Last night I went to a Hallowe’en party and met the mother of a Marine in Iraq. I pulled her into a corner to grill her about Middle East policy. She said the decision to invade was a great mistake, and that U.S. support for Israel was a factor in that decision. I told her that on Charlie Rose the other night IAEA boss Muhammed ElBaradei said that "The Palestinian issue is a red flag of humiliation across the Muslim world." The sooner we deal with the inequity the better. We must show Arabs that they "are part of the human family."
These are the most important underdiscussed issues in U.S. policy in the Middle East. They loom over that mother’s life today as the Israel-centric neoconservatives push for a military strike against Iran, and as George Bush foolishly says that the U.S. stands for freedom, from Beirut to Baghdad to Tehran.
To me this is common sense, and the only ground on which to consider the latest review/attack of Walt and Mearsheimer, a triumph of Oxford-Union-debate-style condescension by Walter Russell Mead, in Foreign Affairs. A vizier of the Council on Foreign Relations, Mead commits himself to nothing in the review. Nothing–when our country is in crisis. Yes: U.S. policy in the Middle East is not well-understood. No: the Israel lobby has not received the attention it merits. Yes: the U.S. needs "to find ways to bridge the gap between its current policies and the national aspirations of Palestinians and other Arabs," whatever that means. Yes: the authors have helped to start an important conversation. Oh but they have only made things worse through their terrible slipshodness.
"Rarely in professional literature does one encounter such a gap between aspiration and performance as there is in The Israel Lobby."
Note that phrase "professional literature." Mead imposes a professional literacy test. He says that this kind of performance is "methodologically complex." He doesn’t like the authors’ "use of evidence" and their sloppy definitions. What upsets him? When Walt and Mearsheimer go from saying the U.S.
has given Israel "extraordinary" support in one line to saying in the next line that it is "uncritical and unconditional" support, Mead cries out, "Note the slippage." And the Syria Accountability Act passes the House by 398 to 4 even as the Iraq Study Group urges our gov’t to engage Syria and is ignored. This is the real, horrifying situation. But Walt and Mearsheimer are showing slippage!
On the handling of evidence:
The authors’ credulity never ceases to inspire. A
group of 76 senators signed a pro-Israel open letter to President
Gerald Ford. One of the signers, Senator Dick Culver (D-Iowa), later
said that he "caved" and signed only because "the pressure was too
great." Mearsheimer and Walt are uncritically enthralled and accept the
retraction as revealing the true, inner Culver. Perhaps, but all one
knows here is that Culver, by his own admission, was willing to say
things he did not believe to gain a political advantage. When was he
speaking the truth, and when was he seeking approval? Washington is
unfortunately well supplied with loose-lipped opportunists…
Mead is clever. "The true, inner Culver." The inspiring naivete of the authors. That is wit, and pure captiousness. There are countless testimonials to the lobby’s muscle-flexing on the Hill to support Culver, from Paul Findley to Fritz Hollings to the torpedoing of Cynthia McKinney (as well as my own experience with a possible congressional candidate). Supporting the hateful Israeli settlements is a price of admission to Congress. This represents a great moral fault in our politics. Walt and Mearsheimer earnestly engage that problem. Mead is scoring performance points.
On the authors’ definition of the Israel lobby:
If everyone from AIPAC to Americans for Peace
Now is part of the lobby, what, exactly, is the political agenda the
lobby supports?…What is the relationship between the internal dynamics of this divided
lobby and the politics and policies of both Israel and wider American
society?When it comes down to it,
Mearsheimer and Walt do not seem to know who, exactly, belongs to this
amoebic, engulfing blob they call the lobby and who does not. Take
their own case. They describe themselves as pro-Israel, in that they
believe in the state’s right to exist…
Aha, got them there! I myself have faulted Mearsheimer and Walt for not being more precise about the lobby’s borders. But how easy is it to be precise in such uncharted territory? It’s not. Mead himself makes a fascinating mistake in his indictment. He crows that W&M have included "everyone from AIPAC to Americans for Peace Now". In fact, APN is part of AIPAC. APN is a member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and all the members of the Conference of Presidents are on the AIPAC executive committee. This is one of the marvels of the Israel lobby: it is a loose coalition. When I learned as much earlier this year, I wondered why APN doesn’t resign from AIPAC to protest AIPAC’s role in the Iraq war, or in the Syria Accountability Act, or in defending the settlements, or in supporting the Lebanon War. But APN doesn’t resign. And no one starts an alternative lobby (and when George Soros notions it, the lobby suggests he was a collaborationist in Hungary during the Holocaust and Soros bows out). This is modern Jewish history. My sense is that Jewish organizations, fearful for Israel’s existence, tend to close rank when it comes to speaking to the U.S. government–and thereby allow the rightwing hardliners to be the court Jews. This cultural/political/institutional mystery is not fully understood by Walt and Mearsheimer, no, but they have done a wonderful job under the circumstances.
Mead (a supporter of the Iraq war) says that they should have waited– what, a year or five?– so as to conform to his professional performance standards. He is completely out of touch with the reality of that Marine mother, whose son is going where next, Iran? Our policy is a galloping troika. Walt and Mearsheimer want to shift the debate and try and rein that policy in. Theirs is a much higher standard for writing than Mead’s criteria of punctilious dressage.
