Prediction: Bush Will Now Emulate His Father Re Israel/Palestine
Consider a few facts:
Former Sec'y of State James Baker is now of course prominent in Iraq policy. Baker is famous for showing contempt for the Israel lobby in the U.S. and for trying and failing to slow Israel's illegal settlements during Bush I's administration. Indeed, fear about Baker's influence is the motivator for The New Republic's latest cover story, which slams Baker as a vain and sinister shadowy figure. Baker's good friend George H.W. Bush blamed his defeat in 1992 in part on the Israel lobby, something I reported months ago, quoting Michael Desch (from his superb paper on the impact of the Holocaust on policy-making).
Desch's evidence for Bush's thinking was "informal comments" by the former President himself, in a 2005 visit to the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M—a visit at which Bush decried the power of AIPAC. The new defense secretary Robert Gates is of course the president of Texas A&M. The holder of the Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security Decision-making at the Bush School is Desch, a realist who has been highly critical of the neocons re the Middle East (but who emerged himself out of the Strauss fen at the University of Chicago; Desch says Strauss would have been against the Iraq invasion, as it lacked Straussian requirements: prudence and a respect for the "habits, mores, and customs of a society," one whose lack of formal institutions left it unready for democracy). Desch has also written favorably of Walt and Mearsheimer's findings.
Gates is friends with fellow Texan academic and spook Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, like him a top CIA official in a Republican administration. Now at UT in Austin, Inman has a pronounced belief, shared by realists Walt and Mearsheimer, that concern for Israel's security played a large role in the (disastrous) decision to invade Iraq (as reported by Peter Voskamp , editor of the Block Island Times, who once saw Gates and Inman and their wives dining together at a little Mexican restaurant in Austin).
Add this all up and what do you get?
Well, it's a different gang. The Gates appointment may well signal a shift in U.S. policy re Israel/Palestine, and a tougher American line on our militarized quasi-democratic client-state. Having first delegated his thinking on this part of the world to Dick Cheney and the neocons, thereby nullifying the existing braintrust in the State Department, President Bush is turning now to his father's circle, a circle that includes men whose ideas will be highly concerning to those who would insulate Israel from criticism. Myself, I think it's a great thing; these guys are wiser and far more balanced than the visionaries of the American Enterprise Institute. Maybe they can give our statecraft balance
The shift would also seem to reflect badly on George Bush's aforementioned intellect. Does he think? He lacks the confidence required to have a hypothesis. There's no deduction or addition, no dialectic, no synthesis. The mind behaves like a slot machine. Yesterday it was lemons, today it's cherries.
Having run away from his father, psychically, Bush is now running back at him. (Any therapist would say, that doesn't resolve the conflict.)
Overstating Jewish Power
Mearsheimer and Walt give too much credit to the Israeli lobby.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, March 27, 2006, at 1:47 PM ET
It's slightly hard to understand the fuss generated by the article on the Israeli lobby produced by the joint labors of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that was published in the London Review of Books. My guess is that the Harvard logo has something to do with it, but then I don't understand why the doings of that campus get so much media attention, either.
The essay itself, mostly a very average "realist" and centrist critique of the influence of Israel, contains much that is true and a little that is original. But what is original is not true and what is true is not original.
Everybody knows that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other Jewish organizations exert a vast influence over Middle East policy, especially on Capitol Hill. The influence is not as total, perhaps, as that exerted by Cuban exiles over Cuba policy, but it is an impressive demonstration of strength by an ethnic minority. Almost everybody also concedes that the Israeli occupation has been a moral and political catastrophe and has implicated the United States in a sordid and costly morass. I would have gone further than Mearsheimer and Walt and pointed up the role of Israel in supporting apartheid in South Africa, in providing arms and training for dictators in Congo and Guatemala, and helping reactionary circles in America do their dirty work?most notably during the Iran-Contra assault on the Constitution and in the emergence of the alliance between Likud and the Christian right. Counterarguments concerning Israel's help in the Cold War and in the region do not really outweigh these points.
However, Mearsheimer and Walt present the situation as one where the Jewish tail wags the American dog, and where the United States has gone to war in Iraq to gratify Ariel Sharon, and where the alliance between the two countries has brought down on us the wrath of Osama Bin Laden. This is partly misleading and partly creepy. If the Jewish stranglehold on policy has been so absolute since the days of Harry Truman, then what was Gen. Eisenhower thinking when, on the eve of an election 50 years ago, he peremptorily ordered Ben Gurion out of Sinai and Gaza on pain of canceling the sale of Israeli bonds? On the next occasion when Israel went to war with its neighbors, 11 years later, President Lyndon Johnson was much more lenient, but a strong motive of his policy (undetermined by Israel) was to win Jewish support for the war the "realists" were then waging in Vietnam. (He didn't get the support, except from Rabbi Meir Kahane.)
If it is Israel that decides on the deployment of American force, it seems odd that the first President Bush had to order them to stay out of the coalition to free Kuwait, and it is even more odd that the first order of neocon business has not been an attack on Iran, as Israeli hawks have been urging. Mearsheimer and Walt are especially weak on this point: They speak darkly about neocon and Israeli maneuvers in respect to Tehran today, but they entirely fail to explain why the main initiative against the mullahs has come from the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Authority, two organizations where the voice of the Jewish lobby is, to say the least, distinctly muted. Their theory does nothing to explain why it was French President Jacques Chirac who took the lead in isolating the death-squad regime of Assad's Syria (a government that Mearsheimer and Walt regard, for reasons of their own, as a force for stability).
As for the idea that Israel is the root cause of the emergence of al-Qaida: Where have these two gentlemen been? Bin Laden's gang emerged from a whole series of tough and reactionary battles in Central and Eastern Asia, from the war for a separate Muslim state in the Philippines to the fighting in Kashmir, the Uighur territories in China, and of course Afghanistan. There are hardly any Palestinians in its ranks, and its communiqué³ have been notable for how little they say about the Palestinian struggle. Bin Laden does not favor a Palestinian state; he simply regards the whole area of the former British Mandate as a part of the future caliphate. The right of the Palestinians to a state is a just demand in its own right, but anyone who imagines that its emergence would appease?or would have appeased?the forces of jihad is quite simply a fool. Is al-Qaida fomenting civil war in Nigeria or demanding the return of East Timor to Indonesia because its heart bleeds for the West Bank?
For purposes of contrast, let us look at two other regional allies of the United States. Both Turkey and Pakistan have been joined to the Pentagon hip since approximately the time of the emergence of the state of Israel, which coincided with the Truman Doctrine. Pakistan was, like Israel, cleaved from a former British territory. Since that time, both states have carried out appalling internal repression and even more appalling external aggression. Pakistan attempted a genocide in Bangladesh, with the support of Nixon and Kissinger, in 1971. It imposed the Taliban as its client in a quasi-occupation of Afghanistan. It continues to arm and train Bin Ladenists to infiltrate Indian-held Kashmir, and its promiscuity with nuclear materials exceeds anything Israel has tried with its stockpile at Dimona. Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and continues in illegal occupation of the northern third of the island, which has been forcibly cleansed of its Greek inhabitants. It continues to lie about its massacre of the Armenians. U.N. resolutions have had no impact on these instances of state terror and illegality in which the United States is also partially implicated.
But here's the thing: There is no Turkish or Pakistani ethnic "lobby" in America. And here's the other thing: There is no call for "disinvestment" in Turkey or Pakistan. We are not incessantly told that with these two friends we are partners in crime. Perhaps the Greek Cypriots and Indians are in error in refusing to fly civilian aircraft into skyscrapers. That might get the attention of the "realists." Or perhaps the affairs of two states, one secular Muslim and one created specifically in the name of Islam, do not possess the eternal fascination that attaches to the Jewish question.
There has been some disquiet expressed about Mearsheimer and Walt's over-fondness for Jewish name-dropping: their reiteration of the names Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, etc., as the neocon inner circle. Well, it would be stupid not to notice that a group of high-energy Jews has been playing a role in our foreign-policy debate for some time. The first occasion on which it had any significant influence (because, despite its tentacular influence, it lost the argument over removing Saddam Hussein in 1991) was in pressing the Clinton administration to intervene in Bosnia and Kosovo. These are the territories of Europe's oldest and largest Muslim minorities; they are oil-free and they do not in the least involve the state interest of Israel. Indeed, Sharon publicly opposed the intervention. One could not explain any of this from Mearsheimer and Walt's rhetoric about "the lobby."
Mearsheimer and Walt belong to that vapid school that essentially wishes that the war with jihadism had never started. Their wish is father to the thought that there must be some way, short of a fight, to get around this confrontation. Wishfulness has led them to seriously mischaracterize the origins of the problem and to produce an article that is redeemed from complete dullness and mediocrity only by being slightly but unmistakably smelly.
It appears that little philly weiss is playing at psychology; "Having run away from his father, psychically, Bush is now running back at him. (Any therapist would say, that doesn't resolve the conflict.)"
A reader wonders, what would "any therapist say" about little philly weiss; an apostate ex-jew who "ran away from his father" and now devotes all his energies to fomenting anti-semitism by attacking the state of israel and exposing so called "jewish" influence worldwide.
One might note a freudian slip in his critique of W, perhaps some accidental self-revelation, but alas not an epiphany.
A miserable little narcissist like this is best ignored. The Observer in effect has done this by bumping him over to the blogosphere. Perhaps the rest of us ought to ignore him as well.
Do not get yourself bothered by the trolls, Phil. At the end of the day their attacks will be only technical errors. Poor things, sad victims of those nazi ballistic equations.
you may be onto something:
"I walked thirty blocks down Broadway with my cousin Stephanie, who had arrived
just after my reading ended, and we talked mostly about the strangeness of our fathers, brothers who left behind twin legacies of tragic mystery and failure."- Phil Weiss
"...now I hate my family and culture" - Phil Weiss
http://mondoweiss.observer.com/2006/07/k-weber-is-moved-to-tears-as-she-reads-from-her-novel-in-the.html
Phil
I hope you don't get discouraged by these (paid?)critics who mount vicious personal attacks on everything you post. For every one of them you have hundreds of other readers who come here every day to find news and insights that are available almost nowhere else in the media. Thanks for speaking out and thanks for being such a great representative of the overwhelming majority of American Jews who, unlike your spiteful critics here, support American first.
regards
Gene Machina
bush had to do this. he is not going to do anything radical or particularly interesting. there is no way he understands the concept of the realist school of foreign policy or can appreciate it. he's a born agains christian and a neo conservative at heart. and a fascist. or very big government "conservative".
this is a baby sep in the right direction and I wouldn't expect to many more of them
Well, to quote James Baker, "F--k the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway."
The idea that Bush Sr. lost because of the Jewish lobby is ridiculous. Bush Sr. lost because he was out of touch with most of America. He lost because of the economy.
How American Jews voted:
From Ynetnews:
Yitzhak Benhorin
WASHINGTON - American Jews expressed flagrant support for Democratic candidates for Congress, contributing to a turnaround in the House of Representatives.
According to a CNN sampling of voters, 87 percent of Jewish voters voted Democrat.
This was the highest percentage of support for Democrats since the Republicans took over Congress in 1994.
The Republican Party tried to frighten Jewish voters during the election campaign, primarily with their ads in Jewish newspapers, but no one was buying.
In this election, Jews voted for candidates they thought would be good for Israel, but not necessarily the ones who would be the best for Israel, said Steve Rabinowitz, an elections expert who served in the White House during the Clinton era.
Jews didn't vote for anti-Israeli candidates, but also didn't ignore other issues important to them: the war in Iraq, the economy, immigration, the environment and abortion, he explained.
One of the Democrats' biggest assets was Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago-born son of former Israelis, who chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign.
Emanuel, who served as a Clinton political advisor in Washington, endorsed conservative candidates for conservative states such as Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky and, thus, succeeded in achieving a political upset in traditionally Republican areas.Additionally, the number of Jews in Congress is expected to increase: Bernie Sanders (Independent) from Vermont and Ben Cardin (Democrat) from Maryland will raise the number of Jewish Senators from 11 to 13 out of 100 - in a nation where Jews comprise only 5 million of the 300 million person population.
There are some 25 Jewish representatives in the House of Representatives, several of whom are expected to chair important House committees in the future.
A New York Times poll says that 88% of American Jews voted Democratic.
Thanks for another great article Phil. These blind Israeli-firsters are just plain annoying.
Crikey! Pop and I loved Jim Baker. When Jim said f-ck the jews, we invited him over to my place for a barbie.
Thanks for helping us do battle with the Christkilers.
Your mates,
Mel and Pop
are all jews as annoying as the ones on this board? I'm not justifying the holocaust but, it's like they are daring people to do it sometimes.
Phil, Robert Gates was involved deeply in the Iran-Contra affair. It will be the left that most vociferously opposes his appointment.
Lester, sorry we are so annoying as to stick up for ourselves when we think we are being treated unfairly. I'm sure you would prefer the good old days when Jews were too afraid and too ashamed to speak up for themselves. I'ts certainly a good reason to almost justify the Holocaust.
Here's AIPAC's file on Gates:
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2529
Notice he does not seem to regard Iran as the Great Satan. Any bets on which power group will oppose his nomination?
Let's use this as a controlled experiment on the question of whether there really IS a lobby! :)
susan- that's what I'm talking about. only jews can TYPE whinily