Chas Freeman's appointment is important in sociological terms. Freeman is the latest heir to a realist tradition in foreign policy that–while Jews have been adherents of it–has a gentile cast because it is associated with opposition to the recognition of Israel in 1948 and, more recently, the Walt and Mearsheimer analysis of the pro-Israel stranglehold on foreign policymaking in the Middle East.
In Jacob Heilbrunn's book, They Knew They Were Right, he speaks of the neocons in very sociological terms. They were City College of New York Jewish boys who felt excluded by the WASP establishment. They had resentment over that exclusion. They built a "parallel establishment," and lo, they matched the WASP tragedy that was Vietnam with the tragic war they pushed, against Iraq/the Arab world.
When this was pointed out by critics of the Iraq War, the Israel lobby smeared the critics in sociological terms, as anti-semites whose pedigree extended to Father Coughlin and other isolationists. It was gutter-fighting, and it was effective. Realism became an outsider tradition. John Mearsheimer has been repeatedly censored in the last couple years. Steve Walt, too, till he got his blog at Foreign Policy. Never forget that Dana Milbank in the Washington Post wrote a disgusting column that said these men were white-knuckled blue-eyed Germanics– implying they were Nazis. And Yivo gave over its stage to a denunciation of Walt and Mearsheimer as antisemites, and not a word about the Iraq war tragedy that motivated them, let alone an invitation to them to respond.
That era ended last November 4, the era of the neocon parallel establishment fueled by ethnic resentment and fear of antisemitism. The big surprise in the attack on Chas Freeman from the usual quarters–the Weekly Standard and the New Republic and other rightwing Jews–is that it has been met this time by a mixed coalition who say No thanks! Richard Silverstein, Jim Lobe, and MJ Rosenberg are among Freeman's Jewish defenders. Steve Walt showed real intellectual leadership here, drawing the line a week ago by calling the attacks McCarthyite witchhunt. Andrew Sullivan has said, There's a blacklist of people who opposed the Iraq war and it has to end!
I'm saying that the old divide of tribal identity politics in Vietnam=Iraq/Bundy=Wolfowitz are over. Under Obama we are into a new era of ethnic cohesion. This is great news. Roger
Cohen's column today would be considered "Arabist" in an earlier time, and dismissed. No longer. We can at last speak openly of "an American interest" in the Middle East that is much larger than support for the Jews in Israel and not be accused of antisemitism. This is Walt and Mearsheimer's achievement, and Jimmy Carter's and Jacob Heilbrunn's and MJ Rosenberg's, and Chas Freeman's too. A lot of people are going to share in this. Now let's all hug.
P.S. Glenn Greenwald shares my analysis, here, in a vigorous defense of Freeman. He says the taboos are still chilling. Yes, but they're faltering.
