Andrew Sullivan’s excellent sentence-by-sentence takedown of the Washington Post’s exceptionally tendentious editorial against Chuck Hagel today bears reading. Here’s a taste, with the Post quoted first followed by Sullivan’s comment.
On the contrary: Mr. Hagel’s stated positions on critical issues, ranging from defense spending to Iran, fall well to the left of those pursued by Mr. Obama [...]]]>
Andrew Sullivan’s excellent sentence-by-sentence takedown of the Washington Post’s exceptionally tendentious editorial against Chuck Hagel today bears reading. Here’s a taste, with the Post quoted first followed by Sullivan’s comment.
On the contrary: Mr. Hagel’s stated positions on critical issues, ranging from defense spending to Iran, fall well to the left of those pursued by Mr. Obama during his first term — and place him near the fringe of the Senate that would be asked to confirm him.
The left? This implies that all realism in foreign policy is an artifact of the left, whereas, of course, it has always been more at home on the right. But again: note the attempt to stigmatize rather than argue: “well to the left” and “fringe”. This is a hazing, not an argument.
The Post, which I think tends to be more slightly more liberal interventionist than neo-conservative (it can be critical — albeit not very — of Israel from time to time, and it occasionally even praises the UN, anathema to the neo-cons), has indeed become ever more enthusiastic about the exercise of U.S. military power overseas over the past few decades despite the Iraq disaster over which they have never suggested the slightest regret.
LobeLog alumnus, Ali Gharib, also takes some good shots at the Post over at Open Zion.
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Chairman Concerned Over Lack of U.S.-Iran Contact – Jim Garamone, American Forces Press Service
During a stop at the University of Miami yesterday, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen said that the lack of contact between the United States and Iran is troubling.“Even in the [...]]]>
Chairman Concerned Over Lack of U.S.-Iran Contact – Jim Garamone, American Forces Press Service
“Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, U.S. officials could still talk with the Soviets,” the admiral said. In the early 1960s, U.S. and Soviet leaders had the Hot Line that went straight from the White House to the Kremlin. The United States and Soviet Union had the two largest armories of nuclear weapons. Both nations had nuclear-armed forces on alert at all times.
A must-listen: Columbia SIPA Professor’s Gary Sick’s keynote speech at the London School of Economics on Iran and the Arab world
The Road Not Taken Toward Iran – Paul Pillar, The National Interest
U.S. in a Bind Over Palestine’s Bid for U.N. Recognition – Barbara Slavin, IPS News
Conflict in Israel?: A problematic speaking deal at The New York Times – Max Blumenthal, Columbia Journalism Review
In 2009, Bronner, who has run the bureau since March 2008, joined the speakers bureau of one of Israel’s top public relations firms, Lone Star Communications. Lone Star arranges speaking dates for Bronner and takes 10 to 15 percent of his fee. At the same time, Lone Star pitches Bronner stories.
Turkey, Egypt and Israel – Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Hawks Fret Over U.S. Withdrawal – Jim Lobe, IPS News
“In fact, with such small troop numbers, U.S. commanders would be forced to all but close shop,” concluded Boot, whose views have in the past reflected those of former Central Command chief and current Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, Gen. David Petraeus.
Sanctions and Iran’s Growing Economic Woes – NIAC Podcast
The Prescience Of Mearsheimer – Andrew Sullivan, The Dish (h/t Mondoweiss)
First, Rosner’s attempt to be coy and deny any ideological slant on his own part is unconvincing. No one except Rosner can tell us who he votes for, but anyone with any familiarity whatsoever with Rosner’s writing knows that he leans strongly to the right. Similarly, Rosner touts the fact that Smith cites three members of Kadima, the opposition party, as evidence that he is giving voice to Israeli doves. But of course, Kadima (the party founded in 2005 by Ariel Sharon) is “dovish” only in the most minimal sense of the word. To frame the entire debate as one between Kadima and Likud is to restrict it to a debate between the center-right and hard-right.
Rosner also notes that Smith has (quite generously, he implies) cited not one but two Palestinians in the article — in this case, PA negotiator Saeb Erekat and Ghaith al-Omari of the strongly establishmentarian American Task Force for Palestine. According to the count that Rosner himself gives, this makes two Palestinians as opposed to thirteen Israelis. Moreover, both Erekat and al-Omari are given only a couple brief sentences each, while various Israelis are given much more extended quotes. By my count, Palestinian voices account for 87 words of this 2663-word article — that is, less than 3%. Given that Palestinians make up around half of the population between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, this is simply inexcusable.
Most misleading of all is Rosner’s claim that Smith’s article simply states what everyone knows to be true — that Obama’s policies in Israel/Palestine have been a failure. I, for one, would not dispute this characterization, but Smith’s “view from the Middle East” gives the impression that people “in the region” feel that Obama has failed because he has pressed Israel too hard. In actuality, of course, virtually everyone in the region outside of Israel — not to mention virtually everywhere else in the world — feels that Obama has failed because he has been afraid to press Israel hard enough.
I would have no problem with Smith’s article if, instead of being titled “View from the Middle East,” it had been accurately titled “View from the Israeli Political Establishment.” As is, however, the article is deeply misleading, and Sullivan was right to call out its bias. Smith can be a good reporter, but he unfortunately seems to have internalized the Politico ethos that strives to conform as closely as possible to Washington conventional wisdom.
]]>Larison (with [...]]]>
Larison (with my emphasis):
The more interesting question is whether the U.S. is able to acknowledge that major and rising powers do not share its preoccupations and to adjust expectations of their cooperation with U.S. policy accordingly. Washington isn’t likely to abandon its fixation on Iran’s nuclear program, but it should give the administration some pause that it has just publicly endorsed permanent Security Council status for what is, in fact, one of the chief “rogue” nuclear states in the world. This is not a criticism of the administration’s engagement of India. On the contrary, the administration’s correct dealing with India stands as a rebuke to the administration’s Iran policy. Further, the favorable treatment shown to nuclear-armed India confirms that states that never join and flatly ignore the requirements of the NPT and go on to build and test nuclear weapons are not censured or isolated in the least. Instead, they are rewarded with good relations and high status. More to the point, if the administration had what it wanted and India were on the Security Council as a permanent member with veto powers, how much weaker would U.N. sanctions against Iran have had to be to satisfy India? Put another way, if India is ready to be considered such an acceptable and responsible power, what does Indian indifference to Iran’s nuclear program tell us about the rationality of our government’s obsessive hostility towards the same?
(Via Andrew Sullivan.)
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Yet AEI’s Danielle Pletka, that very same think-tank vice president, continues to confound expectations. In her latest post on AEI’s Enterprise Blog, she offers conspiracy theories that obliquely revive former AEI fellow David Frum‘s “Axis of Evil” phrasing, and backing them up with… not much. She ends with kicker designed to elicit fear, and links to an article that contradicts her whole point.
Pletka’s piece warns about the threat of a coalition between Russia, Iran and Venezuela. her headline quips: “Connect the Dots — But Don’t Call It an Axis of…” She’s perhaps acknowledging that Iraq’s membership in the first “Axis of Evil,” and the subsequent disastrous war, makes the term politically ill-advised.
It’s a short post — just eight sentences — and her point is that Russia is going to help Venezuela open a nuclear power plant and possibly sell Hugo Chavez the S-300 air defense missiles that Iran was due to purchase (but didn’t when Russia, under U.S. pressure, backed out of the reportedly $800 million deal).
In light of Venezuela’s ties to Iran, Pletka is worried all this is very suspect, and Venezuela might ship the air defense missiles to Iran. “One might reasonably suspect that any weaponry headed for Caracas could easily find its way to Tehran,” is her endnote.
But then she links to a September 14th Fox News story about how a weekly Caracas-Damascus-Tehran flight has actually been cancelled. The article, which cites an Iranian right-wing pseudonymous former CIA spy as a source, calls the flight path a “terror flight.”
It’s no wonder that one of Pletka’s former AEI researchers added his perspective on her scholarship to Andrew Sullivan’s Atlantic blog last year. The researcher’s job was “to provide specific evidence to support ready made assertions,” and describes Pletka’s work as the “academic equivalent of mad libs.” “The form is set by the neoconservative agenda, and she mobilizes a narrative that fills in the blanks to serve that agenda.”
Perhaps in her kicker, Pletka meant to demonstrate that such equipment has been “easily” transported before, at some previous time. Therefore, it can happen again. But that’s not what the link she supplied said: It said that there was a potential channel for equipment to move between Venezuela and Iran, but it’s been shut down.
It’s just like saying neoconservatives have before, at some previous time, led the country into a Middle East war with fuzzy facts and bellicose rhetoric. Unlike the “terror flight,” though, neocons are still at it.
]]>The real question is why the piece was published in the first place. I’ve written for Tablet before, and found the editors to be smart, thorough, and open-minded (as evidenced by their willingness to publish my piece in the first place). Reading Smith’s screed, I have to wonder how it made it through the publication process without anyone forcing him to provide some evidence for his claims.
More generally, it’s an interesting question why Smith has his gig at Tablet in the first place. I have no objection to the magazine airing neoconservative voices–they are a small minority in the American Jewish community, but an important one–but it is strange that the magazine would give its only weekly politics column to a neoconservative political operative who uses it exclusively as an echo chamber for talking points from Commentary and the Weekly Standard (where Smith also writes). I’ve gone through just about all of Smith’s Tablet columns, and virtually without fail they fall into one of two genres: there are hit pieces against whoever the neocons’ enemy of the week is (e.g. Trita Parsi, the Leveretts, and this latest article), and there are sycophantic puff pieces touting the wisdom of various Likudnik policymakers (e.g. Elliott Abrams, Michael Oren). Last week, he attempted a deeper think piece on Israel, Intellectuals, And The Fate Of Western Civilization, and it didn’t go too well–the kind of turgid pop philosophy that would be more at home in a college newspaper.
So why are we treated to Smith’s insights every week? Is it his good looks? His winning personality? A condition imposed by a funder? Regardless, his columns are jarringly out of place with the tenor of the rest of the magazine–and if his last couple are any indication, they’re only getting worse.
]]>It is clear from every sentence that Wieseltier writes that the man considers himself a Great Intellectual, and I am told that his writings from twenty years ago (and his book about his father’s death) are worth reading. I will have to take this on faith, because I certainly can’t remember ever reading anything particularly interesting by the man. His articles tend to be compendiums of liberal hawk cliches, made notable only by the fact that they are delivered in the most pompous prose style this side of the New Criterion. He tends to rely on superficial displays of erudition to draw attention away from the weaknesses of his argument; note the long and rather gratuitous disquisition on Auden that opens the Sullivan piece. And frankly, one wonders what would happen if others applied to his writing the remarkable oversensitivity he applies to Sullivan’s. Consider Wieseltier’s account of his celebration upon learning that Barack Obama had been elected president:
I woke up the next morning still under the spell of solidarity and love. I decided to make the spell last. I gave away my tickets to a performance of some late Shostakovich quartets, because for once I was not interested in the despair. Instead I spent the day listening to the Ebonys and the Chi-Lites and the Isley Brothers. For lunch I went to Georgia Brown’s for fried green tomatoes.
Of course, the fact that Wieseltier believes that the election of an African-American president calls for soul food rather than classical music does not make him a racist. Still, it is easy to imagine how he would react if he caught Sullivan (or anyone else) making a comparable statement about a Jewish politician.
I am less interested in what the whole affair says about Wieseltier, however, than in what it says about the changing politics of anti-Semitism.
As Greenwald notes, the reaction to Wieseltier’s attack demonstrates how badly the pro-Israel hardliners have overplayed their hand when it comes to allegations of anti-Semitism. For a long time, such accusations were a political death sentence for those on the receiving end of them. Even in recent years, they have remained damaging when directed at figures who were not known personally by many people in Washington journalistic circles (e.g. Walt and Mearsheimer, Chas Freeman).
However, the hardliners badly blundered by casually and frivolously leveling the anti-Semitism charge against people who were widely known — and widely known not to be anti-Semites — in Washington. Joe Klein, an anti-Semite? Andrew Sullivan, an anti-Semite? The obviously absurdity of these charges has caused many observers to go back and reevaluate the entire way that the charge has been used in the past — and has only confirmed the impression that it is all-too-frequently used to stifle all dissent from Israeli policies.
The result is that the tacit framework governing “responsible” criticism of Israel is breaking down. For members of what we might call the liberal wing of the New Republic crowd (as opposed to the outright neocons who also populate its pages), some mild criticism of Israel is permitted so long as it is strictly confined within narrow limits. One may allude to unidentified “mistakes” made during the Gaza war, but not suggest that these constituted war crimes. One may offer tepid support for the hypothetical goal of ending settlement construction, but not offer clear-cut support for the Obama administration when it actually tries to implement this goal. One may criticize the occupation as imprudent, but not condemn it as immoral; one may argue against it on the grounds that it is bad for Israel, but not on the grounds that it is bad for the Palestinians.
Above all, any such criticism must be uttered only by Jews, and even Jews must display their Zionist credentials at all times while doing so. In this way, criticism of Israel is permitted only provided it be so emasculated that it is guaranteed to be ineffectual.
Wieseltier’s attack on Sullivan appears motivated not by any actual belief that the latter is an anti-Semite, but by rage that he has violated these tacit rules — that a gentile dares offer unapologetic criticism of Israeli policies. More than that, we can detect in Wieseltier’s piece a deep sense of panic that this framework of “responsible” criticism is breaking down. The attack is quite obviously an attempt to intimidate Sullivan into ceasing all criticism; I join many others in hoping that Sullivan sticks to his guns.
Finally, it’s worth noting how radically the debate about the role of the Israel lobby (or Likud lobby, or status quo lobby, or whatever one wishes to call it) has shifted in recent years. For proof, see the New Republic‘s Jonathan Chait, in a post titled “Andrew Sullivan Is Not An Anti-Semite”. While Chait’s views on these issues are certainly to the right of mine, he is smart and generally reasonable in his views; for that reason, he frequently ends up engaging in damage control for his intemperate bosses. His discussion of the politics of the Israel lobby is interesting:
Leon agrees that the pro-Israel lobby wields significant power in U.S. policymaking, and determining this level of power is also a legitimate topic of inquiry. At one point on the spectrum of thought you have what Leon and I would consider a realistic assessment of the power of the Israel lobby. As you move further along the spectrum, you eventually approach Osama bin Laden’s view of the power of the Israel lobby. Clearly, bin Laden qualifies as an anti-Semite. But the judgment can’t be that as soon as you go just a little further along the line from my view, then you’re an anti-Semite. There has to be some room on this question to be merely wrong — to harbor an exaggerated view of the power of the Israel lobby without being an anti-Semite. Otherwise debate becomes impossible.
This echoes an earlier point that Chait made in the wake of the Chas Freeman affair (in which he was one of Freeman’s chief antagonists):
Of course I recognize that the Israel lobby is powerful, and was a key element in the pushback against Freeman, and that it is not always a force for good. I just don’t ascribe to it the singular, Manichean, different-category-than-any-other-lobby status that its more fevered critics imagine.
Similarly, the Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg (another exemplar of the “TNR liberal” type described above) wrote a 2008 New York Times op-ed in which he endorsed the bulk of the Mearsheimer/Walt thesis — while insisting, of course, that his views bore no resemblance at all to theirs.
Thus we can see how deeply discussion of the Israel lobby has shifted. The TNR liberals now insist that of course the Israel lobby is extremely powerful, and of course it exerts an influence on U.S. foreign policy that is frequently (or even generally) pernicious. To conceal the fact that they are conceding the truth of the basic Israel lobby thesis, they tend to contrast their views with some caricatured position that they attribute to Mearsheimer and Walt (the Israel lobby is the only interest group with any influence in Washington, The Jews call all the shots in U.S. foreign policy, or something to that effect). Of course, only a few years ago many of the same parties alleged that it was an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory even to claim that there is such a thing as an “Israel lobby” and that it exerts a powerful (although not all-powerful) influence on U.S. foreign policy. However, they seem to expect the public to forget all this.
In short, the Wieseltier-Sullivan affair demonstrates that things are changing in Washington. And, I might add, not a moment too soon.
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