In reading Dershowitz’s rebuttal to Mearsheimer and Walt, I noticed something else he said:
“It is rightfully considered vile to suggest that American Catholic politicians such as John F. Kennedy and John Kerry owe their primary allegiance to the Vatican over the United States.”
Dershowitz is saying, Don’t you dare bring up Jewishness in politics. But his statement about Catholic politicians is wrong.
Dershowitz can be given the point on John Kerry. During the ’04 campaign the Catholic question came up in a murmurous way that struck me as anti-Catholic. I don’t remember chapter and verse, but it was whispered. And Kerry didn’t have to answer it for a couple of reasons. A, he was unquestionably pro-choice and had thus separated himself from the church on the principal issue about which there might be suspicion of Vatican influence (I believe he’s also anti-pedophilia, another conflict with the Vatican). More importantly: B, John Kennedy and Mario Cuomo had already done the hard work for him.
During the 1960 campaign, Kennedy’s Catholic-ness was raised as an issue. Maybe some of it was vile; but some comments were completely legitimate. The would-be first Catholic president—people wondered what is the relationship between the politician and the Vatican. So two months before the 1960 election, Kennedy gave a famous speech on the subject to an audience of ministers in Houston. It began:
While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election…
Note his words “necessarily and properly the chief topic.” Not “vilely.” Then Kennedy sought to (and did) defuse the issue:
Whatever issue may come before me as President–on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject–I will make my decision… in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.
The big enchilada there was “birth control.” Catholics were against birth control. My parents were for it (maybe not fervently enough, I hear my commenter Mr. Anonymous saying). But it was a big issue. The Griswold decision stating that birth control was a private matter, a principle Alito and Scalia (9 kids) savage to this day, didn’t come down till ’64.
In 1984 the Catholic question popped up again. N.Y. Gov. Mario Cuomo was thinking of running for president. Democrats like me wondered how a dedicated Catholic would deal with social questions like abortion. Dershowitz may regard us as vile; Cuomo didn’t. He went to Notre Dame and gave a speech on being a Catholic governor and jumped right into my favorite subject—
What is the relationship of my Catholicism to my politics? Where does the one end and other begin? Or are the two divided at all? And if they’re not, should they be? Hard questions.
The meat of the speech was about abortion. Yes Cuomo was against it, and obeyed his church’s teaching. But when it came to his job he bowed to the political reality of the people’s interest. They were for abortion, by and large, had made that clear.
I believe that legal interdicting of abortion by either the federal government or the individual states is not a plausible possibility and even if it could be obtained, it wouldn’t work. Given present attitudes, it would be “Prohibition” revisited, legislating what couldn’t be enforced and in the process creating a disrespect for law in general.
You can question Cuomo and Kennedy’s answers. But they were presidential aspirants’ answers to serious (i.e., not vile) questions about their beliefs. One of the great things about Mearsheimer-Walt is that it has (finally) politicized the issue of devotion to Israel. If your religious belief dictates a blind devotion to the state of Israel, as Bush aide Elliott Abrams has told us his does—
Outside the land of Israel, 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….
—and you are running for national office, or you are creating policy in the White House on the explosive Middle East, you should be called upon to display something of the same transparency that Kennedy and Cuomo did. The reason Joe Lieberman and the neocon braintrust have never been asked to do so is yes, the shadow of the Holocaust, but also because the Israel lobby has successfully put across the argument that America’s interest and Israel’s interest are utterly congruent. That is what is changing.
(See my previous post on La Dersh)
The Mearsheimer-Walt paper does not address one single benefit that the United States support of Israel provides.
This is the crux of why the paper is suspect.
What about the defense technology that the US co-develops? What about Intel's top selling chips that are developed and manufactured in Israel? What about Teva Pharmaceuticals 17 billion dollars/ yr. of generic drug manufacture and research? IBM and Google's R&D centers? These are not trivial issues.
Maybe it's unfair business practices, rather than a covenant with G-d.
"The Mearsheimer-Walt paper does not address one single benefit that the United States support of Israel provides."
There is little to no benefit to America. That's the point.
What about the defense technology that the US co-develops? What about Intel's top selling chips that are developed and manufactured in Israel? What about Teva Pharmaceuticals 17 billion dollars/ yr. of generic drug manufacture and research? IBM and Google's R&D centers?
The difference between Alan Dershowitz and John F. Kennedy or Mario Cuomo is that Dershowitz is intellectually dishonest. He uses his obviously powerful mind not to seek the truth but as a tool to defend Israel. Dershowitz explains that the reason there is no record of his ever cticizing Israel is not that he never finds anything to criticize but rather that he doesn't want to give aid and comfort to anti-Semites. I think it's because he automatically takes Israel's side at every twist and turn in the US-Israeli relationship. All one has to do is listen to the man speak or read anything he's written. He obviously cares more about the welfare of a fellow Jew 10,000 miles away in Israel than he does about a gentile American ten blocks away in Cambridge.
i think, anon, that the point here is that US corporate presence in Israel remains an independent decision made by independent boardrooms who are free to do whatever their shareholders choose (and quite rightly so). But since US shareholders are an all-volunteer crowd, it's the poor US taxpayers we're more concerned about.
All your hand-waving here represents a non-argument, a non-issue; Nike doesn't need a close relationship between Washington and Jakarta before they can manufacture there, and i'm pretty sure that Exxon & Texaco are happily doing business in several nations that the State Department prefers not to be seen too closely with. GM is feverishly manufacturing in China, hardly the US' bosom-buddy and a nation still subject to various high-technology embargos.
What about Intel's top selling chips that are developed and manufactured in Israel?
This is a silly argument. Israel doesn't give Pentium chips away free to US computer users. It is well paid for the chips it builds. The US doesn't "owe" Israel anything just because an Israeli company developed the chip. Besides, if you follow the computer industry you know that AMD currently builds better CPUs than Intel. But no one would be so dumb as to argue on that account that US computer users now owe a moral debt to AMD.
Based on your comments it appears that you have little understanding of the management at a Fortune 50 hardware or software companies. R&D centers are much different beasts than resource extraction operations (Exxon andTexaco) and low-cost manufacturiing (Nike).
Alberto Macchi, AMD's corporate vice president:
"AMD considers Israel as a center of knowledge and innovation, and we are considering making a strategic investment there. This might not happen tomorrow, he added, but it will happen eventually."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051202-5678.html
The poor, US taxpayer benefits more by having a 4 ghz chip on the market than having an extra two dollars in his pocket.
You don't get the point, Israel keeps America competitive. China that is poised to eat up the United States. The US needs all of the help it can get to remain competitive.
"During the 1960 campaign, Kennedy's Catholic-ness was raised as an issue."
JFK was being forced to respond to the old KKK line that Catholics were disloyal because they "bowed to a foreign dictator in Rome". That was the same bigotry that defeated Al Smith 30 years earlier.
It in fact had little to do with religious views. The Protestant Ministers JFK was addressing actually had conservative social views similar to the Catholic Church. Rather, it was the smear of disloyalty and foreign allegience that was being leveled against the Catholics, just as its now being used to smear the Jews.
Of course now that the Left is perpetrating it, I wonder how far they're prepared to go. About ten years ago, two equally prominent professors, Dick Herrnstien and Charles Murray published a "scholarly", footnoted book called "The Bell Curve". It purported to prove (scientifically) the old racist canard that blacks are dumber than whites.
So I wonder, would anyone support subjecting Black political candidates to special IQ tests? Should a "discussion" of Black intelligence become part of the political discourse whenever Black candidates make a run?
Nah, didn't think so.
JFK was being forced to respond to the old KKK line that Catholics were disloyal because they "bowed to a foreign dictator in Rome".
It in fact had little to do with religious views. The Protestant Ministers JFK was addressing actually had conservative social views similar to the Catholic Church. Rather, it was the smear of disloyalty and foreign allegience that was being leveled against the Catholics, just as its now being used to smear the Jews.
Go to NYC sometime for the last two weeks of a senatorial campaign. The candidates don't talk about what they are going to do for America. They rather spend their time bragging how much they support Israel and how fast they'll move the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. No wonder that so many Americans wonder about New York City voters' real priorities.
I can see now why 'Joey Kavod' or however he spells it, has taken to posting his comments anonymously, they are all basically the same comment, to wit, you should be grateful to israel for bringing you the Intel chip, for dominating the Fortune 500, etc.
Phil – is "I believe he's also anti-pedophilia, another conflict with the Vatican" supposed to be a joke, or is it just an involuntary little eruption of slime?