Influencing American Foreign Policy -- The Impotence of Jews & Arabs Together

UPDATING links added 12-15-2010

The Wikileaks are telling the broad public some truths that were earlier mainly known only to the very well-informed. Jeffrey Goldberg explains that American foreign policy is made by US officials, although I would not say that policy is necessarily made in the American interest. That interest is itself a matter of interpretation and controversy.

The Impotence of the

Pan-Semitic Front

By Jeffrey Goldberg

Here's a fact that might astonish Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, whose book, "The Israel Lobby," posits the existence of a nefarious, all-powerful Jewish lobby that works in direct opposition to American interests: The "Lobby" (they love to capitalize the word, to accentuate its alleged uniqueness) has failed to convince two successive American administrations, one Republican and one Democratic, to attack Iran's nuclear sites. So much for Jewish power.

Here's another fact that might astonish Walt and Mearsheimer: It turns out that the Jewish lobby wasn't even the main lobby working to bring about an attack on Iran. It was, according to the treasure trove of State Department cables released by Wikileaks, the Arab lobby -- whose lead lobbyist is, by the way, the King of Saudi Arabia (which is a big job, since he's also in charge of the world's oil supply) -- that was at the forefront of an intensive, even ferocious, anti-Iran lobbying effort. For Walt and Mearsheimer to acknowledge that the Arab lobby, and not the Jewish lobby, was the prime mover of this issue would mean that they would have to recall their book, and somehow stuff back into a bottle all of the anti-Semitic invective they unleashed in the book's wake. So don't expect an apology anytime soon.

In sum, what we have here is a situation in which all of the Semites in combination have been proven impotent in their attempt to move American foreign policy. Which suggests that American foreign policy might actually be made by Americans. This is definitely a tough week for the neo-Lindberghians.

This article available online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/11/the-impotence-of-the-pan-semitic-front/67222/ Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

I'm not sure that Goldberg believes that walt-mearsheimer really believe in what they wrote in their own book called The Israel Lobby. In fact, Mearsheimer himself was interviewed on NPR several years ago and contradicted the claims made by walt & himself in their book, which might better be called a non-book, to use terminology from the 1960s and 1970s. Goldberg would have done better to write: Here's a fact that might astonish walt & mearsheimer if they really believed what they wrote in their book The Israel Lobby.

The revelation discussed by Goldberg is that Arab rulers too, not only Israel, were very concerned by the Iranian nuclear bomb project. This was known long ago and even reported fairly frankly in early 2009 by an Arab reporter with the Associated Press. Maybe the phoney experts on Middle Eastern affairs who proliferate and swarm in the major mass media and the "think tanks" don't read AP reports. Otherwise, why were they so ignorant and misleading?? A Jerusalem Post editorial mentions some of the names: Marc Lynch of Foreign Policy, Robert Dreyfuss of the once rational The Nation, and of course walt-mearsheimer. There are many more lesser and greater lights who reiterated the same silliness.

Getting back to Goldberg's point that the influence of the Semites in Washington, of Jews and Arabs taken either separately or together, was not enough to move Washington to a really firm policy against the Iranian Bomb, a policy not ruling out military action, as several Arab rulers called for, what do we conclude. First of all, the actual US policy was made by Americans, not Arabs or Jews or both, and not necessarily in the true, paramount interest of the American people which would be to limit nuclear proliferation. Secondly, it seems that --despite many fine words over the many years history of the Iran nuke endeavor-- the Washington policymakers did not want to stop the Iranian Bomb project. They want Iran to have the Bomb.

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Barry Rubin on Wikileaks and the Iranian Bomb [here]
David Horowitz, editor of the Jerusalem Post on Obama's duplicity concerning the Iranian Bomb Project [here]
Judith Apter Klinghoffer covers disappointment among Western "leftists" that Arabs too opposed the Iranian Bomb [here]. She also argued that "Obama lied when he pretended that he needed to kick Israel to convince Arabs to support his anti-Iran policy" [here].
12-8-2010 Tariq al-Mohayed admits that the wikileaks revelations about Arab opposition to the Iranian Bomb Project were true [here]. He calls them: "leaked US diplomatic cables."
12-15-2010 Martin Kramer brings a lecture from two years ago explaining that Arab states feared an Iranian Bomb [here].