by Jim Lobe and Eli Clifton
Following on David’s post about Sheldon Adelson’s nuclear strategy for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, it might be useful to recall some of the casino magnate’s favorite Israel-related organizational beneficiaries. Perhaps they should be asked if they, too, believe that Tehran and its [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe and Eli Clifton
Following on David’s post about Sheldon Adelson’s nuclear strategy for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, it might be useful to recall some of the casino magnate’s favorite Israel-related organizational beneficiaries. Perhaps they should be asked if they, too, believe that Tehran and its inhabitants should be nuked if Iran doesn’t bow to the demands of Bibi Netanyahu (another beneficiary of Adelson’s largesse) after a demonstration bombing in the middle of some Iranian desert. Eli has compiled a list of recent contributions by both the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Charitable Trust, the Adelson Family Foundation, Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Charitable Trust,and Sheldon Adelson himself, based on U.S. government tax records. While these two channels may not be the only ones Adelson uses to supply funding for his favored organizations, they are the most transparent.
It turns out that the biggest beneficiary over the last six or seven years has been the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which has received a total of $1.704 million, followed closely by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), at $1.510 million between 2008 and 2011.
Next on the list is the American Israel Education Fund, the arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that sponsors tours for U.S. lawmakers and other influential elites to Israel. It received $1.048 million in 2007.
Two organizations received $1 million each: the One Jerusalem Charitable and Educational Fund in 2007, and the Friends of Israel Initiative, which was founded in 2010, is headed by former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, and did almost nothing, so far as I can tell, in 2012. John Bolton, however, is one of its charter members.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) received $530,000 between 2001 and 2007, while the Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI) received $500,000 between 2007 and 2012, according to the tax records.
Close behind was the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), which received $400,000 during that same period of time.
Lesser beneficiaries included the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America ($321,000 in 2007-08); the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces ($236,000 between 2007 and 2012); and the American Islamic Congress ($195,500) in 2008-09. These channels also provided token amounts to Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), and the American Friends of UN Watch.
(A spreadsheet detailing all of these grants can be viewed here.)
Again, given the fact that Adelson spent at least $98 million on the 2012 election cycle, and given his oft-stated devotion to Israel, I suspect this represents a fraction of his actual pro-Israel-related philanthropy. But we do know that he has given significant amounts of funding to these groups whose leaders will hopefully clarify whether they share Adelson’s rejection of sincere negotiations with Iran and his possibly genocidal strategy for dealing with its nuclear program.
]]>In recent weeks, a few incidents have begun to raise questions about the vaunted power of the so-called “Israel Lobby” and whether its influence might be waning. First there were the AIPAC-backed congressional bills that sought to level sanctions on the Palestinian Authority to punish it for having gone to the [...]]]>
In recent weeks, a few incidents have begun to raise questions about the vaunted power of the so-called “Israel Lobby” and whether its influence might be waning. First there were the AIPAC-backed congressional bills that sought to level sanctions on the Palestinian Authority to punish it for having gone to the United Nations in seeking and winning an upgrade in their status to one that implied statehood and granted it a few more rights in the international system. Those bills both died before reaching the floors of the Senate and House of Representatives. More recently, there was the row over Chuck Hagel’s nomination as Secretary of Defense. That nomination went forward and it has since become evident that, despite some disparaging comments from a few Senators, Hagel is likely to be confirmed.
Those aren’t small failures for “the Lobby”, but the circumstances around them should be examined to put them in context. The two events do indicate the potential beginnings of a shift in the discourse around US policy in the Middle East, but it’s important not to make more out of this than there is.
On the matter of punishing the PA, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency mused on the significance of the fact that AIPAC found itself opposed by the Reform movement, the largest American Jewish denomination, led by the Union for Reform Judaism. This was unusual, not because more liberal Jewish organizations might disagree with AIPAC, but because they would actually advocate an opposing position in public. This supports the notion that the new “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying group, J Street, has indeed opened up some space for discussion within the pivotal Jewish community about how the US might respond to events between Israel and the Palestinians.
This shouldn’t be exaggerated, however. J Street, for one thing, has also put itself into a position of redefining the boundaries of acceptable discourse, not necessarily opening it up. This was evidenced last year when J Street made clear its opposition to Christian groups taking any action that might put a small amount of pressure on the Netanyahu government to change its obstructionist stances. First there was J Street’s opposition to a Presbyterian initiative to divest from the occupation (carefully worded to avoid divestment from or boycott of Israel itself) and later its condemnation of a letter from church leaders calling for a review of whether US military aid to Israel was being used to support settlements and occupation and therefore violated US law.
This latest episode, while demonstrating that J Street has had impact in somewhat moving the boundaries of discourse, was not about policy, but about tactics. On one hand, AIPAC pushed for punitive measures to address what Israel saw as a grievance. On the other, the Reform movement took up the J Street line, which said that the proposed punishment would undermine Israeli interests. None of this challenges policy; it merely reflects a disagreement about how best to serve Israel’s interests.
On the Hagel nomination, AIPAC’s silence was deafening from the start. The opposition was led entirely by radical neoconservatives like Elliott Abrams, Bill Kristol and, organizationally by the demonstrably marginal Emergency Committee for Israel. Still, more mainstream Jewish leaders like Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League and David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, as well as leading Senate Republicans Mitch McConnell, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, expressed opposition to Hagel’s nomination.
But AIPAC understood that this was not a winning fight from the beginning and stayed out of it, at least in terms of the public arena. Leading Jewish Democrats also stayed silent or expressed support for Hagel. J Street supported Hagel, which was only natural since Hagel had spoken at one of their conferences, and the Israeli government, still reeling from backing the wrong horse in the presidential election, made it clear they were not going to oppose him.
AIPAC is really good at what it does. One of its chief skills has always been avoiding fights it won’t certainly win. It never intended to get into a fight over Hagel, so it left the fight to extremist groups like the ECI. But do these two incidents show that the Lobby is losing its grip?
I would emphasize the extent to which the Lobby operates on fear. I don’t mean to suggest that it doesn’t wield real power, it does. But that power is greatly magnified by two factors: the lack of an opposing force and an exaggerated belief in the extent of that power.
We are starting to see the waning of the Lobby’s power. Some of this is due to J Street in a small way, but in the end they will be replacing one problem with another if they succeed, as explained above. But the fact that there is a much greater light shining on the Lobby helps put their real power in perspective. It started with Stephen Walt’s and John Mearsheimer’s groundbreaking work, and has continued to the point where we now see columnists ranging from Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan to Thomas Friedman openly discussing the lobby’s power.
I will use the dreaded word anti-Semitism here, because it has long been my view that, while outside observers gauge the Lobby’s power by the extent to which it has influenced US policy (an accurate measure), on the Hill, a lot of the belief in the Lobby’s power is a self-fulfilling prophecy that is based only in varying degrees on the Lobby’s actual successes and mostly on a long-held myth and belief that “the Jews” hold far more power than they do, as has been the case for centuries.
The Lobby possesses real power, but that power has taken on an almost mythical status. That’s partly because of a near absence of a counter to the Lobby. J Street and a few other groups are finally starting to create that, but it remains minimal for now. The lobby’s main focus is also foreign policy, which is rarely high on a Congress member’s list of priorities when he or she thinks about re-election. They would rather focus on domestic initiatives that actually matter to their voters than take on the Lobby. But it is also true that the Lobby’s past successes scare people more than they should. Few Jews, much less any other group of US citizens, cast their votes based on Israel, one way or the other.
The myth of exaggerated Jewish power, rooted in classical anti-Semitism, is also starting to be revealed for the sham it is. Yes, Jews make up a vastly disproportionate piece of the Democratic donor base, but consider this: in the 2012 election cycle, pro-Israel PACs contributed a total of just over $12 million. Of that money, a little more than $1 million came from J Street’s PAC. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama split about $1.43 million just about evenly. Between the two of them, they spent over $1.1 billion. Yes, individual Jewish donors give quite a bit, but poll after poll shows that Jews don’t vote based on Israel. A few major individual donors might give on this basis (Sheldon Adelson on the Republican side, Haim Saban for the Democrats), but this by itself cannot explain the slavish devotion shown in Washington to Israel. What can explain it is the prevailing myth that Jews and Jewish money are fully tied to Israel policy and are a pivotal pot of gold in election cycles. This anti-Semitic myth has been, ironically, perpetuated by virtually every major Jewish organization with AIPAC in the lead. Whether it’s true or not, the belief that it’s true has made it so.
But as this myth is revealed to be the smoke and mirrors that it is, so too are some of the effects of the Lobby’s history in elections blunted. And as more critical narratives across a broad spectrum of media arise, so too is the Lobby’s real power affected. We’re still missing an actual c4 lobby that can raise significant funds and advocate for Palestinian interests (as opposed to “peace,” two states or peace for Israel’s sake — that is, a lobby which, like the Israel Lobby, advocates for Palestinian interests alone). But existing factors are indeed changing the game. Too slowly, for sure, and these are all gains that can be wiped out and even reversed in a very short time. But it’s the first time since 1987 that I can recall seeing the Lobby’s influence taking a step back.
Slowly but surely, debate over US policy in the Middle East is starting to open up, and the machinations of AIPAC and the Lobby are being revealed, making it more difficult for it to operate. As a US Jew, I am also gratified to see that the exaggerated perception of Jewish power is beginning to wane. These are small steps and don’t indicate that things are going to change profoundly any time soon. But they are seeds for a more rational US policy and that gives me hope.
]]>During their meeting, timed to coincide with the AIPAC confab, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu presented President Obama with a copy of the Book of Esther. As Nathan Guttman noted in The Forward:
Benjamin Netanyahu’s gift to Barack Obama summed up his message at their White House meeting Monday. The Israeli Prime Minister gave the President a copy of he Book of Esther, which tells the story of the Jews fighting back against a genocidal plot by the ancient Persians. Netanyahu sees the nuclear threat posed by modern-day Iran as no less existential to Israel…
As the biblical novella recounts the tale, a Jewish young woman by the name of Esther is taken into the harem of the Persian King Ahasuerus during a roundup of pretty young virgins, after the uppity Queen Vashti is deposed for defying her husband. Esther keeps her Jewish identity secret for five years until Haman, now the king’s vizier, becomes enraged when Mordecai, Esther’s uncle/cousin (depending on the translator), won’t bow to him. Haman persuades the king to allow him to organize the mass extermination of the Jews of Persia on grounds that they refuse to observe the king’s law. Ahasuerus gives Haman his signet ring, to use as he wishes in promulgating edicts.
Urged by Mordecai to intervene, Esther risks her life by going before the king without having been summoned and inviting him and Haman to two sequential banquets. At the second banquet, Esther reveals Haman’s dastardly plot, and Haman and his ten sons are hanged. Mordecai becomes the king’s vizier in his stead, and all live happily ever after–except for the 75,800 people in Persian empire who are massacred when Esther convinces the king to allow the Jews to avenge the plot against them.
“For as long as I can remember, I never liked the holiday of Purim, with its story of the massacre of the gentiles and its message of revenge and rejoicing at the downfall of others,” writes author Ruth Meisels in Haaretz. “And so every year all that’s left for me to do is to grit my teeth during the synagogue reading of the Megillah, taking comfort in the fact that historically, at least, the veracity of this story is very much in doubt.”
Although many apologists for the Book of Esther have claimed its author was familiar with the intimate details of life at the Persian court, such claims don’t hold up in light of what we now know of Persian history (559-331 BC), apart from the copious Greek propaganda produced during the Greco-Persian Wars (492-449 BC).
A Persian king sleeping with a virgin every night? This sounds remarkably like premise of the tale of Sharazad in Hezar Afsaneh, a collection of ancient Persian folk tales. According to Elias Bickerman, a highly respected scholar on Jewish literature of the Achaemenid Persian period, “We have here a typical tale of palace intrigue that could as well find a place in the Persian histories of Herodotus and Ctesias, or in the Arabian Nights. The only Jewish element of the tale is that, according to the author, Mordecai is a Jew.” “Mordecai” was not a Jewish name in ancient times (it is now); nor was “Esther.” In fact, it has been noted numerous times that the two names bear a remarkably close resemblance to those of the Babylonian deities Marduk and Ishtar.
A Persian king marrying a mysterious Jewess who kept her origins secret for five years (especially with her known to be Jewish cousin/uncle lurking around outside, exchanging messages with her through courtiers)? No way! A Persian king’s marriages, as Maria Brosius explains, were alliances with the daughters of foreign potentates and the leading families of the Persian empire for reasons of statecraft. The Achaemenid Persian tradition seems to have been postponing the designation of any of the king’s wives as what might best be translated as “queen” until after she had given birth to his designated heir. Neither Esther nor Vashti is mentioned as having been the mother of Ahasuerus’ children. Furthermore, a Persian monarch’s mother and his wife were entitled to see him whenever they wished.
Finally, there is no historical record of any King Ahasuerus or a Queen Vashti, and, most significantly, no record of a plot to ethnically cleanse the Achaemenid Persian Empire of its Jews. Nor is there any account by any ancient historian of vengeful Jewish mobs slaughtering nearly 76,000 residents of the Persian Empire.
As for Jews living according to their own rules, Darius the Great (ruled 522-486 BC) had institutionalized hagiarchy (rule by priests) over the various and distinct peoples of his empire, not only allowing, but requiring that each of the ethnic groups in his domain live according to its own religious code, promulgated and enforced as da’t–“The King’s Law.” The Second Temple in Jerusalem, for which Jews mourn in their liturgy and for whose restoration observant Jews today pray three times daily was built by returning Jewish exiles with the full support of Darius. The Temple was a center not only for sacrificial worship, but for bureaucratic administration, including the the collection of taxes. Darius and subsequent Achaemenid Persian emperors institutionalized the various religious codes by which his subjects lived. The enactments of Ezra, which became the core of Jewish ritual observances (halakha) still practiced by orthodox Jews to this day, were enforced as though they had been decreed by the emperor himself.
During the Hasmonean revolt against the Seleucid Empire (165-162 BC, commemorated by the Jewish festival of Chanukah), Judeans battled the Greek overlords who had seized control of Judea with Alexander the Great’s defeat of the Achaemenids (331 BC), demanding the right to live according to the Jewish “law of the ancestors,” codified as d’at hundreds of years earlier while Judea under Persian rule. The Parthians, the successors of the Achaemenids in Persia after an interlude of a century or so after Alexander, aided the Maccabees–heroes of the Jewish Chanukah story–in their resistance against Greece, and their Hasmonean descendants in their revolt against Rome.
The closest that most scholars can come to identifying the historical setting of the Book of Esther is the reign of Xerxes, who ruled from 486-465 BC. A staunch and uncompromising monotheist, Xerxes eliminated all government subsidies that non-Zoroastrian religious cults in the Persian empire had been receiving from his father. According to scholar Robert Littman, writing in the Jewish Quarterly Review, it was actually Babylonians, not Jews, who were the original victims in an incident that would be recast as the tale of Esther and Mordecai in the Megillah.
Xerxes took the 18-foot solid gold statue of Bel Marduk, the chief idol of the god, whose hands monarchs seized to gain title as King of Babylon, and whose hands the pretenders had seized to gain legitimacy for their rule and revolt, and carried it off to be melted down for bullion. When the priest of Esagila protested, he was killed. Without the idol of Marduk, no pretender could so easily legitimize and claim divine sanction for his position.
None of this historical background would matter very much, if at all, were Purim were just a fun-focused festival of eating, drinking, whirling noisemakers (groggers) at the sound of Haman’s name, and pretending to really like the triangular-shape pastries, filled with prune jam or poppy seed puree, that grandma baked, the way that the overwhelming majority of Jews who have heard even of Purim recall the festival from their childhood.
But Purim has a darker side, unencumbered by historical facts, that has impacted the relations between Jews and their neighbors, as Elliot Horowitz, a professor at Bar Ilan University, chronicles in his book Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence. In recent years, Purim has taken on an increasingly ominous aspect, with Israeli settlers belligerently sparking confrontations with Palestinians in whose midst they have entrenched themselves. The most deadly of these took place in 1994, when the holiday of Purim coincided with the first Friday of the holy month of Ramadan. Muslim worshipers packed the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, a shrine sacred to Muslim as well as to Jews. An American-born Israeli settler, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, opened fire on them with a semi-automatic rifle, killing 29 and wounding more than 100 others. “Since then, for me and for many others, Purim has never been the same,” Horowitz writes.
Goldstein’s mentor, Dov Lior, the government-salaried rabbi of the Kiryat Arba settlement near the site of the Hebron massacre, has been frequently accused of incitement of, and involvement in, terroristic acts of violence directed against Arabs, including a plot to blow up six buses, loaded with explosives, with the objective of killing the hundreds of passengers on them. Israel’s Shin Bet security service foiled the plot at the last minute. Lior endorsed a book, Torat HaMelech (Law of the King) which countenanced the slaying non-Jews, and not surprisingly drawing upon the Book of Esther for justification. His arrest incited outrage among his followers. At the beginning of February of this year, Israeli Army Radio reported that Lior had derisively referred to the US president as a kushi (a biblical term denoting a person of African descent, the modern Israeli equivalent of “nigger”) and compared him to Haman.
Since his election as Iran’s president in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been depicted both in the U.S. and Israeli media as a modern-day Haman, who will stop at nothing to achieve his genocidal objective. In 2006, Sarah Posner of American Prospect pointed out that Texas televangelist John Hagee, founder of CUFI (Christians United for Israel, an AIPAC for evangelicals) had “a huge following, the ear of the White House, and a theory that an invasion of Iran was foretold in the Book of Esther.” Hagee’s 2005 book Jerusalem Countdown, is described by its publisher as “an incendiary new book purporting to show that the Bible predicts a military confrontation with Iran.” In the Purim apocalypse envisioned by Hagee, Posner noted, “he glossed over the obstacles faced by Tehran in creating a viable nuclear weapon, arguing that ‘once you have enriched uranium, the genie is out of the bottle,’” a view adopted not only by Israeli hardliners but also recently by the US Congress.
Last year, revelers waving groggers with Ahmadinejad’s picture on them created a ruckus at a Megillah reading outside the Iranian Mission to the UN. Now Netanyahu has given Obama a Book of Esther as a gift and a guide, which Netanyahu’s aides have stated is intended to be “a form of ‘background reading’ on Iran.” “Then too, they wanted to wipe us out,” Netanyahu told Obama, according to an Israeli official quoted by the Jerusalem Post. “…’And the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and with slaughter and destruction, and did what they would unto them that hated them.’”
As Ami Eden points out, “there’s the uncomfortable wrinkle that in Megillat Esther the Jews can’t/don’t launch their successful preemptive strike against their enemies until they secure the king’s permission — not quite the ‘Israel has the right, the sovereign right to make its own decisions’ message that Netanyahu has been hammering home during his trip this week to Washington.”
Beyond that wrinkle, there’s a much larger question. Is it really a good idea for a US President to look to a biblical novella (especially one whose “happy ending” is the death of tens of thousands of people), or to any religious text, as his guidebook on foreign affairs? Robert Wright doesn’t think so, and proposes an intriguing “thought experiment” to answer this question:
Suppose that an Arab or Iranian leader of Muslim faith met with President Obama and told him about some part of the Koran that alludes to conflict between Muhammad and Jewish tribes. For example, according to Muslim tradition, the Jewish tribe known as the Qurayzah, though living in Muhammad’s town of Medina, secretly sided with Muhammad’s enemies in Mecca. Suppose this Muslim said to Obama, “Then, too, the Jews were bent on destroying Muslims.” What would our reaction be?
The Book of Esther is bad history. Bad history–especially when it masquerades as a relevant guide to foreign affairs–makes for bad policy.
And bad policy is what you end up with when you can no longer tell Mordecai from Haman.
]]>Now, Paul is not a foaming-at-the-mouth neocon. But neither do his views on the Middle East seem likely fulfill the hopes that the Leveretts have for the Tea Party — namely, providing “the most outspoken congressional opponents of potential moves by the Obama Administration toward military confrontation with Iran.”
For a more fleshed out account of the direction of the Tea Party’s foreign policy, check out Scott McConnell’s piece at Right Web. McConnell, a founding editor of the American Conservative, described the different approaches of neoconseravtives and Tea Partiers who tend toward fiscally-conservative restraint and writes:
Thus far, the neoconservatives appear to be parrying the challenge effectively. The question is, can the neocons, as they have with other political factions in the past, successfully co-opt this new political force in such a way as to make it amenable to their goals?
McConnell notes that Palin was discovered by neoconservative don Bill Kristol. Those Tea Partiers who have actually been successful (winning or garnering great followings and attention) have been courted by — and often seemed to please — Israel lobby forces and some neoconservative influences.
Take Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio, who will represent Florida in the Senate as of early January. The day after winning his seat, Rubio announced a visit to Israel. During the campaign, Rubio, much to the excitement of neoconservatives, said that the U.S. should attack Iran to prevent it from getting nuclear weapons. Likewise, Utah’s Senator-elect Mike Lee, another Tea Partier, met with Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu and ran on a platform that “military action [against Iran] would be justified.” Both Senators-elect said the U.S. should allow Israel to strike Iran.
The picture with Rand Paul is significantly more complicated than what the Leveretts present. Comments Paul made during the campaign in May sparked a minor blog squabble between various elements of the “old right” — the American Conservative‘s Daniel Larison and Antiwar.com‘s Justin Raimondo. (Both could claim the “old right” mantle before the Tea Party was even a glimmer in the eye of Rick Santelli or the Koch brothers.)
Just a week after the mid-term elections that elevated Rubio, Lee and Paul to the Senate, McConnell gave an updated breakdown of Paul’s views in his Right Web piece:
On the other hand, Rand Paul, the son of the isolationist icon and early Tea Party favorite Ron Paul, has studiously avoided discussion of foreign policy issues in his campaign. In October, a GQ article reported that after Paul’s primary win he met with prominent neoconservatives Bill Kristol, Tom Donnelly of AEI, and Dan Senor (cofounder of the Foreign Policy Initiative) in Washington to talk foreign policy. While he once criticized the Republicans’ “military adventurism,” opposed the war in Iraq, and “scoffed at the threat of Iranian nukes,” he may have begun changing his positions. Senor categorized Paul as “in absorption mode” and not “cemented in his views.” Paul later met with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where he reportedly “told them what they wanted to hear” and distanced himself from his father, who has been critical of the extent of U.S. support for Israel.
McConnell concludes by noting that the Tea Party has a strong “religious” right element as well as a “libertarian” one.
The “religious” element is likely aligned with Christian Zionists such as John Hagee and his Christians United for Israel (CUFI), whose views on the Middle East profess a Greater Israel Zionism even more fervent and violent than one finds in most public neoconservative quarters (the two groups are already strong allies). As with the neocons, Christian Zionists tend to take a moralistic worldview that finds any and all enemies of Israel (particularly Muslims) to be “evil” — unredeemable to the point of requiring extermination by force (otherwise known as Armageddon, or the final battle between good and evil, a central piece of Christian Zionist eschatology.)
Furthermore, the “libertarian” elements of the Tea Party might indeed include those who, confronted by the wider consequences of an attack on Iran, would recoil at the idea of a broad and unpredictable Middle East war. But neoconservatives — in attempting to build a diverse coalition for their aggressive policies — will constantly downplay these negative wider consequences of an assault. (As they did during much of the panel on the “kinetic option” at the big Foundation for Defense of Democracies Iran confab earlier this month.)
And as for fiscally minded small-government ideologues from either branch of the Tea Party, they will come to learn that the cost of a bombing run will only be the price of a warehouse full of ordinance, smart bombs, drones with Hellfire missiles, and the fuel to get it all into Iranian territory. That just ain’t that much dough.
If the Leveretts so choose, they can take heart that there might indeed be some Tea Partiers who, as they put it, “are stalwart in their criticism of the Iraq war and their determination that the United States not launch another ‘war of choice’ in the Middle East that will end up doing even greater damage to America’s interests and international standing.” But I’m not going to hold out hope on this score.
Tea Partiers who make it into the halls of power will likely have their principles watered down by that power. The opinions of Tea Party activists in the field won’t concern neoconservatives, who are known for focusing their efforts on elites — what journalist Sidney Blumenthal called the “Counter Establishment” in his 1986 book. Irving Kristol once said that with a magazine that has “a circulation of a few hundred, you could change the world.” (Some recent populist outreach on YouTube and other mediums notwithstanding.)
The Tea Party — or even a significant portion of it — seems to me to be an unlikely part of any coalition in Washington that will work to stop the United States from starting a war with Iran.
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