Some time in the next few days the website israellobbybook.com will be activated–right now it’s a blank–and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, will be published by FSG. This is a historic book. The authors’ LRB paper last year created an intellectual sensation I’ve never witnessed, and notwithstanding the desire of the lobby that the book disappear, I imagine the splash this time will be mainstream. Walt and Mearsheimer will be on television. That likelihood is increased by David Remnick’s flat assertion, in an advance piece on the book that generally threw water on the scholars, that they are right to say that the lobby bears responsibility for the Iraq war.
I’ve been reading the book this August and have three preliminary impressions: Serious, cold and stunning. The seriousness of the book is conveyed on every page. The arguments are calm and earnest, stripped of metaphor and coyness. These are mature men engaged in every sinew with a giant squid of an issue; and their 106 pages of endnotes are overwhelming, and give the lie to anyone who accuses these scholars of "shoddy scholarship."
Cold. The authors are conservative realists at heart. They see states as amoral and a little vicious, and they don’t overheat their arguments. There is no joy in the book, and the fervor is hidden beneath mountains of cold logic. They are reserved, and tactical. They refuse to really take on the dual-loyalty problem (just as Tony Judt refused in his speech at NYU last year) but you sense that they believe it’s a problem (as I do). They generally say that the lobby has every right to do what it does, but their underlying zeal comes out–I think, admirably–when they state that the suppression of free speech on this issue is inappropriate and undemocratic. David Remnick’s anger at the authors–he accuses them of wanting Israel to disappear– seems to me a response to that zeal, and though he misdescribes it, the reader can feel the great molten energy underneath the icy words.
As for stunning, the argument they present is towering and clear and about time. The revision of Israeli history is stirring. The ways that the lobby has diminished the suffering of the Palestinians and enabled the occupation and settlements are starkly and even emotionally described. Most stunning is the argument that Remnick accepts: the authors’ description of the Iraq disaster as arising from the lobby’s pressure. I study this issue, and yet I turned the pages of this chapter with my mouth open, especially the pages dealing with the manipulation of intelligence, and evidence of Israel’s hand in the WMD lies. It is this section that should and must stir national debate, and now.
"How did we get here? Our first guest is Dr. John J. Mearsheimer."
My main problem with the book is the one others have raised, that the word "lobby" is imprecise. How do you define this collection of forces and devotions? It is more a culture than a concerted lobby, an aspect of Jewishness and also an element of the American meritocracy and leadership that I am part of as a media Jew, but which that leadership has been absolutely incapable of examining. For instance, when the authors describe the neocon cipher Scooter Libby as part of the lobby, they don’t really have the evidence as to the workings of his mind. I am sure they are right about Libby. But they don’t prove it and I can do so only by speaking poetically, about the cipher’s emails to his friend Judy Miller about the shared roots of the aspens in their summer retreats. Something is going on here, but you don’t know what it is…
This is where true insiders need to come forward and explain what befell us. When Thomas Friedman shows up in this book, quoted in Ha’aretz, amazingly, as saying the Iraq war originated among 25 neocons within a mile or two of his office; and when Remnick accepts Walt and Mearsheimer’s argument re the neocons–well, honey, the pro-Iraq liberal camp is falling apart. And explaining the Jewish rightwing klatch’s actions to the world is important journalistic work that awaits this country in the nightmare of the next few years. But J.J. Goldberg refuses to talk about Walt and Mearsheimer’s findings. Put on your spurs, J.J., the country needs you.
I said there’s no pleasure in the book. The one exception is the book’s dedication, to the scholar Samuel P. Huntington, whom the authors have known for 25 years. "We cannot imagine a better role model. Sam has always tackled big and important questions, and he has answered these questions in ways that the rest of the world could not ignore. Although each of us has disagreed with him on numerous occasions over the years–and sometimes vehemently and publicly–he never held those disagreements against us and was never anything but gracious and supportive of our work. [my emphasis] He understands that scholarship is not a popularity contest, and that spirited but civil debate is essential both to scholarly progress and to a healthy democracy." Beautiful and deeply moving, that is the credo of an American faith. Those words should be studied more than W&M’s descriptions of Israeli history.
The Jewish meritocracy has always been about ambition. Worldly ambition mainly; we traded our ghettoized tradition of learning for position in the information age. Let us honor the grand intellectual leap of this book with an open discussion.
Related posts:
- Obama Surrogate Calls Walt & Mearsheimer ‘Specious, Dangerous, Venomous.’ Well At Least They’re Not Bitter.
- Legendary ‘NY Review’ Hasn’t Gotten Around to Walt & Mearsheimer, Now Out for a Year
- Walt & Mearsheimer Edge Into the Mainstream
- Walt and Mearsheimer Rebut (and Humble) Their Critics
- Yivo Owes Walt and Mearsheimer an Apology. Or a Stage
{ 53 comments }
Remnick said that the M&W thesis is a "symptom" of the times, ("In this respect, their account is not so much a diagnosis of our polarized era as a symptom of it.), that is, a symptom of that age-old disease of "blame the Jews." He notes uncomfortably the authors' focus on Jewish actions, "… Exxon-Mobile barely exists." He doesn't, at least in that article, explicitly say that M&W want Israel to disappear, but he clearly paints them as being one-sided in their views, and describes their argument as being disproportionate to the facts, one of distorted perspective. He trots out Brzezinski to "provide a tone and a perspective that are largely missing," dutifully listing other lobbies, noting their efficacy.
Perhaps. But most Americans wonder: when did those other lobbies push us into war? Yes, there was the Bay of Pigs, and the cuban-Am lobby played a large role, but that was hardly the catastrophe Iraq has become, and it was a secret operation anyway, not requiring a focused propaganda campaign to "sell" it to the public. This is a false parallelism, itself an attempt at distortion.
Remnick casts M&W as scape-goaters, plain and simple. But his own words betray an uwillingness to grapple with the truth: most telling is his comment regarding the role of the press:
"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."
That seems disingenuous. Remnick knows the score regarding Judy Miller and the Times. This was more than an anemic "inability to upend those duplicities:" Hell, they were actively SELLING the duplicities. Other editors (Gannett, I think) knew the documents and facts being touted were cooked. Plenty of perceptive people on the anti-war left (William Rivers Pitt) and right (Raimondo, Antiwar.com, numerous LRC authors) knew the whole thing was based on lies. Give credit to all those writers who stuck in there all those years, virtuously trying to counter the administration's swillage while being smeared as 'traitors' by the rabid lapdogs of kookland. And it still goes on today! The NYT is still actively engaged in marketing the administration's Iran war, and no one is under any illusion about who the principal enthusiasts are.
What has left Americans furious is the fact that we were lied into war. Who made up the lies, who sold them, and who continues to sell them, is the question most of us are concerned with. Remnick shouldn't assign invidious intent to efforts made by M&W to shed some light on these matters.
After all, isn't sunshine the best disinfectant?
I ordered my copy from Overstock and should get it the first week of September. I think it's cheaper than the price on Amazon. Plus, I'm a sucker for that woman who does the commercials, talking about The Big O.
"Other editors (Gannett, I think) knew …"
Oarwell, I think you mean Knight-Ridder (now McClatchy). Their guys were almost alone in continuing to perform the journalistic function, and deserve to be recognized for it.
(Nice piece of writing, Phil.)
The title is a problematic one for me.
Israel Lobby?
This is a huge generalization.
How many people are supposedly involved with the Israel lobby?
20-40-60—–200?
Even if we count their financial supporters.
This is not representing too many Jewish Americans, or Israelis.
The more correct title would be, Likud oriented lobbying. Just one small shrinking party.
I can not understand you. Why are you so enthusiastic about this subject?
Are we objective?
Even so, your reporting is fun to read.
Steve would again and again have us believe it is only the Likudniks. Bollocks. Thomas Friedman is not a Likudnik. Judith Miller is not a Likudnik. The NYT and the New Republic are not right-wing lunatic publications. Tony Judt has an excellent article on the complicity of Jewish Liberal America where he writes:
"In today’s America, neo-conservatives generate brutish policies for which liberals provide the ethical fig-leaf."
Bush’s Useful Idiots – Tony Judt on the Strange Death of Liberal America
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n18/judt01_.html
Pretending that the misguided support of Israel-no-matter-what is only a singular trait of the Likudniks will not make the problem go away Steve. It will only continue making too many liberal Jewish Americans the ususful idiots of the Likudniks.
David, you're right, it was Knight-Ridder, inc. John Walcott, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, nicely featured in Moyer's 'Buying the War.' Thanks for the correction.
My last sentence should have been:
"It will only continue making too many liberal Jewish Americans the useful idiots of the Likudniks."
Very good post, Mr. Weiss.
As I recall, most US & other Diaspora Jews opposed this war and still do. It was mostly the machers & stink tank/federal government Likud shills promoting & executing their Clean Break conception in Iraq. I also recall prior to 9/11 most of these same characters were promoting a missile defense scam & rattling sabers at China. Thirty five years ago they were Team B henchmen toiling to keep the arms race on track & apprenticing to make the world safe for America's non-negotiable lifestyle.
Of course they promoted the Iraq war in the coincidental interest of Greater Israel, but they were never more than errand boys for hardware salesmen. And their primary loyalty is to themselves and a delusional faith in force, money and power certainly not to any nation, religion or tribe.
The War Crimes Trials (or Truth & Reconciliation Commission, take your pick) can't come soon enough. $1000 says the Jews among & lined up behind the prosecution outnumber the defense by at least 100 to 1; just like they were five years ago when this dog's breakfast was being marketed.
Thanks again for very good post & following this subject.
Hey, the Likud is not even in power! Kadima is a coallition of Jabotinskians and the Zionist left, which is an extreme ethnic Ashkenazi form of Eastern European fascism — despite what Sternhell disingenuously claims in "The Founding Myths of Israel."
The ethnic Ashkenazi Jabotinskian political elite has been digesting the transnational Zionist left political elite for years.
Only the Occult transnational ethnic Ashkenazi political elite (people like Abramoff, Moshe Tendler, Michael Medved, Merkaz Rav Kuk) are able to function separately from the Jabotinskians.
Haven't you ever wondered why the Abramoff scandal hardly touched the Neocons at all?
And while we have all those great academic discussions, people continue to die:
" 3 children killed in IDF attack in Gaza – IDF: 'Complaints should be addressed to terrorists' "
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3443636,00.html
.
As a reformed (Jewish) hater of Zionism, and still not a liker of it, I have to admit to some ambivalence about the stuff now coming up.
First of all, I think it has long been apparent that Israelis (as a whole) are suffering from some kind of national psychosis, meaning that they are delusional about important aspects of reality. I think we should give their zealous American supporters the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are as well.
When dealing with crazy people it is probably not helpful to take a moralistic stance. They are unable to to perceive themselves properly. Also one should bear in mind that while they may be harming others they are also harming themselves. Not necessarily in the same degree, but it is not as though they were profiting from the transaction.
Secondly, (and here I will make some people angry), I have become convinced that the American people are (as a whole) just as psychotic as the Israelis, and with a hell of a lot less provocation. This feeling of mine may have begun back in the eighties with the hysteria about satanic cults raping children in daycare centers, and certainly culminated with our utterly terrified reponse to the destruction of the World Trade Center, which handed the terrorists their victory. In retrospect it looks as though some aspect of our national delusional system was refuted, causing most Americans to freak out.
The central issue here I think is that the American and Israeli national psychoses have gotten in synch and are reinforcing one another, and this is certainly very troubling. But I also see a strong possibilty that Americans could turn around and scapegoat the Israelis and Zionists for their own problems, projecting their crazyness on the others, and this is the fundamental source of my ambivalence.
In line with this, I don't feel the question of 'dual loyality' is really a reasonable issue. It is certainly not uncommon for ethnic groups to give political support to their kin in other countries, and it doesn't seem fair to blame the Zionists for being really successful at it. I don't think the neoconservatives can push the administration (Mr. Cheney) anywhere it does not want to go. They were hired because their worldviews were compatible with his, which is what I was talking about in the previous paragraph.
This is just because my email address has changed, and I wanted to correct what typepad had remembered.
Paul E wrote: "It is certainly not uncommon for ethnic groups to give political support to their kin in other countries, and it doesn't seem fair to blame the Zionists for being really successful at it."
We are not talking about "political support" or aid here. We are talking about multiple wars in the Middle East against Israel's enemies with hundreds of thousands of people dying Paul.
P.S. Nice try. Perfect example of the Hasbara manual's "plain folks technique".
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hasbara
And also it seems pretty reasonable to suppose that part of the administration's agenda is to move a lot of those rich Jewish donors from the Democrats to the Republicans, which would account for its extreme tilt toward Israel.
I think there is something to PaulE's point. As someone else commented today, there is obviously something wrong in a society that lets two jet crashes frighten it into a policy of preemptive war. So I agree it's reasonable to think in terms of shared guilt. But to talk of national psychoses reinforcing one another seems to imply that the two problems share a common nature, and I'm not sure this is a fruitful path to understanding. I happen to believe there is something unique in the Zionist perspective of being "in but not of".
But I will definitely think more about his point.
David,
It might not be exactly right that "we let two jet crashes frighten us into a policy of preemptive war". My memory is that the policy itself was made before the WTC event, and no one in the mainstream complained much, and it was the terrorist attack that enabled the administration to put this policy into effect. I am sorry to nitpick, but I think it goes to my point.
I dont know what "in but not of" means. But yes I believe that the two problems share a common nature, which is that both peoples are really frightened. The question to me is what the Americans are so frightened of.
You might say that they have the feeling that things are going out of control, but I think the changes started to be visible before the economy turned sour for most. In a recent article in Harpers, Earl Shorris said we are frightened by repressed guilt over having used the atomic bomb on Japan. If we could do such a terrible thing, he says, then we have to wonder on some level what others would do to us. Maybe he is right. I agree that repressed guilt sounds right. Others have said that our vein of brutality has a lot to do with Southern fears of a slave revolt, and I agree, but there should be some other factor that brings it to fruition at this time. Also probably relevant is that the military-industrial complex feeds on fear.
Paul
.
"I dont know what 'in but not of' means."
I'm disappointed to hear this. Because you've obviously given some thought to the psychological makeup of your gentile neighbors; have you had no time to apply the same attention to modern Jewish/Zionist identity? Perhaps the phrase "keeping our bags packed" has some resonance? Or "a people apart"?
People have been trying to discuss the implications of separatism for a long time. Ultimately, it's what all this talk of the lobby is about.
Here's a bit from an essay by British author Michael Kustow: "Whenever I think about these things, a scene from the 1980s comes back. In a dining room at London Weekend Television, Melvyn Bragg is hosting a lunch before the final recording of a Channel 4 series I have commissioned about the great writers of Modernism and the modern world. I'm sitting next to George Steiner, and round the table are Hermione Lee, Anthony Burgess, Malcolm Bradbury.
"Steiner turns from the table talk and grips me by the arm. In a dramatic whisper, he says, 'We understand, Michael. We understand. We know that the catastrophe can strike at any moment. This is a civilized conversation, but we are ready to continue it, if need be, in a boulevard cafe in Buenos Aires. Our bags are already packed.'
"I detach my arm from his grip. 'What's this 'we', George? Why are you recruiting me into this 'we'?'"
'60 Minutes' refusing to do segment on Mearsheimer/Walt book:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=77703
Great Post Phil!
I suppose that Jewish seperatism began with the need to keep apart from a hostile Christian world in order to keep the religion going. As Phil says, this doesen't make sense in America today. I wonder though how much this kind of thinking is held by ethnically Jewish Americans today. I really don't know.
I feel the comment that I have thought about the psychology of my gentile neighbors may be based on a misunderstanding. When I talk about Americans I am not saying gentiles in code. If I sometimes distance myself from them it is because I am really disappointed by what the country has come to. No doubt things will change, but by now I have no confidence that they will get better.
Maybe that is my Jewish heritage speaking. Then again, maybe Steiner was saying that Jews know that any society can go bad, and to that extent I am willing to own the tradition.
In an extremely religious, say Haredi, environment "separation" makes sense, just as separation makes sense for Trappist monks. Mystics retire from the world to find the inner voice of God, but for secular Jewish people in a country without any ethnic "nation-state" identity such as the USA, this needs to be examined closely… by Jewish people, of course…
It is bizarre that America's arguably most successful ethnic group wraps itself in victimhood… dual identity in itself isn't the problem (most Americas have at least two) it's what the relationship is with all the other "identities" that is the problem.
Probably the privilege of the United States is that this can finally all be talked out frankly in public for the first time in 2000 years without bloodshed. Maybe there will be a synthesis and some sort of new "Covenant" of coexistance.
To David Duke – Puleeeeze
Repressed guilty??? Jewish separatism a reaction to christian hostility???
I warn about deception.
If I were a jew, any jew, I would be so thankful to Dr. Walt and Mearsheimer for their work. Looks to me like the accumulated evil of zionism will soon start to be unveiled to the world masses, offering some chance for redemption, versus a continuation of the past, thus setting the stage, long term, for a real and total elimination of jews from this planet. One only need look at their micro history and project it to a macro world desiring permanent retribution. Before times only required them moving to another country when they were "found out". Where to this time, if all ruth and compassion is exhausted?
As an aside, Christians are also called to be "in the world, but not of it," which is clearly a nod to the otherworldy aspect of Christianity (without actually embracing Quietism, which I believe is a formal heresy (Hesychasts, the Greek quietist, mystical monks, denounced by the Church, as well as the gnosticism of Meister Eckhart and others (and probably including the "divine sparks" thinking of the Besht, which I personally find fascinating). The world, by Christian lights, is a place ruled by its prince, Satan, and therefore not to be embraced.
Similar, I guess, to the Jewish concept, which seems to be shorthand for noting that gentile cultures are not, in the end, to be trusted. History teaches that behind every smile of the gentile lies a dormant pogrom. It's interesting to reflect on the common sense of Otherness shared by Jews and by (real) Christians. Is there any similar notion to be found in Suffism?
——————-
As for ascribing American fear to repressed guilt over Hiroshima–would that it were so! An America where a significant number are consumed by such guilt would be a very different America indeed. I have a feeling the author might be projecting his own sensitivities onto the unwashed masses. Most Americans, rest assured, NEVER think about such things. They think about their lawns and their cars, about sports, and about their miserable little foibles. Only a few (5 per hundred? Less?) actually read and think about the so-called "serious" issues.
But one things seems clear: Americans are certainly not afraid of terrorism. They might be afraid of the consequences of government policies that have caused the dollar to be ruined and their jobs outsourced to Rangoon, but terrorists? You think that tobacco-chewing redneck in the F150 is worried about terrorists? Ha! No one is afraid of terrorists, except, perhaps, the mythological old biddy in Peoria who the propagandists will gleefully magnify into "the voice of the people," to further the interests of (their) National Security State.
To speak of "the Americans" as if there is any coherent thought or purpose is to give voice to a lie. There is no Vox Populi, only the false consensus trumpeted by sectarian interests. Did "America" drop the bomb? No, Truman dropped the bomb, in concert with Oppenheimer and his team. Even mad fire-bombing Curtis LeMay didn't think the atom bombs were necessary, and he was certainly not someone given over to compunctions about loss of innocent life. It was a decision made by a very narrow elite, and only later was propaganda employed to convince the common man that it was necessary (witness the lies in the NYT in August 45 that "radiation poisoning" was a Japanese fabrication.) The NYT reporter one the Pulitzer for this crap (when will Judy win hers?).
The American people didn't want war with Iraq, and certainly don't want war with Iran. Elite interests engineer public opinion, using push polls and sampling bias, to bolster their nefarious agendas. It is this process of propagandizing the masses, laid out by Bernays, refined by Goebbels, and now mastered by U.S. elites, which must be revealed for what it is: the marketing of evil.
Wow… I had no idea Scooter Libby is Jewish.
Wow… I had no idea Scooter Libby is Jewish.
"They [the source's institution] have ‘instructions' (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this – they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is plenty."
http://www.observer.com/node/47455
The propaganda blitz to soften up public perception, then the murdering starts. Ah, democracy.
Kent – The meeting is about to start in 5 minutes and you're still not here. Burn the synagogue down later and get your ass over here now. That's an order.
-DD
If you are not familiar with Eastern Europe, with being Jewish there, you can enjoy the hateful messages of Walt-Mearsheimer.
They have got as much decency as McCarthy.
These two scholars are displaying a fake integrity.
Senator Simpson said:
If you have integrity, nothing else matters.
If you have not got integrity, the same, nothing else matters.
I know Phil personally, we are good friends and I hope, he will be openminded when we will meet and discuss these matters.
Oarwell, by mistake (or intention?) your link is to an old article from April 2003. It's a riot. This was the time of Mission Accomplished and we get to hear William Kristol say modestly, "Yeah, I think we had some utility. Bush could have come to it all without us, too. But it helped that we had already made these arguments. You feel some responsibility when things go well."
It's a NY Observer article — one of those belated roundups of who the neocons are and what their ideas are like that tended to come out after the war. It's actually pretty good (but of course it manages to avoid all mention of Israel).
Really I think one thing that it is truly not fair to do is to criticize Jewish success in America. It would be much more more useful to analyze the decline of the WASPs.
Where have they gone, all the Jeffersons, Lincolns, Franklins, Emersons, Thoreaus, Jameses (William and Henry), Melvilles, Whitmans, Twains, Graham Bells, Edisons, Faulkners etcetera. Where have they gone? What has happened to the what is still the largest "minority" in the land? Once upon a time as energetic, productive, creative and fruitful a group of men and women as ever trod the earth. Their decline into idiocy is the problem, not the Jews who are something like two percent of Americans and who appear to be working hard to pick up the slack.
The impression one gets is that America's Jews are all that are standing between the USA and its becoming a kind of overweight, dopey, Australia. But of course the flavor is not the same anymore.
"and I hope, he will be openminded when we will meet and discuss these matters."
Uh-oh. :)
The Observer article is good even though it never mentions Israel, not even once (!) as David pointed out. This Kovner guy is a very interesting figure; Phil had an article on him a few months ago but couldn't get to really interview him. It's pretty clear he is another "I-am-a-one-issue guy-and-my-issue-is-Israel" kind of guy:
Phil's article on Kovner (recommended):
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/12353/
Some more info:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/3532
His ascendance from cab driver to Wall Street billionaire is interesting, make sure you read Phil's article. He is seemingly one of the most influential and shadowy players, but I think he is indebted to others and actually takes instructions (not every cab driver becomes a billionaire after someone takes an interest in him some rainy night in NYC if you know what I mean).
Anyway, I googled the paragraph Oarwell posted and it is here:
http://crayz.org/
As far as that information goes, well, let's wait and see. Jim Lobe has been posting a lot of entries on his blog about that coordinated media campaign. In fact, this kind of thing is a neo-con specialty, but it would have never been as successful if "liberals" like Friedman and others weren't helping them. Nobody rallies both sides to the cause like Zion. I would also suggest looking for Gordon's trademark Iran articles in the NYT, something tells me he is going to be writing a lot of them in September!
Kent – After the Jews are all exterminated we will come for the assholes. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Upon visiting suspected facilities in February 2003, and with new declarations by Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded that several sensitive technology facilities are either operational, under construction, or planned. The IAEA raised questions regarding possible enrichment activities at the workshops of the Kalaye Electric Company relating to production of centrifuge components. Additionally, Iran admitted to having imported from China 1.8 tons of nuclear material (UF6, UF4 and UO2) used to manufacture uranium metal, which is essential in weapons production. During its meetings with IAEA officials in August 2003, Iran for the first time provided evidence of its technical violations of the NPT by revealing that in the 1990s, it had carried out 113 uranium conversion experiments involving the production of uranium metal from imported UF4 and the production of UF4 from imported UO2, as well as laboratory-scale experiments in the 1980s involving the production of heavy water.
During the IAEA inspection in June 2003, environmental samples that were taken from chemical traps of the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz revealed the presence of highly enriched uranium (HEU). Short of declaring Iran in violation of the NPT, the IAEA Director-General Mohamed El-Baradei stated, "Iran has failed to meet its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement"[4] and criticized Iran for not being transparent with the construction of its nuclear-related facilities and import of nuclear material. The IAEA Board of Governors has imposed on Iran a 31 October 2003 deadline to resolve all outstanding issues and to provide full and complete declaration of its nuclear material and nuclear activities, specifically Iran's enrichment program and past conversion experiments. It further called on Iran to suspend all enrichment activities and sign an Additional Protocol.[5]
In an effort to diffuse the tense relations between Iran and the IAEA and to preserve the sanctity of the nonproliferation regime, foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany secured Iran's consent to cooperation with the IAEA ahead of the 31 October deadline. Faced with probability of sanctions and international isolation in case of noncompliance with the IAEA's demands, Iran announced on 21 October 2003 that it will cooperate with the IAEA with full transparency and disclosure, sign the Additional Protocol and commence its ratification procedures, and suspend all enrichment and reprocessing activities, albeit for an "interim period." And finally, on 18 December 2003, Iran signed the Additional Protocol to the NPT, thus allowing snap inspections of its nuclear facilities by the IAEA experts. Ali Akbar Salehi, the outgoing Iranian representative to the IAEA, signed on behalf of Iran, and Director-General El-Baradei signed for the IAEA.[6]
Iran appears to be dangerously close to developing an indigenous nuclear fuel cycle, which would in turn enable it to develop a nuclear bomb without much reliance on outside help. Comparison with the other nuclear axis member North Korea is tempting, but inappropriate. Iran is motivated by its aspirations for political, religious, and military leadership in the region, unlike North Korea, for whom mere survival appears to be the priority. Iran has traditionally felt insecure among its neighbors, first vis-à-vis Iraq, whom it considered its most immediate physical and ideological threat, and now that the Hussein regime is gone, the growing presence and influence of the United States. Additionally, the constant threat of Israel's nuclear arsenal, mostly perpetuated by Iran's technocrats, government officials and the pro-nuclear lobby, adds to Iran's perceived concerns and justifies it to the domestic audience the need to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran's progress toward nuclear weapons, though irreversible, might be hampered by a combined effort on three fronts. First, an unlikely but not impossible development would be an emergence of a domestic opposition to nuclear weapons, potentially within President Khatami's reformist government. A second front would come in the form of intense international pressure on states that are still in the position to help Iran perfect its knowledge and infrastructure—Russia, Pakistan, China, and North Korea. A third approach might be a regional effort on the part of Arab states to pressure Iran to abandon sensitive technology and questionable activities in favor of a weapons-free zone in the Middle East.
Since Iran signed the Additional Protocol on Nuclear Safeguards on 18 December 2003, the Protocol provided inspectors from the IAEA with greater access within Iran and the option to carry out intrusive inspections at Iran's nuclear facilities.[7] Subsequent IAEA inspections in Iran revealed a wealth of new information related to the development and scale of Iran's nuclear program. Iran is generally viewed as having been forthcoming and helpful to these IAEA efforts, although this cooperation has clearly not been absolute. Indeed, on 18 June 2004, IAEA board members voted to reprimand Iran for not providing the agency with more timely and comprehensive support. Specifically, Iran was rebuked for postponing IAEA visits to a number of locations related to Iran's P-2 centrifuge enrichment program, which had been scheduled to take place in March 2004.[8] The IAEA also criticized Iran's lack of forthrightness about its possession of P-2 design drawings and other related research, and information regarding its manufacturing and mechanical testing activities, all of which was omitted from Iran's 21 October 2003 declaration to the agency.[9] The IAEA called on Iran to "be proactive in taking all necessary steps on an urgent basis to resolve all outstanding issues", including those related to contamination by low-enriched uranium (LEU) and HEU, as well as the limited production of polonium-210 and plutonium.[10]
Concurrently, the United States along with some other IAEA board members has continued to maintain that Iran is pursuing an underground nuclear weapons program. And while this claim has not yet been substantiated by IAEA inspectors, proponents argue that Iran has violated the NPT and that the country's nuclear file should, in turn, be referred to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for its review. El-Baradei is, however, weary of pursuing such a hard line against Iran, as he fears that exerting too much pressure may cause Iran to opt out of the NPT altogether.[11] Responding to the barrage of critics who insist that Iran's illicit intentions are obvious, El-Baradei has pointed to the continued absence of a "smoking gun" and the fundamental shortcomings of attempts to concretely assess Iran's programmatic goals without such evidence. As he stated in July 2004, "We are not God. We cannot read intentions."[12] For its part, Iran continues to assert that it pursues a nuclear program with only peaceful applications, while El-Baradei is steadfast in his belief that the situation may be resolved diplomatically.[13] In addition, Rustnrcsia remains unequivocally opposed to United Nations' sanctions against Iran, especially given the absence of evidence to bolster claims about illicit activities. Russia has also supported Iran's disclosure efforts, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin's November 2003 charge that Iran acted in bad faith by failing to fully comply with IAEA inspections.[14]
In an effort to bring Iran into compliance with its international obligations, European representatives from Britain, France, and Germany, in cooperation with the IAEA, offered Iran nuclear and trade incentives in exchange for Iran's abandonment of nuclear aspirations. In mid-November, all parties agreed to an agreement reaffirming Iran's commitment to uphold its obligations under the NPT, yet recognizing its right to pursue nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes.
U.S. officials, dissatisfied with the agreement, continued to pressure the international community to pursue more stringent investigations of Iran's nuclear program. In late November, a CIA report revealed Iranian involvement with Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, and details regarding the nuclear assistance and technology he shared.
On 29 November 2004, the IAEA Board of Governors adopted a resolution regarding Iran, putting into effect the NPT Safeguards Agreement and forcing Iran to suspend all nuclear-related activities until an investigation takes place. Iranian government officials voluntarily agreed to the resolution, but repeatedly declared that Iran has no intention of completely abandoning its nuclear program as the agreement is temporary.
On 2 December 2004, IAEA inspectors sought access to two secret Iranian military sites where the main Iranian opposition group alleged nuclear activities have taken place: Parchin and Lavizan II. Intelligence data indicates explosives testing and the purchase of equipment that may be used for uranium enrichment.
In March 2005, Iran refused IAEA inspectors a second visit to Parchin, a military site suspected of nuclear activity, stating that another visit was not justified. This has hindered the atomic agency's ability to complete its investigation into Iran's centrifuge equipment and the source of nuclear contamination detected during earlier visits. Results of January inspections to five other nuclear sites revealed nothing suspicious.
Amid rising concerns about Iran's insistence on its right to enrich uranium and inwardly revised estimates of its ability to build a nuclear bomb, the possibility of Israeli and/or American plans to mount an attack on Iranian nuclear sites "a la Osirak" received extensive treatment in the press in the first few months of 2005. Officials from both nations denied the charges.
Concurrent with Iran's ongoing EU trio nuclear negotiations, Iranian nuclear official Ali Akbar Salehi asserted on 22 April 2005 that Iran's plan to achieve full mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle is "completely clear and irreversible." This ambition has elicited widespread international criticism. In a "message" to Iran, on 26 April the United States approved the sale to Israel of "bunker buster" bombs capable of penetrating Iran's underground nuclear facilities.
On 1 August 2005, Iran notified the IAEA of its decision to resume uranium conversion activities at its conversion facility at Esfahan. This decision to resume uranium conversion was seen as a breach of the November 2004 Paris Agreement that viewed Iran’s suspension of all uranium-related activities as a prerequisite for dialogue. This notification by Iran was followed by the IAEA Director General’s report to the Board of Governors in September 2005, confirming Iran’s resumption of uranium activities and describing new findings. The findings were in two major areas, one related to the origin of the low enriched uranium and highly-enriched uranium contamination found at various locations in Iran and the second, related to the issue of the P-1 and P-2 centrifuge program. The Director General’s report in September 2005 also used strong language, urging Iran to adopt greater transparency measures vis-à-vis their nuclear program. On 24 September 2005, the IAEA passed a resolution finding Iran in non-compliance as opposed to previous resolutions that merely affirmed a breach in obligations. The resolution passed with 21 votes of approval, 12 abstentions, and one opposing vote. Russia and China were among those that abstained from voting and Venezuela was the only country to vote against the resolution. The resolution stated that Iran's non-compliance due to "many failures and breaches" over nuclear safeguards of the NPT were grounds for referral to the UN Security Council.
The resolution passed on 24 September 2005, leaving the door open for future referral of Iran to the Security Council and was finally adopted in February 2006. On 4 February 2006, the 35-nation board of the IAEA voted to “report” Iran to the Security Council over its decision announced in January, to restart nuclear research. The above resolution passed with 27 votes of approval, 5 abstentions, and 3 opposing votes. This was the first time that Russia and China agreed to go along with the position of the EU-3 and the United States over Iran. However, Russia and China insisted on using the word “report” instead of “refer” in the text of the most recent IAEA resolution. Iran has rejected the above resolution calling it, “illegal, illogical and politically motivated.” As a response to the most recent resolution, Iran has decided to scrap the “containment and surveillance measures” as defined under the 1997 Additional Protocol, limiting the intrusive powers of the inspectors and putting a halt to snap inspections as well. Iran has also resumed small scale enrichment activities at its Natanz facility as of February 16. In a parallel diplomatic process vis-à-vis a deal backed by the United States and the European Union, Russia continues to pursue negotiations with Iran that would allow Russia to host Iran’s uranium enrichment program leaving only the uranium conversion to be carried out on Iranian soil.
Kevin MacDonald may be a very controversial person but his in-depth study of the neocons is the best and most comprehensive there is:
http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/UnderstandJI-3.htm
If 1/2 of what Kevin MacDonald is saying is true, all this is going to end very, very badly. How badly? World War Three badly.
I'm still amazed when I read comments from people who are somehow suppose to be educated that here 6 years later are unwilling to see the 9-11 attacks as a False Flag.The obviousness of all three Trade Center demolitions,the transportation and destruction of the wreckage,"Lucky"Larry and his fingerprints all over the whole design,etc.No we didn't "let" the attacks happen to us!No it wasn't faulty intelligence!And most of all,it wasn't 19 highjackers.All of you scholars,pundits,psuedo-intellectuals,op-ederz and archair philosophers who continue NOT TO SEE 9-11 and the events that have followed and that are coming-you are part of the problem!The "Lobby" is part of the network.Here's where M&W fall short.It's not the lions you can see that are the danger,it's the ones you can't.Wake up sleepy heads!
Here is what I don't understand. Gareth Porter on Anti-War.com is reporting that Israeli officials warned the George W. Bush administration that an invasion of Iraq would be destabilizing to the region and urged the United States to instead target Iran as the primary enemy, according to former administration official Lawrence Wilkerson.
Wilkerson, then a member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and later chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, recalled in an interview with IPS that the Israelis reacted immediately to indications that the Bush administration was thinking of war against Iraq. After the Israeli government picked up the first signs of that intention, Wilkerson says, "The Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy – Iran is the enemy."
Wilkerson describes the Israeli message to the Bush administration in early 2002 as being, "If you are going to destabilize the balance of power, do it against the main enemy."
The warning against an invasion of Iraq was "pervasive" in Israeli communications with the administration, Wilkerson recalls. It was conveyed to the administration by a wide range of Israeli sources, including political figures, intelligence, and private citizens.
Wilkerson notes that the main point of their communications was not that the United States should immediately attack Iran, but that "it should not be distracted by Iraq and Saddam Hussein" from a focus on the threat from Iran.
The Israeli advice against using military force against Iraq was apparently triggered by reports reaching Israeli officials in December 2001 that the Bush administration was beginning serious planning for an attack on Iraq. Journalist Bob Woodward revealed in Plan of Attack that on Dec. 1, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had ordered the Central Command chief Gen. Tommy Franks to come up with the first formal briefing on a new war plan for Iraq on Dec. 4. That started a period of intense discussions of war planning between Rumsfeld and Franks.
Soon after Israeli officials got wind of that planning, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked for a meeting with Bush primarily to discuss U.S. intentions to invade Iraq. In the weeks preceding Sharon's meeting with Bush on Feb. 7, 2002, a procession of Israeli officials conveyed the message to the Bush administration that Iran represented a greater threat, according to a Washington Post report on the eve of the meeting.
Israeli Defense Minister Fouad Ben-Eliezer, who was visiting Washington with Sharon, revealed the essence of the strategic differences between Tel Aviv and Washington over military force. He was quoted by the Post as saying, "Today, everybody is busy with Iraq. Iraq is a problem. … But you should understand, if you ask me, today Iran is more dangerous than Iraq."
Sharon, who has been in a coma since early 2006, never revealed publicly what he said to Bush in the Feb. 7 meeting. But Yossi Alpher, a former adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Barak, wrote in an article in the Forward last January that Sharon advised Bush not to occupy Iraq, according to a knowledgeable source. Alpher wrote that Sharon also assured Bush that Israel would not "push one way or another" regarding his plan to take down Saddam Hussein.
Alpher noted that Washington did not want public support by Israel and in fact requested that Israel refrain from openly supporting the invasion in order to avoid an automatic negative reaction from Iraq's Arab neighbors.
After that meeting, the Sharon government generally remained silent on the issue of an invasion of Iraq. A notable exception, however, was a statement on Aug. 16, 2002 by Ranaan Gissin, an aide to Sharon. Ranaan declared, "Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose. It will only give [Hussein] more of an opportunity to accelerate his program of weapons of mass destruction."
As late as October 2002, however, there were still signs of continuing Israeli grumbling about the Bush administration's obsession with taking over Iraq. Both the Israeli Defense Forces' chief of staff and its chief of military intelligence made public statements that month implicitly dismissing the Bush administration's position that Saddam Hussein's alleged quest for nuclear weapons made him the main threat. Both officials suggested that Israel's military advantage over Iraq had continued to increase over the decade since the Gulf War as Iraq had grown weaker.
The Israeli chief of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Farkash, said Iraq had not deployed any missiles that could strike Israel directly and challenged the Bush administration's argument that Iraq could obtain nuclear weapons within a relatively short time. He gave an interview to Israeli television in which he said army intelligence had concluded that Iraq could not have nuclear weapons in less than four years. He insisted that Iran was as much of a nuclear threat as Iraq.
Israeli strategists generally believed that taking down the Hussein regime could further upset an Iran-Iraq power balance that had already tilted in favor of Iran after the U.S. defeat of Hussein's army in the 1991 Gulf War. By 1996, however, neoconservatives with ties to the Likud Party were beginning to argue for a more aggressive joint U.S.-Israeli strategy aimed at a "rollback" of all of Israel's enemies in the region, including Iran, but beginning by taking down Hussein and putting a pro-Israeli regime in power there.
That was the thrust of the 1996 report of a task force led by Richard Perle for the right-wing Israeli think tank the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies and aimed at the Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
But most strategists in the Israeli government and the Likud Party – including Sharon himself – did not share that viewpoint. Despite agreement between neoconservatives and Israeli officials on many issues, the dominant Israeli strategic judgment on the issue of invading Iraq diverged from that of U.S. neoconservatives because of differing political-military interests.
Israel was more concerned with the relative military threat posed by Iran and Iraq, whereas neoconservatives in the Bush administration were focused on regime change in Iraq as a low-cost way of leveraging more ambitious changes in the region. From the neoconservative perspective, the very military weakness of Hussein's Iraq made it the logical target for the use of U.S. military power.
I think that American Likud elements may have been more enthusiastic about using Iraq as a stepping stone to Iran than the Israeli military that, when all is said and done, will have to live… and perhaps die with the mess the Americans leave when they fianlly go home.
American neocons are famously chicken hawks,a breed which are probably a lot scarcer in Israel, where practically everybody has been in the Army and quite a few have actually heard shots fired in anger abd see comrades "fall".
Whatever the rights and wrongs of all of this are, I can see that something of train wreck like proportions is going to happen sooner or later and after it has happened the United States will be another country and not a very pleasant one, I fear.
Efil and Fred, you could have posted the link and a few highlights instead. Please give us a break.
As far as Porter's article goes, Wilkerson is definitely a most credible patriot. However, there is also a LOT of evidence that Israel was in fact pressing for war. In my opinion, it is impossible to believe that AIPAC and the neo-cons would ignore the will of an Israeli government with Sharon at the helm, as anyone who has even the most elementary knowledge of them would agree that this would never happen in such an important issue.
What is at play here is probably a very nice attempt by Israel to cover its tracks by playing both sides of the argument at the same time.
For some of the counterevidence, allow me to repost daveg's post of a few days ago:
**********
"While it appears the Israel thought Iran was the better target, they were not exactly against the Iraq, at least not publically.
Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow, a former member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to Condoleezza Rice, the ‘real threat’ from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The ‘unstated threat’ was the ‘threat against Israel’, Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002. ‘The American government,’ he added, ‘doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.’
On 16 August 2002, 11 days before Dick Cheney kicked off the campaign for war with a hardline speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Washington Post reported that ‘Israel is urging US officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.’ By this point, according to Sharon, strategic co-ordination between Israel and the US had reached ‘unprecedented dimensions’, and Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq’s WMD programmes. As one retired Israeli general later put it, ‘Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq’s non-conventional capabilities.’
Israeli leaders were deeply distressed when Bush decided to seek Security Council authorisation for war, and even more worried when Saddam agreed to let UN inspectors back in. ‘The campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must,’ Shimon Peres told reporters in September 2002. ‘Inspections and inspectors are good for decent people, but dishonest people can overcome easily inspections and inspectors.’
At the same time, Ehud Barak wrote a New York Times op-ed warning that ‘the greatest risk now lies in inaction.’ His predecessor as prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, published a similar piece in the Wall Street Journal, entitled: ‘The Case for Toppling Saddam’. ‘Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do,’ he declared. ‘I believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a pre-emptive strike against Saddam’s regime.’ Or as Ha’aretz reported in February 2003,
Enough said.
Posted by: daveg | August 30, 2007 at 02:21 AM
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2007/08/remnick-writes-.html#comment-81090957
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The mislinking was unintentional. I never heard of crayz.com, was copying that from Raimondo's Antiwar column, where he is pulling from a post by Barnett Rubin at Informed Comment, Juan Cole's blog. Rubin writes:
"Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:" (etc., as above)
Rubin ends his post with this:
"I hesitated before posting this. I don't want to spread alarmist rumors. I don't want to lessen the pressure on the Ahmadinejad government in Tehran. But there are too many signs of another irresponsible military adventure from the Cheney-Bush administration for me just to dismiss these reports. I am putting them into the public sphere in the hope of helping to mobilize opposition to a policy that would further doom the efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq and burden our country and the people of the Middle East with yet another unstoppable fountain of bloodshed."
Paul Roberts, Ray McGovern and others are echoing this. The attack seems inevitable, and I'm sure in time we'll find out it was cooked up a while back, probably green-lighted over a year ago. Hersh reported in January 2005 ("The Coming Wars")on SF units already in Iran. Lebanon, now seen as a debacle, might have been an attempt at prophylactically widening Israel's cordon sanitaire before the actual rape began.
Copies of the highly anticipated new book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt arrived on bookshelves in Washington late last week despite a reported "embargo" from the publisher until its official September 4 release. In a sign of the book's controversial nature, the New York Times reported on August 16 that organizations such as the Chicago Council on Global Affairs have canceled scheduled events with Mearsheimer and Walt. This new debate about the rights of the prominent political scientists to present their critique of Israel adds to the question of whether their work is anti-Semitic — a claim made against the professors' original "Israel Lobby" paper published last March. Rather, the central issue on which reviewers of Mearsheimer and Walt's book should focus is whether the evidence the professors present supports their arguments about the significant influence of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy decisions.
Despite well over one thousand endnotes and updated chapters on the lobby's role in influencing the Bush Administration's approach to Israel, Iraq, Syria, Iran and the Lebanon War of 2006, the book consistently misrepresents U.S. decision-making in the Middle East. Mearsheimer and Walt manufacture causal connections between the lobby's activities and American actions that Bush Administration insiders rebuke.
Unfortunately, the book does not include any interviews with current or former government officials about the lobby's influence on foreign policy. (The one interview cited in the endnotes refers to the departure of Flynt Leverett from the Brookings Institution. Leverett, who served on the National Security Council staff during the Bush Administration's first term and has been an ardent critic of its policies since, is not quoted about his views on the lobby's influence or the Bush Administration and the Middle East). Earlier this year, Mearsheimer and Walt argued that they did not need interviews since "we felt we already had sufficient information about the lobby's operations" and additional research "would not have altered our conclusions." In fact, what Mearsheimer and Walt would have discovered, as I did, is that their interpretation of events does not accord with how Bush officials characterize the reasons for policy decisions and their interactions with the Israel lobby.
Before addressing the flaws in Mearsheimer and Walt's claims and the specific cases they misinterpret, it is first essential to understand their core argument: The Israel lobby acts not just as one important voice informing government officials, but consistently shapes American foreign policy decisions. Originally, they asserted, "the overall thrust of U.S. policy in the region is due almost entirely to U.S. domestic politics, and especially to the activities of the 'Israel Lobby.'"
That sentence has disappeared from the book, but its essence remains in a series of claims about particular areas in which the lobby played a central if not determinative role. They write, the lobby "was the principal driving force behind the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq in 2003." Similarly, the Bush administration has failed to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict, "because there has been little change in the balance of power between Bush and the lobby." And on Syria, they state, "absent the lobby, there might already be a peace treaty between Israel and Syria."
At a minimum, Mearsheimer and Walt depict the Israel lobby as guiding American policy decisions toward Israel and throughout the Middle East. Maximally, the professors portray presidents and secretaries of state as subservient to the executive director of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and neoconservative sub-cabinet officials.
Responding to each of these charges, and the five chapters in which they present their evidence, would require significant space. However, a close examination of the critical period of U.S.-Israel relations from 2001-2002 — the period that motivated Mearsheimer and Walt's work on this subject — reveals that events on the ground in the Middle East drove the administration's policies, not the activities of the Israel lobby.
In the months following the September 11 attacks, Mearsheimer and Walt claim, "American policy makers believed that shutting down the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or at least making an attempt to do so, would undermine support for terrorist groups like al Qaeda." To achieve this, "President Bush began pushing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to show restraint in the Occupied Territories," and soon Bush "said publicly for the first time that he supported a Palestinian state." However, this version of events reverses the impact of 9/11 on the Bush Administration and ignores the role played by Saudi Arabia during this period.
In the weeks preceding September 11, the Bush Administration faced a growing crisis in its relations with Saudi Arabia because it had not placed enough emphasis on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah refused to meet Bush until the administration changed course. According to a Washington Post report, Saudi Ambassador Bandar bin Sultan delivered a message to the President from Crown Prince Abdullah, stating that since American "national interest in the Middle East is 100-percent based on Sharon . . . we will protect our national interests, regardless of where America's interests lie in the region."
Because of this potential rift with the kingdom, President Bush wrote to the Saudi crown prince pledging to work toward alleviating Palestinian suffering. As Bruce Riedel, the senior National Security Council official for the Middle East at the time, later told me, "the driving force" of American policy toward the Middle East during this period was Saudi Arabia and "policy was set under pressure from the Saudi lobby."
While Mearsheimer and Walt claim that the United States was busy trying to appease Arab opinion after 9/11 by pressuring Israel, administration officials explain the opposite was taking place. One senior State Department official told me, "9/11 tended to transform the administration's view of the conflict, and frame it more in terms of a wider ideological struggle between forces of extremism and democratic modernization in the region. Arafat's continuing flirtation with terrorism solidified the view that he was on the wrong side of the emerging divide in the region." Finally, the president's first official announcement in support of a Palestinian state was not pressure at all, since Ariel Sharon had already accepted the concept of Palestinian statehood. Riedel explained, "We weren't going to get in trouble for supporting something Sharon already supported."
The second case Mearsheimer and Walt cite as evidence for the effectiveness of the Israel lobby occurred just four months later, at the time of Israel's reentry into West Bank cities in response to a massive suicide bombing that killed thirty Israelis celebrating Passover. Mearsheimer and Walt note that President Bush and senior officials initially urged Israel to withdraw from the West Bank but later ceased such calls and ultimately sided with Sharon, calling him a "man of peace." The lobby, of course, was responsible for this switch.
Yet Mearsheimer and Walt fail to describe the events leading up to Israel's Operation Defensive Shield. They completely ignore the mission of General Anthony Zinni to renew security cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians during this period-and the envoy's conclusion that Palestinian Authority leader Yasir Arafat was the impediment to progress on the peace process. Zinni made his first trip as envoy in December and returned in January the very day Israel intercepted the ship Karine-A on its way to delivering fifty tons of weaponry purchased by Arafat. (Mearsheimer and Walt write "there was no definitive evidence that directly implicated Arafat" in the weapons purchase, but captured Israeli documents establish that Fouad Shubaki, the director of finances for the Palestinian Authority's security forces, provided the funds for the cargo and the operation.)
Zinni believed that the capture of the Karine-A would end the security negotiations he was pursuing, but found the Israelis continued to be amenable to compromise. When he offered his own "bridging plan" to resolve differences between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators on the parameters for an agreement, Zinni found that the Israelis accepted the plan without reservations. However, Zinni could not get a final answer from Arafat and ultimately concluded, "Arafat was the stumbling block . . . No matter what he told anyone, he would not make compromises." Consequently, Zinni recognized that the Passover bombing had a "9/11 effect" on Israelis, even among the security professionals who had been most forthcoming during his negotiations.
By not even referencing Zinni's mission or the level of terror that provoked Israel's Operation Defensive Shield (63 Israelis had been killed and hundreds injured in suicide bombings since Zinni's first trip as envoy), Mearsheimer and Walt present a particularly one-dimensional view of the president's reaction. Indeed, had they read further into President Bush's remarks when he called for Israel to withdraw from its incursions into the West Bank, they would have discovered the real reason why the administration soon withdrew its demands for a pull-back. The president said,
"I speak as a committed friend of Israel. I speak out of a concern for its long-term security, a security that will come with a genuine peace. As Israel steps back, responsible Palestinian leaders and Israel's Arab neighbors must step forward and show the world that they are truly on the side of peace. The choice and the burden will be theirs."
Predictably, no one stepped forward and by June the administration called for new Palestinian leadership and would no longer deal with Arafat. The new policy emerged as a result of Arafat's own failings, his unwillingness to halt terror attacks and the frustrations of the administration in dealing with him. According to Bush officials, the Israel lobby played no role in this policy shift.
These examples highlight how the lobby is not the driving force behind U.S. policy toward the Middle East. And if it does not determine U.S. decisions toward Israel specifically, the lobby is highly unlikely to exert greater influence over policy toward other Middle Eastern countries, such as Syria, Iran or Iraq.
Perhaps the most pernicious claim that appears in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is that the lobby "was the principal driving force" behind the decision to invade Iraq. The origin of the Iraq War will likely be debated by historians for generations to come, but it is pretty clear that Mearsheimer and Walt greatly simplify a complex story by arguing that "a small band of neoconservatives" led the march toward war, which Israeli officials helped sell to the American public.
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld responded best to the charge that Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith from the Pentagon and other neoconservatives from the vice president's office were the "driving force behind the Iraq war", in Mearsheimer and Walt's words. Rumsfeld told the New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg, "I suppose the implication of that is that the President and the Vice-President and myself and Colin Powell just fell off a turnip truck to take these jobs." Interestingly, Rumsfeld barely appears as a principal actor in Mearsheimer and Walt's treatment of the events shaping the Iraq War.
Similarly, Peter Wehner, former deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, called Mearsheimer and Walt's description of the lobby's role in the Iraq War "ludicrous." Instead, Wehner explained, "The principal driving forces behind the decision to invade Iraq were (a) Saddam Hussein and his aggressive and malevolent regime; and (b) the lesson the Administration took away from the attacks on September 11, which were that you do not wait on events while dangers gather." Once again, by failing to consult officials, Mearsheimer and Walt attribute influence to the lobby when other factors dominated the administration's thinking and actions.
Although The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy appears to contain much clearly documented research, its authors fail to capture the realities of policy formation and present a series of letters, statements and rallies by supporters of Israel as evidence of the lobby's manipulation of Washington. Mearsheimer and Walt would have benefited from conversations with foreign policy officials or representatives of the lobby itself to get a more precise portrayal of the events they describe. Had they done so, they would have found that their description of American foreign policy is often inaccurate or misleading, and their overall thesis is contradicted by central figures in their story.
Alexander, quoting Zinni to attack M&W is a bit cheeky, especially in light of Zinni's views on the Iraq war:
"I think the American people were conned into this," he says. Referring to the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which the Johnson administration claimed that U.S. Navy ships had been subjected to an unprovoked attack by North Vietnam, he says, "The Gulf of Tonkin and the case for WMD and terrorism is synonymous in my mind."
"What I don't understand is that the bill of goods the neocons sold him has been proven false, yet heads haven't rolled," he says. "Where is the accountability? I think some fairly senior people at the Pentagon ought to go."
…
"I think it's the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody – everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do.
"And one article, because I mentioned the neo-conservatives who describe themselves as neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that's the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it. I certainly didn't criticize who they were. I certainly don't know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I'm not interested.
"I know what strategy they promoted. And openly. And for a number of years. And what they have convinced the president and the secretary to do. And I don't believe there is any serious political leader, military leader, diplomat in Washington that doesn't know where it came from."
And this:
"Perhaps the most pernicious claim that appears in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is that the lobby "was the principal driving force" behind the decision to invade Iraq. The origin of the Iraq War will likely be debated by historians for generations to come, but it is pretty clear that Mearsheimer and Walt greatly simplify a complex story by arguing that "a small band of neoconservatives" led the march toward war, which Israeli officials helped sell to the American public."
Not if what Robert Dreyfuss reported in the Nation (June 2003)is true:
"According to the former official, also feeding information to the Office of Special Plans was a secret, rump unit established last year in the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel. This unit, which paralleled [Abram N.] Shulsky's – and which has not previously been reported – prepared intelligence reports on Iraq in English (not Hebrew) and forwarded them to the Office of Special Plans. It was created in Sharon's office, not inside Israel's Mossad intelligence service, because the Mossad – which prides itself on extreme professionalism – had views closer to the CIA's, not the Pentagon's, on Iraq. This secretive unit, and not the Mossad, may well have been the source of the forged documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake uranium for weapons from Niger in West Africa, according to the former official."
Has this been refuted?
We live in an age where many many people around the world can do some pretty nasty things if they're backed into a corner. It is my believe, the only thing that will put the brakes on the selfish and arrogant Israeli-lobby is another major disaster here. Then we will enter a period where a number of scenarios are possible. Bottom line is, many Americans are learning who dragged us into the mess in the Middle East, how is covered-up in the mass media and how for example, our bill of rights and our freedoms are under attack as a direct result of it.
LOL! The apologia legions are storming poor Phil's blog!
Well, the above rather lame "review" of M&W's book was written by a certain Ben Fishman.
Who the hell is Ben Fishman? According to the National Interest Online,
"Ben Fishman is a researcher and special assistant to former Ambassador Dennis Ross at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy."
Now the Washington Institute for Near East Policy happens to be a pro-Israel think tank specializing in producing and disseminating pro-Israel media material which was founded in 1985 by Martin Indyk, a former research director for AIPAC and if I remember correctly, later ambassador to Israel!
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1568
Very credible on the Lobby indeed.
We live in an age where many many people around the world can do some pretty nasty things if they're backed into a corner. It is my believe, the only thing that will put the brakes on the selfish and arrogant Israeli-lobby is another major disaster here. Then we will enter a period where a number of scenarios are possible. Bottom line is, many Americans are learning who dragged us into the mess in the Middle East, how is covered-up in the mass media and how for example, our bill of rights and our freedoms are under attack as a direct result of it.
Here is a Hebrew article with the same reaction from Israeli settlers, but without the profanity. Get someone to translate ir. http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/899/695.html
Not sure what you aim to show with this video. It's hardly difficult to get drunk Americans with deep personal problems to say awful things on a Thursday night. I'd say about 90% of the people you interviewed were American-Jews (and not Israelis), while the others were messianists (you point this out in the commentary, Blumenthal seems to imply that they are Israelis). Imagine if someone did a similar exercise in Gaza. It's also absurd to say they had developed views on Israeli politics – one of the girls didn't even know who Netanyahu was. You yourself acknowledge that they are mainly short-term visitors from the States, but then go on to say that they are somehow typical. Well, maybe in Jerusalem, although there are lots of dissenting views as well. The rest of the country, however, is somewhat more nuanced.
American tourists! Hilarious. No wonder so many of us claim to be from Canada while traveling.
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