I have said that Walt and Mearsheimer's assertions will seem more and more like commonplaces in the years to come, as we realize, That ain't the half of it. One of their assertions was that Israel pushed for the Iraq war once that became the neocon agenda. Well maybe the truth is worse?
The other day I met a very political person who will go nameless. Someone who is well-connected in the Jewish community; and as I got out my hurdy-gurdy, that it's necessary for the Jewish community to examine its leadership's particular responsibility for the Iraq war, s/he repeatedly asked me, "Why did they support it?" When the Jewish community was overwhelmingly against the war. I realized that her/his questions were Socratic. S/he knew the answer, or an answer, and was pointing me to this belief: that Israel pushed this war among the neocons and the Jewish leadership. That Israelis talked to Malcolm Hoenlein, that kind of thing. That Dore Gold, the secret $96,000 a year "scholar" in Jerusalem for the American Enterprise Institute, pushed it in Bush's braintrust… And when I said that my own sibling's Jewish newspaper had pushed the war, my interlocutor said, Why did they support it? Very conspiratorial. Suggesting that Israel had given them the word.
I offer this in the dark of morning, as mere suggestion about how things might have worked. It goes to the central issue here: There's a ton of journalism to be done on the causes of the Iraq War that is not being done. Walt and Mearsheimer were attacked for saying the Israel lobby wanted the war, a patent fact, though W&M are coming back inside. And some day, when Israel feels safer, this s**t may start coming out.
Another datum. Haaretz interviews Brzezinski (Haaretz is so far ahead of our newspapers it isn't funny) who says: "One [piece of] advice that I would give the Israeli government is not to engage in this campaign for an
American attack on Iran, because I don't think America is going to
attack Iran, and if it did, and the consequences would be disastrous."
"It wouldn't be particularly good for American-Israeli relations,
and there will be a lot of resentment against [Israel]," he said.
"There already has been some after the war in Iraq."
