Bret Stephens, a columnist at the Wall Street Journal, recently wrote an article urging tougher sanctions against Iran.
Stephen Walt sees this as further vindication of his “Israel Lobby” thesis:
Rest assured that if sanctions don’t work, Stephens will be calling for military action. Stephens is the former editor of the Jerusalem Post, a well-connected neo-conservative, and one of the many pundits who helped cheerlead us into the disastrous war in Iraq. Is he really someone whose advice we ought to be paying attention to now? It would be one thing if he were offering a new set of prescriptions, but learning from past mistakes doesn’t seem to be part of the neocon playbook.
But for now, his piece is really just one more data point we should put in our files and remember. As [John Mearsheimer and I] wrote a few years ago: “The [Israel] lobby is also likely to make sure that the United States continues to threaten Iran with military strikes unless it abandons its nuclear enrichment program. Given that this threat has not worked in the past and is unlikely to work in the future, some of Israel’s American backers, especially the neoconservatives, will continue to call for the United States to carry out the threat. … There is also some possibility … that [Bush’s successor] will do so, particularly if Iran gets closer to developing weapons and if hardliners there continue to predominate. If the United States does launch an attack, it will be doing so in part on Israel’s behalf, and the lobby would bear significant responsibility for having pushed this dangerous policy.”
Caveat: Because no lobby “controls” U.S. foreign policy (a point we’ve made repeatedly and that critics routinely ignore), military action of the sort that Stephens & Co. are pushing isn’t inevitable. But if it does happen, you’ll know who played a key role in bringing it about.
Translation: If the United States were to attack Iran, you know who Walt & Mearsheimer will be blaming.
Of course, precisely how these neocons—by writing editorials and columns—will push the Obama administration into war with Iran is not explicitly addressed. Then again, that’s not surprising, because Walt & Mearsheimer never quite explained how the Israel Lobby was responsible for the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq.
As Jeffrey Steinberg wrote in his review of Walt & Mearsheimer’s book:
One of the most serious charges that Mearsheimer and Walt level at AIPAC and its neoconservative fellow travelers is that they were indispensable in pushing America to invade Iraq. There is no doubt that neoconservatives agitated for the war, and that many neoconservatives are Jews; and there is no doubt that there were Jews, in and out of the Bush administration, who argued for the invasion of Iraq, including Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle. Is that really all we need to know about the origins of the war? There were also some Christians at the scene, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Stephen Hadley, and Richard Myers. Some of those Christians were even in positions to order the invasion!
The assertion that the Iraq war would not have happened except for the lobbying of Jews is an echo of an ancient idea spread by anti-Jewish ideologues: that Jews, operating in the shadows, manipulate gentile leaders to unknowingly advance Jewish interests. In order to believe this in the case of Iraq, the argument would have to be made that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were not merely idiots, but also uninterested in ruling. A couple of years ago I asked Rumsfeld to comment on accusations that the Jewish lobby maneuvered the administration into war. “I suppose the implication of that is the president and the vice president and myself and Colin Powell just fell off a turnip truck to take these jobs,” he said. But Mearsheimer and Walt mention Cheney and Rumsfeld only for fleeting instants in their discussion of the origins of the war. They seem to think that William Kristol is the commander in chief.
Similarly, the Daily Princetonian reported on a debate between political scientist Robert Keohane and Walt & Mearsheimer:
A major point of contention during the discussion was the role of neoconservative policymakers in the Bush administration and their links with pro-Israel lobbyists. Mearsheimer and Walt said that neocons played a significant role in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, a move the two argued was also seen at the time as being in Israel’s best interest.
“There’s no question that the neoconservatives were the main driving forces behind the war, supported by key organizations in the lobby like AIPAC,” Mearsheimer said.
Keohane disputed the link between AIPAC and the decision to go to war in Iraq. He cited nine other reasons for the invasion, including concerns over weapons of mass destruction and a desire to promote democracy.
The mention of AIPAC’s role in the lead up to the Iraq war set off a spirited exchange.
“It’s hard to find other organizations or institutions that were pushing the war,” Mearsheimer said. “If it wasn’t the neoconservatives, and it wasn’t the leaders of the lobby, and it wasn’t Israel, then who was it?”
“Two people: One is the president, and the other is the vice president,” Keohane said to applause.
And Ron Kampeas at Capital J, has observed how Walt’s language tends to vary from blog post to blog post:
As he has done recently, Walt tries here to weasel away from the central role the book assigned the lobby — in this latest post, the Iraq war was “dreamed up by the neocons” and “backed by key groups in the Israel lobby,” while the 2007 book accused the Israel lobby of joining “forces with the neoconservatives to help sell the war to the Bush administration and the American people.”
So that ratchets the lobby’s role back a notch or two — from the active “selling” of the war to the passive “backing” of it, from the neoconservatives’ equal in responsibility for the war to a more subservient role. You’d think given these realizations (and I’m not endorsing this moderated view — Dick Cheney is not a neocon) Walt would be preparing an updated edition of the book, explaining to folks that he might have been more nuanced, that he overstated the case.
Walt never clearly explained how the “Israel Lobby” supposedly pushed the United States to invade Iraq; and his depiction of the Israel Lobby’s role seems to change at least once a week. So, how precisely are the neocons and their fellow travelers expected to push the Obama administration into war with Iran?
True to form, Walt seeks to vaguely describe the Obama administration’s decision-making process about an event that has not yet even happened. And he is threatening that, if there is a conflict, the “Lobby” will be held accountable.
Preemptively blaming Zionists for war. Once again, Walt takes a page from a very old—and very disturbing—playbook.
Something very common of antisemites is the vagueness of the definition of the concepts they use – as was clearly shown in your post. But that should be an anatema for academics. If there is one thing you learn pretty early on in the academia is that if you cannot clearly define the scope and meaning of your concepts, you have no scientific thesis at all.
Antisemitism is the exact opposite in this regard of scientific thought. Walt should lose his PhD in a public shaming event. And to think how hard it is to win one…
The fact is that Walt is simply describing reality. There is a very powerful Israeli lobby in Washington. This lobby actively pushed for the Iraq war, but does not bear full responsibility for the war. That full responsibility rests with Bush and the neoconservatives that he was so tight with.
Despite the bad outcome of that war, the Israeli lobby and the Neoconservatives are both still very powerful in Washington. If you don’t like this reality, fine. But trying to assassinate the character of anyone who points it out helps nothing.
@atheist@ The different fascist agitators used the same argument when the Second World War started. Take for instance Oswald Mosley who time and time again spoke about the “Jewish war” . And the communist in the USA and GB took a stand against the “imperialist war” when Ribbentrop and Molotov signed the pact in August 1939. They changed their attitude only when the URSS was attacked in June 1941.
So how about that war, was that a “Jewish war”?
How about the Korean War and the Vietnam war, were the Jewish too?
Karl Pfeifer: Not really. WWII didn’t even really have that much to do with Jews from the US, British or Soviet point of view… the US declared war after Pearl Harbor if you’ll remember, not because of the mass murder against Jews and other “undesirables” that Hitler was perpetrating. The Soviets were just defending their homeland against an invasion.
I don’t really care that much what Oswald Mosely said, nor am I that interested in what neo-Nazis believe, so long as someone is keeping an eye on them. The fact is that there is a Israeli lobby that helped to start the Iraq war, and many people in this lobby would like to start a new one against Iran. My interest is not in starting wars, but ending & preventing them.
Also, the idea that Walt is “threatening” anyone is fairly absurd don’t you think? He’s pointing out how things work in Washington, for those who want to know.
@atheist@ You are not interested in Mosley and what the fascists said, but you say exactly the same, without any substantial proof.
do you think that an A-bomb in the hands of the Mullahs is only a danger for Israel?
And how can you end wars? After all Mosley also said, that a war against the Nazis is harming British interest and he was for peace with Hitler.
So should United Nations say to Iran you may produce your A-Bomb and give some of it to HizbAllah and Hamas?
@Karl Pfeifer, I really don’t say or think the same as Mosley or any other Nazi, past or present. I don’t know why you are so confident of knowing my inner thoughts. Perhaps you have a crystal ball… if that is the case then may I suggest you take out some Windex and wipe it off?
If you believe that anyone who is against any war must be an anti-semite, then I guess you might divide the world into “War Lovers” on one hand, and “Anti-Semites” on the other. Is that the case? Because if so, that is depressing as hell.
As far as Iran getting a nuke goes, there is no proof that they are trying to get a nuclear weapon. And even if they did, the fact is that Israel could easily deter Iran from launching this weapon, as Israel posseses what is estimated at being the fifth-largest nuclear arsenal in the world. They have land-launched, sea-launched and air-launched nukes. If Iran tried anything it would be annihilated, and the Iranians must know this.
I was under the impression that the chief people pushing for the war in Iraq were the very powerful Christians who happened to be the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and National Security Advisor – you know, the actual people who were running the government in 2002-2003 when the war was being planned, not a bunch of op-ed writers like Kristol. You might not have noticed, atheist, but the U.S. did Iran a big favor by invading Iraq – and Iran was and is arguably a greater threat to Israel than Iraq was in 2002-2003. My recollection of those years is that our President and Vice President had plenty loud enough voices and power to get us into the Iraq war.
Rebecca, it is obviously true that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others in the US government bear the prime responsibility for starting the Iraq war. Also, you are quite right the Iraq war has enhanced the power of Iran in the region. The argument Walt is making, and I think he’s right, is that there is a powerful Israeli lobby in Washington, and that this lobby pushed for the Iraq war.
Walt is not making the argument that the Israeli lobby controls Washington, or that Bush and Cheney were manipulated by this lobby into attacking Iraq. He’s arguing that the Israeli lobby was a key player in starting the war. Judeosphere says that Ron Kampeas at Capital J, has observed how Walt’s language tends to vary from blog post to blog post:
To me this does not look like a changing story, as Mr. Kampeas would have it. What appears to Mr. Kampeas as an untrustworthy tendency to equivocate looks to me like Walt is describing a complex political phenomenon. The fears of Judeosphere, that Walt is attempting to instigate some kind of pogrom, seem very overblown to me, to say the least.
@atheist@ you forget history, first comes the antisemitic incitement, the rumour about the powerful Jews, about Jewish conspiracy and then sometimes the pogrom. Anyway I recommend that you read the whole Interview Prof. M. Postone gave a British leftwing website.
Prof. Moishe Postone from Chicago University:
“Israel is far from being as powerful as charged. Yet you have people like my present and former colleagues at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, strongly supported by circles in the UK, who argue that the only thing driving American policy in the Middle East is Israel, as mediated by the Jewish lobby. They make this sweeping charge in the absence of any serious attempt to analyze American policy in the Middle East since 1945, which certainly cannot adequately be understood as Israel-driven. So, for example, they completely ignore American policy toward Iran for the past 75 years. The real pillars of American policy in the Middle East after World War Two were Saudi Arabia and Iran. That has changed in recent decades, and the Americans aren’t sure how to deal with that and secure the Gulf for their purposes. Yet you had a book written by these two academics claiming that American policy in the Middle East was primarily driven by the Jewish lobby without bothering to seriously analyze Great Power policies in the Middle East in the 20th century.
I’ve argued elsewhere that this sort of argument is anti-semitic. This has nothing to do with the personal attitudes of the people involved, but the sort of enormous global power it accords the Jews (as, in this case, the puppet-masters of the good-natured, slow-witted, giant, Uncle Sam) is typical for modern anti-semitic thought.”
http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2010/02/05/zionism-anti-semitism-and-left
An interesting talk of Professor Alan Dershowitz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W_A9ILHvrI
Atheist,
There were Jewish groups against the war their were Christian groups against the war. There were Jewish groups for the war there were Christian groups against the war. The clearest most obvious group that supported the war and pushed the U.S. into it was (as Rebecca stated) ”
he President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and National Security Advisor ”
You are making vague vintage antisemitic statements about how Jews work behind the scenes to control government.
You can make whatever denials of racism you want, but we have seen this kind of shit for literally thousands of years. It is not new to us and we can smell it a mile away.
Stan