The Foreign Affairs attack on Walt and Mearsheimer establishes a pattern. Elite opinion in the U.S. is gravely dismissive of the authors. Leslie Gelb in the New York Times. Walter Russell Mead for the Council on Foreign Relations. David Remnick in the New Yorker. I’m sure the Washington Post also pilloried them, I’m blanking on the review right now. Remnick had a funny/bitter line–From what these authors write you’d think that if we just ended the Palestinian issue Osama bin Laden would go back into the family construction business. Funny. Hey, why not try it. Then we could finally catch the bastard.
If you go on Amazon you get a completely different response. 59 out of 93 reviews are 5-star, the top. 454 people found "helpful" a review calling the book "Stunning." While 16 readers found helpful a review that dubbed M&W "Arab propagandists." That’s the divide. Note that the pro-Israel faction is small. This is dangerous sociology: the pro-Israel people are gathered in the elitist turrets, ready to release boiling oil on the masses. David Brooks saw this earlier this year with his analysis of realist isolationist populists versus globalist interventionists. (Wouldn’t mention Israel, though!)
M&W are themselves members-in-good-standing of the elite. Maybe members-in-bad-odor now! According to his bio, Mearsheimer is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. I imagine former Harvard Dean Walt is, too, though his bio is silent. Why isn’t the CFR having Walt & Mearsheimer to a forum at their panelled sock on the East Side? The issues aren’t important enough?
A year ago the censors were asleep at the wheel, and CFR ran a positive item about Walt and Mearsheimer’s original paper. Foreign Affairs’s Middle East guy, L. Carl Brown, kvelled (that’s Yiddish, for gushed):
"May the storm kicked up by this article rage on. The role of pressure groups and lobbies in determining U.S. foreign policy is important. The U.S.-Israeli connection is important. The hardheaded analysis that Mearsheimer and Walt so cogently present cries out for careful consideration. It just might set in motion a useful paradigm shift in the United States’ Middle East policy."
Foreign Affairs promptly unshifted that paradigm shift by running a letter from Martin Gross about as long as the original review suggesting that W&M are antisemites, and noting stiffly, that the review "contains conclusions that materially differ from well-known public information." You’re right, Mr. Gross. That’s what we’ve got to be afraid of–well-known public information!
