On reflection I have to say that while I was cheering him on, Michael Scheuer went a little overboard yesterday in his indictment of the neocons on antiwar.com:
Sen. Joseph Lieberman,
Norman Podhoretz, Victor Davis Hanson, the Rev. Franklin Graham, Alan Dershowitz,
Rudy Giuliani, Douglas Feith, the Rev. Rod Parsley, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey,
Bill Kristol, the Rev. John Hagee, and the thousands of wealthy supporters
of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) appear to care about
the United States only so far as Washington is willing to provide immense,
unending funding and the lives of young U.S. service personnel to protect Israel.
These individuals and their all-for-Israel journals –Commentary, National
Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Wall Street Journal– amount to nothing less than a fifth column intent on involving 300 million
Americans in other peoples’ religious wars,
That’s blanket statement. Richard Witty corrects my post of yesterday, saying that free speech shouldn’t mean wild speech.
He’s got a point. Wild speech isn’t helpful, even if it’s legal.
But what seems to me essential is for an investigation of these issues by the press and by activist organizations. Witty’s exculpatory statements re the neocons are conclusory. So are Scheuer’s. I don’t know that anyone can be conclusory about the neocons’ motivations without the fact. Douglas Feith’s entire recent book disavows any neocon Israel-based ideology, when we all know that he has it.
The fascinating thing about Scheuer’s comments is that they are edging their way into the mainstream. When a leftish CIA guy (my read on Scheuer) and a rightwing Indiana Republican former congressman and a Jewish columnist for Time and two deans of realism (Walt and Mearsheimer) are all saying the same things about the neocons and Iraq, guys, we’ve got a party! The point is that, No one cares for Feith’s denial any more. The culture is moving past that: toward focusing at last on the Zionist agendas that helped push this war. This represents nothing less than a spiritual crisis for the American Jewish community.
Out of residual tribal chauvinism, I insist that Jews take a leading role in this conversation. It’s time for antiwar Jews to stop covering up for Feith and to have an open conversation about the Jewish role in the Iraq war. We know these guys; we grew up with them. Joe Klein refers to all the off-the record conversations he had with Jewish neocons in the runup to the war about their domino theory for the Middle East. Jews got included in those conversations in a way that gentiles did not. Remember the group of Asian-Americans who held a panel in D.C. after that young Asian guy went wild at Va. Tech and killed 30-odd people a year back? It was an honorable but misplaced tribal motion of shame. American Jews owe themselves and the U.S. that and more. Last fall at the behest of Marty Peretz at Yivo, Jewish intellectuals went into fits of denial and name-calling on this very subject. They were feeling “defensive,” one of them, Jeffrey Goldberg, later explained. Well the time for defensiveness is over. This issue is in play. Reclaim the tradition of intellectual analysis and moral bravery that once so distinguished my people! Do reporting on the neoconservatives and Zionism. Ask Judy Miller and Scooter Libby if they’re Zionists and what that means to them. Ask Rahm Emanuel what his vision of Zionism is, and why he went over to Israel during the Gulf War. Ask Kristol and Kaplan and Friedman and Berman and Feith why they wrote that Saddam’s support for Palestinian suicide bombers justified an American invasion of Iraq.
This blog comes out of one conversation I had, with my own dear brother, in 2002. “Philip what do you think of this idea of invading Iraq?” “I’m against it. It’s Vietnam all over again.” “Well you know I demonstrated against the Vietnam war, but my Jewish newspaper says this war could be good for Israel.” I was shocked. And let me add: Not one of my many nephews and nieces went over there to serve. We have to get to the bottom of this. Not wildly, you’re right Richard. But openly, honestly.
