| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 1:30 am Post subject: Review of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's book on the Is |
| From: "Ed Corrigan"
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:03:13 -0400
Subject: Review of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's book on the Israel Lobby: "Iraq, Israel, Iran - Huffington Post, By David Bromwich Posted September 4, 2007
Here is another review of Mearsheimer and Walt's book on the Israel lobby. It makes an number of excellent points.
Ed Corrigan
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/iraq-israel-iran_b_62995.html?load=1&page=1#comments
Iraq, Israel, Iran - Huffington Post
David Bromwich Posted September 4, 2007
When John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's article on
the Israel Lobby appeared in the London Review of
Books, after having been commissioned and killed by
the Atlantic Monthly, neoconservative publicists
launched an all-out campaign to slander the authors as
anti-Semites. Now that their book The Israel Lobby and
U.S. Foreign Policy has appeared--a work of
considerable scope, carefully documented, and not just
an expanded version of the article--the imputation of
anti-Semitism will doubtless be repeated more
sparingly for readers lower down the educational
ladder. Meanwhile, the literate establishment press
will (a) ignore it, (b) pretend that it says nothing
new or surprising, and (c) rule out the probable
inferences from the data, on the ground that the very
meaning of the word "lobby" is elusive.
The truth is that many new facts are in this book, and
many surprising facts. By reconstructing a trail of
meetings and public statements in 2001-2002, for
example, the authors show that much of the leadership
of Israel was puzzled at first by the boyish
enthusiasm for a war on Iraq among their
neoconservative allies. Why Iraq? they asked. Why now?
They would appear to have obtained assurances,
however, that once the "regime change" in Iraq was
accomplished, the next war would be against Iran.
A notable pilgrimage followed. One by one they lined
up, Netanyahu, Sharon, Peres, and Barak, writing
op-eds and issuing flaming warnings to convince
Americans that Saddam Hussein was a menace of
world-historical magnitude. Suddenly the message was
that any delay of the president's plan to bomb,
invade, and occupy Iraq would be seized on by "the
terrorists" as a sign of weakness. Regarding the
correct treatment of terrorists, as also regarding the
avoidance of weakness, Americans look to Israelis as
mentors in a class by themselves.
So a war projected years before by Richard Perle and
Paul Wolfowitz--a war secured at last by the fixing of
the facts around the policy at the Office of the Vice
President--was allowed to borrow some prestige at an
intermediate stage by the consent of a few
well-regarded Israeli politicians. Yet their target of
choice had been Iran. They accepted the change of
sequence without outward signs of doubt, possibly
owing to their acquaintance with the Middle East
doctrine espoused by the Weekly Standard and the
American Enterprise Institute--a doctrine which held
that to create a viable order after the fall of Iraq,
regime change in Iran and Syria would have to follow
expeditiously.
To sum up this part: the evidence of Mearsheimer and
Walt suggests that Israel was never the prime mover of
the Iraq war. Rather, once the Cheney-Wolfowitz design
was in place, the Israeli ministers who trooped
through American opinion pages and news-talk shows did
what they could to heat up the war fever. This war was
on the cards before they threw in their lot with
Cheney and Bush; by their efforts they merely helped
to confer on the plan an aura of legitimacy and
worldly wisdom.
But now the American war with Iran they originally
wanted is coming closer. Last Tuesday, when the mass
media were crammed to distraction with the behavior of
a senator in an airport washroom, few could be
troubled to notice an important speech by President
Bush. If Iran is allowed to persist in its present
state, the president told the American Legion
convention in Reno, it threatens "to put a region
already known for instability and violence under the
shadow of a nuclear holocaust." He said he had no
intention of allowing that; and so he has "authorized
our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's
murderous activities." Those words come close to
saying not that a war is coming but that it is already
here. No lawmaker who reads them can affect the
slightest shock at any action the president takes
against Iran.
Admittedly, it was a showdown speech, reckless and
belligerent, to a soldier audience; but then, this has
been just the sort of crowd and message that Cheney
and Bush favor when they are about to open a new round
of killings. And in a sense, the Senate had given the
president his cue when it approved, by a vote of 97-0,
the July 11 Lieberman Amendment to Confront Iran. It
is hardly an accident that the president and his
favorite tame senator concurred in their choice of the
word "confront." The pretext for the Lieberman
amendment, as for the president's order, was the
discovery of caches of weapons alleged to belong to
Iran, the capture of Iranian advisers said to be
operating against American troops, and the assertion
that the most deadly IEDs used against Americans are
often traceable to Iranian sources--claims that have
been widely treated in the press as possible, but
suspect and unverified. Still, the vote was 97-0. If
few Americans took notice, the government of Iran
surely did.
That unanimous vote was the latest in a series of
capitulations that has included the apparent end of
resistance by Nancy Pelosi to the next war. After the
election of 2006, the speaker of the house declared
her intention to enact into law a requirement that
this president seek separate authorization for a war
against Iran. On the point of doing so, she addressed
the AIPAC convention, and was booed for criticizing
the escalation of the Iraq war. Pelosi took the hint,
shelved her authorization plan, and went with AIPAC
against the anti-war base of the Democratic party.
This much, one might know without the help of
Mearsheimer and Walt. But without their record, how
many would trace the connection between the removal of
Philip Zelikow as policy counselor of the state
department, at the end of 2006, and a speech Zelikow
had given in September 2006 urging serious negotiation
and a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine? The
ousting of Zelikow was a blessing to the war party,
since it freed them from a skeptical confidant of
Secretary of State Rice--perhaps the only person of
stature anywhere near the administration whom she
treated as an ally and friend. And the meaning of the
change was clear when Zelikow's replacement turned out
to be Eliot Cohen: a neoconservative war scholar and
enthusiast, an early booster of the "surge" on the
pundit shows, and incidentally a shameless slanderer
of Mearsheimer- Walt ("Yes, It's Anti-Semitic, "
Washington Post, April 5, 2006).
>From Zelikow to Cohen was only a step on the long path
of humiliation that now stretched before Condoleeza
Rice. When, in March 2007, amid suggestions of a
renewal of diplomacy, she intimated that talks might
be helpful in dealing with the Hamas-Fatah unity
government (whose formation the Arab world had greeted
as offering a promise of peace), she was demolished by
an AIPAC-backed advisory letter bearing the signatures
of 79 senators, which directed her not to speak with a
government that had not yet recognized Israel. From
that moment Rice was effectively neutralized.
The hottest cries for another war have been coming
this summer from Joe Lieberman. He has called for
attacks on Iran, and for attacks on Syria. It is as if
Lieberman, with his appetite for multiple theaters of
conflict, spoke from the congealed memory of all the
wars he never fought. But Joe Lieberman is a
stalking-horse. He would not say these things without
getting permission from Vice President Cheney, a close
and admired friend. Nor would Cheney permit a
high-profile lawmaker whom he partly controls to set
the United States and Israel on so perilous a course
unless he had ascertained its acceptability to Ehud
Olmert.
Yet the chief orchestrater of the second
neoconservative war of aggression is Elliott Abrams.
Convicted for deceptions around Iran-Contra, as Lewis
Libby was convicted for deceptions stemming from
Iraq--and pardoned by the elder Bush just as Libby had
his sentence commuted by the younger--Abrams now
presides over the Middle East desk at the National
Security Council. All of the wildness of this
astonishing functionary and all his reckless love of
subversion will be required to pump up the "imminent
danger" of Iran. For here, as with Iraq, the danger
can only be made to look imminent by manipulation and
forgery. On all sober estimates, Iran is several
months from mastering the nuclear cycle, and several
years from producing a weapon. Whereas Israel for
decades has been in possession of a substantial
nuclear arsenal.
How mad is Elliott Abrams? If one passage cited by
Mearsheimer- Walt is quoted accurately, it would seem
to be the duty of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee to subject Abrams to as exacting a challenge
as the Senate Judiciary Committee brought to Alberto
Gonzales. The man at the Middle East desk of the
National Security Council wrote in 1997 in his book
Faith or Fear: "there can be no doubt that Jews,
faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are
to stand apart from the nation in which they live. It
is the very nature of being Jewish to be apart--except
in Israel--from the rest of the population." When he
wrote those words, Abrams probably did not expect to
serve in another American administration. He certainly
did not expect to occupy a position that would require
him to weigh the national interest of Israel, the
country with which he confessed himself uniquely at
one, alongside the national interest of a country in
which he felt himself to stand "apart...from the rest
of the population." Now that he is calling the shots
against Hamas and Hezbollah, Damascus and Tehran, his
words of 1997 ought to alarm us into reflection.
Among many possible lines of inquiry, the senators
might begin by recognizing that the United States has
other allies in Asia besides Israel. One of those
allies is India; and there is a further point of
resemblance. In a distinct exception to our
anti-proliferation policy, we have allowed India to
develop nuclear weapons; just as, in an earlier such
exception, we allowed Israel to do the same. But
suppose we read tomorrow a statement by the director
of the South Asia desk of the National Security
Council which declared: "There can be no doubt that
Hindus are to stand apart from any nation in which
they live. It is the very nature of being Hindu to be
apart--except in India--from the rest of the
population." Suppose, further, we knew this man still
held these beliefs at a time of maximum tension
between India and Pakistan; and that he had recently
channeled 86 million dollars to regional gangs and
militias bent on increasing the tension. Would we not
conclude that something in our counsels of state had
gone seriously out of joint?
The Mearsheimer- Walt study of American policy deserves
to be widely read and discussed. It could not be more
timely. If the speeches and saber-rattling by the
president, the ambassador to Iraq, and several army
officers mean anything, they mean that Cheney and
Abrams are preparing to do to Iran what Cheney and
Wolfowitz did to Iraq. They are gunning for an
incident. They are working against some resistance
from the armed forces but none from the opposition
party at home. The president has ordered American
troops to confront Iran. Sarkozy has fallen into line,
Brown and Merkel are silent, and outside the United
States only Mohammed ElBaradei of the International
Atomic Energy Agency stands between the war party and
a prefabricated justification for a war that would
extend across a vast subcontinent. Unless some
opposition can rouse itself, we are poised to descend
with non-partisan compliance into a moral and
political disaster that will dwarf anything America
has seen.
____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _ | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 6:17 pm Post subject: |
| Just saw the following at www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/books/06grim.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
September 6, 2007
Books of the Times
A Prosecutorial Brief Against Israel and Its Supporters
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Skip to next paragraph
THE ISRAEL LOBBY AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
484 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.
“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” arrives carrying heavy baggage. John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, set off a furor last year by arguing, in an article that appeared in The London Review of Books, that uncritical American support for Israel, shaped by powerful lobbying organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, does grave harm to both American and Israeli interests.
A bitter debate has raged ever since, with accusations of anti-Semitism leveled by, among others, Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, and Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, one of the principal lobbying organizations taken to task by Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt.
“The Israel Lobby,” an extended, more fully argued version of the London Review article, has done nothing to calm the waters. The authors have been barred from making appearances by at least one university and several cultural centers to discuss their subject, and continue to reap a whirlwind of criticism and abuse. If they were looking for a fight, they have found it.
Slowly, deliberately and dispassionately Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt lay out the case for a ruthlessly realistic Middle East policy that would make Israel nothing more than one of many countries in the region. On those occasions when Israel’s interests coincide with America’s, it should count on American support, but otherwise not. What Americans fail to understand, the authors argue, is that most of the time the two countries’ interests are opposed.
The reason they do not realize this, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt insist, can be explained quite simply: The Israel lobby makes sure of it. Working closely with members of Congress, public-policy organizations and journals of opinion, energetic, well-financed groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the American Jewish Committee, along with dozens of political-action committees, perpetuate the myth, as the authors see it, of Israel as an isolated, beleaguered state surrounded by enemies and in need of America’s unstinting financial and military support.
This lobby is particularly adept at stifling debate before it begins, the authors argue. “Whether the issue is abortion, arms control, affirmative action, gay rights, the environment, trade policy, health care, immigration or welfare, there is almost always a lively debate on Capitol Hill,” they write. “But where Israel is concerned, potential critics fall silent and there is hardly any debate at all.”
There is nothing underhanded or devious about this, the authors say. Like the National Rifle Association or the AARP, the Israel lobby relies on the traditional political weapons available to any special-interest group in pressing its agenda. It just happens to be unusually skillful and effective.
“It is simply a powerful interest group, made up of both Jews and gentiles, whose acknowledged purpose is to press Israel’s case within the United States and influence American foreign policy in ways that its members believe will benefit the Jewish state,” they write.
The problem, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt argue, is that Israel has become a strategic liability with the end of the cold war and a moral pariah in its dealings with the Palestinians and, most recently, the Lebanese. Uncritical American support for its closest Middle East ally has damaged American credibility in the Arab world, encouraged terrorism, stymied the search for a solution to the Palestinian problem, and in every way made America’s international position weaker and more dangerous.
Coolly, not to say coldly, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt mount a prosecutorial brief against Israel’s foreign and domestic policies, and against the state of Israel itself. They describe a virtual rogue state, empowered by American wealth and might, that blocks peace at every turn, threatens its cowering neighbors with impunity, crushes the national aspirations of the Palestinians and, whenever the opportunity arises, bites the hand that feeds it.
Working tirelessly in the background is the Israel lobby, playing Iago to America’s Othello, leading president after president down ever more dangerous paths. Without intense pressure from the Israel lobby, the authors argue, America would not have undertaken the war in Iraq.
Most American readers will bristle at the authors’ characterization of Israel. This is to be expected, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt argue, because of the completely false image of Israel and its history that has been manufactured by the Israel lobby. As a result, Americans completely misinterpret the Palestinian issue and fail to support a productive policy that would tilt away from Israel and toward the Palestinians.
The authors state, on several occasions, their belief that Israel has a moral and legal right to exist, but the effect of their book is to leave it dangling by a moral and strategic thread. In essence they call for the United States to cut Israel loose, to return more or less to American policy before the 1967 war, when the United States tried to occupy a middle ground between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Strangely, the authors do not itemize the fabulous benefits delivered by this approach in the 1950s and ’60s.
It is a little odd that so chilly a book should generate such heat. Most of Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt’s arguments are familiar ones, and it is hardly inflammatory to point out that the major Jewish organizations tend to take a much tougher line on, say, a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem, the Iraq war or settlements in the West Bank, than most American Jews favor. The writers stand on eminently defensible ground when they argue for a more constructive, creative American role in peace talks.
The general tone of hostility to Israel grates on the nerves, however, along with an unignorable impression that hardheaded political realism can be subject to its own peculiar fantasies. Israel is not simply one country among many, for example, just as Britain is not. Americans feel strong ties of history, religion, culture and, yes, sentiment, that the authors recognize, but only in an airy, abstract way.
They also seem to feel that, with Israel and its lobby pushed to the side, the desert will bloom with flowers. A peace deal with Syria would surely follow, with a resultant end to hostile activity by Hezbollah and Hamas. Next would come a Palestinian state, depriving Al Qaeda of its principal recruiting tool. (The authors wave away the idea that Islamic terrorism thrives for other reasons.) Well, yes, Iran does seem to be a problem, but the authors argue that no one should be particularly bothered by an Iran with nuclear weapons. And on and on.
“It is time,” Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt write, “for the United States to treat Israel not as a special case but as a normal state, and to deal with it much as it deals with any other country.” But it’s not. And America won’t. That’s realism.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
C-SPAN viewer Call for GAO head David Walker which mentioned Walt and Mearsheimer book
http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2007/09/israel-lobby-and-us-foreign-policy.html
http://tinyurl.com/2KHCED
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/05/1422235
Drumbeat For Attack on Iran Grows Louder in Washington:
Talk about a U.S. attack on Iran appears to be growing louder in Washington. There are reports that Vice President Dick Cheney's office has issued instructions to conservative think tanks to start a drumbeat for attacking Iran. On Monday the American Enterprise Institute is hosting two events related to Iran. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is giving a speech on how the war on terrorism should be viewed as a "a world war that pits civilization against terrorists and their state sponsors who wish to impose a new dark age." Later in the day former CIA director Jim Woolsey and others will meet to discuss a new book by longtime Iran hawk Michael Leeden titled "The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots" Quest for Destruction." The Heritage Foundation recently hosted an interagency Bush administration war game attempting to anticipate Iranian responses to a U.S. bombing campaign. Meanwhile the Sunday Times of London has reported the Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive air strikes against twelve hundred targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians' military capability in three days. The main source of the article was an official at another conservative Washington think tank – the Nixon Center.
Cheney Orders Media To Sell Attack On Iran:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2007/09/05/cheney-orders-media-to-sell-attack-on-iran.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 10:08 pm Post subject: |
| Israel Lobby Slammed at Start of Book Tour
By Terry Walz
CNI Staff
John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt, the Chicago/Harvard University professors whose article last year on the Israel Lobby caused an uproar amongst hardline supporters of Israel have started a national book tour in connection with the publication of their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26.00), now available.
They made two appearances in Washington , DC on September 5, addressing packed audiences at the Cosmos Club and at the city's famous bookstore, Politics and Prose. The response was overwhelmingly positive.
At the Cosmos Club event, which I attended, the authors addressed two questions: Is there an Israel Lobby? (Walt) and Is the Lobby's impact positive or negative? (Mearsheimer). The object was to bear out the thesis of their book, that such a lobby does exist (which had been preposterously denied by Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross in a debate a year earlier at Cooper Union in New York City), and that it has worked extremely well, often to the detriment of both American and Israeli interests.
Walt told the audience how the initial reaction to the article in the London Review of Books in March 2006 had prompted a vociferous response, one that was often laced with charges of anti-Semitism, none of which was true, and "sloppy scholarship", a charge aimed at demeaning and dismissing the views of the authors. But the response by interested people has been significant. According to the webmaster at the Harvard University website where the longer version of the article was posted, it had been downloaded 265,000 times as of July 2006.
The lobby's successes in congressional hallways have come by wielding a heavy axe, often forcing nervous congressional representative to realize that criticism aimed at Israel would likely result in electoral defeat at the polls. The lobby's ability to steer money to their electoral opponents was among the tools the Lobby used without hesitation. In this, it was perhaps no different than other lobbies, which as Walt averred, were "as American as apple pie."
And yet, the Israel Lobby's agenda, Mearsheimer stated, has led the United States into an alliance with Israel that in the long run undermines both the strategic interests of the United States in the Middle East as Israel 's own interests within that region. It has also led the American government to hold positions that are not only opposed by the majority of Americans polled - for example, on Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, on the continued occupation of the West Bank - but also by most peoples in the world. In a post-colonial world, it has tolerated Israel to construct colonies in the West Bank . There is no doubt, Mearsheimer said, that the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis was among the reasons that led to the 9/11 attacks, and to continues attacks on American interests. There is also no doubt that, whatever leaders of the Israeli government may have thought, the Lobby solidly backed neoconservative efforts to promote the war on Iraq, which has produced nothing but continued death, destruction, and turmoil in the Middle East, to neither American nor Israeli strategic interests in the area, nor the welfare of the people in the region.
Whatever else happens with the book, the authors concluded, their hope is that it would open up the debate on Israel and the American policy in the Middle East , and move the United States to adopt more sensible policies there.
The 355 page book is backed up by an additional 108 pages of footnotes.
The a list of Mearsheimer and Walt's upcoming appearances in California (San Francisco, Los Angeles) and elsewhere during September and October, see their website
http://www.israellobbybook.com/appearances.html and also Farrar Straus and Giroux's (author appearances).
Click here to make a tax-deductible donation:
https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=2836Council for the National Interest Foundation
1250 4th Street SW, Suite WG-1 · Washington, DC 20024
800.296.6958 · 202.863.2951 · Fax: 202.863.2952
http://cnifoundation.org/ | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 7:59 pm Post subject: Mearsheimer/Walt book:'Anti-Semitic' label curbs Israel talk |
| Subject: Re: Mearsheimer/Walt book: 'Anti-Semitic' label curbs talk about Israel
Forwarded:
Cynthia wrote:
Whooooooooa...the herd is bolting. I've heard Smerconish and he's been as pro-Israel as they come
Click here: CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS: 'Anti-Semitic' label curbs talk about Israel
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/09/anti-semitic-label-curbs-talk-about.html
Head Strong | 'Anti-Semitic' label curbs talk about Israel
By Michael Smerconish
The book by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt.
One year after 9/11, I visited Israel as a guest of the Jerusalem Post. In the midst of the intifadah, the hard-line newspaper arranged for me to broadcast my daily radio show from Jerusalem. At the time, I was also filing one-minute commentaries for KYW-AM (1060). One of them caused some consternation at home. Here is what I said:
"Yesterday, an Israeli guide was anxious to show me the community called Gilo.
" 'Look,' he said, 'at the sandbags that these people have to place in their windows to shield them from sniper fire from a neighboring village called Beit Jala.'
"Sure enough, there were sandbags in windows and bullet holes in walls. Thinking of my kids, I said, 'That's no place to raise a family.'
"Today, I had a different guide with a different perspective. He wanted me to tour an Arab neighborhood in the West Bank.
" 'Look at where Israeli tank fire has destroyed these homes,' he said to me. I looked. The devastation was terrible. 'This is no place to live,' I said to myself.
" 'Where are we?' I asked.
" 'This is the village called Beit Jala,' he told me, 'and the tank fired from over there, in Gilo' - where I had been the day before."
I ended the commentary by saying: "And so it goes."
My intention was only to present a form of geopolitical glass half empty/half full, not to assert any moral equivalency. But that didn't spare me an onslaught of e-mail from Jewish listeners disappointed in what I had said, or what they thought I was implying. Some told me my "comparison" was anti-Semitic, which stunned me, given that my entire trip had a palpable, pro-Israeli tone.
I was reminded of that experience this week while considering the backlash against the release of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. Mearsheimer is a political scientist at the University of Chicago. Walt is a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Their book is an outgrowth of their lengthy online article on the same subject, and of a 40-page essay published last spring in the London Review of Books. Their premise is that the United States has set aside its own security to advance the interests of Israel, owing to the existence of a "lobby," which they define as a loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.
Among their observations is that anyone who criticizes Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have a significant influence over U.S. policy stands a good chance of being labeled anti-Semitic.
Labeling has become all too common in today's political debate, overlooking that few of us can neatly be compartmentalized under words such as liberal or conservative. Speak against same-sex marriage? You must be a "homophobe." Oppose affirmative action? That sounds "racist."
Similarly, to question U.S. support for Israel runs the risk of being branded "anti-Semitic." Perhaps it's only a small minority who assign the labels. Still, each debasing generalization stifles conversation about issues of the day. The shame is that some people, who already have a seat at the table, resort to such language as a way to prevent those of different views from even getting to the table at all.
Here's hoping that, six years removed from 9/11, Mearsheimer and Walt can initiate a reasonable conversation about Israel. No subject with implications for U.S. security should be off-limits. Among their words worthy of debate are these: "[S]aying that Israel and the U.S. are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the United States has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around."
Of course, others conclude that the origins of America's terror problem are much wider in scope than Israel alone; they argue that disdain for America's relationship with Israel long preceded the modern terrorist threat. I say let's air it out.
Mearsheimer and Walt's arguments sound similar to words spoken to me by Michael Scheuer, author of the book Imperial Hubris and a man who spent 22 years with the CIA. From 1996 to 1999, he ran "Alec Station," the Osama bin Laden tracking unit at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center. He told me he agreed with Mearsheimer and Walt that the Israeli lobby had "distorted and burdened" U.S. foreign policy.
"The most dangerous aspect of the Israel lobby," Scheuer said, "is that it threatens free speech in America. Very few Americans will exercise their right to free speech if criticizing Israel earns them identification as an anti-Semite."
Which reminds me that after I recently interviewed Scheuer, a blog posting said: "He won't out-and-out claim he hates Jews, but everything he criticizes centers around Israel and the 'dual loyalty' of neo-cons. You would be smart to avoid using this man as a reference. Soon he will reveal himself to be the true anti-Semite he is."
Scheuer argues that he was hired by the CIA not to be guardian of the world, but to be a guardian of the American people, and that our foreign policy should be designed to protect Americans first. This is exactly what Mearsheimer and Walt say we have abdicated.
Hardly an anti-Semitic view, and these well-credentialed academics have gone to great lengths to defuse any accusations of personal animus toward Israel.
"In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm lobby, steel or textile workers' union, or other ethnic lobbies," they write in the London Review of Books. "There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway U.S. policy; the Lobby's activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
Their words are falling on deaf ears in certain quarters. A number of potential forums for discussion with the authors have turned down or canceled events. According to the New York Times, these include the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Jewish cultural center in Washington, and three organizations in Chicago.
This would seem only to strengthen their argument.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Smerconish's column appears on Thursdays in the Daily News and on Sundays in Currents. Michael can be heard from 5:30 to 9 a.m. weekdays on "The Big Talker," WPHT-AM (1210). Contact him via the Web at http://www.mastalk.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
C-SPAN viewer Call for GAO head David Walker which mentioned Walt and Mearsheimer book
http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2007/09/israel-lobby-and-us-foreign-policy.html
Here is a tiny URL for the above one:
http://tinyurl.com/2KHCED
http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 10:46 am Post subject: |
| U.S., Allies Accuse IAEA Chief Nuclear Inspector of Mishandling Iran File
Sunday , September 09, 2007
VIENNA, Austria —
Chief nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei is coming under intense pressure for his handling of the Iran file, with the United States and key allies accusing him of overstepping his authority, diplomats said Sunday.
The diplomats suggested that U.S. disenchantment with the International Atomic Energy Agency chief was at its highest since early 2005. That was when Washington actively considered pushing for his ouster because it considered him too soft on Iran and a drag on attempts to refer the Islamic republic to the U.N. Security Council — which finally happened last year.
Faced with majority support for ElBaradei among his agency's 35-nation board, the Americans dropped public opposition, and he was appointed for his third and final term in February 2005.
But U.S. displeasure was again aroused this year.
snip
Some diplomats said the IAEA chief had also been subject to more insidious attacks in recent weeks, though they could not be certain these were linked to the diplomatic push against him.
Incidents included late-night threat calls to ElBaradei's residence and e-mails to representatives of board-member nations accusing him and other senior agency members of wrongdoing.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296195,00.html | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
