Conflated Loyalties

Joe,

Have you had a chance to read Glenn Greenwald's column today? If you haven't I suggest you do and I also suggest other readers here read it because it complements your post very well. He also addresses Jennifer Rubin

"The Right's game-playing with "dual loyalty" and "anti-semitism" accusations

As our political establishment takes new and disturbing steps towards a more confrontational approach with Iran, the effort to stomp out any discussion of the role Israel plays in that policy has once again intensified. Last week, Joe Klein -- basically out of the blue -- observed that while many advocates of an attack on Iraq (which once included Klein) were motivated by "neocolonial" fantasies or ensuring access to Iraq's oil, many other war proponents were motivated by their allegiance to Israel:

The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives -- people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary -- plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/02/israel_iran/

Good post Joe. Agree that Greenwald's post supports what you're writing.

Why don't these neocons get a real job, like planting trees in Israel?

Hi Joe. Count me among those who admire the stand you are taking. I know you're getting a lot of heat over it, and from usually friendly sources. Encouragement from the dreaded blog commenters may not seem as immediate or relevant, but a lot of us are hoping you hang tough on this one.

Israel's failure to defeat Hizbullah in 2006 demonstrated the limits of Israel's historic military advantage.

Israel's failure to defeat Hizbullah in 2006 was due to the ability to realistically evaluate military goals and strategies and discontinue operations when they proved to be counterproductive.

The US could certainly learn from the example.

Rubin's description of the interests of American Jews is an embarrassment that plays into the worst antisemitic stereotypes.

Well that right there proves you're an anti-semite. Oh, whoops, self-hating Jew.

The impact on US policy from ridiculously small groups of people advocating really bad policy drives me nuts, whether it's Cubans in Miami or neocons inside the Beltway.

Joe, you get a lot of abuse on here (mostly but not always well deserved) so I think that it is important to say "well said" when you speak simple truth.
Thirding the comments that suggest your piece goes well with Greenwald's. Who would have thunk it ..

Good post.

Yeah, Joe, I'll stand on your side on this one. The use of anti-semitism as an emotional and political bludgeon is just wrong.

Good for you for trying to do the right thing here.

This story has it all, two baseless assumptions, guilt by association, and an accusation of anti-Semitism. The Right love to dream up straw men and then turn apoplectic wrestling them to the ground.

Good post, Joe and adds to Glenn Greenwald's post over at Salon. Besides the Commentary and Neocon Gang I am waiting to Alan D to weigh in.

Your timing, in posing your questions and observations is just right.

Great post Joe -- and thanks for actually writing about an ISSUE, as opposed to the horse race or personalities.

I find it interesting that the same Commentary crowd who howl when accused of appearing to have dual loyalities are the very same ones to accuse Obama of having dual loyalities (either to "African Americans" or Africa or some sort of Muslim identity).

Projection?

Joe,

Just as and aside, you out of all the reporters who post here have been writing a string of substantive posts for a while now.

I only wish the others could settle down and stop following the bouncing ball in whatever direction either of the campaigns decides to throw it. So, I just want to echo "attaturk" and say thanks so much.

Just as Christian bigots had to face their own hypocrisy (often pointed out effectively by Jewish commentators and activists), we can hope that American Jews will wrest control of Mideast issues from the neocons.

All Americans should thank you for your courage and resistance to the predictable name-calling and slanders you're seeing (i.e. self-hating Jew, above).

dennis, you need to turn on your irony detector.

Joe, there's another point here: the current neoconservative policies that the U.S. is forcing down Israel's throat will eventually destroy Israel if not stopped.

Anyone who cares about Israel should vote against McCain. It's that simple.

Joe - I wondered as I was reading this if there's any connection to this Jerusalem Post story and the story about Sheldon Adelson in The New Yorker that you referred us to earlier. Is Adelson's hand at work here?

Obama wins the Jewish vote on the economy and domestic concerns. Unless there's some major attack on Israel/U.S., that is.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Thank you for this post.

To piggy-back on it, I want to link to this interview with former UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter. I found this article via juancole.com.

Joe, why are you a self-hating Jew?

That said, good post. And you're right about the top concerns of almost all American Jews. Like most Americans, they are most worried about their own country, not some country half-way around the world. Guess that's why, contrary to the "Obama has a Jewish problem" myth, the polls show large majorities of Jewish voters supporting Obama...because they view him as the person better equipped to solve the problems in OUR nation.

...an air force general running what should have been a much better planned ground operation.

An overoptimistic view of high tech and air power (and brute military power in general)--isn't that one of the basic problems of Neoconservatism?

From Michael Lind's review of Fred Kaplan's Daydreamers book:

From the 1970s onward, the conservative nationalists were drawn to the vision of unchallenged American superiority in high-tech warfare, a longtime theme of Albert Wohlstetter of the RAND Corporation and his younger colleague Andrew Marshall of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment. In his 80s now, Marshall is known as the "Yoda" of the "revolution in military affairs." Kaplan writes: "On January 24, 1991, eight days after the air war [portion of the Gulf War] started, Andy Marshall called a staff meeting. He was wondering whether the 'revolution in military affairs' had begun, whether the opening air strikes of the Gulf War ... marked a fundamental change in the nature of warfare."

Kaplan also observes: "Nearly twenty years earlier, Marshall and Wohlstetter had thought that these new weapons would restore parity to the Soviet-American military balance in Europe. Now that the Soviet Union was gone, it seemed that they might secure American military preeminence worldwide." A decade later, in January 2002, then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld declared that the role of airpower in swiftly routing the Taliban in Afghanistan proved that the revolution in military affairs was complete. One more test remained for the idea that the U.S. could win wars with quick, surgical, high-tech airpower on the cheap: Iraq.

The neoconservatives, for their part, held "two planks": rejecting multilateral diplomacy as a restraint on American power and using that power to reshape the world. "In their first few months in power, Bush and his top aides -- Rumsfeld, Cheney, and [Condoleezza] Rice -- made good on their derision of multilateralism, which they viewed as a vestige of Clinton's liberal sentimentality, and, more than that, an unnecessary burden in an age of indomitable American power..."

In his catalog of Bush administration failures, Kaplan includes the disastrous 2006 Israeli war in Lebanon. Kaplan reports that the Bush administration refused to heed calls for shuttle diplomacy by Secretary of State Rice to broker a truce, because "they wanted to wait a while, to give Israel a chance to demolish Hezbollah." The radicalism of the administration was apparent, when Rice made "the remark that dropped jaws and made headlines. 'What we're seeing here,' she said, 'is, in a sense, the growing -- the birth pangs of a new Middle East.'" Kaplan writes that Bush and Rice "believed that reversing [historic American] priorities -- pursuing democracy at the expense of stability -- would yield both; but there was nothing beyond faith to support this belief."

You should think they'd have learned something after Iraq, but incredibly, they haven't learned anything.

Joe:
I've been pretty hard on you lately but you've hit this one out of the park.

Good post. I've often wondered why it's been more common to talk about dying over a pile of rocks in Israel than talking about the ability to drive to temple in Pensacola without being blown up.

Appreciate what you have in this country and make sure you don't lose it. In a few more right-wing victories the folks that will be pressing the IED button in Pensacola might be the evangelical "friends" that are so "concerned" about Israel right now.

Far out you say? Nobody remembers Oklahoma City. That was a lesson learned well before 9/11.

Again, I've seen Abe Foxman debate Walt and Mearsheimer on PBS and he seems earnest and sincere. But does he really believe that Madison's Federalist 10 could never apply to the Neoconservatives? A "pro-Israel" foreign policy (I put it in scare quotes here, because is it really pro-Israel?) could never count as a "special interest" that the republic has to guard itself against? Never? They get an irrevocable, permanent pass?

"Actually, Israel's failure to defeat Hizballah in 2006 demonstrated a rare instance of terrible military thinking"

True, but vastly overshadowed by the terrible political thinking that led to the decision to attempt an invasion in the first place.

"Actually, Israel's failure to defeat Hizballah in 2006 demonstrated a rare instance of terrible military thinking--an air force general running what should have been a much better planned ground operation."

No. No matter how well they planned it, it would have failed. We are in the age of cheap rocket technology and it has become the great equalizer in these so called 'asymetric' (another name for guerilla) wars.

"Nobody remembers Oklahoma City. That was a lesson learned well before 9/11."

That SHOULD be the GOP's epitaph...

The war in 2006 likely would not have happened without the war in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Clark is going up against the GOP media machine:

Appearing on liberal radio host Ed Schultz's show Tuesday, Clark stuck to his guns, and he accused McCain and the GOP apparatus of drumming up a false controversy.

"The only orchestration was by Republicans," Clark said, referring to unsubstantiated accusations that his criticism was encouraged by Obama, who has repeatedly distanced himself from Clark's remark.

"I think that since John McCain's hired the Swift Boat team to protect his military record," Clark continued, "they just decided they would launch a preemptive strike."

A McCain campaign conference call Monday featured Col. Bud Day, who appeared in attack ads from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth aimed at John Kerry in 2004. Day also compared Kerry to Benedict Arnold.

..."This is a manufactured controversy," he continued, accusing the Republican party of launching a "reconnaissance attack. Someone's going in there to see how the Democratic party's going to handle the national security issues. Because believe me John McCain is running on national security.

He sure is. And who are his national security advisors? Half of them write for the Weekly Standard.

New blog post from me today

As an Israeli here's an outside perspective: what Israel needs is a very strong US. Strong not just militarily, but economically and morally as well. We need you not just to deter the crazy side of Iran but also help us find an alternative to oil (we don't have any, those that do - not big fans of ours), help save us from drowning from rising oceans, help us by being a market for the high tech stuff we are so good at making. We even need you to help us broker peace between us and our neighbors - embarrassing that we should need you to make a local call, but true nonetheless. We are very small fish in this world and though many of us love Chinese food and Russian folk songs we really prefer having the big Orca with red, white,and blue on its tail.
Your election, your vote. But if you ask us what we need - we need you strong.
Thanks for listening.

Joe Klein is doing the Jewish community a great service by standing up, and speaking with clarity and reason.

It's absolutely vital that he continue to do so, because of fools named Kristol, Podhoretz, Kagan, Rubin, and Feith.

I agree, MessiRules, but we need to look hard at the "morally" part. Have we really been that moral lately? I think not. That hardly helps Israel. When we act as unjustly as we have, we sure don't endear ourselves as a trustworthy party to help end disputes.

It's politically incorrect, but I'm going to say it anyway:

Ms. Rubin and others, if you find that your chief concern in life is the conditions of life in Israel, Cuba, Mexico or Timbuktu, you really need to consider how you can move to that place and invest your energies there instead of manipulating our politics, which should be about the best interests of the U.S. of A.

Hear, hear.

Swan Mc - the chances are you've just dropped that link in a drive-by, so you probably won't see this comment. But if you want anyone to pay any attention to you, you need to stay awhile and engage folks. Otherwise this is spamming.

Joe,
I disagreed with you on FISA but you really are right in this post!

Why aren't these guys in favor of cutting off all funds to Israel and let the free market decide?

The only way we are ever going to be viewed as honest peace brokers and world police is that we must be fair and just. If we are going to allow several million people to sway us from center to the right, then we are tipping the scales. No one respects a dishonest judge and no one respects a cop on the take.

To hell with The Muslims, To Hell with the Christians and to hell with the Jews. Just do whats right for humans for a change. We need to get back in the center for things to work.

I guarantee you if we put our foot down and lay the law down, Israel will view this as being hostile regardless of how much help we have given them in the past.

Why is it that we can listen to the words of a few million people acting as though they are being victimized at all times, yet we totally ignore people like Jimmy Carter , Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, The Archbishop of Canterbury , George Galloway and Ex-Dutch prime minister Andreas Van Agt and malign them as "anti-semites" merely for telling it like it is.

I don't know about the rest of you but Im sorry Im not about to align myself with anyone to the point that we have to live as they do in that country merely because they wish to continue an occupation and have the status quo in their favor at all times.

Seeing soldiers in NYC post 9-11 gave me images of how the Israelis live day-to-day in order to continue doing what they are doing and Im not willing as some Israelis may be willing to give up my freedoms in such a way.

Survey after survey shows a substantial majority of American Jews do not share the Commentary agenda, yet even THEIR voices are stifled by the diktat of the neo-cons and their media supporters, who denounce anyone straying from the hysterical pro-Likud agenda. After all the disasters the neo-cons have visited on our nation over the last 7 years, the only wonder is that they still have so much influence.

Good for you Joe. That took courage; knowing that the silent majority of Americans, both Jews and non-Jews, are with you should help deal with all the poison coming your way.

Out of the ballpark on this one. And published in the Times no less. I'm amazed that this patently obvious argument which has been around outside the U.S. for years and inside in the blogosphere has finally made into into the MSM. Was some editor asleep? I hope so, because it rocks, even though it's weird that it takes "courage" to make this argument in the U.S. THAT'S bizarre, but still, I'll take it, because there is far too many minions willing to charge any one who doesn't tow the line, when it comes to Israel, with anti-semitism, a charge that cheapens real anti-semitism and is just unhealthy in democracy.

Mearsheimer and Walt are vindicated, as well they should be. And Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross can just stuff it.

A simple question: how many lives would of been saved if there was an Israel in 1938?

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