In a remarkably-fair piece about Walt and Mearsheimer in the latest New Yorker, the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, summarizes part of the scholars’ argument:
Israel and its lobby bear outsized responsibility for persuading the
Bush Administration to invade Iraq and, perhaps one day soon, to attack
the nuclear facilities of Iran.
And then accepts it. "They were also right about Iraq."
I find this statement staggering. Remnick’s piece is hard on Walt and Mearsheimer, saying they are hysterical and have put together a "prosecutor’s brief" against Israel, and are indifferent to its possible disappearance. But this statement, that Israel and its lobby bear outsize responsibility for the invasion plans, is alive to the common sense of recent history and–as Fritz Hollings put it– to what ‘we all know." Bravo to the New Yorker, for good sense and honesty.
And again, I say: There must be a soul-searching within the Jewish community if the country is going to move past Iraq. Why were the "best and the brightest" of this disastrous war rightwing Jews? Why did DLC Jews join them in banging the drum? And why have progressive Jews given these war supporters cover, rather than exposing them? What are Israel’s regrettable policies toward the Arab world doing to our identification and citizenship?