But if so, the blame doesn’t lie wholly with government agencies charged with maintaining the lists. Some share of responsibility lies with civil libertarian extremists who have ceaselessly lambasted the entire no-fly system. Keep reading →
Like cancer, ideas can metastasize. In 2007, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt — the former a professor at the University of Chicago, the latter at Harvard — came out with The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. A “situation [that] has no equal in American history” had arisen, they wrote in the book (and in a paper bearing the same title posted on Harvard’s website). A domestic pressure-lobby–a body mostly comprising “American Jews making a significant effort in their daily lives to bend U.S. foreign policy so that it advances Israel’s interests” — had accumulated “unmatched power” and was using it to “skew” the American political system for its own narrow ends. Among other things, the Jewish lobby had used its “stranglehold” on Congress and “manipulation” of the mass media to propel the United States into war in Iraq. Keep reading →
Wall Street Journal
Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism From Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda
By John Mueller (Oxford, 319 pages, $27.95)
Reviewed by Gabriel Schoenfeld
In the years since the first nuclear bomb was tested in 1945, the world’s major powers have acquired vast arsenals of the devastating weapons. Minor powers have been working feverishly to follow suit. Some unstable and menacing ones, like Pakistan and North Korea, have been successful. Among those seeking to join the club, Iran is leading the pack. More than a half-century since the birth of the atomic age, nuclear weapons remain the polestar around which geopolitics revolve.
Is all the worry about them misplaced? John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University, certainly thinks so. In “Atomic Obsession,” he argues that nuclear weapons are far less important both as threats and as deterrents than almost anyone assumes. The weapons have always been nearly superfluous, he says; they remain so today. Keep reading →
New York Post
Another Obama Test on Israel
J-street is a new Washington, DC-based Jewish lobbying group that is seeking a place at the table alongside more venerable organizations like the American Jewish Committee and the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. Started only a year ago with generous “seed money” from the financier George Soros, its first national conference begins this Sunday. The keynote speaker — if he shows up — will be National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones.
The “if” is an important question, for there is a chance, if the White House pays attention to the controversy it would be stepping into, that Jones won’t show. Keep reading →
Does the United States still have a vital interest in Afghanistan? Are some experts right to compare the war to Vietnam? What should be the military objective and exit strategy? Gabriel Schoenfeld and Brian Katulis debate in the Los Angeles Times.
New York Post
Osama bin Laden’s recommended reading list has been growing. The surprise isn’t that the al Qaeda-approved books all condemn Jewish influence on US policy — but that the authors in effect return the favor.
In his latest audiotape, the al Qaeda leader urges Americans to read “The Israel Lobby” by academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt and Jimmy Carter’s “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” This adds to his earlier endorsement of the writings of former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer.
Wall Street Journal
It was Clare Boothe Luce who came up with the aphorism “No good deed goes unpunished.” This maxim accurately sums up U.S. efforts to help Russia dismantle its aging nuclear arsenal.
When the Soviet Union dissolved two decades ago, its component pieces were saddled with the formidable task of picking up the fragments of a huge nuclear-weapons stockpile. Fears arose across the world that nuclear warheads and/or radioactive material might get lost or stolen.
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The CIA is no longer in the business of influencing politics abroad.
Thus far, debate over American policy toward Iran has revolved around President Barack Obama’s various responses. When Iran’s electoral crisis first erupted, he downplayed its significance, calling the two rival candidates, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi, “tweedledum and tweedledee.” A week later, he sharply condemned the Islamic regime, describing himself as “appalled and outraged” by the government’s actions.
But are presidential pronouncements — however pusillanimous or intrepid — the limit of American power?
Click here to continue reading my Wall Street Journal op-ed.
