Probing Mearsheimer/Walt on the Iraq War
After some very blah introductory grafs, Ron Kampeas of JTA correctly pinpoints the biggest misapprehension in Mearsheimer/Walt -- namely The Lobby's role in the origins of the Iraq war:
It is on the subject of the Iraq war -- specifically the effort to assign blame to Jerusalem and Jewish organizations -- that the authors go off the rails. On this question, I asked Mearsheimer and Walt particularly about their focus on Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary who was an architect of the war.
Why, I wondered, no mention of Wolfowitz's many writings on the general idea of pre-emptive action, his efforts as the lead U.S. official shepherding democracy into the Philippines and Indonesia in the 1980s?
And what about his 2003 endorsement of the Geneva agreements positing Israel's return to pre-1967 lines, made explicitly because he believed the Israel-Palestinian issue had to be solved if Iraq was to succeed? (To say the lobby was less than enthusiastic about the Geneva agreements would be an understatement.) Were these not more germane to understanding his commitment to war with Iraq than rumors of his commitment to Israel?
Mearsheimer responded: "We're not making the argument that they were monomaniacal, that the United States had to invade Iraq for Israeli benefits."
Yet absent other evidence of the Bush administration's commitment to invade Iraq, that is exactly how their book comes across. The writers assemble quotes from leaders in Jerusalem to show that while Israel "did not initiate the campaign for war against Iraq," it "did join forces with the neoconservatives to help sell the war to the Bush administration and the American people."
The idea that Israel joined with neoconservatives to "sell" Bush on Iraq posits an inversion of how Washington operates -- especially under this administration. Bush's proxies made it clear to Jewish leaders -- and just about everyone else -- in the first days of the administration that the tradition of joining forces on areas of agreement and agreeing to disagree on all else was null: You either signed on with the whole Bush agenda or you were frozen out.
And so, as 2002 wore into 2003, every interest group in this town that needed access to an immensely popular president -- the media, the Democrats and, yes, Jewish and pro-Israel groups -- signed on more or less to the White House policy that arched over all others: invading Iraq.
Read the whole thing.
It is on the subject of the Iraq war -- specifically the effort to assign blame to Jerusalem and Jewish organizations -- that the authors go off the rails. On this question, I asked Mearsheimer and Walt particularly about their focus on Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary who was an architect of the war.
Why, I wondered, no mention of Wolfowitz's many writings on the general idea of pre-emptive action, his efforts as the lead U.S. official shepherding democracy into the Philippines and Indonesia in the 1980s?
And what about his 2003 endorsement of the Geneva agreements positing Israel's return to pre-1967 lines, made explicitly because he believed the Israel-Palestinian issue had to be solved if Iraq was to succeed? (To say the lobby was less than enthusiastic about the Geneva agreements would be an understatement.) Were these not more germane to understanding his commitment to war with Iraq than rumors of his commitment to Israel?
Mearsheimer responded: "We're not making the argument that they were monomaniacal, that the United States had to invade Iraq for Israeli benefits."
Yet absent other evidence of the Bush administration's commitment to invade Iraq, that is exactly how their book comes across. The writers assemble quotes from leaders in Jerusalem to show that while Israel "did not initiate the campaign for war against Iraq," it "did join forces with the neoconservatives to help sell the war to the Bush administration and the American people."
The idea that Israel joined with neoconservatives to "sell" Bush on Iraq posits an inversion of how Washington operates -- especially under this administration. Bush's proxies made it clear to Jewish leaders -- and just about everyone else -- in the first days of the administration that the tradition of joining forces on areas of agreement and agreeing to disagree on all else was null: You either signed on with the whole Bush agenda or you were frozen out.
And so, as 2002 wore into 2003, every interest group in this town that needed access to an immensely popular president -- the media, the Democrats and, yes, Jewish and pro-Israel groups -- signed on more or less to the White House policy that arched over all others: invading Iraq.
Read the whole thing.
posted by hellisotherpeople at 6:26 PM
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