Wishful Thinking and "The Israel Lobby"
Professor Noam Chomsky sends an intriguingly mixed message in his critique of Mearsheimer and Walt's "The Israel Lobby."
In his "Foreign Policy" column for Zmag, the professor says,
M-W focus on AIPAC and the evangelicals, but they recognize that the Lobby includes most of the political-intellectual class -- at which point the thesis loses much of its content. They also have a highly selective use of evidence (and much of the evidence is assertion).
Meanwhile, in the Chicago Tribune, Prof. Chomsky declared, "I wish the lobby theory was true."
My initial reaction to Prof. Chomsky's wishful thinking was and remains, "Why?" Returning to his Zmag column, Prof. Chomsky conlcudes,
The thesis M-W propose does however have plenty of appeal. The reason, I think, is that it leaves the US government untouched on its high pinnacle of nobility, "Wilsonian idealism," etc., merely in the grip of an all-powerful force that it cannot escape.
We may speculate upon the appeal to "The Israel Lobby" for a variety of interested parties, but what is the appeal to Mearsheimer and Walt's theses for Prof. Chomsky? Especially to the point of admittedly wishful thinking.
