There is an interesting article in the latest NY Review of Books on Israel and an academic paper from a pair of professors whose treatment of the subject has caused a bit of a stir amongst cognoscenti and pundits alike. The paper, written by a pair of Harvard and University of Chicago professors -- Stephen Walt for the former and John Mearsheimer the latter -- posits that "the centerpiece of US policy in the Middle East has been its unwavering support for Israel, and that this has not been in America's best interest."
Seems plausible enough. And yet this simple, rather obvious assertion, which incorporates evidence of the unparalleled power of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby here in Washington, as proof, has created a cacophany in both the political and academic worlds with people decrying the authors as amateurs, idiots, and borderline anti-Semitic. Some factual mistakes, decontextualized quotes, and narrow scope of focus -- the paper does little to address Palestinian transgressions during the previous decades of turmoil while lambasting the Israeli delegation for responding in kind, for one -- have bolstered critics' demands that the paper be dismissed out of hand.
And while these mistakes are as unfortunate and unexpected as they were avoidable, considering the article's esteemed pedigree, its core argument -- that AIPAC has a powerful, and many times negative, effect on US policy decisions -- is, as the above article states, "entirely correct." Their contention is more fully explained in the following:
"While other special-interest groups influence US foreign policy, Mearsheimer and Walt say, no lobby has managed to divert it 'as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US and Israeli interests are essentially identical.' The result has turned the US into an 'enabler' of Israeli expansion in the occupied territories, 'making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians.' Pressure from AIPAC and Israel was also a 'critical element' in the US decision to invade Iraq, they write, arguing that the war 'was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure.'"
And while the NY Review's article does a good job showing that this latter bit is not the only explanation for our involvement in Iraq -- another overstep by the authors that only serves to further diminish the work's overall impact -- it also nicely fills in a crucial gap that the authors neglected to deal with -- a lack of firsthand evidence of how, exactly, AIPAC functions on Capitol Hill. Despite a $47 million annual budget and a cadre of well-connected employees and supporters able to influence political votes and races with ease, Mearsheimer and Walt largely neglect the finer points of AIPAC's operations. Thankfully, though, the bulk of the NYBR article deals with this very issue and offers a fascinating look at how the lobby wields its weight in Washington, and does so so effectively.
But the most important point it raises, in my mind, revolves around how the paper has been received and how the lobby and its consituents have responded -- with cries of persecution and anti-Semitism on the part of the authors. This knee-jerk reaction that almost always accompanies the utterance of a cross or critical word against Israel and the ability of these people to drag the debate to these issues and not the merits of the original statement reminds me of how the current Administration has dealt with almost all forms of criticism in its six years in office.
From the war in Iraq to the war on Terror (and the myriad stepping stones in between), whenever it has been confronted with a sharp critique or a meager questioning glance, the Administration and its supporters have lashed out at the inquisitor by questioning their patriotism, their intelligence, and/or their character rather than the validity of their statements or the import of their uncertainty. This has created a climate where our political debates engage emotion over the issues and where opinion is formed (and the debates themselves won) on the basis of volume rather than intellect and argumentative rigor or persuasion.
And it is this point, which is the centerpiece of another interesting article in the latest issue of Harper's entitled, "Stabbed in the Back! The Past and Future of a Right-Wing Myth." (An admittedly unfortunate example of punctuational exuberance, to be sure.) In the article, author Kevin Baker shows how the long-running legacy of the Seigfried myth -- the Wagnerian hero who was betrayed by one of his own and fatally stabbed in the back -- has been implemented by Republicans in order to absolve themselves of criticism and blame for everything from the shortcomings stemming from the Yalta accord ending WWII to Vietnam and Iraq. By creating the notion of betrayal to explain falling short in their mythically heroic endeavors, Baker details how these men have to this day been able to reframe history and escape from accepting culpability for their part in it.
He writes,
"What Nixon and a few of his contemporaries did for the right was to make culture war the permanent condition of American politics. On domestic issues as well as ones of foreign policy, from Ronald Regan's mythical 'welfare queens' through George Wallace's 'pointy-headed intellectuals'; from Lee Atwater's characterization of Democrats as anti-family, anti-life, anti-God, down through the open, deliberate attempts of Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove to constantly describe opponents in words that made them seem bizarre, deviant, and 'out of the mainstream,' the entire vernacular of American politics has been altered since Vietnam. Culture war has become the organizing principle of the right, unalterably convinced as it is that conservatives are an embattled majority, one that must stand ever vigilant against its unnatural enemies -- from the 'gay agenda,' to the advocates of Darwinism, to the 'war against Christmas' last year."
Thus as a result, we are treated to conversations that employ logically specious claims -- that critics are being unsupportive of the troops, for example, and thus treasonously un-American when they speak out against the war in Iraq or its execution -- to defeat warranted examination and debate over government policy and oversight. (As Baker so aptly writes when describing one person's response to the above, "Again, the link was made. Soldiers of the most powerful army in the history of the world would be actively endangered if they even wondered whether the folks at home were questioning their deployment," the hint of incredulity and sarcasm unmistakable in his tone.)
The downfall of the myth this time around, though, as evidenced by the President's continuingly disintegrating poll numbers and the parallel mess in Iraq, is that Republicans have separated the public from the struggle, a distance that has divorced them from any sense of unity or ownership with its eventual outcome and led to diminishing levels of support. Baker explains:
"The Bush Administration has now become the first government in our nation's history to fight a major war without seeking any sort of national solidarity. Far from it. The whole purpose of the war in Iraq -- and the 'war on terrorism' -- seems to have been to foment division and to win elections by forcing Americans to choose between starkly different visions of what their country should be...
Bush and his advisers have sought to use the war not only to punish their enemies but also to reward their supporters, a bit of political juggling that led them to demand nothing from the American public as a whole. Those of us who are not actively fighting in Iraq, or who do not have close friends and family members who are doing so, have not been asked to sacrifice in any way. The richest among us have even been showered with tax cuts. Yet in demanding so little, Bush has finally uncoupled the state from its heroic status. It is not a coincidence that modern nationalism dates from the advent of mass democracy -- and mass citizen armies -- that the American and French revolutions ushered in at the end of the eighteenth century. Bush's refusal to mobilize the nation for the war in Iraq has severed that immediate identification with our army's fortunes."
And while Baker is quick to point out that all of this did not begin with the Bush Administration, the clear implication is that, as is usually the case when that particular qualification is offered, they are among the worst offenders in trotting this myth and its arguments out. A really interesting read.
We'll close, as always, with a couple of readers from my favorite neck of the woods, Latin America. The first is from the latest Foreign Affairs and deals with the much-ballyhooed shift to the left underway in much of South America. Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Bolivia have already done so, while Mexico and Peru are flirting with doing so in the coming year's elections, which has made the five people in Washington still cogniscent of the southern continent's existence and importance a little nervous. Trotting out such time-honored fears of a Castro-led or -inspired revolution across the area (or a similar one led by his protege, Hugo Chavez), many have seized on the high levels of anti-American sentiment present in these countries (stoked so effectively by the aforementioned Chavez) and the shift in style of government to trumpet a total collapse of our interests in the area. But author Castaneda argues that, while superficially there has been a move to the left, it is by no means a uniform one, distinguishing between two distinct camps held within the Latin liberal sector.
One is a socialist, Castro-ist model as has taken hold in Cuba; the other is a populist, borderline authoritarian one as has consolidated power in Venezuela. The Castro model incorporates elements of Soviet-style Communism with grandiose, ideological rhetoric and symbolism; the Chavez model, on the other hand, has little in the way of ideology, instead relying on emotion and cult of personality, along with rigidly enforced calls for uniformity and token projects for the working class and poor, to maintain its hold on power. Castaneda explains the origins of the pair's allure, as well as a key difference affecting their hopes of doing so in the future, in the following:
"Democracy, although welcomed and supported by broad swaths of Latin American societies, did little to eradicate the region's secular plagues: corruption, a weak or nonexistent rule of law, ineffective governance, and the concentration of power in the hands of a few...
More recently, something funny has happened to both kinds of leftist movements on their way back to power. The communist, socialist, and Castroist left, with a few exceptions, has been able to reconstruct itself, thanks largely to an acknowledgment of its failures and those of its erstwhile models. Meanwhile, the populist left -- with an approach to power that depends on giving away money, a deep attachment to the nationalist fervor of another era, and no real domestic agenda -- has remained true to itself. The latter perseveres in its cult of the past: it waxes nostalgic about the glory days of Peronism, the Mexican Revolution, and, needless to say, Castro. The former, familiar with its own mistakes, defeats, and tragedies, and keenly aware of the failures of the Soviet Union and Cuba, has changed its colors."
Really interesting stuff. And it's worth noting that while Castaneda is correct in stating that Castro's links to the Latin left -- whether implicit or direct -- have had little effect on domestic elections, but long been an impediment to the community's stances on various individual issues, involvement with Chavez may be having the opposite effect, if recent developments in Mexico and Peru are any indication. At least in terms of the former, close ties to Chavez (in the form of political endorsements and public appearances by the Bolivarian) seem to have hurt both Mexico's Lopez Obrador and Peru's Humala in recent weeks as their poll numbers have steadily declined in light of their opposition's hammering on the connection between the two. It's uncertain if this is a sign of things to come across the continent or just an isolated, albeit effective, backlash engineered by the opposition camps at the end of their campaigns. Worth keeping an eye on, in any event.
The other two articles are a pair of profiles on the source of that dissatisfaction -- who else? -- Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, apparently the leader of the only country still in existence in Latin America judging by the articles published in the media. The first is by Michael Shifter, a professor over at Georgetown and the VP for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue, from the same issue of Foreign Affairs. It details how despite all of Chavez's political bluster and hemispheric influence, his social programs -- the key to his wide and seemingly-unflagging popular support in the country -- are widely considered failures, as evidenced by low to no economic growth, continually dismal standards of living, and a trenchant gap between the haves and the have-nots. The other also addresses this issue, but from a more personal, human perspective. It's from last month's National Geographic and is by the inimitable Alma Guillermoprieto, one of the best writers on Latin American stuff out there. You can check out an excerpt here -- I wasn't able to find a full text version online, so you'll have to take a fieldtrip to the library to see it.
Until next time, my friends...
