At: http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2007/08/serious-cold-st.html

At a time when revisionists are attempting to deny what many of us witnessed firsthand--the decisive role of the Israel Lobby in bringing about the Iraq War, and many other disasters for the United States--Professors Walt and Mearsheimer have published a book that irrefutably sets forth the documentation of this role. What follows are some comments by Phil Weiss, a jewish writer for whom the expression "my country" is unambiguous--he means the USA.

http://www.philipweiss.org/

Walt and Mearsheimer’s book on the Israel Lobby is being published today. I finished it last night. I said before that it was historic, but I did not realize quite what it was till I put it down: a great work of American muckraking in the tradition of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (the meatpacking industry), Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (pesticides), and Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed (Detroit).

...the main reason the book cannot be ignored is that the arguments go much further, and are devastating. Simply put, the book proves that the tail has wagged the dog on the greatest foreign policy mistake of the last 40 years, a mistake that has caused incredible suffering in Iraq and the U.S., and blasted my country's image. The evidence the authors marshal is so compelling that it leaves me, as a progressive Jew, weeping with distress over what the fervid particularist imagination of rightwing Jews has done to my country.

I would point to one sentence in the book that I found heartbreaking. The authors describe in detail the neocon vision of transforming the Middle East as democracies by starting with Iraq. The dream that peace in Jerusalem would begin with war in Baghdad, which has ended in such a miserable failure, grew out of the conviction that Israel was a great democracy and that its treatment of the Palestinians would be overlooked once the U.S. changed Arab societies. It is a complete delusion; and yet its power over Jews of even liberal stripe can be glimpsed this week in The New Republic...

I've been reading the book this August and have three preliminary impressions: Serious, cold and stunning. The seriousness of the book is conveyed on every page. The arguments are calm and earnest, stripped of metaphor and coyness. These are mature men engaged in every sinew with a giant squid of an issue; and their 106 pages of endnotes are overwhelming, and give the lie to anyone who accuses these scholars of "shoddy scholarship."

Cold. The authors are conservative realists at heart. They see states as amoral and a little vicious, and they don't overheat their arguments. There is no joy in the book, and the fervor is hidden beneath mountains of cold logic. They are reserved, and tactical. They refuse to really take on the dual-loyalty problem (just as Tony Judt refused in his speech at NYU last year) but you sense that they believe it's a problem (as I do). They generally say that the lobby has every right to do what it does, but their underlying zeal comes out--I think, admirably--when they state that the suppression of free speech on this issue is inappropriate and undemocratic. David Remnick's anger at the authors--he accuses them of wanting Israel to disappear-- seems to me a response to that zeal, and though he misdescribes it, the reader can feel the great molten energy underneath the icy words.

As for stunning, the argument they present is towering and clear and about time. The revision of Israeli history is stirring. The ways that the lobby has diminished the suffering of the Palestinians and enabled the occupation and settlements are starkly and even emotionally described. Most stunning is the argument that Remnick accepts: the authors' description of the Iraq disaster as arising from the lobby's pressure. I study this issue, and yet I turned the pages of this chapter with my mouth open, especially the pages dealing with the manipulation of intelligence, and evidence of Israel's hand in the WMD lies. It is this section that should and must stir national debate, and now.