Dan does not quote the part where Milbank refers to Mearsheimer and Walt as "two blue-eyed men with Germanic surnames." Aside from its inaccuracy (Mearsheimer has brown eyes), this is a repulsive insinuation. If the authors of this piece were named Hernandez and Lopez, would Milbank have made a note of the ethnic origins of their last names? Doubtful. Instead, Milbank is essentially insinuating that Mearsheimer and Walt are Nazis, which is demonstrably false (see Mearsheimer and Walt's efforts in the 1990's to prevent a Nazi-sympathizer from joining the University of Chicago faculty).

I'd also encourage anybody to watch the video of the event on which Milbank is reporting. It's available for all to see on the c-span website. As you're watching, remember that Milbank's article was supposed to be a piece of journalism, not fiction. Milbank's piece is a pure hatchet job and a not very good one at that. Mearsheimer and Walt deserve much, much, much criticism, but Milbank's piece sets the debate back, not forward.

...Mearsheimer and Walt badly defined their independent variable, miscoded one alternative explanation, omitted several other causal variables, poorly operationalized their dependent variable...

Sorry, No Hablo English! Or please, somebody explain it to me. Gracias Seņor.

I think the recent Lebanon debacle by US and Israel has only strenghtned Walt-Mearsheimer conjecture. It is high time for US to revisit its middle east strategy.

This kind of snottiness is all Dana Milbank knows how to do. Just watch him anytime he goes on Olbermann's show. The two of them going back and forth just makes you nauseous.

That doesn't change my opinion that the M/W piece is wrong.

The part at the end about M&W going to give an interview to Al Jazeera is what disturbed me the most. It is common knowledge that Al Jazeera is a propaganda arm for Islamic fundamentalism. One only needs to go through their reporting from Iraq, in which they've made up countless stories about "innocent civilians" killed.

As a former student of Mearsheimer's this is what disappoints me the most. I have always disagreed with his argument, but also always defended him against the chanrges of anti-semitism. Pandering to the propaganda arm of the Islamists, however, is going to far.

And it's not just the Al Jazeera thing. M&W should have realized that sticking to their thesis did not automatically require that they had to peddle it to our enemy and those who tacitly support our enemy. In the search for a friendly audience, M&W jumped feet first into morally questionable waters.

In response to the previous anonymous, this is why it is, I think, very important to, as they say, "Go to the videotape." Watch the event and then read Milbank's disingenuous account. What Milbank doesn't mention about the Walt/Mearsheimer event:

(1) Neither Walt nor Mearsheimer absolved Palestinians or radical Islamists for blame in the problems in the Middle East. In fact, they spread blame among all parties.

(2) Both Walt and Mearsheimer make it clear, repeatedly, that they do not hold Israel or the Israel lobby solely responsible for the war in Iraq. As Walt says at least twice, "The lobby was a necessary, but not sufficient, cause of the war." You can disagree with that argument, but it is vastly different that how Milbank portrays the event.

(3) Milbank makes the event sound like it was some sort of rabble-rousing pep rally. If you watch the event, it looks remarkably like most things you'll see on C-SPAN: often slow and boring.

(4) And, finally, the C-SPAN video trickles over after the event formally ends. Milbank writes, "When the two professors finished, they were besieged by autograph- and photo-seekers and Arab television correspondents." Again, let's go to the videotape. Sure, like any event, there were people going up to Mearsheimer and Walt after the event to ask question and the like, but "besieged?" Hardly. Milbank makes it sound like they were mobbed like rock stars. I defy anybody to watch the video and maintain that that is an accurate portrayal.

Milbank's piece is really hack journalism at its worst. The Post ought to be embarrassed.

Given Mearsheimer's solid, northeast, working class accent, Millbank's insulting transliteration strikes me as snobbery.

The way I see it, yhr Neocons are using Israel, because you need an Israel to be there for Armmagehdon (sp?). So when Israelis or Jewish people see support for Israel, what they don't see is that they are a tool. Neocons aren't afraid of chaos of suffering anywhere in the Levant, because its part of the story.
Jewish peole are being used. In the end ( the neocon ending), the Jews don't even get into Heaven.
Used, abused, then thrown away. That's the neocon Jewish plan.

Do we really need anyone to tell us that we have a problem with Israeli lobby influence?

I'm with Dan: kernel of a good thesis, shoddy follow through. And I agree that this debate is already so polarized that it can't even be had right now with the Walt-Mearsheimer piece as its core.

Four years ago, Michael Lind wrote much the same piece in Prospect. (Sub-headline: "America's unconditional support for Israel runs counter to the interests of the US and its allies. We need an open, unprejudiced debate about it.") For some reason, Lind wasn't subject to the same level of attacks. But nor did he really get people talking frankly about this.

Look, anybody with a brain cell knows that Israel and its Jewish-American cousins have a powerful lobby. The Arab side has no equivalent in politicaly lobbying (though it has rather fully captured academia). AIPAC gets results.

The empirical question left unanswered by Walt-Mearsheimer is "How powerful? What outcomes has the lobby achieved that wouldn't have been achieved without it?" A hard-working graduate student who doesn't care about having a future career: get on it!

The analytical question left unanswered (because we need the answer to 1 first) is: "How much do the lobby's successes hurt American foreign policy?" Choose your theoretical framework for what American policy should be, and go with it, yet another hard-working grad student who doesn't mind waiting 100 years for the answer to question 1 and then still having no career.

The moral question, number 3, is "Is Israel a badly-behaved state, and if so how badly, and how much does America's alliance implicate America as well?" For a rational debate on this question, we will have to wait for the afterlife, I'm afraid. No question seems so polarizing in all of foreign affairs.

In the current _Foreign Policy_, there is another exchange of letters betwixt the editors and readers re: Mear-Walt, with the customary Mear-Walt response at the end. For my money, the best letter is the one that asks -- none-too-subtly -- why a couple of self-proclaimed Realists are even bothering with an argument about the influence of a domestic interest group, sullying themselves with the dread second level-of-analysis.

Their half-baked and all-too-predictable response: Realism doesn't explain _everything_, and anyway this proves what Realism has said all along, that statesmen ought to ignore special interests.

When in doubt, whip circularity out....

"Look, anybody with a brain cell knows that Israel and its Jewish-American cousins have a powerful lobby. The Arab side has no equivalent in politicaly lobbying (though it has rather fully captured academia). AIPAC gets results."

OPEC?

It's amusing that Millbank should doubt M&W's critique of the Israel Lobby, when he wrote an article entitled, "AIPAC"s Big, Bigger, Biggest Moment" in the Washington Post on May 25, 2005 (tip to Steve Sailer)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/23/AR2005052301565.html

From a description of Millbank on the Post website:

"Before coming to the Post as a Style political writer in 2000, he covered the Clinton White House for the New Republic and Congress for the Wall Street Journal."

Hmm.... Style, yes. But substance???

And if he want's to get into the significance of names - every Dana I've know was a girl.

In response to Anon, above: "It is common knowledge that Al Jazeera is a propaganda arm for Islamic fundamentalism. One only needs to go through their reporting from Iraq, in which they've made up countless stories about "innocent civilians" killed."

Exactly whose "common knowledge" is this? Al-Jazeera is a highly reputable news source in the Middle East. It's biases are no more pronounced than those of American networks. While the overall editorial slant may oppose US policies, saying that the network is a mouthpiece for fundamentalism is simply wrong. As for the accusation that they invent stories about civilians being killed in Iraq; why bother, when there are so many real incidents they could be reporting? Next time, Anon, try reading a source before you critique it.

Speaking as an uninformed average American, my perception of the Middle East is that it is split into the Israelis, who are the last Westerners with balls (well, maybe the Australians), and the Arabs, who are a collection of raving lunatics. I'm pretty sure my opinion is reasonably middle-of-the road.

For the purposes of this post, its not terribly important whether I'm right (what's important is whether that perception is roughly middle-of-the road). What I don't understand from this post, though is why do you believe that an 'Israeli lobby' is shaping Washington policy? In other words, if the mass of Americans see the Middle East as I do, and because America is a (admittedly a sloppy, inefficient) democracy, and those 300 million elect representatives that sloppily and inefficently represent them, why in the world would you think a few lobbyists in Washington shape the attitudes of 300 million people, and their 535 representatives?

Why not apply Occam's Razor, and think to yourselves that those 300 million people (who elect their 535 representatives) perceive the Middle East and support Israel. Do they do so because there's a lobby in Washington that spends XX dollars, or because of what Israel and the Arabs do and say?

Why be a conspiracy theorist about it?

Steve

It was in 1984 wasn't it: We don't have to defeat them, just change their minds. Who owns the Washington Post (Time & Slate), the New York Times, Newsweek, US News & World Report, the New Republic to name just a few? Who's controlling the message on the Middle East? Who decides what editorials are written and what Letters to the Editor get published? Who decides who's an anti-semite?

Where's the lively debate in Congress on the most pressing issue of our time? Where's the debate in the newspapers?

Why, in this great democracy of ours, does criticism, however strident, have to be sent out of the country to be published?

What a disgrace this all is. And mark my word: all of this is going to blow up in the Jewish community's face in America. A mere sixty years after the Holocaust and Dershowitz and Abraham Foxman are shamelessly tarring and feathering critics of Israel.

I loved the M/W article and tell everyone that I know to read it. And if M/W talk to Muslim groups, good for them. These guys are scholars and patriots of the first order. I look forward to hearing more from them.

"Why be a conspiracy theorist about it?"

No one is being a conspiracy theorist - one is focusing on the attempts of lobbying groups. It is no different than focusing on the lobbying efforts of AARP on behalf of seniors, the efforts of groups lobbying on behalf of Saudi Arabia, or the NRA lobbying on behalf of gunowners. What M&W are arguing is that the lobbying done on behalf of Israel distorts American foreign policy, just as our policy in regards to Cuba is largely written and drafted in Miami.

"just as our policy in regards to Cuba is largely written and drafted in Miami."

Really. I always thought US feelings towards Castro had something to do with it. Same question: the obvious answer is CASTRO. Why not accept the obvious answer? Why be a conspiracy theorist about it?

"Who owns the Washington Post (Time & Slate), the New York Times, Newsweek, US News & World Report, the New Republic to name just a few? Who's controlling the message on the Middle East? Who decides what editorials are written and what Letters to the Editor get published? Who decides who's an anti-semite?"

It's not an Israeli lobby in Washington for any of these questions (except perhaps the last). This argument- Jews control the media, which controls the perception- makes sense, whether its right or not. But the original argument-Jews give money to congress, which somehow controls the perception-doesn't make any sense.

If you want to change US attitudes towards the Middle East, simply start publicizing Israeli calls for the extermination of Muslims, and publicize the Israeli suicide bombings of Muslim pizza parlors and city buses. Its apparently all happening, but being suppressed by the Washington Post.

Steve

Aipac is powerful...the Indians aim to have a similar organisation within a decade but the real ballot box power comes from "good ole, end times, born again evangelical types who REALLY...REALLY WANT JESUS TO COME....AND SOON!

Anyone that talks to one of the worlds 1.2billion muslims who is not a ruler of an opec nation, MUST hate america/jews.

" the Israeli suicide bombings of Muslim pizza parlors and city buses"

Uh, Steve - 200 Palestinians have been killed in the past month, not by suicide bombers, but American supplied fighter jets and Israeli tanks. Not to mention the 900 Lebanese killed with American-supplied cluster bombs. Think about - Israel was dropping so many bombs on Lebanon, they ran out and Dubya had to resupply them, while the bombing was still going on. You don't need suicide bombers when you have a pipeline to American armaments.

Just because someone is paraniod does not mean nobody is out to get them.

"Really. I always thought US feelings towards Castro had something to do with it. Same question: the obvious answer is CASTRO. Why not accept the obvious answer? Why be a conspiracy theorist about it?"

Again - lobbying is not conspiracy. Castro is an aging dictator, that although he is not very kind to his own people, is no threat to the U.S. So, why the same failed policy for 50 years? Lobbying and votes. Nothing insidious about it - just demonstrates the distorted effect of having a national policy drafted by one interest group.

It is no different than focusing on the lobbying efforts of AARP on behalf of seniors, the efforts of groups lobbying on behalf of Saudi Arabia, or the NRA lobbying on behalf of gunowners.

KXB, there is a fundamental difference between the AARP, which lobbies on the behalf of old Americans, the NRA, which lobbies on the behalf of gun-owning Americans, and an organization that lobbies on the behalf of a foreign government.

I have no problem whatsoever with organizations lobbying politicans on the behalf of people who can legally vote in our elections.

I have a big problem with organizations lobbying our politicans on the behalf of people who can not legally vote in our elections. The people those groups should be talking to is the State Department.

With that said-

If you want to change US attitudes towards the Middle East, simply start publicizing Israeli calls for the extermination of Muslims, and publicize the Israeli suicide bombings of Muslim pizza parlors and city buses. Its apparently all happening, but being suppressed by the Washington Post.
-Steve

...the guy has a point. My impression, based on talking to numerous Americans about the matter, is that most Americans are pretty ambivalent on Israel as such, but are fairly sure that the Palestinians are Not Nice People At All.

People who wonder why the US is pro-israel are asking the wrong question.

A better question would be "What can palestinians do to convince Americans that they're the kind of country we wouldn't mind having as a neighbor?".

Rosignol:

I do not have a problem with groups lobbying on Israel's behalf, but I do take issue when they conflate the interests of just one political faction within Israel to be the interests of the entire U.S. Israeli politics is a bare-knuckled affair, so the idea that groups like AIPAC can say there is one Israeli opinion on how to handle security does not square with reality.

As for whether Palestinians make good neighbors, they can, provided you do not completely control their border crossings, airspace, sea access, and reserve the right to bomb a city block in pursuit of one man.

In Chicago, there is a fairly sizable Palestinian population, and as far as Arab communities go, are probably second only to Lebanese in their laid back attitude to religion, or enjoying a drink when their mother is not around. They had a reputation for being the most commercially minded of Arab communities.

But whether they would be nice neighbors matters little in U.S. policy. The Communist Party of China, Vladimir Putin, and the Saudi royal family are all unpleasant characters - but we still do business with them. That Israel cannot get along with the Palestinians should be of secondary concern in American policy.

The moral question, number 3, is "Is Israel a badly-behaved state, and if so how badly, and how much does America's alliance implicate America as well?" For a rational debate on this question, we will have to wait for the afterlife, I'm afraid. No question seems so polarizing in all of foreign affairs.

I think that could be stated better.

There is no oquestion that israel is a very, very badly-behaved state.

The moral question is whether they are justified in what they do. They have enemies who don't want to allow them sufficient lebensraum. They are heavily outnumbered. Most of the world is against them, apart from america they have no one who would stand up for them, without our intervention they would be close to being at war with the rest of the world. If they didn't take extreme measures against the enemies within their borders, there is no question they would be destroyed.

It can be argued that they have no choice, and that this is all the justification they need.

Alternatively, we could argue that they are not after all justified and that our assistance to them should be somewhat reduced; and we might look for ways to instead assist innocents of all sorts to leave the area before it's too late.

The question about the USA holding suspected criminals without trial, habeas corpus, right to avoid cruel or unusual interrogation techniques, etc is not whether we're doing all that stuff. The question is whether we're justified in doing it. Similarly, the moral question about israel is not whether they're doing terrible things. It's whether they are right to do terrible things, under the circumstances.

They have enemies who don't want to allow them sufficient lebensraum.

Interesting choice of words.

Thank you for making it clear that discussing this issue with you is a waste of time.

There is, however, one think I am curious about: exactly who do you think invaded who back in 1948?

Ah, Rosignol, you're hardly the one to decide who's a waste of time to discuss things with.

So just in case you can be worth discussion things with just this once, tell us, is my claim about the moral issue here wrong? If so, what did I miss?