House Foreign Affairs chief Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) was wondering about the “nefarious ends” of some “elements” there, and Jeffrey Goldberg, who, with shifting views, expressed apprehension about the Muslim Brotherhood (giving space to FDD’s Reuel Marc Gerecht, who [...]]]>
House Foreign Affairs chief Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) was wondering about the “nefarious ends” of some “elements” there, and Jeffrey Goldberg, who, with shifting views, expressed apprehension about the Muslim Brotherhood (giving space to FDD’s Reuel Marc Gerecht, who seems open to Islamism, apparently, and Eli Lake, who doesn’t think Egypt’s peace deal with Israel will collapse).
Goldberg, to his credit, is asking big questions. And one of the biggest right now is about Islamism, and it’s role in the future of the Middle East. It’s playing out most acutely today in Tunisia and Egypt, but has been simmering all over the region, from Gaza to Qom.
Opinion makers in the U.S. seem to be divided along the lines that define what M.J. Rosenberg has called the “status quo lobby” (SQL), those whose actions — or key inactions — have thwarted a robust role for the U.S. in Middle East peacemaking. Goldberg and Ros-Lehtinen fit the paradigm: Both unflinching SQLers, they wear their hesitance for the long-awaited Arab democratic uprising on their sleeves.
The tepid support for Egyptians is about fear of Islamists, and no totalitarian strain, but one that has transitioned to seeking democratic legitimacy and inclusion. Yet events unfold in Egypt that drown out that narrative of what Phil Weiss, in an eloquent, must-read essay, called the “false choice of secular dictator-or-crazy Islamists.”
A bearded, angry young Arab shouted into a camera that “whether you’re Muslim, whether you’re a Christian, whether you’re an atheist, you will demand your goddamn rights.” Police held their fire, and protesters their stones, to break for prayers. On Twitter, Marc Lynch, a professor at George Washington University, wrote that a key day of demonstrations went forward even without the internet because people already knew where to meet up: “[O]n Friday everybody knew mosques would be focal points, didn’t need to coordinate.”
But the “false choice” clings to life among adherents of the SQL, where it is considered infallible wisdom.
The New York Times gave us a pretty even handed account a few weeks back about Tunisia’s relatively moderate Islamist party, then hauled out WINEP‘s Martin Kramer to unthinkingly denounce Islamism. (The Times also carried a pro-inclusion analyst.) Kramer, you see, hasn’t honestly answered or asked this question for decades.
Even Ben Birnbaum, a young reporter with the right-wing Washington Times, where he works with Lake, was asking himself some serious questions, too, on Twitter:
Do my mixed feelings about democracy in #Egypt make me a bad person? #Jan25
You get the feeling that Steve Coll had just the SQL in mind when he wrote, in the New Yorker, that the Tunisian Islamist party — the one that’s cool with “tourists sipping French wine in their bikinis” – is “raising anxieties in some quarters.”
In other quarters, however, questions are being asked. Take Coll himself:
[T]he corrosive effects of political and economic exclusion in the region cannot be sustained—among them the legions of pent-up, angry young men, Islamist and otherwise.
Yes, he calls for Obama to “thwart” Islamists in Tunisia. But the New Yorker‘s Comment is a column that important people read, and they’re reading about important questions.
]]>But I’ve just stumbled upon something long overlooked that raises an even stronger case for the need to assess Ross’ closeness to the neoconservative movement — a group that has led U.S. foreign policy into so many disastrous undertakings, and that stands as the ideological driving force behind the dishonest campaign for war with Iraq and Iran. Now we have to ask: Just how close is Dennis Ross to the neoconservative movement?
According to the journal’s website, Ross, as he sits today in Barack Obama’s National Security Council, is a member of the board of editors of the neoconservative Middle East Quarterly. The Journal, whose editors have included AEI‘s Michael Rubin, Martin Kramer, and Efraim Karsh, is published by arch-hardliner Daniel Pipes; the journal is run out of his Middle East Forum think tank.
According to The Internet Archive’s “Way Back Machine,” which takes snapshots of webpages over time, Ross’ listing on the board of editors started sometime between July 2 and July 12, 2006. By the latter date, Ross’ affiliation is recorded as the Washington Institute for Near East Studies (WINEP), the AIPAC-formed think tank that he played a part in setting up, where he was a scholar. As of April 2008, Ross was still listed at MEQ with the WINEP affiliation.
Along with his membership on the board of the Jewish People’s Policy Institute (JPPI), a Jerusalem think tank, Ross gave up the WINEP gig when he moved to the administration.
But, as of today, he is still listed among the board of editors of MEQ. Interestingly, his affiliation has changed. Ross is now simply listed as:
Dennis Ross
Washington, D.C.
That change suggests that the site has been updated since Ross left WINEP — a departure that coincided with the formal announcement of Ross’ appointment to the Obama administration. This raises the question of why Ross is continuing his institutional affiliation with a bastion of aggressive neoconservatism such as MEQ while serving as a top administration adviser on the Middle East.
On a Middle East Forum blog, Ross’ battles within the administration have been covered by former AIPAC’s administration relations director Steve Rosen, who has never acknowledged the ties between the Forum and the Quarterly or Ross’ role in the latter.
As far as I can tell, flipping through the journal and Middle East Forum’s archives, Ross doesn’t seem to ever have contributed to either, though he was interviewed for MEQ by Pipes and Ross’s former WINEP and (apparently) current MEQ colleague Patrick Clawson.
On the board of editors of MEQ, Ross is joined by Karsh, the editor; Pipes, the publisher; Rubin and Clawson, both senior editors; James Phillips, a fellow at the neoconservative Heritage Foundation; journalist and Hudson Institute fellow Lee Smith; and WINEP executive director Robert Satloff.
As of late Friday afternoon, the NSC and MEQ, both asked for comment, haven’t yet responded. I’ve asked if Ross is paid, and what his responsibilities are or have been. When they respond, I’ll update.
Ross was out of the country today, in Israel, trying to restart peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Iran — also in Ross’s portfolio — met with the P5+1, including the U.S., in Turkey.
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