Monday, March 20, 2006
LGF has a nice round-up of links on the Walt and Mearsheimer piece (see: Kennedy School: AOK with David Duke, Explaining the religious mind-set, Kennedy School: It's All AIPAC's Fault) here: Stephen Walt's War with Israel. [James Taranto also has some excellent comments, here.]
Look, to me, I think the same thing whenever I see something like this, and this time's no different. Like I said to an emailer earlier today, the thing with these guys, and guys like them, is that they clearly desire a shift in US policy. OK, so they and their ideological friends have been banging their heads against the wall for years -- theorizing, cajoling, essaying...predicting how America should be acting...but somehow, for some reason, America just won't obey. Now they're frustrated because...by gum, they're right and smart and the world just won't see it! It's not they and their theories that are wrong, oh no. The only logical explanation for this illogical behavior is that the deck is stacked against them. Unfair, insidious forces are at work.
So, instead of taking the difficult road and continuing to try to sway opinion by making good arguments...instead...they blame the deck, and like lazy students look for the simple answers...and the hidden hand.
[Update: Powerline has a good post here, and another here. Looks like Dean Walt himself may be a recipient of "The Lobby's" largesse. Ha!
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Taranto wrote:
"Israel is a democracy. This they concede, but they also claim that "some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values." In particular, they claim that Arab citizens of Israel "are treated as second-class citizens" and note that "a recent Israeli government commission found that Israel behaves in a 'neglectful and discriminatory' manner towards them."
Now take out Israel and replace it with France, (recent events - November 2005) and voila we have something very similar in behaviour on the part of the arabs. The refusal to integrate.
This was made apparent about two years ago with the bankruptcy of many towns and villages.
The arabs refused to contribute to their upkeep by paying rates and taxes for garbage removal, sewage, public lighting etc., because it is money going to the Jews.
From the founding of the State there has been a refusal on the part of most arabs, Bedouin and Druze excluded, to participate fully in running a democratic state thereby creating a lack of confidence on the part of Jews to pay full attention to their demands in exchange for at most a fith column.
They are not cooperating to appease their arab "brothers" but continue to demand, as socialists do so well, of the State.
Of course for academics a socialogical study of the past 50 something years would be too contextual for their agenda.
What would be nice to see on paper is a serious study of what has accrued to the US from its support of Israel; that means all the technological advances in medicine, agriculture, electronics apart from improvements to F-16s, Arrow partnership and sending data from Mars.
Maybe there is someone capable of doing a Cold War accounting of Israel's contribution to America's position.
Martin Kramer has a nice rebuttal
http://www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/2006_03_17.htm
" To answer Walt's simple argument, I'll respond with a simple question. If you need an ally somewhere, don't you want it to be the smartest, most powerful, and most resourceful guy on the block, who also happens to admire you? And what is the point of having an ally who's backward, weak, irresolute, and thinks in his heart of hearts that you're his enemy? That's the choice the United States faces in the Middle East.
It took the United States some twenty years to figure this out. Between 1948 and 1967, it believed in Walt's zero-sum concept of the Middle East. The United States recognized Israel in 1948, but it didn't do much to help it defend itself, for fear of alienating Arab monarchs, oil sheikhs, and the "Arab street." That was the heyday of the sentimental State Department Arabists and the profit-driven oil companies. "
The other mirror these learned profs didn't hold up to their thesis was the impact of Arab/Muslim lobby groups, native (i.e. CAIR, MPAK) or foreign, including endowing various university chairs, etc.