Walt and Mearsheimer spoke at Politics and Prose in Washington on September 5; C-Span aired the event tonight, over a month later. A pity the network should wait so long, on such a newsworthy event.
The authors surprised me only in their fluidity. They seemed confident and calm. But they had the house behind them. This was the true revelation of the event. It appeared that about 2/3 or more of the audience was supportive of the authors. They cheered criticism of the Iraq and Lebanon wars, they cheered the authors’ sharp attacks on the Israeli occupation and on suppression of free speech about the occupation in the States.
All but three or four in the long line of questioners were sympathetic. And most were well-informed. The questions came from peacenik types, Arabs, professorial types, people with foreign accents. Young hipsters. They knew about cluster bombs and Foreign Minister Bevin and the state of historical scholarship. By contrast, the pro-Israel lobby side seemed undermanned and a little intimidated. These critics didn’t go after Walt and Mearsheimer hammer and tongs, as if they sensed, this crowd is hostile, better scream about it later, outside.
It struck me that the media may ignore this book or deride it all they please, but Walt and Mearsheimer are really tapping into widespread popular dissatisfaction with our policy toward Israel. You sensed a hunger for information and for a forum in that sophisticated crowd. You felt the explosion of suppressed views, and joy that such things might be said. In that sense, it was a tremendously exciting night; for it suggests that Americans from many different walks of life wish to change our foreign policy, and do so in an intelligent manner.
Walt made an intriguing comment about the oil companies: they only lobby against environmental laws and for tax breaks–they never lobby re foreign policy.
Why??
are they so afraid of the lobby that they limit themselves to non-Israel issues?
BTW:a minor point it was hilarious to hear Walt reveal that Dick Cheney used to lobby against Iran sanctions in the 1990's
Hello Philip,
As you know, many of us progressive jews have been lobbying our government to change it's policies towards Israel and stop supporting the right wing in Israel. There are many, I repeat many, Israelis who do not agree with the occupation and wish to see the Palestinians achieve an independent state. AIPAC does not represent our positions, but rather those of the right wing in Israel and the USA, including millions of Evangelicals who are as painfully lacking in compassion towards Palestinians as the worst of Gush Emunim. Most American Jews that I have contact with are far more sympathetic to the peace movement in Israel than to Likud. One thing I see lacking from your own analysis and that of the comments that I've read is factoring in the extremist movements within the Arab and Muslim camps that resist a peace settlement short of the elimination of Israel. I distinguish these movements from those resistance movements that seek equality and not a reversal of domainance. There exist complex dynamics that make it difficult to maintain an absolutist position, even though there are many aspects to the conflict that require such positions.
I hope that W&M have set in play a shift in our policy towards who in Israel we support and what policies we see as good for the USA, the world, the Palestinians, and the Israelis. I am confident that assuming there is not another orgy of suicide bombing or Katushyas we will see a re-emergence of the Israeli peace movement,a shift in Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and a fairly negotiated settlement.
Shalom.
31 Billion dollar military aid comment:
I was glad that someone brought up about the latest blank cheque that we have given Israel…with no effective Congressional oversight of Israel the following occurs:
AIPAC has disproportionate influence on our Israel policy
and
we have no leverage over Israel since they know that there is zero chance that the aid $ will ever be cut off.
Thanks for covering all this, Mr. Weiss. I have been feeling desperately in need of signs of hope. This does indeed feel like a sea change, one which I have witnessed here in the Bay Area over the last decade, but did not realize was happening elsewhere.
In contrast to the erudite dispassionate Mearsheimer/Walt presentation, the following Abe Foxman show was raving and hysterical. It amounted to: how dare they describe conditons in occupied Palestine as apartheid; how dare they suggest that US bias towards Israel was a motivating factor for 9/11; how dare they suggest the Israel Lobby supported war with Iraq. This fosters anti-semitism! It ended with: of yes, by the way, war with Iran is absolutely necessary.
The audience at the World Affairs Council in Dallas/Fort Worth also sounded very sympathetic. Here is the link–
link to dfwworld.org
/>
and here is the MP3–
"We will see a re-emergence of the Israeli peace movement …"
Yeah. Any day now.
(And by the way, the idea of M&W is not to replace unconditional support for one Israeli faction with unconditional support for another Israeli faction.)
All one has to do to be disabused of any illusions concerning a supposed Israeli Peace movement is to go read the comments by supposedly left-wing Israelis who read Haaretz. Go to Haaretz and read the comments section on any article written by Amira Hass or Gideon Levy, the two Israeli journalists most sympathetic to the Palestinians. Every single comment is a condemnation of them for being traitors. Once in a while, you'll get a gentile commenting that the Israeli readers need to start supporting peace, and twenty voices will shout them down.
I would put the population in support of peace in Israel at most as about 15 percent of the Jewish population.
Israel's population will not support peace until it becomes a necessity– until they are forced off the gravy train. On a side note, funny how right-wing Americans support welfare for noone except the Israelis.
Anti-Likud Zionist writes upthread: "As you know, many of us progressive [J]ews have been lobbying our government to change it's policies towards Israel and stop supporting the right wing in Israel."
I believe we have just been through a paradigm shift brought about by the book of Walt and Mearsheimer. Someone even referred to these times as "post-Walt and Mearsheimer" and I agree.
I have been reading blogs pertaining to the Israel/Palestine conflict for some two years now. I have never seen such a profusion of anti-Israel and anti-AIPAC posts as now. Take this one, for example
“>link to themagneszionist.blogspot.com
and I don't do that anymore, although I still have to go through my blog & make the necessary corrections. Until I find a more appropriate concept, I'm using "expansionist Zionist". Another example is this response from a blog owner to a racist comment on one of his posts: "This blog doesn't censor/delete comments, even when they are as disgustingly racist as yours. We all have the right to our own opinion, so I'll tell you mine: as any other form of racism, Anti-Semitism is disgusting; as is your comment. Please, in the future, go post your scummy opinions somewhere else. Thanks."
I'll end by saying that many of us, and you in particular, have fought to bring to light the extremes to which an organization like AIPAC has gone to "likud-ize" the US administration. It had to be done and that work is not finished. Yet I strongly believe that while continuing our denunciation and condemnation of the ill-advised politics of AIPAC, we also have the responsibility to make sure that the backlash – the one that Tony Judt and others had been fearing, and whiffs of which I can already sense in the bloggosphere – remain under control.
Sorry for this long comment.
Dexter Filkins' piece on Kanan Makiya in the NYT Magazine is a must read in the ongoing autopsy of the Iraq catastrophe. (link to nytimes.com
also a valuable document for an anatomy of intellectual folly–make that human folly–in our time.
Makiya, the courageous, soulful, and gravely misguided Iraqi in exile, wrote two indispensable books about Iraq: one about Saddam Hussein's regime of terror (Republic of Fear), the other about the default of Arab intellectuals (Cruelty and Silence). In the 1990s, he campaigned for American intervention. He was tireless.
He knew that to liberate Iraq he needed a practical champion, and the man he lined up with was Ahmad Chalabi. And playing Trotsky to Chalabi's Lenin, most consequentially after September 11, 2001, the onetime Trotskyist became the public face of an invasion that could now be presented to a panicked America as a kick-start for the dramatic top-to-bottom remaking of the corrupt Arab Middle East.
In this, Kanan Makiya was also deeply, catastrophically, flowers-and-sweets wrong. He was also compelling. I well remember how, at NYU in November 2002, he used his polemical skill to convince George Packer, among others, that the moral case for his go-for-broke expedition into Iraq trumped all the objections raised by myself along with Michael Walzer, Frances Fitzgerald, and Mansour Farhang. (The text of my own talk that night is here.)
Filkins, whose NYT war coverage was remarkable, now gives us glimpses of an agonized Makiya itrying to write his way out of the history that has befallen all of us. He quotes the former Iraqi official Ali Allawi:
“Kanan is a romantic,” Allawi said, seated on the couch. “He thinks in these broad categories. He thinks of democracy, of freedom, in ideological terms rather than in terms of practice and experience and living."
But to say that Makiya is a romantic is not strong enough. The second part of Allawi's quote is more apt. Makiya is an ideologue, a Platonist–that is, a revolutionary. The Idea is what is Real. Serious conservatives from Edmund Burke to Max Weber always knew this substitute of theology for the politics of actual human beings was disastrous. If Makiya is to write something adequate, something more than a self-exoneration, something commensurate with the enormity of recent years, he must ask himself why he didn't know what serious conservatives have been trying to tell that tradition since the days of Rousseau and Hegel.
Makiya "basically thinks that people are decent and good,” Allawi goes on. But it's weirder than that. For also, in the late '90s and into the Bush years, Makiya believed that the Iraqis were internally mangled, morally bent, fatally bent, bent in the way that Hannah Arendt described in her tour de force on totalitarianism–bent by the years of Saddam's Ba'athism. He said this in public and I heard him say it in private more than once.
So the logic of his line of argument, if it had any coherence at all, was essentially this: That these deeply corrupted victims of decades under the Ba'ath regime were going to make a cleansing revolution, and purge themselves, if only the right Lenin/Trotsky/Mandela rode down to them on a white horse. And, by the way, if only the American nation, in its wholehearted generosity, agreed to send the advance party.
Such terrible thinking! This was wishfulness to the point of delusion, and past it.
Not only about Iraq, but also about himself. When one is implicated in a disaster, one is bound to ask how this could have happened. Not only, How could Chalabi be so wrong, but: How could I have been so wrong–about Chalabi, about Cheney and Wolfowitz and Bush, about American power as well as about the Iraqi nation?
Filkins says Makiya has been thinking about Dostoyevsky. An excellent idea! But Dostoyevsky did not think that everyone around him but himself was a jerk.
I remember Makiya saying how moved he was when, after a speech he gave in Washington in the '90s, criticizing the Bush I administration for having failed to march on Baghdad, Paulo Wolfowitz came up afterward and told him how right he, Makiiya, was. He was all too impressed by power–Chalabi as future power, Bush and Cheney and Wolfowitz as archdeacons of goodness. I suspect there was an aspect of power-worship in this Iraqi intellectual, as there is in all Trotskyists, and indeed, in many other intellectuals who did not go so far as to light the candle for Lenin.
Makiya was good, America was good, so all would be good in Iraq after Saddam. "We did not know how things were going to turn out," Makiya tells Filkins. But some of us did know, and rather well. We wondered how these broken Iraqis were going to zoom into self-government once they had read the Federalist Papers.
Makiya is, indeed, as Filkins writes, fearless. But he is not brilliant. He did not, as it turns out, know Chalabi. Or Iraq. Or himself.
A lifetime in politics has eroded, even erased almost all my romanticism. I used to love Makiya. I projected my own sort of romantic exile persona onto him. I admired both his Iraq books greatly. But, on Filkins' testimony (not the last word, of course) it sounds as though he does not begin to know the dimensions of the delusions that led him to become the human face of preventive war.
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/oct/07/the_passion_of_kanan_makiya
The israelization of American foreign policy created a conflict. It went against the core beliefs of the majority of Americans because Americans are still deeply in love with their Constitution. We reached a pivot point and if M&W wouldn't do it, someone else would. The infamous "clean cut" ricocheted and as all cuts, cut BOTH WAYS, cutting the racist parasite of Israeli establishment off our backs.
Omein. There is nothing I want more than having MY America back!. Good for Israel too, if you ask me.
Regarding that Filkins article on Makiya, one of the interesting things about Saint Makiya is that he liked Chalabi because he wasn't an Arab nationalist. And what symptom of Arab nationalism did he lack? Apparently he was totally uninterested in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Or that's how it is presented in the article.
Makiya seems to think that was a good thing. No wonder so many American "intellectuals" admired him so much.
While there is much, too much, to criticize Mr. Chalabi on, his lacking in the Arab Nationalism area is not one of them. But if you'd like to use it as a club to demonize jews Donald, far be it for me to stop you. Demonize away. And then take great umbrage when one of them questions whether you're an anti-semite. Hey, you win twice. Brilliant!
I see there's a growing "anti-backlash" movement. There was no anti-Iraq-war movement, there is no anti-Iran-war movement, but there is already an anti-backlash movement.
"I am confident that assuming there is not another orgy of suicide bombing or Katushyas we will see a re-emergence of the Israeli peace movement"
The last orgy I saw was against Lebanon. The anti-Lebanon-War movement was not to be seen, but the anti-backlash movement is all over.
Rarely does one see peace movements in civillian populations that are being targeted with missles. Perhaps you could identity some for us.
CSPAN lists the program as scheduled for Sunday, October 14, at 4:30 AM
http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=8619&SectionName=&PlayMedia=No
Sitting in Beacon or in Walden, disables you to see the reality. You can not understand or assist the people of the Middle East in a balanced manner. You are easily becoming the victim of a one-dimensional propaganda.
Those who never lived there, are pretty unqualified to make a judgment. Including W&M.
This is true for the blunders of most diplomats, too.
The sad fact, that most people who live their isolated existence in the Middle East, are also unaware of their intellectual limitations.
Beyond a natural intelligence, you need experience, languages and some inner motivation to understand more than the surface.
In thousands of years, very few people have understood justice and moral well.
The uncritical supporters of W&M are only interested in propaganda. You could read a copy of the Protocols, too. I am afraid you will like it.
"Rarely does one see peace movements in civillian populations that are being targeted with missles."
Why not? Afterall when russian jews with royal azeri blood are the best americans to be found in the entire american jewish community and rockets become smart and grow into missiles then we are living in strange days indeed!
But in fact I was talking about America, not Israel (I know you think the two are one, but they are not, or are they?). In the warm-up for the Iraq war the jewish community went mute and organized jewry blocked the peace movement. The Lebanon war was not to be seen in America and now there is a new war in the making, but the jewish community instead of putting an end to Lieberman's folly cannot see past the backlash effect.
it's telling though that 2 of the handfull of questioners who opposed the books viewpoint were from our own state department.
Steve, maybe if you associate them with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, people will dismiss the factual, scholarly assertions of Walt & Mearsheimer.
Had this idea occurred to you?
Is there any where to see this on the internet? I've checked YouTube and CSpan, but can't find it.
A. There were plenty of Jews protesting the war. Visibly as Jews and also without stating their ethnic or religious identity. Check out who were the leaders of the anti-war movement.
B. More Jews may have been inclined to protest the war if there wasn't such an anti-zionist bent to it. Next time I call you vermin and you decide not to hang out with me I'll make sure to blame you for not coming over to my house.
C. Proportionately more jews in America opposed the Iraq war than Shiite Muslims. You going to round up the Shiites too?
"More Jews may have been inclined to protest the war if there wasn't such an anti-zionist bent to it."
The anti-zionism you are talking about is a post-war phenomenon. I'm talking about the pre-war period, when people all over the world had precious little idea about who this people "jews" were, other than a war relic.
There is no comming back for you. Today people are talking about Walt & Mearsheimer, tomorrow will be time for a very good reading of Solzhenitsyn.
Anonymous, what you say may be true but AIPAC, ADL, JINSA, etc are not just figments of our imagination. And they have many more millions of dollars to work with than any of the anti-war Jews you allude to.
I protested the Iraq war steadily in February and March 2003 and I didn't see or feel any overwhelming anti-Zionist sentiment. I wish I had–at the time I thought the war was purely about oil and weapons dealing.
Daniel Levy, Senior Fellow and Director of Prospects for Peace Initiative Program – Israel, has a review of W&M book at:
Anonymous writes: "More Jews may have been inclined to protest the war if there wasn't such an anti-zionist bent to it."
Jeffrey Blankfort covers this aspect in this interview regarding the failure of the anti-war movement.
link to themagneszionist.blogspot.com
/>
from 'expansionist Zionism' (a la A. Lieberman)
link to richardsilverstein.com
/>
thus making the dreaded conflation obsolete.
Such a distinction has not been done. Even now. I have only seen it at the blog of 'The Magnes Zionist'.
"There is no comming back for you. Today people are talking about Walt & Mearsheimer, tomorrow will be time for a very good reading of Solzhenitsyn."
What exactly is this supposed to mean? No comming back for you. Is this a threat?
FurGaia – Just because you and others were uninformed about the differences within the Israeli and American Jewish community doesn't mean they don't exist or that this information hasn't been available for any interested party who bothers to read Haaretz or Tikkun to see. The crap about this being a post-war phenomenon is just that – crap. At the time, whole websites were devoted to highlighting the anti-zionist and occasional anti-semitic undercurrent at some of the anti-war events. Michael Lerner was kept from speaking by the radicals at ANSWER because he is your kind of Zionist. If you're genuinely interested in this question you have some research to do.
FurGaia – Have you ever traveled outside of the USA and had someone attack you for the policies of the Bush Administration solely because you are an American? What if they declared that all Americans think the same and all are guilty for the actions of some. Welcome to the world of being a Jew.
And you're one of the people declaring everyone in a group all the same and blaming them for the actions of a few. Welcome to the world of being a fascist.
FurGaia – Not you personally. You seem to be getting that their are differences, as in every group. My point is for those commentors who naively or intentionally ignore this reality.
Quite possibly the best review of W&M yet.
http://www.prospectsforpeace.com/2007/10/ok_here_we_go_the_israel_lobby.html
Just an aside, to the comments about Chalabi and the dream of an Iraqi embassy in Tel Aviv:
It was IDF intelligence who first introduced Chalabi to the CIA.
“>link to mepc.org
The principal point of contact between Chalabi's INC and the White House was John Hannah in Scooter Libby's office.
“>link to saudia-online.com
to madrid and anyone else who wants to see the bookstore event, there's a "Play Now" button at–
Meanwhile
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – An estimated 100 students staged a rare demonstration Monday against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling him a "dictator" and scuffling with hardline students at Tehran University.
Ahmadinejad, who was giving a speech to a select group at the university to mark the beginning of the academic year, ignored the chants of "death to the dictator" and continued with his speech on the merits of science and the pitfalls of Western-style democracy, witnesses said.
The protesters scuffled with hardline students who were chanting "thank you president" while police looked on from outside the university gates. The protesters dispersed after the car carrying Ahmadinejad left the campus.
Students were once the main power base of Iran's reform movement but have faced intense pressure in recent years from Ahmadinejad's hardline government, making anti-government protests rare.
The president faced a similar outburst during a speech last December when students at Amir Kabir Technical University called Ahmadinejad a dictator and set fire to his picture.
Hoping to avoid a similar disturbance Monday, organizers imposed tight security measures, checking the identity papers of all students entering the university and allowing only selected students into the hall. But the protesters were somehow able to gain entrance.
Iran's reform movement peaked in the late 1990s after former reformist president Mohammad Khatami was elected and his supporters swept parliament. But hardliners who control the judiciary, security forces and powerful unelected bodies in the government stymied attempts to ease social and political restrictions.
Numerous pro-reform newspapers were shut down, and since Ahmadinejad's election in 2005, those that remain have been muted in their criticism fearing closure.
At universities, pro-reform students have been marginalized, holding low-level meetings. They hold occasional demonstrations, usually to demand better school facilities or the release of detained colleagues. But pro-government student groups have grown more powerful.
Steve: "The uncritical supporters of W&M are only interested in propaganda."
And I suppose the uncritical supporters of Israel are only interested in truth?
Rob Jaffe, you write: "FurGaia – Just because you and others were uninformed about the differences within the Israeli and American Jewish community doesn't mean they don't exist or that this information hasn't been available for any interested party who bothers to read Haaretz or Tikkun to see."
That was my point (which I cannot have made very clear, obviously). Of course you are right! The information was there but IT WAS NOT MAINSTREAM whereas it should have been. Haaretz is a great daily but how many people get to read it (compared to the number listening to the likes of Limbaugh & O'Reilly). P.S. Thanks for your feedback.
I am sorry I missed the C-SPAN broadcast. I too, have a sense of excitement regarding issues that at one time were hardly talked about openly and honestly. I marvel at the excitement others display as well because this is truly a momentous event. I look forward to continue to learn from other voices and adjust my understanding accordingly.