The biggest fallout from the flotilla attack from the standpoint of the US discourse was Anthony Cordesman’s piece at CSIS in which he said that Israel has become a "strategic liability" to the US. At the end of the piece, Cordesman directly rebuked Israel’s leaders:
Israel’s prime minister and defense minister had full warning about the situation, and they knew the flotilla was deliberately designed as a political provocation to capture the attention of the world’s media in the most negative way possible. They personally are responsible for what happened, and they need to show far more care and pragmatism in the future.
The day after the piece appeared June 1, Michael Hirsh of Newsweek, a commisar of the conventional wisdom, was shaking his head over it during a Q-and-A with Israel lobbyist Dan Senor at the Union League (yes, the Union League, darling; tell me that Jews are outsiders in American society). Hirsh has been an apologist for Israel himself, but he clearly understands that something has changed– and in his comments you can see the way that news professionals, Jewish and non-Jewish, went along with the Israel lobby because it was convention, but are now abandoning it because it’s passe.
We don’t want to go back to the Bush-Clinton consensus. States have permanent interests, not permanent friends… Why shouldn’t there be some broad and deep rethinking…even with Israel? Maybe it’s going too far. You know, Anthony Cordesman has come out with this analysis that Israel has become more of a strategic liability than an asset. You hear it more and more. You hear it with the Walt and Mearsheimer book [which Hirsh then trashes, of course].. It seems to me that the Obama administration is trying to deal with this."
Senor bridled. He said that Cordesman’s statement was "not a new idea. It becomes the conventional wisdom every five years. People scratch their heads and do a version of Walt and Mearsheimer…"
Well that is a load of neocon guano. People don’t do Walt and Mearsheimer’s every five years. Cordesman’s turn is an apostasy.
Consider what Norman Finkelstein reports on Cordesman in his Gaza book, "This Time We Went Too Far" (which last I saw has been reviewed by nobody though it is the most authoritative book on Gaza to come out.) Finkelstein writes that in a crucial report, also for CSIS, Cordesman carried the water for the Israelis on the Gaza assault of ’08-09– absolving them of any war crimes. In doing so, he visited Israel at the behest of Project Interchange "an institute of the fanatically ‘pro’-Israel American Jewish Committee," and served as a stenographer for IDF claims. Finkelstein:
A chunk of Cordesman’s “strategic analysis” consisted of reproducing verbatim the daily press releases of the Israeli air force and army spokespersons, which he then dubbed “chronologies” of the war. Thus Cordesman reproduced, without comment, the 30 December 2008 Israeli press release claiming that Israel hit “a vehicle transporting a stockpile of Grad missiles,” although a B’Tselem investigation at the time found that they were almost certainly oxygen canisters.Subsequent investigations… connfirmed, and the IDF eventually conceded, B’Tselem’s finding. Eight civilians were killed in this precision drone-missile attack on the vehicle even though, according to HRW, “the drone’s advanced imaging equipment should have enabled the drone operator to determine the nature of the objects under surveillance. The video posted online by the IDF indicates that this was the case.”…
Cordesman alleged that official Israeli data are “far more credible” than non-Israeli data, such as that from U.N. sources, one reason being that “many Israelis feel that such U.N. sources are strongly biased in favor of the Palestinians.”… He alleged that “every aspect” of the Israeli air force’s targeting plan “was based on a detailed target analysis that explicitly evaluated the risk to civilians and the location of sensitive sites like schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, and other holy sites,” while the “smallest possible weapon” coupled with precision intelligence and guidance systems were used to “deconflict military targeting from damage to civilian facilities.”
