"Richard Perle Is A Liar"
So says Prof. Steven Walt in his great new column in Foreign Policy which is must reading if you care, even a little, about the Middle East.
Happily Walt has happily survived all the stakes aimed at his heart by the neocons for writing "The Israel Lobby" with John Mearsheimer.
The main line attack on that book was that there is no such thing as the Israel lobby and, if there is, it is a weak, little thing with hardly any influence. Then, with Popeye like suddenness its key operatives used their nonexistent power and fanned out to destroy Walt and Mearsheimer by ensuring that the book was trashed by every reviewer and academic it could enlist in the cause.
Then threats were made to the institutions that employ the two (Harvard and Chicago). It didn't work but only because the two profs have tenure and although Alan Dershowitz can and does block people from getting tenure, he can't strip anyone of it. Just like he can't strip Jimmy Carter of the title of former President, much as he tries. But thank God for tenure. Otherwise, the two profs would be selling apples somewhere and writing brilliant books no one would publish..
Richard Perle, of course, has been a key cog in the nonexistent lobby for almost 40 years. He is also (no coincidence) one of the founding fathers of neoconservatism. He was pushing for the Iraq war from long before the day the planes hit the World Trade Center and he had his boy, Doug Feith, at the Pentagon to help ensure that the war happened. (Perle, who was a top unpaid aide to Rumsfeld, insisted that Rumsfeld hire his acolyte as the Pentagon's #3).
Anyway, now Perle is denying that the neocons exist just like the lobby doesn't exist. Not only that, if they do exist, he isn't one of them. And if he is, he had no influence anyway. He's a nobody, a nothing, a man of no significance whatsoever unfairly attached to a nonexistent movement that could hardly convene a ski weekend let alone a war.
And that is where Steven Walt's response comes in. "He's a liar." Walt says of Perle. Or, as my late lamented father used to say every time George W. Bush appeared on television, "he's a goddam liar."
Anyway, neoconservatism has become the hate that dare not speak its name. It's latest targets are President Obama's appointee to the National Intelligence Council Charles Freeman and the greatest journalist since Edward R. Murrow, Bill Moyers. For a movement that is the figment of liberals' imagination, it is unbelievably potent in a Joe McCarthy kind of way.
I'm lucky I'm a nobody or God knows what these figments of my imagination would do to me.
PS Isn't it wonderfully telling that even Steve Rosen, under indictment for espionage, is able to organize a credible campaign to defeat one of the President's most significant nominee's. Employed all his life by the nonexistent lobby, a key apparatchik in the imaginary neocon movement, he is still a player despite his upcoming espionage trial. And Rosen is a nobody, really a nobody, compared to Perle who, among his many loathsome accomplishments, managed to thwart Kissinger when Kissinger was trying to tamp down the chances of nuclear war with the USSR. Read Kissinger (another lovely) to find out how insignificant he and Nixon considered Perle to be!
Note: Kissinger and Nixon were the good guys in their struggle with Perle. They wanted detente. He wanted an intensified arms race.
That neo-cons lie is not news, the question is why is Perle lying now. There is much more in play that just Freeman's appointment, I'd wager. Their goal appears to be a war with Iran. The question is, what happens when Israel acts on the policies advocated by the coalition members in the last election? What happens when Netenyahu writes a check that only Washington can cash? The neo-cons are trying to make sure Obama's options are limited to unswerving support of what has been consistently bad policy for both the US and Israel.
February 24, 2009 8:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am having a bit of difficulty following this particular scrimmage without a scorecard.
Professor Walt says
That is phrased as if both Prof. Walt and Neocomrade Dr. Strangepearl agree that the present condition of the former al-‘Iráq actually constitutes a ‘debacle’, a proposition I should expect at least the latter to deny ferociously, regardless of what rôle he represents himself as havin’ played back when the bushogenic quagmire was bein’ created.
If Prof. Walt conscientiously continues to think ‘debacle’ even in the face of certain ever-glorious feats of suRGency starrin’ Dr. Gen. D. Petræus of Princeton and West Point and Rancho Crawford -- why, three cheers for Citizen Walt! But so many people think otherwise nowadays that he really ought to explain that judgment a little every time he makes it.
He also seems a little unreasonable as to how he'd like to see his perp punished, namely by bein’ stripped of all respectability:
I trust the professor felt better after that rant. Considered in itself, though, the rant is pretty sad stuff insofar as it gives the impression that Stephen Walt somehow managed to reach his present eminence without ever noticing before just this minute that "Life is unfair."
As a practical matter, I could nominate a number of neoterics whose scalps would be more usefully hunted at this point than Dr. Strangepearl's. How about this gruesome twosome, for instance?
Happy days.
February 24, 2009 8:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ok MJ, it's time for some analysis.
And maybe you can get a book, or at least a prominent article out of this.
As Walt says, the neocons get little heat for their misadventures. So, to what degree does the "mischpuche" factor play into this?
February 24, 2009 8:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Richard Perle Is A Liar"
And in other news, the sun rose in the east, ice is cold, and George Bush could f-up a wet dream.
February 24, 2009 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
MJ,
Nonsense. That's you, dude!
My own particular complaint is with Waltsheimer's conclusion that an Israel lobby is monolithic and nefarious by its very nature. In other words, that supporters of Israel (albeit not necessarily the entirety of its policies) are generically wrong, bad, evil and/or treasonous for participating in the American discourse on US foreign policy.
February 24, 2009 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Perle is engaging in a slightly more intellectual version of the Christian Right's rebranding effort: when your ideas make your movement's name synonymous with ugliness and policies that damage the country, change the name.
I wonder what new moniker he's picked out.
February 24, 2009 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I watched Perle on CSPAN, some conservative panel was asking him questions and there might even have been some liberals there. There must have been because a reporter stood up and gave Perle a grilling. And then Perle says that he read his book but it was only based on secondary and tertiary sources.
The reporter lashed Perle. I mean he contended there were 5423 cites in his book including....number of direct quotes from Perle.
Perle was shaken and went on to the next questioner.
No such thing as neocon!! Vice President did not have much to do with the war!!! Not much influence!!! It was an amazing thing to see.
His demeanor was so down, like he was the beaten man he is.
I do believe in credibility. I do not and will not believe anything that comes out of w's mouth, cheney's mouth, rummy's mouth, feith's mouth...
And I certainly will never believe anything coming out of perle's mouth.
February 24, 2009 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not here to defend Richard Perle, an odious character by any measure.
Nor am I opposed to opening up the discussion of US policy toward Israel/Palestine to different viewpoints, including just criticism of Israel's settlement of Palestinian land. I would even agree with those who hope for a more "even handed" approach following the changes in administrations - positive in the US, regrettable in Israel and yet-to-be-determined among the Palestinians.
What I am opposed to is the gross and dangerous oversimplification that posits what BarK accurately refers to as a "monolithic and nefarious" Israel Lobby whose long tentacles extend to controlling nearly every aspect of US foreign policy, academia and even the newsroom (i.e., tying the Washington Post story about Moyers to his recent criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza -- please). In this, MJ and his cohorts adopt the same tactics of those they seek to criticize. Anyone who dares to disagree with their harsh assessment of Israel's actions is smeared as a neo-con loving, AIPAC supported troll. It's really no different than the allegations of anti-semitism directed against Israel's critics. . . and no more justified. The victim in all this name calling is the prospect of reasoned debate that takes into account the failings of both sides to the conflict.
FYI, I have read many eloquent and persuasive critiques of Walt & Mearsheimer that have nothing to do with neo-con or AIPAC influenced ideology. In addition to Bar Kafka's criticism above, I would add their astonishingly malevolent and frankly dangerous assertion that the "Israel Lobby" was responsible for the US decision to invade Iraq. See Leonard Fine of Americans for Peace Now http://peacenowconversation.org/?p=87
"Many of us (“us” meaning people who care passionately for Israel’s safety and welfare and who have very serious problems with many aspects of Israel’s policies) hold views not very different from yours regarding the way the pro-Israel lobby sometimes works and the policies it sometimes pursues. Too often, the lobby does not tell the whole of the story, rendering Israel and its action in colors altogether too pastel, depicting Israel’s enemies as more monochromatically extreme than in fact they are. But your chastisement also leaves out large chunks of the whole story – in particular, ignoring Israel’s very real sense of vulnerability and the depth of the ill wishes so many of its neighbors harbor towards it. The result is, therefore, not a corrective to the lobby’s imbalance so much as an opposite but equal distortion. What a shame."
It's a point I've been trying to make about this blog for a long time.
February 24, 2009 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here are links to a few other critiques of Walt & Mearsheimer's poisonous screed by those notable neocons, Michael Massing and David Remnick.
Michael Massing in the New York Review of Books (reprinted on AlJazeera): http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2006%20Opinion%20Editorials/May/22%20o/The%20Storm%20over%20the%20Israel%20Lobby%20By%20Michael%20Massing.htm
David Remnick in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2007/09/03/070903taco_talk_remnick
I'll quote Remnick, as it applies equally to much of what MJ slings out here regularly.
"Mearsheimer and Walt are not anti-Semites or racists. They are serious scholars, and there is no reason to doubt their sincerity. They are right to describe the moral violation in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. (In this, most Israelis and most American Jews agree with them.) They were also right about Iraq. The strategic questions they raise now, particularly about Israel’s privileged relationship with the United States, are worth debating––just as it is worth debating whether it is a good idea to be selling arms to Saudi Arabia. But their announced objectives have been badly undermined by the contours of their argument—a prosecutor’s brief that depicts Israel as a singularly pernicious force in world affairs. Mearsheimer and Walt have not entirely forgotten their professional duties, and they periodically signal their awareness of certain complexities. But their conclusions are unmistakable: Israel and its lobbyists bear a great deal of blame for the loss of American direction, treasure, and even blood.
***
Taming the influence of lobbies, if that is what Mearsheimer and Walt desire, is a matter of reforming the lobbying and campaign-finance laws. But that is clearly not the source of the hysteria surrounding their arguments. “The Israel Lobby” is a phenomenon of its moment. The duplicitous and manipulative arguments for invading Iraq put forward by the Bush Administration, the general inability of the press to upend those duplicities, the triumphalist illusions, the miserable performance of the military strategists, the arrogance of the Pentagon, the stifling of dissent within the military and the government, the moral disaster of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the rise of an intractable civil war, and now an incapacity to deal with the singular winner of the war, Iran—all of this has left Americans furious and demanding explanations. Mearsheimer and Walt provide one: the Israel lobby. In this respect, their account is not so much a diagnosis of our polarized era as a symptom of it."
February 24, 2009 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
AG:
I'm surprised that you link to Massing to support your case, because while he has some criticisms of Walt/Mearsheimer, he also says that on their central contentions they are entirely right - his main criticism is the lack of first-hand documentation - and that it was not they, but the hostile response to them that showed hysteria in an unpleasant attempt to suppress their message. A couple of representative quotes below.
Hysterical does seem an apt word for the reaction to "The Israel Lobby." The paper seems to have brought out the worst in its critics ...
Overall, the lack of firsthand research in "The Israel Lobby" gives it a secondhand feel. Mearsheimer and Walt provide little sense of how AIPAC and other lobbying groups work, how they seek to influence policy, and what people in government have to say about them. The authors seem to have concluded that in view of the sensitivity of the subject, few people would talk frankly about it. In fact, many people are fed up with the lobby and eager to explain why (though often not on the record). Federal campaign documents offer another important source of information that the authors have ignored. Through such sources, it's possible to show that, on their central point—the power of the Israel lobby and the negative effect it has had on US policy—Mearsheimer and Walt are entirely correct.
I'm afraid that your own description of their work (e.g. "poisonous screed") illustrates exactly the point that Massing is making: that while W & M's argument is not without its flaws, the response to it has been frankly over the top, and tells us more about the critics than about W & M themselves.
February 24, 2009 4:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. But W&M have hardly been silenced as the "Lobby theory" would have predicted. Nor have others. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, George Ball wrote a book with a similar thesis quite a while ago.
In fact, I'd say the most interesting sentence from Massing is this: "Mearsheimer and Walt provide little sense of how AIPAC and other lobbying groups work, how they seek to influence policy..."
IOW, do they do anything to influence policy that all other powerful lobbies don't do? Tell half truths. Try to suppress the truth, say, about the medical effects of smoking. Hassle reps who threaten to go their own way on the issues. Outspend their opponents.
(W&M also had some dubious statements, such as the notion that Israeli citizenship is based on "blood." One would think serious scholars would get the basics right.)
I tend to agree with Hitchens on this: Most of what WM revealed about the Lobby has been common knowledge for a long time, and much of what is new in the book is rather "smelly."
I'm afraid that the Lobby thesis has become a convenient handle for all manner of otherwise well-earned criticisms of the Bush years. Convenient and self-serving because it places "the cause" outside the country and in foreign hands who don't care about "America's real interests." You put all your sins on the goat and send it out into the wilderness.
Thus, for example, at blogs such as TWN, you'll find people argue, seriously, that because AIPAC supported the Iraq war (let's say this is true), the Iraq war is AIPAC's doing, and link after link will be produced to support this thesis. Well, a LOT of folks supported the invasion--why is it AIPAC's doing? Or Israel's? Or Jewish Americans?
Christ, in terms of real support, Britain gave the U.S. far more cover--the Downing Street memo, not to mention thousands of troops--than Israel or AIPAC. And yet, we NEVER blame Britain for the invasion of the war.
But to get back to my main point, I still haven't heard a good explanation of HOW the Lobby wields this much power that doesn't boil down to intense Lobbying and directing money to and away from certain candidates. Unfortunately, all of this is entirely legal and above board in our fairly imperfect system, and WM have admitted as much. When I bring this up, all I get are rhetorical responses, but no there there.
If you want to talk about the spy trial, okay. However, even MJ has indicated there may not be much there, other than sleazy behavior. But more to the point, how does this activity amount to wielding "power over" the U.S. government? Please connect the dots for me.
February 24, 2009 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
David:
MJ Rosenberg has steadfastly defended W&M but even he disagreed with W&M's contention that, but for the Israel Lobby, American boys and girls would not have died in the deserts and cities and villages of Iraq. I have no problem with critiques of the dramatically negative impact that right-wing allegedly "pro-Israel" lobbyists have had on both this country and in the Middle East. But I also have no problem calling W&M's faux scholarly conclusion that this monolithic Israel Lobby sent American boys and girls off to die in Iraq to be nothing short of shameful. It is and has been part of the marketing strategy of W&M to capitalize on the real pain that such charges have caused in the Jewish community, to both hardline neo-cons and also to peace-loving alternative-seeking Jews like AG and, fwiw, me. I think the Forward, in this editorial, hit the nail on the head in exposing the scab-tearing, schoolyard taunting marketing approach of W&M:
"These folks [W&M and others] have a case. Major Jewish organizations, including centrist as well as hard-line groups, regularly use their clout to narrow the scope of acceptable public debate on Israel. They cast their net wide, indiscriminately targeting independent-minded allies of Israel along with its sworn enemies. Many pro-Israel dissenters have walked away feeling deeply bruised and disillusioned.
"Lately, however, some of Israel’s critics have started learning a few tricks themselves — and rather than enriching the conversation, they are choosing to further muddy it. There are substantial numbers of true moderates in this country who believe deeply in the need for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. They struggle to make their voices heard in a hostile political and communal environment, and they naturally look for spokesmen who can capture the public’s attention and help unite and mobilize the peace camp — including, most recently, scholars Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. We are sympathetic to this quest for leadership, but after firsthand experience of these scholars’ definition of “opening the debate,” we feel compelled to speak up: They’re the wrong guys.
"The trick follows a typical pattern. Step one: Publish your views in as provocative a manner as possible. Use words like “apartheid,” as Jimmy Carter did in his book, or paint Jewish lobbying efforts in darkly conspiratorial terms, as Walt and Mearsheimer did in a paper published last year. Step two: Dare the Jewish community to lash out at you, then whine about being victimized by bullies. Step three: Implore fair-minded liberals to line up behind you, forcing them to choose between endorsing your vision — however skewed — or becoming part of the censorship juggernaut."
http://www.forward.com/articles/11461
The Forward's editors continue with an astonishing report on how W&M tried to set the terms for a Forum-sponsored event on their book, behavior more in line perhaps with talk-show literary gibberish than the type of intellectual discourse one would expect from two distinguished scholars. Truly bizaare behavior, I submit, by the two good professors.
Now if you don't like AG's choice of Massing, how about Americans for Peace Now's Leonard Fein, who more than anyone and longer than anyone has fought against the status quo on matters pertaining to Israel and Palestine? He is no Israel apologist. Professor Fein recognized the inherent and sloppy and dangerous flaws in W&M's thesis and you should read it and hopefully accept that it is not just crazy neocon Jews who were disgusted with W&M. The point is, when will good lefties accept that one can love Israel, hate the Occupation, hate the Gazan incursion, and reject W&M and this notion of extraordinary Jewish control, as exemplified by the Lobby (W&M's caps in the first instance)? Such linear thinking will forever confine the so-called left to circle-jerk obscurity and irrelevancy, and that
is a gosh darn shame in my opinion.
Put another way, it is so genuinely unfortunate that, for whatever reason, so many folks on the left are content with sticking their fingers in the ears of their adversaries, making them squirm, calling them hysterical, rather than making any genuine effort to garner support for real change. It's really nothing more than an abandonment of responsibilty, all in exchange for kicks.
In closing, I offer this excerpt from Professor Fein's open letter to Professor Walt in response to Professor Walt's request for his asessment. Professor Fein, who should be questioned by no free-thinking and objective observer in terms of where he stands on I-P matters, writes:
"In effect, not intent: I know how much time and effort you invested in this work; I am saddened to find the result so flabby. But I do not for a moment think either of you is antisemitic. Yet I can now appreciate how some readers will conclude you must be, for how else can we understand how two serious scholars can permit themselves such a departure from the rigors of serious scholarship? There are other possible explanations, I know: A genuine resentment of the neocons, a thirst for a red-meat controversy to relieve the ennui of the academy, the rewards, such as they are, of celebrity – and yes, a real concern that the pro-Israel lobby (mainly AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents) has and uses more muscle than is healthy for the political system – or, for that matter, good for Israel. Many of us (“us” meaning people who care passionately for Israel’s safety and welfare and who have very serious problems with many aspects of Israel’s policies) hold views not very different from yours regarding the way the pro-Israel lobby sometimes works and the policies it sometimes pursues. Too often, the lobby does not tell the whole of the story, rendering Israel and its action in colors altogether too pastel, depicting Israel’s enemies as more monochromatically extreme than in fact they are. But your chastisement also leaves out large chunks of the whole story – in particular, ignoring Israel’s very real sense of vulnerability and the depth of the ill wishes so many of its neighbors harbor towards it. The result is, therefore, not a corrective to the lobby’s imbalance so much as an opposite but equal distortion. What a shame."
What a shame indeed. Please read Professor Fein's entire critique.
Bruce S. Levine
New York, New York
February 24, 2009 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I omitted the link to Professor Fein's open letter.
http://peacenowconversation.org/?p=87
Also, in the paragraph directly following the Forward link I include I mistakenly refer to a "Forum-sponsored" event. I meant "Forward-sponsored".
February 24, 2009 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I thought you were referring to the Forum (the Werner Erhardt outfit formerly known as EST).
February 24, 2009 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
David44:
The main point of my comment was that MJ (like Walt & Mearsheimer) is too often guilty of the same sin as his adversaries. While critics of the AIPAC agenda are labeled anti-Israel or anti-semitic, those who take issue with the J-Street agenda (at least as interpreted by MJ) are vilified as neocons or part of the nefarious, multi-tentacled Israel Lobby. A good example of this is contained in MJ's post above, where he argues that the professors survived a coordinated neocon assault, the thrust of which was intended to show that there really is no such thing as the Israel Lobby or if there is, that it's just not that powerful. As I tried to show with just a few examples, there is far more to the critique of Walt & Mearsheimer than MJ allows, and from far more respectable sources, many of whom would otherwise be W & M's natural allies (i.e., Americans for Peace Now). I have noticed this tendency in following this blog over the past several months in its unstinting criticism of Israel while deligitimizing any commenters, equally committed I'm sure to a peaceful resolution, as neocons or pro-settler fanatics. As Mr. Fine aptly noted: "The result is, therefore, not a corrective . . . so much as an opposite but equal distortion."
I also take issue with your characterization of Massing's criticism as the lack of firsthand documentation. While Massing does accurately point out the influence that several purportedly pro-Israel lobbying groups have exerted (and which I am in no position to dispute), his piece also points out the many ways in which W & M's analysis "smells" (though I am loathe to quote Hitchens, even if it is via Tintin):
1. Factual errors, including most notably the idea that Israeli citizenship is based on the idea of blood kinship.
2. Distorting statements by Ben Gurion to make it appear Israel has always been interested in territorial expansion by military means.
3. An analysis of the "dwindling moral case" for supporting Israel that fails to take into account the violence directed against Israel by its adversaries.
4. As I noted, the appalling notion that the all-powerful Israel Lobby led us into the Iraq war.
These canards lead me to characterize their work as a "poisonous screed," however valid the central premise of their work.
February 24, 2009 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
AG:
Yes, these points were all indeed made by Massing. But my comment was not intended to suggest that W-M was right and you were wrong on these matters, or indeed that they are insignificant issues, but to draw your attention to the fact that your intemperate language demonstrates the very hysteria that Massing identifies in W-M's critics.
Let us accept that W-M were wrong on the Israel Lobby and the Iraq War. Why do you (like many others) attribute this not to an error, but to extreme malice - "poisonous screed", "astonishingly malevolent" and so on? Perhaps if it was so obviously wrong that it can only be attributed to malice one might conclude that. But frankly, while it may well be wrong, it does not seem to me obviously wrong: it depends (a) on how closely one associates organizations like PNAC with the "Israel Lobby", and (b) how much influence one thinks organizations like PNAC had on the Iraq War. One can (and should) debate these matters. One should not seek to put such matters outside debate by smothering the proponents of the argument with insult.
February 25, 2009 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wait a minute! "Pernicious force..." "Worldwide threat..." Why, this could have been lifted verbatim from Nazi tracts! This is antisemitism unvarnished! An oozing, glowing lump of Canard - the kind of which Abe Foxman tirelessly warns us about! Careful! DAMMIT, you almost stepped in it! Massing and Remick are just too darned kind, and Mearsheimer and Walt (sound German to me) are bigots in ivy!
To get the tiresome points across, I guess Dershowitz needs good cops to his bad. Massing is particularly good at setting a reader up to acede to the professors' points, then blowing down his strawmen with... puffballs of feigned agreement on some points, and then despair that so much bumbling, or Jew-hatred, or plain-old bad grammar gummed up the works. Shame, really! A lot of the "soft dagger" attacks after "Lobby's" 2006 publication excoriated it for "inaccuracies" - with no citations of these missteps.
February 24, 2009 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Um, sorry SF Curt, but that's David Remnick you're quoting, not Dershowitz. Your caricature doesn't hold up.
February 24, 2009 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wasn't aware I attributed the quote the Dershowitz.
Oh... wait. I didn't.
February 24, 2009 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
On closer inspection, you are correct. Which leads me to wonder, what was the point, exactly? Is it that Remnick is the good cop to Dershowitz's bad? Are they in cahoots?
February 24, 2009 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perle has become an entertainer. Do novelists lie when they write fiction?
I don't know about "the Israel lobby", that does sound like a fiction, but there's no doubt that there is an ensemble of organized lobbying efforts in favor of Israeli interests.
Which is Perle denying?
February 24, 2009 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
MJ's initial reference was to Walt's Foreign Policy piece about Perle. That column is persuasive.
In it, Walt speaks of neoconservativism; the words "Israel lobby" do not appear. But MJ links the two, and most of our commenters here bite.
We know that neocons exist; most once happily embraced the label. By conflating the two, discussions like this -- no matter which side you take -- reinforce Walt and Mearsheimer's thesis.
One minor point that I find offensive. Armchair Guerrilla criticizes the image of the lobby's "long tentacles."
I'd let that pass, but there were two other references to "tentacles" in comments on another recent TPM post. They were made by supposed supporters of Israel, I must add, not by critics.
I can't cite the precise source, but I know this is an explicitly Nazi image. Characterizing critics this way is implying their anti-Semitism.
It has no place in a reasoned discussion.
February 24, 2009 6:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have just finished the uniquely rewarding experience of bathing my two year old and putting her to bed. Now I am drawn back into the Walt & Mearsheimer debate I thought was over years ago. Damn you, MJ Rosenberg, for drawing me back in. Still, as I am the offending party, I am constrained to reply.
I wrote: "While critics of the AIPAC agenda are labeled anti-Israel or anti-semitic, those who take issue with the J-Street agenda (at least as interpreted by MJ) are vilified as neocons or part of the nefarious, multi-tentacled Israel Lobby."
I was not aware of previous use of the term tentacles. Its insertion was impulsive and offhand, though it was meant to imply that some of the more virulent anti-Israel rhetoric seen on this site - even from those who profess to be "pro-Israel" - and among the left in general draws on familiar and in my view dangerous anti-semitic tropes. (I would not say that of MJR, though his singleminded focus on the Israel Lobby and near-constant depiction of Israel's actions as malevolent, without any reference to the context in which those actions occur, make me wonder what he means when he claims to support Israel. If he believes much of what he has written over the past few months, the US should not only withdraw support for Israel but should actively seek its demise.)
My larger point is that the tactics employed by the pro-Israel/pro-peace camp seem to increasingly resemble those they seek to oppose and are equally stifling of debate. I did not mean to imply that they are motivated by anti-semitism, although they are happily received by that crowd as well.
February 24, 2009 9:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've used tentacles before, and make no apologies. Acanuck, if you don't recognize that the Lobby debate on the left as it is conjures up a lot more than a discussion of current events, then I question your definition of reasoned discussion. Seems to me that the discussion you criticize above has been one of the more reasoned I've seen in quite some time on these sensitive issues, tentacles and all. Of course, you could try and sidetrack it and claim that AG was implying anti-semitism, but then that would be stifling reasoned debate and I'm sure that's not your intention. One thing we agree on, and that is that MJ did link the Perle topic with W-M and the Lobby, and he did get some reasonable bites. I make no apologies for that either.
February 24, 2009 7:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Indeed, your reference to MJ causing some folks to "bite" fits perfectly--to a tee actually--into the Forward's critique of the W&M marketing campaign I linked to above. Biting, selling books, it's all part of the game. Unfortunately, sometimes games hurt people, and hurt Peoples too, and sometimes the hurt is cause by pains first inflicted on fields of play that are decades and sometimes centuries-old.
February 24, 2009 7:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Walt and Mearsheimer say this:
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.
It's hard, I guess, to prove whether the pressure from supporters of Israel like Perle, Kristol, Feith, Wolfowitz, etc. was indeed critical to the decision to attack Iraq, but one can hardly deny that the pressure was there--particularly from Kristol's PNAC organization. PNAC had begun calling for the overthrow of Hussein during the Clinton administration (long before 9/11). And Perle, who was a member of PNAC, had called for this action even earlier in a report written for Netanyahu's new government in 1996. Perle's group wrote:
Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions . . . .
Since Iraq's future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly, it would be understandable that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites in their efforts to redefine Iraq . . .
The predominantly Shia population of southern Lebanon has been tied for centuries to the Shia leadership in Najf, Iraq rather than Iran. Were the Hashemites to control Iraq, they could use their influence over Najf to help Israel wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hizballah, Iran, and Syria. Shia retain strong ties to the Hashemites: the Shia venerate foremost the Prophet’s family, the direct descendants of which — and in whose veins the blood of the Prophet flows — is King Hussein.
Now it's impossible to say whether or not Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld would have decided to go to war with Iraq in the absence of the pressure applied by pro-Israeli neocons. But it's also clear that Kristol, Perle, Wolfowitz, and Feith, in particular, had a lot of influence on US policy at the time of the Iraq war and all also had been calling for Hussein's overthrow for many years, in part because they thought the removal of Hussein from power would be good for Israel. So W&M's thesis, while not proved by any means, is also not as weak as some like to claim.
February 24, 2009 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's also worth pointing out that W&M preface their discussion of neo-con influence on decision to attack Iraq with this:
Although neo-conservatives and other Lobby leaders were eager to invade Iraq, the broader American Jewish community was not. Just after the war started, Samuel Freedman reported that ‘a compilation of nationwide opinion polls by the Pew Research Center shows that Jews are less supportive of the Iraq war than the population at large, 52 per cent to 62 per cent.’ Clearly, it would be wrong to blame the war in Iraq on ‘Jewish influence’. Rather, it was due in large part to the Lobby’s influence, especially that of the neo-conservatives within it.
February 24, 2009 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Purple:
You did what I did before upthread and forgot to include your link.
As to Iraq, this is the point Professor Fein addresses so well, and I refer you to the link in both my post and one of AG's posts above. W&M refer to a cadre of Jewish neo-cons and then conclude that the "Lobby" was a necessary condition precedent for the Iraq War. Where, Professor Fein aptly queries, do W&W show evidence of a link between these Jewish neo-con guys and the Lobby (in caps)? Here's Fein on this point, but you should really read the whole letter; it's not that long but it is pretty damning to W&M's thesis I submit:
"But now we arrive at the critical question: Where is the lobby in all this? You tell us (p. 241) that “the neoconservatives were not the only part of the lobby pushing for war with Iraq. Key leaders of the major pro-Israel organizations lent their voices to the campaign for war.” Bear in mind that the accuracy of that assertion is absolutely essential to the chapter, to the accusation.
"What is your evidence? Here it is, all of it: One posting on Salon.com and an editorial from the Forward in 2004, more than a year after the war had been launched. You include not a single direct example of what those “lent voices” said. If there is additional evidence, you do not cite it or refer to it. In fact, on p. 243, you cite Nathan Guttman’s 2007 report in the Forward that is headlined “Groups Mum On Iraq,” the gist of which is that “most Jewish organizations have refused to speak out against the war.” Now which is it? Did key leaders lend their voices, or were they silent?
"And on this rickety scaffolding you hang the statement “absent the lobby’s influence, there almost certainly would not have been a war.” This is the sum of your “abundant evidence.” No, it is not only not abundant; it is not evidence. The only connection between the lobby and the war that you show depends on your total conflation of the “lobby” and the neocons".
In short, W&M presume without evidence that there is a link between this small group of Jewish neocon guys and some Lobby with a capital L. I don't think they're anti-semitic, but I do submit that they're pretty reckless for a couple of tenured professors at the finest universities in the country.
I don't know where the Pew Study statistics that you cite come from, but I think they are beside the point. The key is that there is this supposedly tightly knit Israel Lobby (capital L) that's controlling American foreign policy, so controlling that it was a necessary condition for the decision to launch a war that has killed more than 4,000 American kids. Pretty harsh stuff and you're my buddy Purple, but you have to understand that I make no apologies for seeing a little deja vu all over again. Why is it so hard for so many good people to understand that?
Ciao.
Bruce
February 24, 2009 8:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Darn. Sorry again!
http://peacenowconversation.org/?p=87
February 24, 2009 8:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bruce, all the quotes are from the version of the M&W article published in the London Review of Books:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
I haven't read the longer book and don't really want too (just not that interested in it). The original paper can be found at:
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011
___________
I think it's worth repeating W&M's definition of the pro-Israel lobby:
We use ‘the Lobby’ as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. This is not meant to suggest that ‘the Lobby’ is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues.
I think this adequately describes a phenomenon that is hard to deny exists--there are a great number of individuals and organizations that argue rather persistently for a pro-Israel foreign policy. These groups and individuals aren't always in agreement with each other and may have intrests and agendas beyond Israel, but they are united by strong and consistent support for Israel. PNAC certainly was one of these groups. It had a broader agenda than Israel, but it also was very consistently supportive of Israel. Many of its members had connections to other pro-Israeli groups including AIPAC, JINSA, and WINEP. And some, like Perle, Feith, and Wurmser had close ties to Likud and had been active in providing advice to Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders. I think it's hard to argue that PNAC wasn't a very important force behind the Iraq war. It had led the crusade during the Clinton years to make overthrow of Hussein US policy, lobbying both congress and the president. Its members published many articles calling for aggressive action against Hussein. And Perle, Feith, and Wurmser had even advised Netanyahu to make the overthrow of Hussein an Israeli strategic objective. PNAC members Rumsfeld, Perle, Feith, Bolton, and Wolfowitz in their official capacities certainly had a pivotal role in making war with Iraq US policy after 9/11. And PNAC director Bill Kristol was a tireless advocate of the policy in the conservative press. Maybe we would have gone to war with Iraq even without PNAC's efforts--but actually, I doubt it. I guess one could argue whether PNAC really was part of a pro-Israeli "lobby." It certainly was concerned with many more issues than Israel and Iraq (Taiwan and American military expansion were equally important concerns). But one has to shut one's eyes not to see how many of PNAC's members had close ties in one way or another to either pro-Israeli groups or Israel itself. And those close ties, combined with Perle's explicit statements on the benefits of overthrowing Hussein to Israel, do at least give one reason to pause and question whether the PNAC crowd was pushing for war because they believed it was good for Israel.
February 25, 2009 12:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, the link for the paper published by the group led by Perle that called in 1996 for the overthow of Hussein is:
http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm
February 25, 2009 6:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bruce, I did read Fein's letter completely. And, as you said, Fein's core argument is that W&M don't prove a connection between the neocons and the so-called lobby. But I think if you accept M&W's definition of the lobby as a "loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction" then I think it's hard to deny that the neocons fit within that definition. Maybe that definition is too broad to be meaningful. I could see that argument. But I think many of the critics of W&M are ignoring W&M's definition of the lobby as a loose coalition, not centrally organized and then proceeding to show that W&M's thesis is wrong because all the groups and individuals W&M refer to are not part of a "monolithic" lobby. But M&W never made the claim that the lobby is monolithic or clearly defined. It's a loose coalition that share's a common interest--to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. The neocons, in my opinion, clearly fit within that loose coalition. And I do believe that without the neocons the war in Iraq would have been much less likely to have occurred. That's not to say it wouldn't have occurred, but I think the neocons were certainly an important force in ensuring that it did occur.
Also, I must say that the level of scrutiny to which M&W's article has been submitted is unusual. If they had written about the influence of the "gun lobby" or "organized labor" or "big business" or any other interest group, I doubt their scholarship would have been challenged with such vigor, even if it were far more sloppy than its critics claim it to be.
February 25, 2009 7:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry for the repetitive posting, Bruce. But I also wanted to acknowledge your point about "deja vu"--the fact that M&W's description of a powerful mostly Jewish pro-Israel lobby with undue influence on US foreign policy recalls anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Yes, it can. And I understand the sensitivity. At the same time, I think one has to put on blinders not to notice that there are a very large number of organizations and individuals advocating for Israel in the US and that these organizations and individuals do significantly influence both policy toward and perceptions about Israel in the US. I can think of no other foreign country that has this kind of support. And it is very legitimate for Americans to be concerned about whether all this advocacy for Israel has created something of an "entangling alliance." It's important to stay away from the anti-Semitic theories of Jewish control, but we also must be free to question whether we have an entangling alliance with a foreign country and whether the groups and individuals that help cement that entangling alliance are really helping our country by strengthening that alliance. This is a legitimate question and preventing it from being asked and examined is not good for America.
February 25, 2009 7:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Purple State,
Who exactly is preventing this discussion?
February 25, 2009 11:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Fair enough BK . . . no one is preventing it from being asked . . . just a lot of criticism being directed at the authors who asked it.
February 25, 2009 9:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
And I would maintain that much of the criticism is well-earned. Walt & Mearsheimer published an assertion, and the burden is on them to support their argument. Scrutiny is different from censorship.
February 26, 2009 7:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Purple State,
That is quite the hypothetical situation. Let's approach the gun lobby, for example. One could submit a thesis that our regulatory system of environmental conservation could not have been established without the support of gun lobbies like the NRA and Ducks Unlimited. Therefore, gun advocates deserve credit for the existence of our National Park System, endangered species regulations, etc. I would argue that such an assertion is a bit of a stretch.
Walt & Mearsheimer published a work titled The Israel Lobby (singular form noted), and not A Loose Coalition of Individuals and Organisations Who Actively Work to Steer US Foreign Policy in a Pro-Israel Direction. I hope you can appreciate a significant difference without too much scrutiny.
February 26, 2009 8:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don't forget that Cheney and Rumsfeld were both in PNAC whether they came with pro-Israel bias or not (relative to Iraq). I cannot see how they didn't have that bias, it's hardly unusual. And Rumsfeld is known to have voiced a desire to go after Iraq right after 9/11. So he didn't need to have his arm twisted at all at that point. Whether he was lobbied by Israeli interests before then, whether those interests in PNAC and other similar circles, I don't have a clue.
February 24, 2009 9:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed, this is a reasoned discussion. And I don't impute bad faith to Guerrilla or to you.
But as a fairly consistent critic of Israeli policy, I'm sensitive to the use of loaded imagery to characterize positions I share.
Yes, the Lobby debate conjures up a lot of historical shit -- but, really, only on the left?
Since we are taking part in that debate, W&M didn't invent the term "Israel lobby," they just had the guts to say "This is a legitimate and important thing to study."
(I think you will admit that did take guts.)
And they never said the lobby was monolithic and all-powerful, just a loose but focused and effective coalition of groups and individuals.
February 24, 2009 9:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
acanuck, you are not an anti-semite (nor is Purple State or mythbuster, for anyone who's counting. Plus, you have pretty good taste in movies. And I don't disagree with anything you say here. Finally, despite my avatar, I believe I am occasionally capable of reasoned discussion, even in the sinkhole of reason known as the Middle East.
February 24, 2009 9:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hadn't even noticed that you used "tentacles" twice in this thread until you pointed it out.
I didn't take it personally. In debating Israel/Palestine, it's hard even for moderates to avoid hyperbole and over-simplification of opposing arguments. "Sinkhole of reason," indeed.
We disagree strongly on whether W&M's work is a "poisonous screed." Their book is the reason we can have this discussion today, and it's a discussion that's long overdue.
Did the "neocons" or the "lobby" foment the Iraq war? Both are what W&M call "loose coalitions," but the overlap in personnel is undeniable.
Anyway, it's basically irrelevant to W&M's thesis.
I read this today:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKLO81819420090224
What with a far-right Israeli cabinet in the offing, we're coming down to crunch time, when even moderates will have to get off the fence.
I know which side I'm on.
February 24, 2009 11:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
There I go again, throwing my tentacles around all over the place. Even I wasn't aware I had used the term twice in the same thread, proving, if nothing else, that I am in desperate need of an editor.
I have never equated pro-Likud with pro-Israel. Now that Bush & Co are gone, I would hope that the argument over the strength of the neocons would subside. Perhaps these are the dying vestiges.
As for the article, depressing stuff indeed. And to think we in bourgeois Brooklyn, for example, get ourselves all worked up over eminent domain.
February 25, 2009 12:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Professor Dershowitz is working to have himself declared Law of the Land so that he can revoke tenure and ex-Presidential status. Stay tuned!
His first action will be to ship MJ off to a supermax for calling Doug Feith...."boy." Hooboy, look out!
February 24, 2009 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Signing off for the night. A solid discussion.
One I'm sure we'll have again, alas.
And yes, MJ, Richard Perle is a liar.
February 25, 2009 3:00 AM | Reply | Permalink