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Yes, Lying Is Very Bad, Mr. Secretary

Maybe George Shultz believes what he writes about Mearsheimer and Walt, which shows that he isn’t even acquainted with their original essay, much less the book they have published.  My guess is that he either skimmed the work or decided that he already knew what it said and wrote this attack without checking to see if any of […]

Maybe George Shultz believes what he writes about Mearsheimer and Walt, which shows that he isn’t even acquainted with their original essay, much less the book they have published.  My guess is that he either skimmed the work or decided that he already knew what it said and wrote this attack without checking to see if any of his charges make any sense.  For instance, he has this “damning” statement:

Anyone who thinks that Jewish groups constitute a homogeneous “lobby” ought to spend some time dealing with them.

Of course, what the essay said on this point was:

We use ‘the Lobby’ as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. This is not meant to suggest that ‘the Lobby’ is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues. Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby, because Israel is not a salient issue for many of them.

Hm, let’s see…it isn’t about “Jewish groups” and it isn’t homogeneous.  It’s a loose coalition, its members don’t always agree and it has no overall organisation.  “The Lobby” serves as a term of convenience, a catch-all to refer to these various groups together.  Yes, that sounds very much like what Shultz said, except for all of the completely different ideas contained in the two statements. 

The responses this idea of “the Lobby” receives are bizarre.  It’s as if someone wrote about the role of “the tobacco industry” and was then accused of believing in a monolithic corporate alliance in which there was absolutely no difference of opinion about anything.  Generalising about groups that have common interests and goals is now seen as promoting conspiracies.  To call these responses sloppy would be a bit too generous.  

Sec. Shultz almost certainly knows better than this, of course, but he chooses to lend his prominence to the public effort to smear and insult two academics who make inconvenient arguments for people who support a misguided foreign policy.  If “questioning” is legitimate, and “lies” are not, what should we make of Shultz’s article?  A legitimate difference of opinion, or a scurrilous pack of lies?  Is that really the standard Shultz wants to use? 

In between his hyperventilating breaths about “underhanded Jewish plots” (which is clearly not what Mearsheimer and Walt are describing) and the like, he argues that comparisons between Israel the South African Nationalist apartheid regime are ludicrous.  This is true in a way–the Nationalists were running their system inside the territory of the country that their government legally ruled, while Israel illegally occupies territory and imposes a restrictive, discriminatory system on the inhabitants.  (For the record, I think all territories occupied in violation of international law should be abandoned by their occupiers–the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus is another outstanding example of a U.S. ally being permitted to continue breaking the rules without suffering any real consequences.)  Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in territories it does not even rightfully hold would be like the old South African government imposing its policies inside the borders of Namibia.  From the perspective of international law, Israel’s policy in the territories is not quite like apartheid; it is in a way worse because it does not even take place within the state’s recognised borders.  This makes it one of the more outstanding examples of persistent international lawlessness of the last four decades.   

One of the counterarguments employed against Mearsheimer/Walt is that there are also other influential lobbies that sometimes also get their way and wield tremendous power in Washington.  You don’t say!  This is apparently supposed to prove that pro-Israel groups do not have much influence, or that they are sufficiently counterbalanced by other interests to make complaints about their undue influence seem foolish.  If “the Lobby” does not rule with absolute power over every decision made by the U.S. government, it must not exist, or its existence doesn’t matter!  Of course, we all know that oil interests, the Saudis and defense contractors, among others, have great influence in Washington as well.  These are, on the whole, not terribly desirable influences, and they deserve similar scrutiny.  Then again, no one is denounced as a neo-fascist for simply mentioning these other lobbies, and there is no immediate charge of conspiracy-mongering when someone argues that the goals of the “the Lobby” do not coincide with the interests of the United States.

Shultz says “those who blame Israel and its Jewish supporters for U.S. policies they do not support are wrong.”  That’s very interesting, except that this is not what Mearsheimer and Walt have done.  They are not “blaming,” they are analysing and trying to understand the rationale for what would otherwise be utterly irrational policies (e.g., the invasion of Iraq).  They do not single out or “blame” Israel’s Jewish supporters.  They state that there are many groups, including Christian evangelicals and the like, that advance what these groups believe are in Israel’s interests (which the groups also believe are in America’s interests), and they attribute to these groups significant influence in shaping policy in the Near East.  (If someone made the argument that “the Israel Lobby” significantly affects our Cuba policy, he would be rightly laughed out of the room.)  Hard as it is for many to understand the difference, understanding a phenomenon and imputing some evil to it are two very different things. 

At every stage, Mearsheimer and Walt have stated very clearly that they believe there is nothing “improper,” much less underhanded or malign about efforts to lobby on behalf of Israel.  They do believe these efforts are badly mistaken in the context of advancing U.S. national interests.  It is because the most ardent supporters of Israel in this country refuse to tolerate any questioning of U.S.-Israel relations or U.S. Near East policy that they refuse to have the debate over whether or not supporting Israel to the extent and in the manner that our government has done is actually serving the national interest.  Perhaps these supporters suspect that they would not win such a debate on the merits and so must continually throw out these outrageous charges against critics.  If that is the impression supporters of Israel would like to give, they should keep engaging in the same histrionics as they have done for months. 

A query: do those who deny the existence of “the Lobby” think that Christian evangelicals have much political influence on other issues?  If they do, why would that influence not be similarly significant when it is deployed on behalf of putatively pro-Israel policies?  Do they deny that many Christian evangelicals are rather intensely pro-Israel in sentiment?  If they do not deny it, what is so strange in arguing that there are groups and individuals that represent the interests of Christian evangelicals when it comes U.S. policy concerning Israel (the latest of which is Christians United for Israel)?  What if someone were to say that the policies advocated by these pro-Israel evangelicals, which tend to be on the militant and aggressive side, are contrary to the American national interest?  Would supporters of Israel simply deny the existence of their numerous allies?  No, they would have to explain why supporting the bombing of Lebanon serves American interests, which they cannot do.  They would have to explain how illegally settling land that does not belong to Israel serves American interests.  They would have to explain how subsidising and arming the Israeli armed forces serves American interests.  In other words, they would have to defend the policies they support on their merits, and this they have never been able and have scarcely tried to do.

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