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The continuing power of Walt & Mearsheimer

By Philip Weiss on May 20, 2010

Ezra Klein has an interesting note about Walt and Mearsheimer. He reports that Jon Chait of the New Republic started writing about Israel because of Walt and Mearsheimer, he was so angry about them; and Klein says he also was drawn into the topic by Walt and Mearsheimer, the Chait-ian reaction against them, which he regarded as “fearful tribalism.” Talk about the power of ideas.

I’m in Klein’s camp. I started writing this blog in March 2006 just before W&M published their incredible paper. I’d finally decided to write about Israel (after avoiding the topic all my life) because of a comment a relative made to me in 2003: “What do you think about this war [Iraq]? I demonstrated against the Vietnam War, but my Jewish newspaper says this war could be good for Israel.” I was shocked and disturbed by the comment. But it was Walt and Mearsheimer who gave me courage. Their bombshell paper echoed the political truth of my relative’s statement. Walt and Mearsheimer said that the neocons, the braintrust for George Bush’s disastrous war, were motivated by Zionism. I remember the day Scott McConnell emailed the paper to me, he had gotten it from Mike Desch that morning, in Texas. The shock of recognition went round the world.

The reaction was vicious. “In Dark Times Blame the Jews,” the Forward wrote at the time, a disgraceful headline. Yivo Institute held a panel to denounce the authors as anti-Semites.

Chait was defensive but Klein is not defensive. And Klein will win. Some day there will be an open conversation inside the Jewish community about the Jewish role in the Iraq war, specifically, ultra-Zionists’ role in selling a policy of permanent war in the Arab world as an American interest. Peter Beinart just further opened the door to this conversation by making it clear that his politics are fueled by Zionism, Beinart who pushed the Iraq war as “the good fight”–a book in whose index the words Israel and Palestine did not appear.

Agree with them or not, Walt and Mearsheimer’s book changed the discourse. They blew the bridge. They opened up a space where no one said you could go. Two realists, they spoke feelingly about the Nakba and the humiliations of the occupation–which all the liberals like Beinart and Ken Pollack and Lawrence Kaplan and Paul Berman had dismissed out of hand.

When their book came out in 2007, I compared it to Silent Spring and Unsafe at Any Speed, and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. I think that was an understatement.

May 21, 2010 - Posted by | Wars for Israel

2 Comments »

  1. We are all still waiting for an open discussion inside the Jewish community on the Jewish role in declaring war on Germany WW11 and the true figures of actual Jewish deaths at the hands of the Nazis. Considering that some 3.5mil jews were definitely alive when they signed up for reparations from the Germans as proof they survived the Nazi. To pose any such question one is relegated to the camp of ‘Holocaust deniers’ yet official records are still denied public access.

    Israel part in the manufactured evidence of Saddam’s WMDs was confirmed by Blair. That the bombing of Syria’s Nuclear reactor was another photoshoppped ‘evidence’ of Israel that would have plunged the ME into another war had Syria responded to the provocation. That the Georgia conflict was another instigation of the Israeli mercenaries who fled for home as soon as the conflict started and would have blown up but for Putin’s timely response.

    Thanks to the information age and the Goldstone report, there exist a better chance of open discussions than existed previously and the Zionist must be held accountable for their atrocities against the Palestinians but only if the US stops using its one veto to hinder the Member Nations from carrying out the duties it was mandated to perform.

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    lydia's avatar Comment by lydia | May 21, 2010 | Reply

  2. “Some day there will be an open conversation inside the Jewish community about the Jewish role in the Iraq war…”

    How luxurious for you. While you’re giving it a think, could you hurry? Maybe a quicker awakening could head off war with Iran.

    Like

    G Street's avatar Comment by G Street | May 22, 2010 | Reply


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