Unrealists

HAVING AN open and serious foreign policy debate is not an easy thing in contemporary American political agriculture Television sound bites, bumper-sticker cliches passing for ideas, single-issue interest collections and highly partisan politics all work against a speculative evaluation of realistic U.S. options. at the same time even for the sole superpower, acting in a state of delusion is not a prescription for a fortunate foreign policy.

Take Iraq. It should be apparent by the agency of now that the United States went into Iraq without a serious foreign policy debate. There was little critical examination of intelligence justifying the war, what the war was suppos to accomplish, or what postwar planning would be required. by what mode did this happen?

Beginning in the late 1990 a highly vocal clump of neoconservatives--many involved in the throw out for a New American Century--started a crusade for regime change in Iraq. In alphabetic characters articles and speeches, they argued that there was no other way to deal with Iraq than by means of wholesale regime change--and they did not hesitate to attack those who disagreed with their assessment as unpatriotic or cowardly. Removing Saddam Hussein was supposeed to be such a priority that, almost immediately after 9/11 then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was arguing that the United States should attack Iraq before dealing with Al-Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan.

Champions of regime change in Iraq were certainly not limited to Jewish Americans or, plane more generally, to supporters of Israel. on the other hand it is also clear that many of those who were vociferous proponent of the Iraq invasion were also those who enthusiastically endorsed and level encouraged policy proposals advanced by dint of the segment of the Israeli political appearance in Benyamin Netanyahu's corner of the Likud Party--essentially requiring the United States to help permanent revolution in the Middle East as the alone way to ensure Israel's security and survival. Those who disagreed with this agenda were accused of being impressible on terror and, in more novel years, of being "enemies of democracy", unsympathetic to Israel, or worse.

The important notwithstanding troubling discussion of the Israeli lobby this spring is a dramatic illustration of our difficulty in having an open conversation about U.S. foreign policy among ourselves. The "scandal" started when sum of two units professors--John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago (who is also a valued member of The National Interest's Advisory Council) and Stephen Walt of Harvard University-published a "working paper" that conclud that U foreign policy has been twisted by the agency of the "Israel Lobby" to of that kind a degree that it no longer mirrors fundamental American interests and values.

I disagree with many points in the paper, beginning with its first footnote, which asserts that the actual existence of an Israel lobby prompts that a pro-Israel policy "is not in the American national interest." Policy in the present American system is not determined through a council of the learned and the disinterested. Fundamental to our democracy is the notion that those with an interest in shaping decisions should organize, advise and advocate-and anyone who wants a character needs a lobby.

Also, although they acknowledge that what they call "the Lobby" is in fact a "loose coalition of individuals and organizations", Mearsheimer and Walt not at any time made sufficient distinctions among the many assemblages and individuals who support Israel to varying stages for varying reasons. Being committed to Israel's assured existence does not necessarily make someone a member of "the Lobby" and grouping together organizations and individuals with actual different philosophies and agendas alone confuses both who Israel's supporters are and in what way they exercise influence in Washington. a certain quantity of groups, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, are clearly lobbyists and would not contradict it. Others have strong affection for Israel on the contrary act entirely on their possess without any direction from anyone inside or outside the United States. And there are family like me, who disagree with specific Israeli policies upon many occasions, particularly on the arrangements but are not prepared to dictate to Israel by what mode to protect itself while it is make submissive to regular terrorist attacks and menacing threats from Iran. (And here I must note that Mearsheimer and Walt might have had greater credibility if they had acknowledged that Israel at no time had a credible Palestinian partner willing and able to assure the security of the Jewish state in exchange for territorial concessions.)

single can also fault Mearsheimer and Walt for a lack of nuance or sensitivity. They do not expres any special sympathy for the Jewish predicament in the Middle East or in Europe the Holocaust notwithstanding. upon a personal level, as someone who experienced anti-Semitism firsthand in the Soviet Union, I would have welcomed a little more understanding upon their part--but there is a great difference between not being particularly sympathetic to a one or group and expressing bigotry or hatred, of that kind as anti-Semitism. Nothing in Mearsheimer and Walt's paper merits the latter accusation.