Israel or whereever when you KNOW they're full of potholes in your own country.
There was a funny scene in the 1975 TV movie, "The Night That Panicked America," about the 1938 Orson Welles "War of The Worlds" radio broadcast. Some wealthy people in San Francisco are at a party and making sympathetic remarks about Hitler and Mussolini, when they hear part of the broadcast and think that the U.S. is being invaded by Martians. The Butler, however, knows that it's just a play and can't resist needling them. So he parrots back their own phrases, reassuring them that the Martians "will make the trains run on time," and that "they only want a place in the sun--surely you can see the justice in that." But of course the same arguments that they made shortly before are no longer convincing when they are the victims of the aggression.
Posted by: Montag | August 29, 2007 at 09:25 PM
If one views the issue of the power of the Israel Lobby as an issue of competing political elites, the trans/supranational ethnic Ashkenazi political elite(*) by virtue of having state power in Israel has some natural advantages over competing elites in the USA, but because the State of Israel is completely dependent on the USA, eventually the US branch of transnational ethnic Ashkenazi political elite will call the shots, and I believe this development was achieved with Ariel Sharon's stroke.
(*) There were originally 5 transnational ethnic Ashkenazi political elites: Yiddishist, Radical Revolutionary/Marxist, Labor Zionist (technically fascist, but people freak out when it is so described), Jabotinskian Zionist, Occult Zionist. The first two no longer exist while the next two have blended under the dominance of the Jabotinskians. The Occult Zionists are very idiosyncratic. It will probably be a while before the Jabotinskians absorb them.
Posted by: Joachim Martillo | August 29, 2007 at 09:41 PM
BTW, AIPAC obeys the people that pay the salaries. Jewish Power by J.J. Goldberg has problems, but it is correct on this point.
Posted by: Joachim Martillo | August 29, 2007 at 09:43 PM
Reminds me, sadly, of my days in Soviet Union when everybody knew the truth and even get tired of knowing it, but then an "official" journalist with that always the same "It's never was a secret to anyone" admits on the 12th page of PRAVDA 1/100 of what every !@#$-ing child on the street already knew for years and everyone at the Moscow saloon cocktail parties goes "Oh, my God! Finally! Freedom of the Press!".
I forgive my former compatriots - they had no idea what freedom of the press was. But you? You, people, do really KNOW what it is, so how the hell you don't die from shame watching this comedy?
Re-read the same Remnik's "Lenin's Tomb" - it was written 20 years ago about USSR, but it feels like its all about USA 2007.
Congratulations, comrades. Now lets admit the de-facto merge of both Parties into single big "Party USA" and be done with that silly Constitution of yours.
I suggest Remnik for chief editor of the "Daily TRUTH".
Posted by: Alex Chaihorsky | August 29, 2007 at 09:59 PM
to KXB,
I understand your point. I had put that second link in there to the CBS survey to provide a comparison to the mood of the overall population at that time. But I concede that you can't really compare two different surveys with differently worded questions. Ultimately we're left with just a subjective sense of the mood of the times (heavily influenced by the example of Jews in public positions, particularly the media). So I might be wrong.
But your second point, that Jewish-American voters are still largely left-leaning, really goes to the heart of the matter, because the unique thing about this war was that its support crossed the political divide. We had such normally liberal voices as the New York Times, the New Republic, New Yorker, and the Union for Reform Judaism all pushing for preemptive war.
Personally, I don't think the neocons could have gotten away with it if they didn't have these so-called "liberal" allies. (Think Art Sulzberger and Judy Miller.)
Posted by: David | August 29, 2007 at 11:21 PM
Remnick is part of the problem. The usual sophistries, as befits the New Yorker.
Go W&M.
Posted by: evanj | August 30, 2007 at 01:08 AM
While it appears the Israel thought Iran was the better target, they were not exactly against the Iraq, at least not publically.
Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow, a former member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to Condoleezza Rice, the ‘real threat’ from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The ‘unstated threat’ was the ‘threat against Israel’, Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002. ‘The American government,’ he added, ‘doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.’
On 16 August 2002, 11 days before Dick Cheney kicked off the campaign for war with a hardline speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Washington Post reported that ‘Israel is urging US officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.’ By this point, according to Sharon, strategic co-ordination between Israel and the US had reached ‘unprecedented dimensions’, and Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq’s WMD programmes. As one retired Israeli general later put it, ‘Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq’s non-conventional capabilities.’
Israeli leaders were deeply distressed when Bush decided to seek Security Council authorisation for war, and even more worried when Saddam agreed to let UN inspectors back in. ‘The campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must,’ Shimon Peres told reporters in September 2002. ‘Inspections and inspectors are good for decent people, but dishonest people can overcome easily inspections and inspectors.’
At the same time, Ehud Barak wrote a New York Times op-ed warning that ‘the greatest risk now lies in inaction.’ His predecessor as prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, published a similar piece in the Wall Street Journal, entitled: ‘The Case for Toppling Saddam’. ‘Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do,’ he declared. ‘I believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a pre-emptive strike against Saddam’s regime.’ Or as Ha’aretz reported in February 2003,
Enough said.
Posted by: daveg | August 30, 2007 at 02:21 AM
Ramzi Yousef sez:
If the U.S. government keeps supporting Israel ... then we will continue to carry out operations inside and outside the United States... All people who support the U.S. government are our targets in our future plans, and that is becuase all those people are responsible for their government's actions and they support the U.S. foreign policy and are satisfied with it.
SOURCE: Ramzi Yousef's laptop computer as recovered by Philippine authorities in 1995.
Posted by: daveg | August 30, 2007 at 02:26 AM
My comment here comes in addition to some I made on Phil's previous entry. I would like to quote here from an article by William Engdahl, author of a study on oil and geopolitics entitled "A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order", which has been translated into Arabic, Korean, German, Croatian and Turkish.
"Today, much of the world is convinced the Bush Administration did not wage war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein because of threat from weapons of mass destruction, nor from terror dangers.
"Still a puzzle, however, is why Washington would risk so much in terms of relations with its allies and the entire world, to occupy Iraq. There is compelling evidence that oil and geopolitics lie at the heart of the still-hidden reasons for the military action in Iraq.
"It is increasingly clear that the US occupation of Iraq is about control of global oil resources. Control, however, in a situation where world oil supplies are far more limited than most of the world has been led to believe. If the following is accurate, the Iraq war is but the first in a major battle over global energy resources, a battle which will be more intense than any oil war to date. The stakes are highest. It is about fixing who will get how much oil for their economy at what price and who not. Never has such a choke-hold on the world economy been in the hands of one power. After occupation of Iraq it appears it is.
"The era of cheap, abundant oil, which has supported world economic growth for more than three quarters of a century, is most probably at or past its absolute peak, according to leading independent oil geologists. If this analysis is accurate, the economic and social consequences will be staggering. This reality is being hidden from general discussion by the oil multinationals and major government agencies, above all by the United States government.
"Oil companies have a vested interest in hiding the truth in order to keep the price of getting new oil as low as possible. The US government has a strategic interest in keeping the rest of the world from realising how critical the problem has become.
"According to the best estimates of a number of respected international geologists, including the French Petroleum Institute, Colorado School of Mines, Uppsala University and Petroconsultants in Geneva, the world will likely feel the impact of the peaking of most of the present large oil fields and the dramatic fall in supply by the end of this decade, 2010, or possibly even several years sooner. At that point, the world economy will face shocks which will make the oil price rises of the 1970's pale by contrast.
"In other words, we face a major global energy shortage for the prime fuel of our entire economy within about seven years."
And this is what Engdahl had to say about the role of Cheney:
"In a speech to the International Petroleum Institute in London in late 1999, Dick Cheney, then chairman of the world's largest oil services company, Halliburton, presented the picture of world oil supply and demand to industry insiders. 'By some estimates,' Cheney stated, 'there will be an average of two percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three percent natural decline in production from existing reserves.' Cheney ended on an alarming note: 'That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day.' This is equivalent to more than six Saudi Arabia's of today's size.
"Perhaps it was no coincidence that Cheney, as Vice President, was given as his first major assignment the head of a Presidential Task Force on Energy. He knew the dimension of the energy problem facing not only the United States, but the rest of the world.
"Cheney is also well identified as the leading Iraq warhawk in the Bush Administration, together with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Repeatedly it was Cheney pushing for military action against Iraq, regardless of which allies support it.
"When we examine what is known about global oil reserves, and where they are, in light of the above 'peak oil' analysis of much of today's existing oil production, it becomes clearer why Cheney would be willing to risk so much in terms of America's standing among allies and others, to occupy the oilfields of Iraq. Cheney knows exactly what the global oil reserve situation is as former CEO of Halliburton Corporation, the world's largest oil services company."
Google for the complete text: Engdahl Iraq
Posted by: Arie Brand | August 30, 2007 at 02:54 AM
BTW, it's good to see that Phil is getting some paying work--
"Watching Matt Drudge"
http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Where+Is+America%27s+Most+Influential+Journalist%2C+Matt+Drudge%2C+Coming+From%3F+--+New+York+Magazine&expire=&urlID=23622373&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fnews%2Fmedia%2F36617%2F&partnerID=73272
(I haven't read it all yet, but it looks pretty spicey.)
Posted by: David | August 30, 2007 at 03:43 AM
Here is another Engdahl article.
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/60/19680
Engdahl quote from a previous comment.
"When we examine what is known about global oil reserves, and where they are, in light of the above 'peak oil' analysis of much of today's existing oil production, it becomes clearer why Cheney would be willing to risk so much in terms of America's standing among allies and others, to occupy the oilfields of Iraq. Cheney knows exactly what the global oil reserve situation is as former CEO of Halliburton Corporation, the world's largest oil services company."
If this analysis is true, shouldn't the first step have been distancing the USA from Israel as Bush I did just before the start of the 1st Gulf War?
Yet, Cheney and Bush are not willing to alienate Israel and the Israel Lobby.
Doesn't that say that relations with Israel and the Israel Lobby (or as I would say the transnational ethnic Ashkenazi political economic elite) are more important to the Bush administration that relations with the UK, France, Germany, and Spain and the rest of the world?
Engdahl's analysis certainly does not undermine Walt and Mearsheimer's thesis (incorrect though some of their views of the Israeli Lobby are), and Engdahl does not seem to reject the main point.
Posted by: Joachim Martillo | August 30, 2007 at 03:54 AM
Phil, you are way too eager to see allies where none exist if you think the Remnick piece shows agreement with W&M. The best you can say about it is that he politely agrees that W&M are not anti-Semites, which is a form of progress. I suspect a few years ago that's exactly what the New Yorker would have called them.
David already pointed out the paragraph where Remnick gives his own summary of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but I'll add one point. He complains that WM's book "recounts every lurid report of Israeli cruelty as indisputable fact". Note the wording there. Immediately afterwards Remnick lists a series of Palestinian atrocities--I wonder if he thinks he is being "lurid", or if that word only applies to reports of Israeli cruelty? The only specific line Remnick has about Israel's crimes is "the narrative rightly points out the destructiveness of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and America's reluctance to do much to curtail them." I imagine anything harsher than that would probably be Remnick's notion of "lurid". Remnick also thinks it is a devastating point to mention that Palestinian terrorism began before 1967--apparently he expects his readers to be unaware of the long history of atrocities on both sides that started decades before 1967.
As David points out, he also thinks Barak's offer at Camp David was generous. As is usual with propagandists, he can't be bothered to note that the Israeli/Palestinian negotiators came much closer to an acceptable agreement at Taba several months later, because that would refute the storyline of Arafat irrationally turning down a generous peace offer at Camp David. Remnick's evidence that the offer was generous is that a Saudi prince thought it was. Yes, we always go to Saudi princes for analysis of human rights issues. Who better to tell Palestinians what they deserve than a member of a backwards authoritarian regime?
Remnick is doing his best to limit the damage the WM book will do to the credibility of much of the mainstream press, including the New Yorker.
Posted by: Donald Johnson | August 30, 2007 at 05:43 AM
All those arguments about Oil and the national interest being part of the calculation in setting this administration's foreign policy fall like a house of cards when one looks at the whole record of this administration. If it were possible to assume – with no evidence presented whatsoever, mind you – that there were "other factors" besides the Israel Lobby at play in making the case for the Iraq war, there is definitely no way one can entertain such assumptions now that the campaign to start a war with Iran gains full speed.
What exactly is in the national interest or any other lobby's interest in a war with Iran? I would really like to be enlightened. Because the Foreign Policy Bureaucracy is totally against it. The CIA thinks it will be a catastrophe. The Pentagon has four-star generals leaking damaging reports and information to Seymour Hersh and the press trying to stop this. The Europeans, including the British, think this would be "nuts" (Jack Straw’s words when he was still Foreign Minister). The traditional Establishment (Baker, Scowcroft, Brzezinski, even Kissinger) has made it absolutely clear it would be against the US interest, with Brzezinski going so far in his efforts to sabotage this as to warn in his February 2007 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of "a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran"!!! Can you believe that???
www.senate.gov/~foreign/testimony/2007/BrzezinskiTestimony070201.pdf
The cognitive dissonance that is created by the incredible success that such a small group of people have had in highjacking the most powerful nation in history is not going to be resolved by wishful thinking. It is happening before our eyes, whether we want to believe it or not. However, I share Greenwald's pessimism and I don't think we will be able to do anything about it, no matter how much evidence we have before our eyes or how many scholars come out writing books. People will simply not leave their barbeques and ballgames to take to the streets and protest. The Israel-first crowd and the neo-cons will self-destruct under the weight of their own chutzpah and arrogance. The only question is how much damage the US will have to take and how many hundreds of thousands of innocent people will have to die before people wake-up and this happens.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/08/29/iran/index.html
Posted by: Alan | August 30, 2007 at 08:14 AM
The above link to Brzezinski's incredible testimony which everyone must read is a pdf file which is not recognized as a link by the server it seems. You can get it here:
http://www.senate.gov/~foreign/hearings/2007/hrg070201a.html
"... If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody
involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to
be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large.
A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure
to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility
for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S.
blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against
Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire
eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. "
This is exactly what is happening, we are halfway there already. Giving new meaning to the word "prophet" I guess...
Posted by: Alan | August 30, 2007 at 08:28 AM
"...so how the hell you don't die from shame watching this comedy?"
When a few jet crashes is enough to cower an entire nation into accepting a preemptive war doctrine we suspect shame is no longer a factor.
And when it is enough to cower it's congress into tranferring to the executive branch it's exclusive power to declare war then we suspect comedy has become a way of life.
I'm sorry for you, Alex, you've reached the home of the brave and found it inhabited by ghosts whispering about torture and markets in a single lifeless breath.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 30, 2007 at 08:48 AM
Anonymous:
No, do not feel sorry for me. I had good and fascinating almost 20 years of old America, starting literally from living on the streets, which was a fascinating journey. With so much poverty, suffering and death all over the planet, not that shabby for a poor little Russki Jewish me.
And of course there is a chance to die an honorable death fighting for the US Constitution one day. I have no doubt it will come to that, actually. What more a guy could ask for?
Posted by: Alex Chaihorsky | August 30, 2007 at 01:13 PM
Martillo wrote a propos of Engdahl's analysis of the situation:
"If this analysis is true, shouldn't the first step have been distancing the USA from Israel as Bush I did just before the start of the 1st Gulf War?"
Frankly I don't see why. Cheney might be a patriot in his own eyes but from a global perspective he is not more than a neighborhood gangster, though the neighborhood is in this case as wide as a continent.
Once you have decided to go by the logic of armed robbery it is handy to have a heavily armed mate around the place, who has an established criminal record, whose own claim on the loot (oil) can only be modest and who ultimately can be blamed for the heist.
England was let in on the scheme. France and Germany are only sizable competitors for oil who ultimately would be alienated anyway.
The scenario cooked up between these robbers is now falling apart.
The more recent Engdahl article Martillo referred to does, indeed, not take issue with Walt and Mearsheimer. Rather, he sees the appearance of their study as a sign that the scenario is indeed unravelling.
But his point of view remains that the whole thing is ultimately about oil.
He quotes with approval this Russian view:
"Gennady Yefstafiyev, a former general in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, said, "The US's long-term goals in Iran are obvious: to engineer the downfall of the current regime; to establish control over Iran's oil and gas; and to use its territory as the shortest route for the transportation of hydrocarbons under US control from the regions of Central Asia and the Caspian Sea, bypassing Russia and China. This is not to mention Iran's intrinsic military and strategic significance."
Posted by: Arie Brand | August 30, 2007 at 03:10 PM
Oh, I see. The diabolical Cheney wanted to advance the US interest (as he saw it) and made sure he got all the neocons on board so they and Israel could be blamed if things didn't turn out that well.
What a guy! Thanks for the analysis Arie.
Posted by: Tricky Dick | August 30, 2007 at 04:11 PM
I actually believe that if the US would pursue its core strategic interests of stability and reliable oil routing instead of watchdogging the Israeli Utopia, all the ME problems would go away including Iran and Islamic opposition.
At the same time I do allow for more "conspiratorial" scenario when Bush and Co., having seen how AIPAC prevented his father, older Bush, from the second term, decided to play a very interesting game when if it won, its Bushe's glory and if lost - would start a long-term alienation and decline of Israeli and Jewish influence on American affairs in general.
Call me crazy, but I cannot believe that WASPy America is really that happy with giving up that much of its power to rich minority tribe with open loyalty to a foreign entity.
Current situation allows for many possibilities. But one thing is clear to me - we will witness the correction of the distribution of power within the US with considerable diminishing of Israeli influence. Most probably it will happen quietly in the form of very smooth negotiations between very unknown people with no apparent positions of power while some Kissinger-like puppets solemnly mumbling their usual pseudo-wise half-riddles upon the crowds of jaw-gaped journalistic half-wits. But the outcome of it will be very serious - and that would be the removal or considerable relaxing of AIPAC yoke of political bribing and blackmailing from Congress elections.
And that would be a very good thing for everybody, including, in the long run, Israel itself.
Posted by: Alex Chaihorsky | August 30, 2007 at 05:08 PM
The website is actually active now. http://www.israellobbybook.com/ It also has a PDF of M&W's detailed response to critics.
Posted by: m.idrees | August 30, 2007 at 05:13 PM
Thanks for the link. I have now gone through most of M.& W.'s replies to their critics. I must say it is a valuable repository of facts and arguments that can be used when the usual pro-Zionist defences are trotted out.
I read their refutation of Benny Morris, who has become a sort of Quisling against his own earlier opinions, with particular satisfaction.
I was however disappointed by their reaction to the claims about the role of oil in the US's present Middle East policy.
They wrote:
"We recognize that there are other interest groups that work to shape U.S. policy in the Middle East, but these groups are no match—alone or in combination—for the Israel lobby. Although there are a few pro-Arab or pro-Palestinian political groups in the United States, they are small, not nearly as well funded, and not very effective. There is no well-organized and politically potent“Arab lobby” and little evidence that U.S. politicians ever feel much pressure from pro-Arab groups.46 Similarly, there is little or no evidence to support the widespread belief that U.S. oil companies were actively pushing the Bush
administration to invade Iraq. Oil companies and arms manufacturers
occasionally lobby to protect their own commercial objectives, but they
generally do not try to exert a broad influence on U.S. Middle East policy. The
effects of this imbalance on American policy are clear. If the oil lobby, arms
dealers, and Arab petrodollars were driving U.S. policy, one would expect to see
the United States distancing itself from Israel and working to help the
Palestinians, while seeking to curry favor with big oil producers like Iraq or the
Islamic Republic of Iran. But because these groups are much weaker than the
lobby, U.S. policy leans heavily the other way. Oil producers like Saudi Arabia
do hire public relations firms to enhance their image (especially after events like
the September 11 attacks), but these efforts exert little influence over the broad direction of U.S. policy. Former AIPAC executive director Morris Amitay
explained why in the early 1980s: “When oil interests and other corporate interests lobby, 99 percent of the time they are acting in what they perceive to be
their own self-interest—they lobby on tax bills… We very rarely see them
lobbying on foreign policy issues… In a sense, we have the field to ourselves.”
M.& W.'s argument here seems to state implicitly that American foreign policy is only devised in response to the activities of lobbies. Since there has been no push by an oil lobby, one way or the other, present strategy in the Middle East cannot be about oil.
As I said earlier: the business of oil companies is international and they would have little interest in trying to ensure that one particular state will be able to keep up its supply of oil.
But that doesn't mean that the group around Cheney and Rumsfeldt didn't have that interest - or that Cheney has given it up.
And the 'strategy' of ensuring that supply by force of arms excludes that other strategy "working to help the Palestinians, while seeking to curry favor with big oil producers like Iraq or the Islamic Republic of Iran."
One cannot steal one's cake hoping that the baker will smile on you.
Posted by: Arie Brand | August 30, 2007 at 07:49 PM | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 11:01 pm Post subject: AIPAC's criminal history -- a new study reviewed |
| AIPAC's criminal history -- a new study reviewed
Foreign Agents
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright
Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal
By Grant F. Smith
Book Review by Terry Walz
CNI Staff
Many citizens concerned by the undue influence of the Israel lobby are
dismayed by the action of the US Congress that adopts resolution after
resolution favoring Israel with nary of word about its failure to make
peace
with the Palestinians, whose land it inhabits, or with its neighbors,
whose
borders it abutts. Last year Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, two
professors from prestigious American universities, began a public
debate on
the power of the lobby - a cause long advocated by the Council for the
National Interest - giving hope that a public airing of the American
Israel
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), its work, financing, and political
connections would help Americans understand the gross misdirection of
Middle
East foreign policy over the last forty years. Grant F. Smith's new
book,
Foreign Agents, decisively pushes this debate forward and shows just
how
brazen and criminal the lobby has acted since its beginnings.
Smith traces the development of AIPAC from its early days under founder
Si
Kenen, who in 1947 registered with the US Department of Justice under
the
Foreign Agents Registration Act as an employee of the American Zionist
Committee for Public Affairs. He was representing himself then as an
agent
working for Israel. He continued to register as a foreign agent
during the
late forties and fifties, working for various organizations funded by
the
Israel government, but in 1959, the name of the American Zionist
Committee
was changed to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to
better reflect, as Kenen said, that it "raised its funds from both
Zionists
and non-Zionists." Its focus of work never changed, which was to
promote
the cause of Israel in both the executive and legislation branches of
government, yet the organization no longer filed as a foreign agent.
AIPAC
eventually developed an extensive grassroots national network of
organizations that engaged in all manner of illegal activities, from
transgressing federal elections laws, to economic and industrial
espionage,
to flouting congressional laws regarding the use of arms exported to
foreign
countries, and passing classified and secret information to the Israeli
government via the Israeli embassy in Washington. In 2005, after a
nine-year
investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, two of AIPAC's
top
officials were arrested for espionage, and the role that AIPAC played
over
the years as a covert agent for Israel was given unusual light.
The book uses as a primary source the historic and remarkable hearings
that
Senator William Fulbright held in 1963 to investigate the "activities
of
agents of foreign principals in the United States." The Committee's aim
was
to look at the work of all organizations working on behalf of foreign
countries, but in the process it discovered that the American Zionist
Committee (AZC) was funded by the Jewish Agency, an arm of the Israeli
government, and by the Israeli embassy, although its principals were
not
registered as foreign agents. The hearings disclosed the secret world
of the
AZC and the Jewish Agency, finding a pattern of money laundering that
became
a hallmark of AIPAC in the years to come. Both the Agency and the
embassy
typically hid the support that they provided by using private
foundations
and individuals as fronts so that it would appear the AZC was funded by
American, not foreign, sources. Thus they bypassed the terms of the
Foreign Agent Registration Act and sought to obscure their aim, which
was to
represent the interests of the Israeli government.
To measure the influence of the emerging lobby, Smith covers a wide
spectrum
of illegal and criminal activity. He begins by examining AIPAC's
efforts to
promote Israeli economic interests to the disadvantage of American
workers.
During the 1984 negotiations that preceded the creation of a "US-Israel
Free
Trade Agreement," AIPAC obtained a copy of the classified document
spelling
out the American negotiating strategy. Thus Israeli negotiators were
aware
of American positions well in advance of the meeting. AIPAC then
managed to
persuade the House Ways and Means Committee to provide special
protections
for Israeli imports of certain products should a free-trade zone be
established. Even Congressional members, with long experience in
Israeli
lobby tactics, couldn't help but notice AIPAC's heavy hand in this
instance.
The pressure exerted by AIPAC during congressional and presidential
elections is well known, though consistently denied by the
organization.
Smith here focuses on the California Senate race of 1986 and the role
played
by Michael Goland, a real estate developer, who contributed $1 million
via
various conduits to derail a potential dangerous opponent of Sen. Alan
Cranston, who was seeking reelection that year and was an AIPAC
favorite.
Goland was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for election fraud.
Goland had been a member of the board of AIPAC and had been highly
visible
in AIPAC's successful effort to unseat Sen. Charles Percy of Illinois
in
1984.
AIPAC also had a hand in the defeat of Sen. Fulbright in 1968, and of
Congressman Paul Findley in 1986. Findley's series of books about the
lobby,
especially his Dare to Speak Out, have been noted for the light they
have
thrown on the power of the lobby and its illegal activities.
AIPAC set up a series of political action committees (PACs), all with
innocuous names, with the aim of influencing the election of
congressional
representatives all over the country. It made sure that internal
firewalls,
as Smith describes them, were set up so that no one could detect
AIPAC's
hand. But the line between them and the actions of the committees
was
hardly invisible. One "activist," a Chicago businessman, attempted to
explain in a New York Times interview in 1987 how he and AIPAC operated
independently, in the course of which it became apparent that the
opposite
was true, that there was tight coordination between AIPAC and dozens on
pro-Israel committees. In 1988 the Washington Post published an
internal
AIPAC memo, reproduced in Foreign Agents, revealing now active AIPAC
was in
illegally coordinating PAC distributions to favored candidates.
The many instances of election fraud prompted a group of former US
government officials to sue the Federal Election Commission for failure
to
require AIPAC to publish details of its income and expenditures, which
political action committees are required to do. Among this group were
George Ball, former secretary of state, Paul Findley, former
congressman and
founder of the Council for the National Interest, Andrew Kilgore,
publisher
of the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs and former ambassador
to
Qatar, and James Akin, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The FEC
delivered
a report on the complaint that cleared the PACs but professed a desire
to
further study the actions of AIPAC, but in fact the chief complaints
were
ignored. Appeals to the Supreme Court were turned aside on various
points
and the case remains in legal limbo to this day.
In the last twenty years, AIPAC has continued to develop its political
networks. Steve Rosen, AIPAC Director of Policy, notoriously likened
the
lobby to "a night flower. It thrives in the dark and dies in the sun."
It
funds dozens of congressional "educational" trips to Israel every year
through its affiliate the American Israel Education Foundation; it
continues
to publish Si Kenen's Near East Report, which serves as a propaganda
arm of
the Israel government; it established a "think tank," the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, which maintains a roster of "experts"
providing cover for Israeli government positions (many of whose Board
members have served as Board members of AIPAC); it maintains a large
public
relations office in Manhattan; and works in tandem with the new Saban
Center
for Middle East Policy, whose president, Martin Indyk, was deputy
director
of AIPAC and a former US ambassador to Israel. Thus Middle East
policy at
Brookings Institution, once a formidable independent think tank, has
been
usurped by pro-Israeli interests.
The growing arrogance of AIPAC, which in recent years acted with brazen
impunity, was not unnoticed by the FBI counterintelligience which began
probing the organization's activities as far back as 1999. In 2005,
Col.
Lawrence Franklin, who was working in the office of Douglas Feith,
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, was arrested and charged with
giving
classified documents to two top officials at AIPAC who passed them on
to the
Israeli embassy. The information concerned US positions toward Iran.
The
AIPAC officials were also arrested and charged with espionage. Lawrence
was
found guilty and sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison and
fined
$10,000 for passing classified information to AIPAC and an Israeli
diplomat.
The trial against Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman has been delayed on
several occasions and is now scheduled to begin in January 2008. The
espionage charges have been dropped. A full analysis of the trial and
its
various permutations can be found in Smith's Chapter Five.
The case appropriately summarizes the extent of the illegalities that
AIPAC
has engaged in since its beginnings some fifty years ago. Senator
Fulbright
was on to something much bigger than even he could have imagined .
Spawned
by the Jewish Agency, it has abetted efforts that have encouraged
"charitable" organizations in the US to contribute more than US $50
billion
to illegal settlements in Gaza and the West Bank while appropriating
and
developing lands that belong to Palestinians. The money laundering
activities of the Agency and the US donors have been brought to the
attention of the US Department of Justice, thanks to work by the
Institute
for Research: Middle Eastern Policy and the Council for the National
Interest but as yet no action has taken place to stop the illegal
operations. As Smith states, "This follows an established pattern of
law
enforcement failures since the Fulbright foreign agent hearings."
Foreign Agents shines light on the murky world of AIPAC and its efforts
to
divert policy and push Israel's rightwing interventionist agenda in
Washington. It garnered support for a war and occupation of Iraq in
Congress. Contrary to the assertions of many now claiming how AIPAC
was
not promoting war, Smith documents how it helped prompt the American
invasion of Iraq and now threatens to coordinate an intervention by the
US
in Iran. The consequences for the American public have been huge, as
the
response to Hurricane Katrina made clear, and has rendered the US the
least
popular country in the world. The book also discusses in detail how
tenuous
are AIPAC's claims to even be a legally constituted nonprofit
corporation.
Most of all, it serves to remind us that the American Israel Public
Affairs
Committee does not serve US interests, but works as a foreign agent for
the
government of Israel and should be required to register as a foreign
agent.
Only then will be operations and financing be made transparent and
public.
In fact, this book makes a convincing case that America - and the world
-
would be better off without AIPAC.
(end) | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2007 12:21 am Post subject: New book challenges US support for Israel |
| Just saw the following posted at www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\08\31\story_31-8-2007_pg4_2
New book challenges US support for Israel
NEW YORK: An upcoming book challenging whether diplomatic and military support for Israel is in the best interests of the United States is set to spark fresh debate on Washington’s role in the Middle East.
“The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” written by two of the United States’ most influential political science professors, is set to hit the bookshelves next Tuesday and promises to break the taboo on the subject. Written by John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt from Harvard, the book follows an article they published last year that stirred impassioned debate by setting out a similar position.
Their thesis is that US endorsement of Israel is not fully explained by strategic or moral reasons, but by the pressure exerted by Jewish lobbyists, Christian fundamentalists and neo-conservatives with Zionist sympathies.
The result, according to the book, is an unbalanced US foreign policy in the Middle East, the US invasion of Iraq, the threat of war with Iran or Syria and a fragile security situation for the entire Western world. “Israel is not the strategic asset to the United States that many claim. Israel may have been a strategic asset during the Cold War, but it has become a growing liability now that the Cold War is over,” the authors said.
“Unconditional support for Israel has reinforced anti-Americanism around the world, helped fuel America’s terrorism problem, and strained relations with other key allies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia,” they added.
According to the two writers, “backing Israel’s harsh treatment of the Palestinians has reinforced Anti-Americanism around the world and almost certainly helped terrorists recruit new followers.”
Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, described the book as “an insidious, biased account of the Arab-Israeli conflict and of the role of supporters of Israel in the US,” in an interview with AFP.
“Everything about American policy toward the conflict is presented in exaggerated form, as if America is completely one-sided in support of Israel and that those policies are simply the product of the Israel lobby.” He is countering Mearsheimer and Walt’s book with his own title: “The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control,” due out on the same day.
Mearsheimer and Walt highlight the three billion dollars in US economic and military aid that Israel receives every year - more than any other country. They also point to Washington’s diplomatic support: between 1972 and 2006, the United States vetoed 42 United Nations Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel, while watering down many others under threat of veto. Foxman counters that the special relationship works both ways and that the United States has gained much out of its ally.
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs canceled a public debate on the issue planned for September and featuring Mearsheimer and Walt when they were unable to schedule a time that Foxman could also manage.
In the conclusion of their book, Mearsheimer and Walt say that the United States must change its policy towards Israel. “The United States would be a better ally if its leaders could make support for Israel more conditional and if they could give their Israeli counterparts more candid advice without facing a backlash from the Israel lobby.” With just over a year until the 2008 US presidential election, however, they said the issue was unlikely to even enter the debate. afp
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Walt & Mearsheimer's Proof That 'Tail Wagged the Dog' Points American Jews to a Universalist Ethos:
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2007/09/more-on-walt-me.html
Last edited by Alpha on Mon Sep 17, 2007 5:34 pm; edited 1 time in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 6:13 am Post subject: Buchanan: laying out the case for a new war |
| Has Bush Boxed Himself In?
By Pat Buchanan
08/29/07 "Creators Syndicate" -- - As Americans anguish over how to extricate this country from Iraq without a disaster greater than what we now have, and without our friends suffering the fate of our friends in Cambodia and Vietnam, they had best brace themselves. This escalator is going up.
and his generals are laying out the case for a new war. And there has been no resistance offered either by a vacationing Congress or the major presidential candidates.
On CNN's "Late Edition" Sunday, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, No. 2 commander in Iraq, said, "It is clear to me that (the Iranians) have been stepping up their support" for enemy fighters in Iraq.
"They do it from providing weapons, ammunition, specifically mortars and explosively formed projectiles. ... They are conducting training within Iran of Iraqi extremists to come back here and fight the United States."
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said his troops were following 50 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who have been crossing the border and training fighters in Iraq. The State Department is about to declare the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.
Earlier in August, President Bush directly charged Tehran with aiding Iraqi insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers:
"I asked Ambassador Crocker to meet with Iranians inside Iraq ... to send the message that there will be consequences for ... people transporting, delivering EFPs, highly sophisticated IEDs, that kill American troops."
The EFPs are roadside bombs that penetrate Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Abrams tanks. They have taken the lives of scores of U.S. soldiers.
Whether Bush has made the decision to attack the al Quds training camps inside Iran, he has painted himself into a corner.
If he does not strike the camps, he will be mocked by the War Party as a weak commander in chief, too timid to use U.S. power to protect soldiers he sent into battle or to punish those killing them.
Thus, Bush must either announce that his diplomacy has worked, and attacks out of Iran have diminished or been halted, or he will have to explain why the Top Gun of the carrier Lincoln was too wimpish to do his duty by the soldiers he sent to fight.
Who is pushing for attacks on Iran? Israel and its lobby. Vice President Cheney. Sen. Joe Lieberman, who has been calling for air strikes on Al Quds camps for months. And a War Party facing lasting disgrace for having lied the country into an unnecessary war, and for having assured the American people it would be a "cakewalk."
The arguments for war on Iran are both strategic and political.
Israel is terrified Iran will end its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East and wants an all-out U.S. war on Iran to prevent it. The War Party fears Iran may acquire a nuclear weapon, which would inhibit U.S. freedom of action in the Gulf and convince the Arab states that the United States is yesterday and they must appease Iran or go nuclear themselves.
As for Bush and Cheney, if they go home without hitting Iran's nuclear sites, and Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, the Bush Doctrine will have been defied by the Ayatollah as well as Kim Jong-il, and their legacy will be a no-win war in Iraq.
The War Party is thus seeking an excuse to launch air strikes on Iran, as that would trigger Iranian counterstrikes on our forces. Then they will have their long-sought casus belli for U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities.
First, the al Quds camps, then Natanz, Isfahan and Bushewr.
Initially, Americans might cheer the bombing of Iran, and Congress would head for the tall grass. But as U.S. strikes would be an act of war, rallying the Iranians behind the failing regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and igniting a long war the end of which we cannot see and the troops for which we do not have, there are powerful arguments against a new war.
Iran and the United States would both pay a hellish price, and Iran at least seems to recognize it. Both the Iraqi and Afghan governments say Iran is behaving as a good neighbor. There is evidence Tehran's nuclear program is faltering, or being curbed. Iran is said to be making concessions to U.N. inspectors.
Iran has released an American seized in response to our seizure of five Iranian "diplomats" in Iraq. Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, in a letter to the Washington Post, denies Iran is aiding the Iraqi insurgency and calls on the U.S. government to "proffer evidence" and "provide the list of Iranian agents who it alleges are operating in Iraq."
If there is a rush to war here, it is not on the part of Iran.
As Bush is preparing for war on Iran, if he has not already decided on war, where is Congress, which alone has the constitutional power to authorize a war?
Or has it given Bush and Cheney another blank check?
To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com . | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 10:19 pm Post subject: |
| http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article2348741.ece
From The Sunday Times
September 2, 2007
The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy
By John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt
Reviewed by Max Hastings
Five years ago, Atlantic Monthly commissioned two academics, John Mearsheimer of Chicago University and Stephen Walt of Harvard, to write a significant article about the influence of the Israeli lobby on American foreign policy. When the piece was at last completed, the magazine declined to publish, deeming it too hot for delicate American palates. It eventually appeared in 2005, in the London Review of Books, provoking one of the most bitter media and academic rows of recent times. The authors were accused of antisemitism, and attacked with stunning venom by some prominent US commentators. Mearsheimer and Walt obviously like a fight, however, for they have now expanded their thesis into a book.
Its argument is readily summarised. The authors support Israel’s right to exist. But they are dismayed by America’s unconditional support for its governments’ policies, including vast sums of cash aid for which there is no plausible accounting process. They reject the view articulated as a mantra by all modern American presidents (and 2008 presidential candidates) that Israel and America share common values, and their national interests march hand in hand.
On the contrary, say the authors, America’s backing for Israel does grave damage to its own foreign-policy interests. And many Israeli government actions, including the expansion of West Bank settlements and the invasion of Lebanon, reflect repressive policies that do not deserve Washington’s endorsement: “While there is no question that the Jews were victims in Europe, they were often the victimisers, not the victims, in the Middle East, and their main victims were and continue to be the Palestinians.”
The authors argue that American policy towards Israel is decisively and
They quote the experience of a Senate candidate who was invited to visit AIPAC early in his campaign for “discussions”. Harry Lonsdale described what followed as “an experience I will never forget. It wasn’t enough that I was pro-Israel. I was given a list of vital topics and quizzed (read grilled) for my specific opinion on each. Actually, I was told what my opinion must be . . . Shortly after that . . . I was sent a list of American supporters of Israel . . . that I was free to call for campaign contributions. I called; they gave from Florida to Alaska”.
When congresswoman Betty McCollum, a liberal with a solid pro-Israel voting record, opposed the AIPAC-backed Palestinian AntiTerrorism Act, which was also opposed by the state department, an AIPAC lobbyist told McCollum’s chief-of-staff that her “support for terrorists will not be tolerated”. Former president Jimmy Carter incurred not merely criticism but vilification when he published a book entitled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, likening Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians to that of the old white regime in South Africa towards its black majority.
Whatever view Europeans take of Israel, most find it difficult to comprehend the sheer ferocity of American sentiment. Ian Buruma wrote an article for The New York Times entitled How to Talk About Israel. He said how difficult it is to have an honest debate, and remarked that “even legitimate criticism of Israel, or of Zionism, is often quickly denounced as antiSemitism by various watchdogs”.
Such remarks brought down a storm on his head. The editor of The Jerusalem Post, also a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, published an open letter to Buruma that began: “Are you a Jew?” He argued that nonJews should discuss these issues only in terms acceptable to Jews.
The American media, claim the authors, even such mighty organs as The New York Times and The Washington Post, do less than justice to the Palestinians, much more than justice to the Israelis. Robert Bartley, a former editor of The Wall Street Journal, once said: “Shamir, Sharon, Bibi – whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by me.” There is no American counterpart to such notably Arabist British polemicists as Robert Fisk.
Mearsheimer and Walt’s book argues its points at such ponderous length that it makes pretty leaden reading. But it is extraordinary that, in a free society, the legitimacy of the expression of their opinions should be called into question. “We show,” say the authors, “that although Israel may have been an asset during the cold war it is increasingly a strategic liability now that the cold war is over. Backing Israel so strongly helps fuel America’s terrorism problem and makes it harder for the United States to address the other problems it faces in the Middle East.”
Americans ring-fence Israel from the normal sceptical proc-esses of democracy, while arguments for the Palestinians are often denounced as pernicious as well as antisemitic. All the 2008 presidential candidates, say Mearsheimer and Walt, know that their campaign would be dead in the water if they hinted that Israel would receive less than 100% backing if they win. They note that many Israelis are much bolder in attacking their own governments than any American politician would dare to be.
Part of the trouble is that AIPAC faces no significant opposition. Palestinians, and indeed all Arabs, command negligible sympathy in America, especially since 9/11. The authors think that the most helpful step towards diminishing the Israel lobby’s grip would be for election campaigns to be publicly financed, ending candidates’ dependence on private contributions: “AIPAC’s success is due in large part to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who do not.”
But the authors know reform will not happen. The Israel lobby is vastly strengthened by the support of America’s Christian Zionists, an important element of George W Bush’s constituency. Some may think these people are lunatics, but there are an awful lot of them. They are even more strident in their opposition to Arab rights in Palestine than the Israeli Likud party.
Mearsheimer and Walt conclude, weakly but inevitably, with a mere plea for more open debate in the US about Israel. “Because most Americans are only dimly aware of the crimes committed against the Palestinians,” they say, “they see their continued resistance as an irrational desire for vengeance. Or as evidence of unwarranted hatred of Jews akin to the antisemitism that was endemic in old Europe.
“Although we deplore the Palestinians’ reliance on terrorism and are well aware of their own contribution to prolonging the conflict, we believe their grievances are genuine and must be addressed. We also believe that most Americans would support a different approach . . . if they had a more accurate understanding of past events and present conditions.”
For Europeans, all this adds up to a bleak picture. Only America might be capable of inducing the government of Israel to moderate its behaviour, and it will not try. Washington gives Jerusalem a blank cheque, and all of us in some degree pay a price for Israel’s abuses of it.
After that remark, I shall be pleasantly surprised to escape an allegation from somebody that I belong in the same stable of antisemites as Walt and Mearsheimer. Yet otherwise intelligent Americans diminish themselves by hurling charges of antisemitism with such recklessness. There will be no peace in the Middle East until the United States faces its responsibilities there in a much more convincing fashion than it does today, partly for reasons given in this depressing book.
The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt
Allen Lane £25 pp496
Buy the book here at the offer price of £22.50 (inc p&p)
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Articles of faith
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2169839,00.html
When two eminent US scholars wrote about the 'Israel lobby' they were vilified by colleagues and the Washington Post. This week Barack Obama joined the attack. Ed Pilkington hears their story
Saturday September 15, 2007
The Guardian
Given the reception John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt received for their London Review of Books essay last year on what they called the Israel Lobby, it would have been understandable had they crawled away to a dark corner of their respective academic institutions to lick their wounds. Their argument that US foreign policy has been distorted by the stultifying power of pro-Israeli groups and individuals was met with a firestorm of protest that has smouldered ever since.
The authors were assailed with headlines such as the Washington Post's: "Yes, it's anti-semitic." The neocon pundit William Kristol accused them in the Wall Street Journal of "anti-Judaism" while the New York Sun linked them with the white supremacist David Duke.
The row became a focal point of a much wider debate about the limits of permitted criticism of the state of Israel and its American-based supporters that has ensnared several academics and writers, including a former president. Jimmy Carter was castigated earlier this year when he published a plea for a renewed engagement in the Middle-East peace process under the admittedly provocative title, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. He was labelled an anti-semitic "Jew hater" and even a Nazi sympathiser. Meanwhile, a British-born historian at New York University, Tony Judt, has been warned off or disinvited from four academic events in the past year. On one occasion, he was asked to promise not to mention Israel in a speech on the Holocaust. He refused.
For Walt, the explosion of criticism after the LRB publication in March 2006 struck particularly close to home as two members of his own Harvard faculty turned on him. Ruth Wisse, professor of Yiddish literature, compared Walt and his University of Chicago co-author's work to that of a notorious 19th-century German anti-semite. Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard criminal law professor who represented OJ Simpson, charged them with culling some of their references from neo-Nazi websites.
Given the battering he has taken, Walt is remarkably upbeat. "We were surprised by how nasty it got," says the Harvard professor. "The David Duke reference, the neo-Nazi websites - these were intended to smear us and swing attention on to us rather than to what we were saying. It wasn't pleasant, but it never made me doubt what we had written or doubt myself." Standing tall in the face of attack is one thing; to raise your head above the parapet for a second round is quite another. But that is what the Mearsheimer/Walt double act are doing: they have gone on the offensive with the publication of a book-length version of their original treatise.
As night follows day, the dispute has started anew. The New York Sun has dedicated a section of its website to the controversy; Dershowitz has revved up again, calling the book "a bigoted attack on the American Jewish community"; and Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, has gone to the trouble of writing his own book in riposte - and it's in the bookshops a week before The Israel Lobby appears.
There is one obvious question to put to Walt: why do it to yourself? Wasn't one stoning enough? "We did ask ourselves, did we want to go through this again?" he admits, but only to add: "It didn't take us all that long to figure out we had more to say and it was our job to say it."
By writing a 496-page book, as opposed to the original article's mere 13,000 words, the authors hope to present a more nuanced version of their case. They have taken in new examples to support their thesis, notably the second Lebanon war, which broke out in the interim, and have sought to address some of the points raised by critics.
The book follows the structure of the original article fairly faithfully, and its argument can be summarised thus: in recent years the US government has given Israel unconditional support, showering it with $3bn a year irrespective of the human rights violations it inflicts on the Palestinians. It was not always this way - think of the Suez crisis of 1956 when America stepped in to frustrate Israel's (and Britain's) ambitions. But from the 1960s onwards the relationship deepened to the extent that today American and Israeli interests are deemed by many Americans to be essentially identical.
The authors ask why this is the case, and argue that strategically there is no reason for it. The end of the cold war removed a central justification for the special relationship, as Israel no longer provided the US with a barrier to communism in the region. Post 9/11, the US and Israel are presented as partners against terrorism, but America's vulnerability to attack partly stems from its support for Israel, which has provoked hostility in the Muslim world. Nor is there a moral argument for indiscriminately backing Israel - as a towering military presence in the Middle East, Israel is no longer under existential threat.
So what explains this ongoing largesse? The authors conclude that the answer lies with the Israel lobby, a loose coalition of individuals and organisations that wants US leaders to treat Israel as though it were the 51st state. The lobby stifles debate, inhibits criticism of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and maintains the special relationship despite the fact that it has become a liability both for the US and for Israel itself.
In its transition from literary journal essay to stand-alone book, the authors have made a few telling alterations of presentation and emphasis. The most vivid is that in the body of the text they have demoted lobby to lower case: the Israel Lobby has become the Israel lobby. Walt sees that as the most minor of changes, remarking that: "John and I don't even remember how the capital L got used in the first place."
More substantially, perhaps, they have used the extra space to make several robust disclaimers, insisting that they have never questioned the right of Israel to exist or the legitimacy of the Israel lobby itself. They have also filed down some of the more jagged edges of their argument, such as their position on the role the lobby played in the build-up to the Iraq war. They still maintain that the war would "almost certainly not have occurred" were it not for the Israel lobby, but they soften the claim by adding that America's belligerent mood in the aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington also had much to do with it.
Such nuances make for a more sophisticated read, but they fall far short of the revisions - the authors would say capitulations - that would be needed to satisfy their detractors.
Foxman is one of the most vocal critics. His new book, timed specifically to counteract the arrival on bookshelves of The Israel Lobby, pulls no punches. Its title is representative of the tone of the book: The Deadliest Lies. "This is a big lie that the Jewish people have lived with throughout history," he tells me from his New York office. "Up to now these anti-semitic canards have been heard on the fringes, but to have two respected academics repeat them legitimises the debate and penetrates the mainstream."
More measured - though still forceful - criticism of the Mearsheimer and Walt book has come from those titans of US journalism, the New York Times and the New Yorker. The Times' book critic William Grimes takes a swipe at the authors' claim that it is time for the US to treat Israel as a normal country: "But it's not. And America won't. That's realism." David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, suggests none too flatteringly that the book is symptomatic of a polarised era in which Americans are searching for an explanation to the evils of the times.
In the swirl of debate, the squabbling parties keep coming back to the core concept of an Israel lobby, case notwithstanding. The authors have been meticulously careful in the book to stress that they see the lobby as a loose coalition. It is not a single, unified movement and it is certainly not a cabal or conspiracy. Yet no matter how profuse their disclaimers, they have not assuaged those antagonists for whom any lumping together of Jews or Jewish interest groups sets alarm bells ringing. "Visit any anti-semitic website and you'll hear the same old themes: the Jews have too much power; they exercise political influence not as individual citizens but as a cabal," writes Foxman. "Walt and Mearsheimer sound all the same notes, with a subtlety and pseudo-scholarly style that makes their poison all the more dangerous."
In our conversation, Walt accepts the phrase "the lobby" is "an awkward term as many of the groups and people in it don't operate on Capitol Hill. It's shorthand - you could call it the pro-Israel movement". One wonders why he and his co-author have stuck with it, then, when it has allowed their detractors to smear other more credible parts of their argument.
Take the slanging match over the causes of the Iraq war. Walt and Mearsheimer rightly lay a large part of the blame for this disastrous escapade on the neoconservatives within the Bush administration, but they then go on to define those neocons as an integral part of the Israel lobby. Books have been written about the various motivations of the neocons. Sympathy for Israel is one, but there are many others - the desire to spread democracy, a belief in the positive uses of military intervention, denigration of international institutions. To suggest that the neocons and the Israel lobby are one and the same is a conflation too far.
But the authors have brought into the open aspects of American intellectual life that needed airing. They cast light on the overweening activities of specific pro-Israeli groups, most importantly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Aipac is a self-avowed lobby (it calls itself America's pro-Israel lobby) and has been ranked the second most powerful such body in the US. With a staff of more than 150 and a budget of $60m, it wields extensive influence among Congressmen, working to ensure criticism of Israel is rarely aired on Capitol Hill. The Guardian invited it to comment, but it declined.
Though Foxman insists the furore is proof that debate is alive and kicking, Walt and Mearsheimer have also put their finger on the limits of acceptable discourse in the US. It is notable that none of the candidates standing for president in 2008 have a word of criticism for Israeli state behaviour; this week Barack Obama pulled an advert for his campaign from the Amazon page selling The Israel Lobby, denouncing the book as "just wrong".
So what happened to America's commitment to free speech, the First Amendment? "We knew from De Tocqueville this country is driven by conformity," Judt says. "The law can't make people speak out - it can only prevent people from stopping free speech. What's happened is not censorship, but self-censorship." Judt believes that a few well-organised groups including Aipac have succeeded in proscribing debate. He recalls a prominent Democratic senator confiding to him that he would never criticise Israel in public. "He told me that if he did so, for the rest of his career he would never be able to get a majority for what he cared about. He would be cut off at the knees."
In the final chapter of the book, Walt and Mearsheimer make a shopping list of reforms. They call for: a two-state solution to the Middle East crisis; greater separation of US foreign policy from Israel for both nations' sake; and campaign finance reform to reduce the power of pro-Israeli groups.
Nothing outlandish, or even controversial, there. Coming at the end of such a bumpy ride of claim and counter-claim, the conclusion feels almost disappointingly gentle. That in itself bears eloquent witness to the state of affairs in America today, where thoughts considered unremarkable elsewhere are deemed beyond the pale.
· The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt is published by Allen Lane at £25. To order a copy for £23 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875
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Just saw the following posted at www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\08\31\story_31-8-2007_pg4_2
New book challenges US support for Israel
NEW YORK: An upcoming book challenging whether diplomatic and military support for Israel is in the best interests of the United States is set to spark fresh debate on Washington’s role in the Middle East.
“The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” written by two of the United States’ most influential political science professors, is set to hit the bookshelves next Tuesday and promises to break the taboo on the subject. Written by John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt from Harvard, the book follows an article they published last year that stirred impassioned debate by setting out a similar position.
Their thesis is that US endorsement of Israel is not fully explained by strategic or moral reasons, but by the pressure exerted by Jewish lobbyists, Christian fundamentalists and neo-conservatives with Zionist sympathies.
The result, according to the book, is an unbalanced US foreign policy in the Middle East, the US invasion of Iraq, the threat of war with Iran or Syria and a fragile security situation for the entire Western world. “Israel is not the strategic asset to the United States that many claim. Israel may have been a strategic asset during the Cold War, but it has become a growing liability now that the Cold War is over,” the authors said.
“Unconditional support for Israel has reinforced anti-Americanism around the world, helped fuel America’s terrorism problem, and strained relations with other key allies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia,” they added.
According to the two writers, “backing Israel’s harsh treatment of the Palestinians has reinforced Anti-Americanism around the world and almost certainly helped terrorists recruit new followers.”
Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, described the book as “an insidious, biased account of the Arab-Israeli conflict and of the role of supporters of Israel in the US,” in an interview with AFP.
“Everything about American policy toward the conflict is presented in exaggerated form, as if America is completely one-sided in support of Israel and that those policies are simply the product of the Israel lobby.” He is countering Mearsheimer and Walt’s book with his own title: “The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control,” due out on the same day.
Mearsheimer and Walt highlight the three billion dollars in US economic and military aid that Israel receives every year - more than any other country. They also point to Washington’s diplomatic support: between 1972 and 2006, the United States vetoed 42 United Nations Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel, while watering down many others under threat of veto. Foxman counters that the special relationship works both ways and that the United States has gained much out of its ally.
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs canceled a public debate on the issue planned for September and featuring Mearsheimer and Walt when they were unable to schedule a time that Foxman could also manage.
In the conclusion of their book, Mearsheimer and Walt say that the United States must change its policy towards Israel. “The United States would be a better ally if its leaders could make support for Israel more conditional and if they could give their Israeli counterparts more candid advice without facing a backlash from the Israel lobby.” With just over a year until the 2008 US presidential election, however, they said the issue was unlikely to even enter the debate. afp
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Walt & Mearsheimer's Proof That 'Tail Wagged the Dog' Points American Jews to a Universalist Ethos:
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2007/09/more-on-walt-me.html
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The Lobby Strikes
Posted by Justin Raimondo on August 27, 2007
The publication of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, a book-length version of the now-famous essay by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, is—naturally!—an occasion for the Lobby to go into high gear, and the intimidation tactics are already well along. Mearsheimer and Walt were invited by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs to speak before the group, but the event was cancelled by the group’s president, Marshall Bouton, who gave out the party line that the two could not be permitted to speak without a “balancing” point of view by none other than Abe ”What Armenian Genocide?” Foxman. That’s the Lobby’s “argument”—that Mearsheimer and Walt’s thesis is so “toxic” that it cannot be allowed to stand alone, without a “corrective” offered by the Anti-Defamation League or some other outfit associated with the Thought Police.
This just goes to confirm the authors’ thesis, expressed in their London Review of Books piece:
“The Lobby pursues two broad strategies. First, it wields its significant influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker’s own views may be, the Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the ‘smart’ choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favour a different policy.”
Article URL: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/the_lobby_strikes/
The above was linked in the following article by Justin Raimondo:
War with Iran Its Already Started:
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11521
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Additional on Mearsheimer/Walt:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/03/17/u-s-middle-east-policy-motivated-by-pro-israel-lobby.php
Last edited by Alpha on Sun Sep 16, 2007 2:21 am; edited 1 time in total | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
