Postscript to Walt & Mearsheimer

Thank you to The Jewish Press for publishing “The ‘Israel Lobby’ and Academic Malpractice.”  Senior Editor Jason Maoz’s article (“Walt’s Paper Trail”) reviewed the precursors to Stephen Walt’s latest “research” and is an important addition to the commentary.

As bookends to this matter, here is a letter and a comment from both ends of the political spectrum — appearing respectively in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal and in a post last week at Daily Kos:

1. Laura A. Huggler wrote as follows to the Wall Street Journal:

Ruth R. Wisse, in her March 22 editorial-page commentary “Israel Lobby,” has identified and addressed the insidious implications contained in John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s recent paper, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

My husband and I represent the diverse membership of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).  I am Catholic; my husband is Protestant.  We are active in AIPAC at the local level in Michigan and are neither gullible nor stupid Americans, as Profs. Mearsheimer and Walt imply.  Earlier this month I attended my third consecutive AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. The capstone experience was the opportunity to meet with my elected congressman and senators regarding vital foreign policy issues that affect the U.S., Israel and the world.

I am a full-time working professional hurrying to complete my doctoral dissertation while awaiting the arrival of our second adopted child from Guatemala, so going to Washington was no small sacrifice.  However, it was very important to go, not because I am neoconservative or under the sway of a “coalition” or any of the other inane ideas that Profs. Mearsheimer and Walt suggest.  I went because I am deeply concerned about Israel and the Middle East, and I wanted to have a say in how U.S. foreign policy is shaped.

America and Israel historically have been aligned for peace and democracy.  They stand together against terrorism.  These shared values resonate deeply within me as a citizen and voter.

2. Richter, who ends his comments with a signature slogan reflecting a different point of view (“Fox News – We Distort, You Imbibe”) left this comment at Daily Kos:

I read their opus, and am mightily unimpressed. . . .

This absurd argument reaches its nadir with the author’s protracted effort to suggest that AIPAC lobbied Bush into going to war in Iraq.  Does anyone here really believe that Bush would have stayed out of Iraq in a world without AIPAC? Actually, this virtually lets Bush off the hook.  It wasn’t the oil, it wasn’t a personal vendetta, it wasn’t warmongering or expansionism that made Bush go to war.  No, it was those nasty folks at AIPAC.  Take them out of the picture, and Bush would have named Joan Baez Secretary of Defense.

Sorry.  I don’t buy it.

Note to future conspiracy “scholars” doing further “research” for a Harvard “research paper:”  Huggler, Maoz, Richter and I have never met.