Finkelstein’s ‘Ruling Elite’ Is Gentile. He’s Wrong

God bless Al-Jazeera for airing a debate between two Americans that would never take place on American television: John J. Mearsheimer and Norman G. Finkelstein dispute the question, Was Israel’s security a motivator of the Iraq war?

Nay, said Finkelstein. "Look at the mechanics of decision-making… Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld are… firmly entrenched in the U.S. ruling elite." Those guys would never knowingly serve the interests of a foreign power. Furthermore, Cheney and Rumsfeld had known many of the Jewish neoconservatives for many years, and no one would say that C & R are "gullible" men. If the neocons had the interests of a foreign power in mind, Cheney and Rummy would see through them. Good point.

The explanation for the war, said Finkelstein, was imperial hubris. After 9/11, our leaders grieved for two minutes, and then thought, What are we going to do with this opportunity? "The ruling elites thought it would be an easy victory."

Mearsheimer answered that the decision was more complex in character. The
neocons "basically see Israeli and U.S. foreign policy as having the
same set of interests." These men surrounded Cheney. Then 9/11 happened; and a guy who had always been against nation-building and had prudently opposed going into
Baghdad in ’91 "flipped his thinking."

I find Mearsheimer far more persuasive. His explanation is
psychologically plausible. It is grotesque or cartoonish for Finkelstein to say that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld grieved for 2 minutes. They may be monsters, but they were staggered and scared–and responsible. It is interesting to me that Finkelstein’s ruling elite are grotesques, but the neocons must be excused of any corrupt motive. Mearsheimer’s understanding of the neocons is more historically and ideologically astute. The conflation of Israel’s interests with U.S. interests is deeply
engrained in neoconservative thinking. Neocons became neocons in some large measure over Israel’s security, and they genuinely don’t see a
difference of interest between our countries. They have gotten away with this confusion for a long time, without anyone calling them on it.

Finkelstein’s good point about Why did anyone drink the neocon koolaid cannot be answered without talking about Jewish inclusion in the Establishment. Finkelstein offers a nostalgic view of American society as controlled by ruling elites that in any case are not Jewish. Mearsheimer doesn’t take him on because to do so would be to raise an "antisemitic canard," and he is already in enough trouble.

But Finkelstein is wrong. No understanding of the Iraq war decision is complete without looking at the composition of the American establishment–and indeed of the religious character of the thinkers who gave us the war. Or to frame it as Tom Friedman did in this wonderful Haaretz piece, the war was planned by 25 guys within a stone’s throw of his office in Washington. Many of those planners were Jews. Jews are now such equal partners in Finkelstein’s ruling elite that a religious concern for Israel has become enmeshed in our policy-making. Too enmeshed; it has hurt the American interest, and hurt Jewish identity, too.

Look at the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s announcement of a hearing next week on policy toward Iran, titled "Between Feckless and Reckless: U.S. Policy Options to Prevent a Nuclear Iran." Sounds pretty hawkish. The hearing is being held by Gary Ackerman and Brad Sherman, both of whom my Almanac of American Politics identifies as Jewish. The two men testifying are Daniel Glaser, a deputy assistant secretary of Treasury, and Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, a deputy assistant sec’y of State. I’m guessing one or both of those witnesses are Jewish. Yesterday I blogged about the fact that the State Department has now adopted as policy the rightwing Jewish claim that anti-Zionism is antisemitism; and Howard Berman, the formerly liberal chairman of  House Foreign Afairs, who has said that Israel was a big reason he went on the committee and who voted for the Iraq debacle, applauds that new order. 

As for Cheney, his world is the establishment, and his world before he was v.p. included many empowered Jews. He and his wife both were fellows at the American Enterprise Institute, chaired by the secretive neocon hedge king Bruce Kovner and peopled by the likes of Dore Gold, Richard Perle, David Frum, Michael Rubin–men who completely ignored the Israeli occupation of Arab land as they called for war against the Arab world. When Cheney got in, he hired neocon Jews, including David Wurmser and Scooter Libby. He lavishly toasted neocon Bernard Lewis on his 90th birthday, and in the shock after 9/11, brought Lewis in to explain the Arab world to him.

Finkelstein’s image of the American elite as a whitebread bastion is bunk. The elite includes tons of Jews, many of whom are producing a great deal of wealth that is vital to our economy and institutions. It’s no wonder that Cheney was surrounded by conservative Jews.

The next question is whether these Jews are Jews qua Jews. Aren’t they just public service professionals? Why aren’t they all like Ambassador Kurtzer, Obama’s excellent adviser, who in his  new book,  on Middle East policy firmly invokes an American interest and says that our Middle East policy should be made in the U.S., not Israel! The answer is that Kurtzer is the exception, and an orthodoxy has governed Jewish opinion and idea-formation. Thanks to Zionism as the crux of Jewish identity, thanks to neoconservatism’s conflation of Israeli and U.S. interests,  thanks to the Iraq war and its Jewish advocates repeatedly citing Palestinian suicide attacks as a reason for the U.S. to topple Saddam, thanks to largely-Jewish censorship of those who would speak about Palestinian human rights, thanks in short to good old fashioned religion, Americans have a right to be as skeptical of neocon/neoliberal Jewish engagement with our Middle East policy as they are of evangelical Christians monkeying with gay-rights policy.