Posted on 03/17/2006 5:25:30 AM PST by SJackson
"The combination of unwavering U.S. support for Israel and the related effort to spread democracy throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S. security. ...
...snip...
Sound like the rantings of President Ahmadinejad of Iran or Louisiana anti-Semite David Duke? It turns out that those are selections from a paper issued this month by the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government in its "Faculty Research Working Papers Series" and written by two American professors, Stephen M. Walt and John Mearsheimer. The paper, posted on the Internet, is starting to attract attention not only because of its substance but because of the affiliations of the authors. Mr. Walt is the academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School, a graduate school for students preparing for careers in public service. He also holds the Robert and Renee Belfer professorship in international affairs at the Kennedy School. Mr. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison distinguished service professor of political science and co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago.
Messrs. Mearsheimer and Walt go out of their way to condemn anti-Semitism, but with their references to this mysterious "Lobby," their accusation that it is an agent of Israel manipulating the press and the political system, they are flirting with stereotypes that have historically been deadly. They claim that invoking anti-Semitism only chills debate, so we'll put that question aside for now, though it will be interesting to see how Jewish donors and professors of these universities react to these charges along with the rest of American Jewry.
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
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And in fact, they say that some of their best friends are Jews! ;)
Same shit different day. Even after the Muhammad cartoon riots and the burning automobiles in France these academic quislings still don't realize that Islam is the enemy. Not a bunch of Jews in Israel. Muhammadans want to conquer Israel, it's now apparent that Europe is next on the list via a demographic Jihad. Dutch are leaving their country in disgust and decamping to Australia and New Zealand and USA.
The lazy left is in awe of Islam because it's public face shows no doubt
Great point. To the left there is romance in the notion of being abused and dominated by barbarians.
The first thing a conservative president should do after he is sworn in, is to request the resignation of all the hangers-on in Executive branch offices. Then he should cull all Ivy Leaguers out and put real people in their places, people from Kansas State University or Texas A&M, for instance. This would have a very salutary effect on the politically incestuous climate that now pervades DC. I'd love to see the day when having Harvard, Yale, or Columbia on one's resume would eliminate one from consideration for the White House staff. I'm fairly sure Pres. Bush's second term would have been more sucessful had he followed that advice.
Exactly. Well said.
And what if this were true? The implication that the US should close its eyes and watch Arabs tear Jews apart and dismantle Israel is truly frightening.
The US should support Israel because if it didn't, there would be another Holocaust. There are some who say that it is not our business, but I disagree. America is a successful nation because, though not perfect, seeks justice above all else. This applies internally in policy such as merit dictating success, separation of powers (and sometimes overcompensated by seeking to elevate the margins simply because the outcomes are unjust).
So why should it not also have a foreign policy based on Justice, too? The Arab war against Israel is unjust. And need I remind the authors that this administration is the first to openly call for the creation of a Palestinian state? Is that not the embodiment of Justice, too?
I smell a dead fish deep inside this article. Though it tries hard to mask the odor of decayed ethics it fails to fool me.
As for the war in Iraq, it could have been over in 3 weeks if it weren't for internecine violence. Some argue that it is our fault for igniting it - ignoring completely that it was only brutal oppression that kept it low key under Saddam's regime. Iraq can be at peace at any time it wants, when the Iraqis decide to stop killing each other.
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This article is pure bunk. I'd like to debunk it line by line but it's not worth that much effort. But lets start:
the Lobby’s campaign to quash debate about Israel is unhealthy for democracy. Silencing sceptics by organising blacklists and boycotts – or by suggesting that critics are anti-semites – violates the principle of open debate on which democracy depends.
Squashed debate? The debate rages all the time - among the citizenry, in the media, in politics, and in the international bodies. This sentence is a pre-emptive attempt to stifle debate itself - the implication being that Americans who believe America has a moral or ethical obligation to keep Israel in existence should not exercise their right to say so. And if their view is the dominant view among Americans and the people they elect, that IS democracy in action.
Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain.
The authors attribute this to the Israel lobby? How foolish of them! This aid is the result of a commitment made by Jimmy Carter and a Democratic Congress in the quest to bring peace between Egypt and Israel. Egypt was the aggressor, having no claim to any land where Israel is - but invaded to steal that land anyway.
Egypt was at the time in the Soviet sphere of influence. The military aid given to Israel in 1973 saved their asses. If we did not come to their rescue with airlifts, Israel would have lost the war and the Arab invaders carried out their rhetoric of murdering its citizens. Helping Israel in 1973 was the right and moral thing to do.
But it also was in the USA's interests! As a result of the defeat of Egypt in 1973, the US dislodged Egypt from Russian influence, and broke the Arab bloc aligned against the US. This had nothing to do with the "Jewish Israel lobby". (/sarcasm!)
The authors may be unhappy about the aid to Israel, but that was the deal America made to make peace happen between these two countries - a peace which is (and was) in our national interests. And we are paying both countries, not just Israel. Aid to Egypt, the Palestinians, Lebanon and Jordan actually exceed the aid given to Israel. So what is wrong with providing Israel a little security from these other countries? I could argue that the aid makes them feel more confident, and thus less willing to escalate conflict. If they were cut off while their enemies rearmed, Israel might be a lot more "brutal" than they think it is today. They would be forced to beat their enemies hard now, before they acquired parity with Israel's military superiority. Hence, the aid keeps the peace which is in our interest in many ways.
The terrorist organisations that threaten Israel do not threaten the United States, except when it intervenes against them (as in Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random violence directed against Israel or ‘the West’; it is largely a response to Israel’s prolonged campaign to colonise the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
There is not one shred of evidence to support this claim. I agree it is not "random" but the rest is bunk. Palestinian terrorism against Israel actually precedes the existence of Israel, when it was aimed at the Jews of the British Mandate. The pogroms led by Amin al Husseini in 1920, the Jerusalem Riots of 1926, the Hebron Massacre of 1929, to the beseigement of Jewish towns in 1947. Not to mention, that terrorism existed before Israel build any so called "settlements". That Arabs say that this is the cause of conflict does not mean that they are telling the truth. The evidence overwhelmingly proves otherwise. The PLO existed only to destroy Israel - its charter spefically states it has no claim to the West Bank. The PLO terror machine rained hell on Europe - including hijacking American civilian aircraft and killing Americans and killing Israelis in Munich - before the settlement project even began. I could go on, but this is enough to prove the point. These authors have nothing to support this claim. It is simply the regurgitation of propaganda, and shameful that Harvard Academics do not have the presense of mind to at least attempt at objectivity here.
So if neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America’s support for Israel, how are we to explain it?
They have started with a false premise, so it's no wonder they end up with a faulty answer to their question. Support for Israel is moral. Israel doesn't have to be a saint to receive this support. The US can and does rebuke Israel when it believes Israel has acted in the wrong. But the support is moral because the alternative to supporting Israel is the destruction of Israel and the mass murder of Jews. However badly the authors believe Israel behaves towards Palestinians, it is not motivated by the same ideology that motivates Israel's enemies - the destruction of Israel and the removal or disposal of an entire people. Israel may be heavy handed, but it does not seek to destroy its enemies, it seeks to show them strength in the hopes that they will relent.
Sorry to be so long winded on a post, but this article is so bad it's unbelieveable. If these are among the best minds at Harvard then Harvard certainly not deserving of the esteem it receives. These two have not written this paper with any semblance of objectivity. What they have done is assembled a series of anecdotes, removed from their proper context, to construct a false thesis and then used those anecdotes to reach an absurd conclusion. It seems to me that they had the conclusion in mind before they wrote it - and decided to seek out evidence that supports it. That is not the scientific approach, so why are political scientists using it? This is simply NOT how academics is supposed to be approached. The men are entitled to hold whatever opinion they want, but to pass this trash off as scholarly work is a disgrace to Harvard and to scholarship. These men deserve to be mocked, as does this stupid-is-as-stupid-does article.
They got rid of Larry Summers so they could publish this type of drivel. Next stop divestment.
Conservatives should have supported Summers loudly while they had the chance. Yes, he was a democrat. But he still blocked the path of the lunatic left.
Good post and all true. I often forget why Israel is getting the 3 million in the first place. It goes back to Dhimmi Carter's peace deal
"Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain."
This is totally misleading.
Europe is the largest recipient of aid. This aid does not appear on the radar screen because it is part of the Defense budget. As a result Europe, far richer than Israel, has cut its own defense spending and instead puts that money into social programs funding a nanny state.
You are correct. Being disingenuous appears to be standard practice in academics.
I always find it fishy that the postmodern academics, who in our times have adovated that looking after a country's own self-interests (particularly the develoepd world, and especially, the United States) must be tempered with international justice, suddenly starting going gungho for the US to watch out for its own interests.
Yes you are right to point out this hypocrisy. Without saying its anti-semitism outright, the world has almost always been exceptionalist when it comes to the Jews. To see liberals make common cause with religious totalitarianism is frightening. I consider myself a true liberal - these phoney-baloney liberals give us a bad name. They are the reactionaries, not the conservatives who now carry the liberal mantle.
Not that I agree with these guys but they are no liberals. They're old school realists like Kissinger. I has a class with Mearsheimer once.
Mearsheimer is categorized as a Neo Realist. His Harvard co-author is a far leftist. It reminds me of the alliance between Buchanan and Justin Raimondo. Post 9/11 there are some strange partners.
Poster 'wideawake' took him in school too and was also quite suprised at this turn.
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