Iraq comes home: the war of ideas, by PhilipWeiss

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Iraq comes home: the war of ideas, by Philip Weiss

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August 2007
Serious. Cold. Stunning. Walt and Mearsheimer Arrive in Hard Covers

Some time in the next few days the website israellobbybook.com will be activated--right now it's a blank--and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, will be published by FSG. This is a historic book. The authors' LRB paper last year created an intellectual sensation I've never witnessed, and notwithstanding the desire of the lobby that the book disappear, I imagine the splash this time will be mainstream. Walt and Mearsheimer will be on television. That likelihood is increased by David Remnick's flat assertion, in an advance piece on the book that generally threw water on the scholars, that they are right to say that the lobby bears responsibility for the Iraq war.

I've been reading the book this August and have three preliminary impressions: Serious, cold and stunning. The seriousness of the book is conveyed on every page. The arguments are calm and earnest, stripped of metaphor and coyness. These are mature men engaged in every sinew with a giant squid of an issue; and their 106 pages of endnotes are overwhelming, and give the lie to anyone who accuses these scholars of "shoddy scholarship."

Cold. The authors are conservative realists at heart. They see states as amoral and a little vicious, and they don't overheat their arguments. There is no joy in the book, and the fervor is hidden beneath mountains of cold logic. They are reserved, and tactical. They refuse to really take on the dual-loyalty problem (just as Tony Judt refused in his speech at NYU last year) but you sense that they believe it's a problem (as I do). They generally say that the lobby has every right to do what it does, but their underlying zeal comes out--I think, admirably--when they state that the suppression of free speech on this issue is inappropriate and undemocratic. David Remnick's anger at the authors--he accuses them of wanting Israel to disappear-- seems to me a response to that zeal, and though he misdescribes it, the reader can feel the great molten energy underneath the icy words.

As for stunning, the argument they present is towering and clear and about time. The revision of Israeli history is stirring. The ways that the lobby has diminished the suffering of the Palestinians and enabled the occupation and settlements are starkly and even emotionally described. Most stunning is the argument that Remnick accepts: the authors' description of the Iraq disaster as arising from the lobby's pressure. I study this issue, and yet I turned the pages of this chapter with my mouth open, especially the pages dealing with the manipulation of intelligence, and evidence of Israel's hand in the WMD lies. It is this section that should and must stir national debate, and now.

"How did we get here? Our first guest is Dr. John J. Mearsheimer."

My main problem with the book is the one others have raised, that the word "lobby" is imprecise. How do you define this collection of forces and devotions? It is more a culture than a concerted lobby, an aspect of Jewishness and also an element of the American meritocracy and leadership that I am part of as a media Jew, but which that leadership has been absolutely incapable of examining. For instance, when the authors describe the neocon cipher Scooter Libby as part of the lobby, they don't really have the evidence as to the workings of his mind. I am sure they are right about Libby. But they don't prove it and I can do so only by speaking poetically, about the cipher's emails to his friend Judy Miller about the shared roots of the aspens in their summer retreats. Something is going on here, but you don't know what it is...

This is where true insiders need to come forward and explain what befell us. When Thomas Friedman shows up in this book, quoted in Ha'aretz, amazingly, as saying the Iraq war originated among 25 neocons within a mile or two of his office; and when Remnick accepts Walt and Mearsheimer's argument re the neocons--well, honey, the pro-Iraq liberal camp is falling apart. And explaining the Jewish rightwing klatch's actions to the world is important journalistic work that awaits this country in the nightmare of the next few years. But J.J. Goldberg refuses to talk about Walt and Mearsheimer's findings. Put on your spurs, J.J., the country needs you.

I said there's no pleasure in the book. The one exception is the book's dedication, to the scholar Samuel P. Huntington, whom the authors have known for 25 years. "We cannot imagine a better role model. Sam has always tackled big and important questions, and he has answered these questions in ways that the rest of the world could not ignore. Although each of us has disagreed with him on numerous occasions over the years--and sometimes vehemently and publicly--he never held those disagreements against us and was never anything but gracious and supportive of our work. [my emphasis] He understands that scholarship is not a popularity contest, and that spirited but civil debate is essential both to scholarly progress and to a healthy democracy." Beautiful and deeply moving, that is the credo of an American faith. Those words should be studied more than W&M's descriptions of Israeli history.

The Jewish meritocracy has always been about ambition. Worldly ambition mainly; we traded our ghettoized tradition of learning for position in the information age. Let us honor the grand intellectual leap of this book with an open discussion.

Posted at 06:34 AM in Books, Israel, Journalism, Meritocracy, Politics, Culture, Religion, The Assimilationist, U.S. Policy in the Mideast | Permalink | Comments (74) | TrackBack (0)