Glad to see two heros not silenced

[Working Man]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
This link works, unlike the LAST ONE SOMEBODY ELSE SUPPLIED!!!

These two guys who wrote the controversal report on the all powerfull Israeli lobby should be given medals for bravery. These guys got bigger balls than the majority of people who post their own BS, and think they know what the hell they're talking about,,,including myself.

 

[Annie]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...402147_pf.html

These two guys who wrote the controversal report on the all powerfull Israeli lobby should be given medals for bravery. These guys got bigger balls than the majority of people who post their own BS, and think they know what the hell they're talking about,,,including myself.

Link doesn't work. Much like the anti-semetic profs, I'm sure...

 

[Annie]

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A bit more about it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...402147_pf.html

Does this link look familiar, and YOUR original reply??? I forgot that it never worked so I tried it and located a good one. No need to thank me.:funnyface

Whatever your point was, the link still doesn't work:

We are unable to locate the page you requested.
The page may have moved or may no longer be available

 

[Annie]

Glad to see two heros... 07-10-2006 02:02 AM Kathianne not sure of your point in this, but I find it weird

The point is that You Kathianne supplied a bad link on April 22, in response to my first post about the two professors. The UK link should be ok, as I got it tonight off the web. The Washington Post is no longer a source for the story. What ever the jibber jaber, in my 1st reply to your first reply tonight,, is that I copied directly off this board as a cut and paste, ask the people who set the board up. I just wanted to point out that You supplied the inoperabe link.

Whatever. When I post a link, it worked, since I check them through preview. You sir or madame, need to get a life. If this is your attempt to discredit me, good luck. From what you've done this early morning, is make yourself look like you have a stalking problem.

Posting information that is readily available on profile, then copying and pasting about religion, only makes you look like the wannabe importante member you so obviously crave to be.

Personally, I haven't a clue to your issues with me, nor frankly do i give a damn.

 

[Annie]

Like I said. You have some serious issues if you can't admit making a "mistake"??. Perhaps you knew the link was bad and it would derail someone who honestly wanted to check the facts.. I caught it tonight and fixed it.

As far as stalking, you don't have to respond to any of my posts if you don't chose. I don't believe you have anything to offer that I would be in need of, opinion or otherwise.

Since you clearly don't agree with my points of view,, why bother to respond? Sure, that is what political debate brings, but when it seems to be more personal, the factual, I don't see the point.

Ok, if it makes you feel better. I posted a link in April from the Washington Post. They no longer are showing that article, and you are upset. Ok, my bad. Feel better now?

 

[Annie]

Now after all the nonsense, considering that with the #1 post, the poster linked to what he wanted. I think I'll put up some differing pov's:

http://www.slate.com/id/2138741/

fighting words
Overstating Jewish Power
Mearsheimer and Walt give too much credit to the Israeli lobby.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, March 27, 2006, at 1:47 PM ET

It's slightly hard to understand the fuss generated by the article on the Israeli lobby produced by the joint labors of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that was published in the London Review of Books. My guess is that the Harvard logo has something to do with it, but then I don't understand why the doings of that campus get so much media attention, either.

The essay itself, mostly a very average "realist" and centrist critique of the influence of Israel, contains much that is true and a little that is original. But what is original is not true and what is true is not original.

Everybody knows that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other Jewish organizations exert a vast influence over Middle East policy, especially on Capitol Hill. The influence is not as total, perhaps, as that exerted by Cuban exiles over Cuba policy, but it is an impressive demonstration of strength by an ethnic minority. Almost everybody also concedes that the Israeli occupation has been a moral and political catastrophe and has implicated the United States in a sordid and costly morass. I would have gone further than Mearsheimer and Walt and pointed up the role of Israel in supporting apartheid in South Africa, in providing arms and training for dictators in Congo and Guatemala, and helping reactionary circles in America do their dirty work—most notably during the Iran-Contra assault on the Constitution and in the emergence of the alliance between Likud and the Christian right. Counterarguments concerning Israel's help in the Cold War and in the region do not really outweigh these points.

However, Mearsheimer and Walt present the situation as one where the Jewish tail wags the American dog, and where the United States has gone to war in Iraq to gratify Ariel Sharon, and where the alliance between the two countries has brought down on us the wrath of Osama Bin Laden. This is partly misleading and partly creepy. If the Jewish stranglehold on policy has been so absolute since the days of Harry Truman, then what was Gen. Eisenhower thinking when, on the eve of an election 50 years ago, he peremptorily ordered Ben Gurion out of Sinai and Gaza on pain of canceling the sale of Israeli bonds? On the next occasion when Israel went to war with its neighbors, 11 years later, President Lyndon Johnson was much more lenient, but a strong motive of his policy (undetermined by Israel) was to win Jewish support for the war the "realists" were then waging in Vietnam. (He didn't get the support, except from Rabbi Meir Kahane.)

If it is Israel that decides on the deployment of American force, it seems odd that the first President Bush had to order them to stay out of the coalition to free Kuwait, and it is even more odd that the first order of neocon business has not been an attack on Iran, as Israeli hawks have been urging. Mearsheimer and Walt are especially weak on this point: They speak darkly about neocon and Israeli maneuvers in respect to Tehran today, but they entirely fail to explain why the main initiative against the mullahs has come from the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Authority, two organizations where the voice of the Jewish lobby is, to say the least, distinctly muted. Their theory does nothing to explain why it was French President Jacques Chirac who took the lead in isolating the death-squad regime of Assad's Syria (a government that Mearsheimer and Walt regard, for reasons of their own, as a force for stability).

As for the idea that Israel is the root cause of the emergence of al-Qaida: Where have these two gentlemen been? Bin Laden's gang emerged from a whole series of tough and reactionary battles in Central and Eastern Asia, from the war for a separate Muslim state in the Philippines to the fighting in Kashmir, the Uighur territories in China, and of course Afghanistan. There are hardly any Palestinians in its ranks, and its communiqués have been notable for how little they say about the Palestinian struggle. Bin Laden does not favor a Palestinian state; he simply regards the whole area of the former British Mandate as a part of the future caliphate. The right of the Palestinians to a state is a just demand in its own right, but anyone who imagines that its emergence would appease—or would have appeased—the forces of jihad is quite simply a fool. Is al-Qaida fomenting civil war in Nigeria or demanding the return of East Timor to Indonesia because its heart bleeds for the West Bank?

For purposes of contrast, let us look at two other regional allies of the United States. Both Turkey and Pakistan have been joined to the Pentagon hip since approximately the time of the emergence of the state of Israel, which coincided with the Truman Doctrine. Pakistan was, like Israel, cleaved from a former British territory. Since that time, both states have carried out appalling internal repression and even more appalling external aggression. Pakistan attempted a genocide in Bangladesh, with the support of Nixon and Kissinger, in 1971. It imposed the Taliban as its client in a quasi-occupation of Afghanistan. It continues to arm and train Bin Ladenists to infiltrate Indian-held Kashmir, and its promiscuity with nuclear materials exceeds anything Israel has tried with its stockpile at Dimona. Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and continues in illegal occupation of the northern third of the island, which has been forcibly cleansed of its Greek inhabitants. It continues to lie about its massacre of the Armenians. U.N. resolutions have had no impact on these instances of state terror and illegality in which the United States is also partially implicated.

But here's the thing: There is no Turkish or Pakistani ethnic "lobby" in America. And here's the other thing: There is no call for "disinvestment" in Turkey or Pakistan. We are not incessantly told that with these two friends we are partners in crime. Perhaps the Greek Cypriots and Indians are in error in refusing to fly civilian aircraft into skyscrapers. That might get the attention of the "realists." Or perhaps the affairs of two states, one secular Muslim and one created specifically in the name of Islam, do not possess the eternal fascination that attaches to the Jewish question.

There has been some disquiet expressed about Mearsheimer and Walt's over-fondness for Jewish name-dropping: their reiteration of the names Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, etc., as the neocon inner circle. Well, it would be stupid not to notice that a group of high-energy Jews has been playing a role in our foreign-policy debate for some time. The first occasion on which it had any significant influence (because, despite its tentacular influence, it lost the argument over removing Saddam Hussein in 1991) was in pressing the Clinton administration to intervene in Bosnia and Kosovo. These are the territories of Europe's oldest and largest Muslim minorities; they are oil-free and they do not in the least involve the state interest of Israel. Indeed, Sharon publicly opposed the intervention. One could not explain any of this from Mearsheimer and Walt's rhetoric about "the lobby."

Mearsheimer and Walt belong to that vapid school that essentially wishes that the war with jihadism had never started. Their wish is father to the thought that there must be some way, short of a fight, to get around this confrontation. Wishfulness has led them to seriously mischaracterize the origins of the problem and to produce an article that is redeemed from complete dullness and mediocrity only by being slightly but unmistakably smelly.

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/research/working_papers/facultyresponses.htm

Ok, one can throw out Dershowitz, after all he is pro Israel, unlike Hitchens...



Post 2 to follow

 

[Annie]

And #2:

More problematic, is Noam Chomsky not agreeing, as he is pro-Palestinian and very anti-Israel:

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=9999

The Israel Lobby?
by Noam Chomsky

March 28, 2006


I've received many requests to comment on the article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (henceforth M-W), published in the London Review of Books, which has been circulating extensively on the internet and has elicited a storm of controversy. A few thoughts on the matter follow.

It was, as noted, published in the London Review of Books, which is far more open to discussion on these issues than US journals -- a matter of relevance (to which I'll return) to the alleged influence of what M-W call "the Lobby." An article in the Jewish journal Forward quotes M as saying that the article was commissioned by a US journal, but rejected, and that "the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful that he and co-author Stephen Walt would never have been able to place their report in a American-based scientific publication." But despite the fact that it appeared in England, the M-W article aroused the anticipated hysterical reaction from the usual supporters of state violence here, from the Wall St Journal to Alan Dershowitz, sometimes in ways that would instantly expose the authors to ridicule if they were not lining up (as usual) with power.

M-W deserve credit for taking a position that is sure to elicit tantrums and fanatical lies and denunciations, but it's worth noting that there is nothing unusual about that. Take any topic that has risen to the level of Holy Writ among "the herd of independent minds" (to borrow Harold Rosenberg's famous description of intellectuals): for example, anything having to do with the Balkan wars, which played a huge role in the extraordinary campaigns of self-adulation that disfigured intellectual discourse towards the end of the millennium, going well beyond even historical precedents, which are ugly enough. Naturally, it is of extraordinary importance to the herd to protect that self-image, much of it based on deceit and fabrication. Therefore, any attempt even to bring up plain (undisputed, surely relevant) facts is either ignored (M-W can't be ignored), or sets off most impressive tantrums, slanders, fabrications and deceit, and the other standard reactions. Very easy to demonstrate, and by no means limited to these cases. Those without experience in critical analysis of conventional doctrine can be very seriously misled by the particular case of the Middle East(ME).

But recognizing that M-W took a courageous stand, which merits praise, we still have to ask how convincing their thesis is. Not very, in my opinion. I've reviewed elsewhere what the record (historical and documentary) seems to me to show about the main sources of US ME policy, in books and articles for the past 40 years, and can't try to repeat here. M-W make as good a case as one can, I suppose, for the power of the Lobby, but I don't think it provides any reason to modify what has always seemed to me a more plausible interpretation. Notice incidentally that what is at stake is a rather subtle matter: weighing the impact of several factors which (all agree) interact in determining state policy: in particular, (A) strategic-economic interests of concentrations of domestic power in the tight state-corporate linkage, and (B) the Lobby.

The M-W thesis is that (B) overwhelmingly predominates. To evaluate the thesis, we have to distinguish between two quite different matters, which they tend to conflate: (1) the alleged failures of US ME policy; (2) the role of The Lobby in bringing about these consequences. Insofar as the stands of the Lobby conform to (A), the two factors are very difficult to disentagle. And there is plenty of conformity.

Let's look at (1), and ask the obvious question: for whom has policy been a failure for the past 60 years? The energy corporations? Hardly. They have made "profits beyond the dreams of avarice" (quoting John Blair, who directed the most important government inquiries into the industry, in the '70s), and still do, and the ME is their leading cash cow. Has it been a failure for US grand strategy based on control of what the State Department described 60 years ago as the "stupendous source of strategic power" of ME oil and the immense wealth from this unparalleled "material prize"? Hardly. The US has substantially maintained control -- and the significant reverses, such as the overthrow of the Shah, were not the result of the initiatives of the Lobby. And as noted, the energy corporations prospered. Furthermore, those extraordinary successes had to overcome plenty of barriers: primarily, as elsewhere in the world, what internal documents call "radical nationalism," meaning independent nationalism. As elsewhere in the world, it's been convenient to phrase these concerns in terms of "defense against the USSR," but the pretext usually collapses quickly on inquiry, in the ME as elsewhere. And in fact the claim was conceded to be false, officially, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Bush's National Security Strategy (1990) called for maintaining the forces aimed at the ME, where the serious "threats to our interests... could not be laid at the Kremlin's door" -- now lost as a pretext for pursuing about the same policies as before. And the same was true pretty much throughout the world.

That at once raises another question about the M-W thesis. What were "the Lobbies" that led to pursuing very similar policies throughout the world? Consider the year 1958, a very critical year in world affairs. In 1958, the Eisenhower administration identified the three leading challenges to the US as the ME, North Africa, and Indonesia -- all oil producers, all Islamic. North Africa was taken care of by Algerian (formal) independence. Indonesia and the were taken care of by Suharto's murderous slaughter (1965) and Israel's destruction of Arab secular nationalism (Nasser, 1967). In the ME, that established the close US-Israeli alliance and confirmed the judgment of US intelligence in 1958 that a "logical corollary" of opposition to "radical nationalism" (meaning, secular independent nationalism) is "support for Israel" as the one reliable US base in the region (along with Turkey, which entered into close relations with Israel in the same year). Suharto's coup aroused virtual euphoria, and he remained "our kind of guy" (as the Clinton administration called him) until he could no longer keep control in 1998, through a hideous record that compares well with Saddam Hussein -- who was also "our kind of guy" until he disobeyed orders in 1990. What was the Indonesia Lobby? The Saddam Lobby? And the question generalizes around the world. Unless these questions are faced, the issue (1) cannot be seriously addressed.

When we do investigate (1), we find that US policies in the ME are quite similar to those pursued elsewhere in the world, and have been a remarkable success, in the face of many difficulties: 60 years is a long time for planning success. It's true that Bush II has weakened the US position, not only in the ME, but that's an entirely separate matter.

That leads to (2). As noted, the US-Israeli alliance was firmed up precisely when Israel performed a huge service to the US-Saudis-Energy corporations by smashing secular Arab nationalism, which threatened to divert resources to domestic needs. That's also when the Lobby takes off (apart from the Christian evangelical component, by far the most numerous and arguably the most influential part, but that's mostly the 90s). And it's also when the intellectual-political class began their love affair with Israel, previously of little interest to them. They are a very influential part of the Lobby because of their role in media, scholarship, etc. From that point on it's hard to distinguish "national interest" (in the usual perverse sense of the phrase) from the effects of the Lobby. I've run through the record of Israeli services to the US, to the present, elsewhere, and won't review it again here.

M-W focus on AIPAC and the evangelicals, but they recognize that the Lobby includes most of the political-intellectual class -- at which point the thesis loses much of its content. They also have a highly selective use of evidence (and much of the evidence is assertion). Take, as one example, arms sales to China, which they bring up as undercutting US interests. But they fail to mention that when the US objected, Israel was compelled to back down: under Clinton in 2000, and again in 2005, in this case with the Washington neocon regime going out of its way to humiliate Israel. Without a peep from The Lobby, in either case, though it was a serious blow to Israel. There's a lot more like that. Take the worst crime in Israel's history, its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 with the goal of destroying the secular nationalist PLO and ending its embarrassing calls for political settlement, and imposing a client Maronite regime. The Reagan administration strongly supported the invasion through its worst atrocities, but a few months later (August), when the atrocities were becoming so severe that even NYT Beirut correspondent Thomas Friedman was complaining about them, and they were beginning to harm the US "national interest," Reagan ordered Israel to call off the invasion, then entered to complete the removal of the PLO from Lebanon, an outcome very welcome to both Israel and the US (and consistent with general US opposition to independent nationalism). The outcome was not entirely what the US-Israel wanted, but the relevant observation here is that the Reaganites supported the aggression and atrocities when that stand was conducive to the "national interest," and terminated them when it no longer was (then entering to finish the main job). That's pretty normal.

Another problem that M-W do not address is the role of the energy corporations. They are hardly marginal in US political life -- transparently in the Bush administration, but in fact always. How can they be so impotent in the face of the Lobby? As ME scholar Stephen Zunes has rightly pointed out, "there are far more powerful interests that have a stake in what happens in the Persian Gulf region than does AIPAC [or the Lobby generally], such as the oil companies, the arms industry and other special interests whose lobbying influence and campaign contributions far surpass that of the much-vaunted Zionist lobby and its allied donors to congressional races."

Do the energy corporations fail to understand their interests, or are they part of the Lobby too? By now, what's the distinction between (1) and (2), apart from the margins?

Also to be explained, again, is why US ME policy is so similar to its policies elsewhere -- to which, incidentally, Israel has made important contributions, e.g., in helping the executive branch to evade congressional barriers to carrying out massive terror in Central America, to evade embargoes against South Africa and Rhodesia, and much else. All of which again makes it even more difficult to separate (2) from (1) -- the latter, pretty much uniform, in essentials, throughout the world.

I won't run through the other arguments, but I don't feel that they have much force, on examination.

The thesis M-W propose does however have plenty of appeal. The reason, I think, is that it leaves the US government untouched on its high pinnacle of nobility, "Wilsonian idealism," etc., merely in the grip of an all-powerful force that it cannot escape. It's rather like attributing the crimes of the past 60 years to "exaggerated Cold War illusions," etc. Convenient, but not too convincing. In either case.

NC

 

[rtwngAvngr]

http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/01/10/Sharon3.html

At this point, a furious Sharon reportedly turned toward Peres, saying "every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it."

The radio said Peres and other cabinet ministers warned Sharon against saying what he said in public because "it would cause us a public relations disaster."

Mearsheimer and Walt are totally correct. Jews and they're water carriers are liars.

 

[Gunny]

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A bit more about it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...402147_pf.html

Does this link look familiar, and YOUR original reply??? I forgot that it never worked so I tried it and located a good one. No need to thank me.:funnyface

This is stupid.

 

[Working Man]

This is stupid.

You are absolutely right. The people who need to be involved are correcting the post. Hopefully, they too will delete the other "personal" posts, and leave only those that can contribute too, or against my main argument, in a reasonable fashion.

In this case, opposing viewpoints, recorded by known "authorities" on the subject, have been provided. No issue with these posts and I will take the time to read them too.

 

[Working Man]

http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/01/10/Sharon3.html



Mearsheimer and Walt are totally correct. Jews and they're water carriers are liars.

When a prominent Jew in the US Congress, sends you a copy of a report from the Library of Congress, somewhat critical of Israel and its lobbyists,,,and that report substantiates many of the two professor's points,, who are you to believe??? Did he send it to me cause he knows that there isn't a damn thing I can do about it?? Even if I made copies,, not many people would want to be known to have had a copy in their possesion. Many people would fear the water carriers would report them to the superJews at the "temple".

The question for the third time is,, how do I get a revised copy of that report? Why does it seem like the info has been camoflaged?

How did the Chinks get the Silkworm missle technology?? You start building your fortress one brick at a time. Doesn't have to be a fancy brick, just functional.. This too is why North Korea can not be discounted so readlily.

 

[Annie]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
This link works, unlike the LAST ONE SOMEBODY ELSE SUPPLIED!!!

These two guys who wrote the controversal report on the all powerfull Israeli lobby should be given medals for bravery. These guys got bigger balls than the majority of people who post their own BS, and think they know what the hell they're talking about,,,including myself.

Working Man asked me to delete his post where he posted some things that he wished he didn't. No harm. Many of us have written stuff which we probably should have paused before hitting 'send'.

As for the purpose of this first post. I believe the NY Times, along with most newspapers keep articles a week, then they archive and you pay. More to the point with this particular thread, to start a brand new thread betching about a link, which was never given, because it's no longer working? Helllooo??? That's not something that really could be dealt with.

 

[Gunny]

Working Man asked me to delete his post where he posted some things that he wished he didn't. No harm. Many of us have written stuff which we probably should have paused before hitting 'send'.

As for the purpose of this first post. I believe the NY Times, along with most newspapers keep articles a week, then they archive and you pay. More to the point with this particular thread, to start a brand new thread betching about a link, which was never given, because it's no longer working? Helllooo??? That's not something that really could be dealt with.

LInk or no, ANYONE trying to pass off the Palestinians as anything but murderers and thugs, is just a loony lefty. There express intent since Day One has been to "rid Arab land of Jews." Period. No matter what they have to do, as they have proven throughout the years.

Lets take recent events. Israel gives the Palestinians land they can call Palestine. What do the Palestinians do? Vote a known terrorist organization into power, not to mention firing rockets daily at Israel.

The "Woe is me" from the Palestinians is a "no sale." They're hating scumbags, plain and simple, and the lefties that sympathize with them whould have woken up when the "poor, pitiful, picke-on Pali's" voted Hamas in as their gov't.

That's all Israel's fault.