The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
The following is the abstract from a paper posted on the Harvard University site under the section Faculty Research Working Paper Series:
In this paper, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago’s Department of Political Science and Stephen M.Walt of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government contend that the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy is its intimate relationship with Israel. The authors argue that although often justified as reflecting shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, the U.S. commitment to Israel is due primarily to the activities of the “Israel Lobby.” This paper goes on to describe the various activities that pro-Israel groups have undertaken in order to shift U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.
Nowhere in the paper do the authors acknowledge the activities of pro-Islam groups, such as CAIR, and their efforts to shift U.S. foreign policy.
It is a one-side, myopic view of complex policy. Reviewing the actual text of the “academic” paper would lead one to think that it was written by an ambitious grade schooler. I began to fisk the article but soon realized that it would take weeks to list all the errors.
As my brother put it, “Dispicable. This passes for scholorship at Harvard.”
Technorati Tags: Harvard,
Liberal Academia.
I think that you would be hard pressed to claim that CAIR is anywhere near as successful as the Israeli lobby groups.
I threw out CAIR because it popped into my head first. There are others, but that is not the point.
Are you seriously proposing that our foreign policy is formed on the basis of foreign lobbying?
I have read the report and found it perfectly rightous. As the American people we have to learn about the facts which are hided by our own government.These two professors are really brave guys. I appreciate them.
The ‘proverbial elephant in the living room’ has been finely drawn in exquisite detail and now he is berserk with rage: trumpeting shrilly that this is all a filthy lie and that he does not exist, even as he sees to it that Stephen Walt gets fired …
“Nowhere in the paper do the authors acknowledge the activities of pro-Islam groups, such as CAIR”
First, why would they, considering that this is an article about the Israel Lobby? Second — um, CAIR? CAIR can’t get a callback from the White House janitor. By contrast, no lobby, with the possible exception of the NRA or the AARP, wields the kind of influence the Israel lobby does. There just isn’t any basis for comparison.
The paper is flawed in a variety of ways that have been ably pointed out elsewhere. But its critics have been less interested in refuting specific errors than in pillorying it authors in order to prevent an open discussion of its main thrust — the elephant in the room, as a previous poster put it. Dershowitz’ riposte, for example, was especially embarassing: one of his main charges is that the authors wrench quotations out of context. Dershowitz, here comes the punchline, then goes on to wrench Mearsheimer/Walt quotations out of context. Over and over and over again. Oy!
Finally, you’ve filed this log entry, predictably, under “Liberal Academia,” which, if you knew anything about John Mearsheimer, would strike you as funny.