Ezra Klein reflects the growing consensus that Walt and Mearsheimer were right.
It may still be that you’re not supposed to agree with Walt
and Mearsheimer, but so long as you don’t mention them, you can echo
their arguments and buy into pieces of their analysis… [such as] impolitic-yet-obvious statements like some Jewish
neoconservatives view the containment and even destruction of Israel’s
adversaries as an important objective for American foreign policy.
There was nothing intrinsically wrong with that perspective, nor even
with the idea that zionists, like corn farmers, have a powerful
political lobby, but you weren’t supposed to say so before. Walt and
Mearsheimer may have lost the public argument, but they won in creating
the debate.
Klein’s view is welcome but it also rationalizes political correctness. It is impolitic to say that Jewish neocons saw the destruction of Israel’s enemies as an important goal for the U.S. But it is obvious. If it is obvious, why haven’t more journals stated as much? The journalists are craven. It has taken J Street, and Scott McClellan’s book, and Jeffrey Goldberg’s tergiversation, and Jon Stewart’s description of AIPAC as “the elders of Zion,” and Joe Klein’s boldness to bring all this about. Why weren’t our journals telling us about the Israel agenda of the neocons five years ago? And why isn’t that agenda on the front pages now, when Iran is in the cross-hairs? And how large a factor here was a form of racism: that Walt and Mearsheimer are not Jews? Dana Milbank virtually calling them Nazis.
All this talk makes my hinder tired (as they say in Minnesota). It doesn’t become Americans to be so indirect, doesn’t become journalists. Though, yes, I feel vindicated. Nine months or so back I said that Walt and Mearsheimer’s book would one day have the status of The Silent Sea, The Jungle, and Unsafe at Any Speed. I thought it would take years. Seems like it’s taking months.
