Writes a very smart friend: The book being drumrolled below by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (spun out by AIPAC as a thinktank) will become important. Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, AIPAC has basically had no good answer to realists, like Walt and Mearsheimer, who say that Israel’s value as a strategic asset–whatever it was before–has dropped precipitously to the point where Israel saddles the U.S. w/ a strategic liability.
Historically, I cannot overemphasize how important the strategic asset argument was for AIPAC in national security circles and how hobbling it has been to lobbyists to have to dial it back since the FSU’s fall and, more especially, the creeping consensus on Israel as a strategic liability reflected in testimony given to Congress by figures such as Gen. David Petraeus and Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
“Our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment,” Jacoby told Congress flatly.
In this realm, realism, not empty talking points about the only democracy in the Middle East, is the coin of the realm. And AIPAC had no answer. This is going to be the pro-Israel lobby’s answer. It’ll be flacked and propagated as basic text. The two authors, BTW–the usual WINEP setup of one Dem, one GOP guy–are both veterans of the Coalition Provisional Authority–i.e., Bush’s occupation gov’t in Iraq. I’d guess that’s where they met and bonded.
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“Israel right or wrong” is like “my mother drunk or sober” and very hard to sell to people who can think.
And Tony Cordesman knows what he’s talking about :
“The depth of America’s moral commitment does not justify or excuse actions by an Israeli government that unnecessarily make Israel a strategic liability when it should remain an asset. It does not mean that the United States should extend support to an Israeli government when that government fails to credibly pursue peace with its neighbors. It does not mean that the United States has the slightest interest in supporting Israeli settlements in the West Bank, or that the United States should take a hard-line position on Jerusalem that would effectively make it a Jewish rather than a mixed city. It does not mean that the United States should be passive when Israel makes a series of major strategic blunders–such as persisting in the strategic bombing of Lebanon during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, escalating its attack on Gaza long after it had achieved its key objectives, embarrassing the U.S. president by announcing the expansion of Israeli building programs in east Jerusalem at a critical moment in U.S. efforts to put Israeli-Palestinian peace talks back on track, or sending commandos to seize a Turkish ship in a horribly mismanaged effort to halt the “peace flotilla” going to Gaza.
It is time Israel realized that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it become far more careful about the extent to which it test the limits of U.S. patience and exploits the support of American Jews. This does not mean taking a single action that undercuts Israeli security, but it does mean realizing that Israel should show enough discretion to reflect the fact that it is a tertiary U.S. strategic interest in a complex and demanding world.”
http://csis.org/publication/israel-strategic-liability
The startegic assets argument was never more than a cover for sentimental support for Israel by domestic lobbies devoted to identity politics. In a way not being a real startegic asset helped the Israelis. It prevented them from being cut off by the US the way Taiwan, South Africa, and other real startegic assets were. Everybody understands that US support for Israel was never about furthering US interests, but furthering Israel’s interest and the interest of domestic groups loyal to Israel.
“The lobby rescues its old warhorse from glue factory: Israel is a strategic asset”
Such people do not know what the word “strategic” means. Israel could be a tactical asset to the US, but it is not a strategic asset to the US. (The US, by contrast, is clearly a strategic asset of Israel.) In fact, it is more true on balance that Israeli is a strategic liability than a strategic asset. (Though not an enormous one, given the dearth of true external strategic threats to the US.)
The other point is that Israel has to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians. Otherwise it loses all credibility in the wider world.
Zionists can huff and puff about San Remo and the Bible granting the whole of “Erez Israel” to them but outside of the evangelicals nobody is going to buy it .
In the same way that families get busted for child abuse, Israel is in line to get busted for Palestinian abuse.
Slocombe is very “serious” – here is a frontline interview excerpt (with link)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pentagon/interviews/slocombe.html
Q:After we’d taken Saddam down, decapitated the regime, were you concerned in advance about what you saw about to take place?
A: I think we all knew it was going to be a tough job. We didn’t understand all of the details. Some of the things that we thought would be problems turned out not to be problems. Other things that we did not anticipate necessarily would be problems turned out to be bigger problems. The mix of problems was probably different from what we expected.
Kind of sounds like:
there are no “knowns.” There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.
Very, very serious