|
||
American Parochialism: Armenia, the Dalai Lama and the Jewish Question
John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt, the authors of the ever controversial Israeli Lobby, continue to insist that the U.S. government is in the pocket of the American Jewish lobby. No, they are not anti-Semites. But yes, they are wrong - not because the Israeli lobby isn't powerful, but because Middle Eastern policy is only one among a legion of others that are made on the basis of a stunted American parochialism that filters all foreign policy through a self-indulgent domestic lens.
Two new controversies from today's headlines make this ever so clear: the Israeli-leaning U.S. Congress turns out to be the Armenian-leaning and the Tibet-leaning U.S. Congress, even when these "for domestic consumption only" inclinations reflect a disastrously parochial disdain for realism and jeopardize relations with Turkey and China. One hundred years ago, a predecessor regime to the modern Turkish regime (the Ottoman Empire), committed genocide. The Congress has decided that precisely now - as we depend more than ever on Turkish assistance in the war in Iraq and are trying to dissuade the Turkish government from incursions in Kurdish Iraq - is the perfect time to condemn a regime five generations away from the original events for this horrendous but ancient tragedy.
Likewise, the Congress has decided that this is the ideal moment - as we try to win Chinese cooperation on keeping Iran nuclear free and ask the Chinese government to show more tolerance on human rights - to honor the Dalai Lama with its highest medal, though the exercise is bound to infuriate China. Tibet and Taiwan are China's two great bugaboos, holding out the specter of national disintegration, China's most ancient and profound anxiety.
So, no Professors Mearsheimer and Walt, the United States is not in hoc to Israel, it is in hoc to parochialism. It doesn't make foreign policy according to the Jewish lobby's wishes, it makes foreign policy to indulge a host of domestic concerns and self-celebratory varieties of hide-bound insularity. The United States remains a hegemonic global superpower sporting the narrow outlook of mini-states like Monaco and Lichtenstein.
It is not just Middle Eastern policy that is skewed, it is American relations with China, Turkey, France (remember "freedom fries?") and many other states vital to the pursuit of U.S. interests in an interdependent world.
The bad news is that when it comes to international affairs, America remains trapped in self-righteous and self-defeating provincialism. The good news is that this means the power of the Israeli lobby is merely a subordinate clause in the greater story of endless American parochialism. It is the latter and not the former we need to overcome.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Here is an interesting post on Zionism, which forms, as such, the bedrock of Israel lobbying. One of the most vehement attacks on the ideology I've ever seen. The writer uses the pseudonym Minsky.
http://oybay.wordpress.com/2007/10/24/1126
I'll pass on the Israeli leaning U.S. Congress and the timing of the Armenian leaning genocide acknowledging U.S. Congress but as far a Tibet goes there is no right or wrong time, according to the Chinese government, to honor His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.
The Chinese have been whining for forty eight years that the Dalai Lama is a separatist. That may have been true at sometime but now it's time for talks between the two.
The United States doesn't back down on issues of human rights and it shouldn't this time. It's hypocritical for the Chinese government to threaten other nations for giving the Dalai Lama a forum and acknowledging his spirituality considering the history within it's own borders.
As for their anxiety tell the Chinese government to take some Valium and get therapy.
Tibet was a backward nation. Such nations have always been eaten up by more powerful neighbors. If you don't understand the process, you might check with some old Cherokee. The weaker party cannot appease the stronger enough.
I don't have a high opinion of any religion. At their best they seem to have a lot of silliness in them. But there are some that are pure evil. Imperialism is one of those. The Chinese are an admirable people, but the Chinese take over of Tibet was despicable, and typical imperial behavior.
Closer to home ......
But the US does back down on human rights. Certain nation's violations are ignored, even abetted. As for China, the only thing our government will make is noise for internal consumption.
Kbrown, peace and dignity to you, BUT,,,,
Let us be open and honest with ourselves.
And our American history lends itself well to be critical of others?
Do we stand blameless among nations?
We have been trying our utmost to work toward that,,,, More Perfect Union,,,, for 230 years. For nearly 130 years implementing a GENOCIDE of our own, not souls saved, but souls destroyed.
Pray we ALL, for those lost in the Armenian slaughter, the old men of Turkey now dead who even,,,,, remotely,,,,, could be held accountable. Sorrows of ALL involved, so DEEP that we cannot imagine.
We would accuse Germany of crimes against humanity and holding people in death camps. What do we call these same concentrations camps for the wasting away of human life,,,
Umm?
Maybe,,, Reservations????
Just a few years ago a HUMAN being was chained drug behind a pick-up truck till, his head was separated from his body. In now uncertain terms, this too is a stain on our human rights assertions. We torture, we make wars based on religious differences and TURN NO CHEEK.
To suggest a path of peace marks you as a coward, in these times.
China seeks to become as an equal in the family of nations and we stick a thumb in her eye, our shortcomings no less. Chins has been on her road of development just 50 years, more pains of transition that we will ever know.
Do we celebrate their struggles and cheer China`s progress ever hopeful for greater change? Do we help China prepare new ways of helping her own people?
Kbrown, we fill the world with ideological rhetoric of condemnation, without once holding our own selvs accountable for centuries of error.
We would teach our children that conflict and violence has no place, yet applaud the same behavior in current leaders. We sideline values and wisdom of compromise, tolerance, patients, conflict resolution, consensus building and then scream for the abandonment of all we would hold dear and wise.
Not wise and not good.
JMO
All the best
Knute (Neo-LIB)
perhaps you've simply missed the point of Walt and Mearsheimers book entirely.
They never suggested that the Israel Lobby "controls" the entire government, or anything like it. Rather, they contend that it is very effetive at maintaining certain US behaviors and attitudes that lead to responses that damage us needlessly, while continuing to support the agenda of the radical right wing of Israeli politics and its supporters here in the US.
Here it is in a nutshell.
The Israeli settlement movement is bad for Israel, horrific fo the palestinians, and has led, due to our percieved complicity (we pay for it by subsidizing the huge losses Israel incurs from the occuaption that is only necessary to guard and enforce the growth of the settlements) it has led to terrorist blowback and finally, played a central role in inspiring 9/11, and the entire mess that find ourselves in.
None of the other situations you write about here is of the same gravity as the the settlements and their impact on world terrorism. They have persisted for more than 4 decades. they are a singular phenomenon that we as a nation should, by every priciple we hold, abhor and prevent at all costs. Yet nothing is done. And conversation about it is quashed and the issues are constantly equivocated (as your doing here) until they appear meaningless or confusing and beyond reach.
The lobby exists, and has only been successful at propping up insan ultra rightwing likud ideology that has hurt Israel and the US, but makes these nutjobs and their deluded and corrupt supporters happy.
End the settlemets, allow a free Palestine to emerge. Can politicains who put money and poltics ahead of the security of this nation and the execution of morally clear policy. then watch the central inspiration for ME terrorism fade away into history and the war on teror along with it.
Well said, Just.
Bush OK's Another Genocide
President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates by opposing this human rights initiative, are giving the green light to the Turkish government to go ahead and commit another genocide against its Kurdish population.
All the necessary elements are there; there is the PKK which has been declared a terrorist organization; the Kurdish minority living in Turkey could easily be accused of supporting the PKK, George Bush has given his blessings to the Turkish generals, there could not be a more perfect opportunity for another ethnic cleansing.
People, who oppose this human rights issue, are bigots and racists who do not think that the Turkish people have the common sense and the decency to be treated as civilized human beings. Instead, these deniers are treating the Turks as if they are the ‘Barbarian of the Middle East’ who cannot be treated as equal to people living in Western democracies.
Hence, while we do not deny the Holocaust because we have bases and enlisted personnel in Germany, these people make us believe that we should treat the Turks as sub-human barbarians and let their governments deny a crime so that we can use their bases. What’s next? The 9/11 attacks never happened, or it was a civil war?
While other countries are criticized, sanctioned, and attacked when they conquer a neighboring country, according to the US State Department it is OK for the Turkish government to attack and conquer half of Cyprus. Why? Because, we have to appease our Barbarian friends so that we can keep our bases in their country.
It is a shame that the present administration still opposes this important human rights achievement. It is a disgrace that there are still people amongst us who see no harm in denying a crime for profit.
This administration and its supporters marched into the White House as the defenders of the faith and the family values, they turned up to be a pack of wolves ready to sell America’s honor to criminals.
Exactly. Well said! And that just skims the surface of this who atrocial denial business.
As for those who say this is not a good time blah blah, tough bananas! Congress kept throwing out the Armenian Genocide issue year after year after year. And every year, it's the same old story: about endangering relations with a country that has never, ever really been the U.S.'s friend except in a toxic way, and this is not the first time Turkey has given the U.S. the finger.
The Armenian Genocide is NOT negotiable.
Maddogbitesback;Enlighten me please!On what historical evidence do you establish the statement,"the British who created Israel"?
The nearest I can figure out is,the British took over Palestine from the Ottomans,date uncertain, but some where before or in the early stages of WW1.
James Balfour,in 1917 issued a two paragraph note to Baron DeRothschild of France,which became known as the Balfour Declaration.In it he stated that britian would not object to and European Jews who so desired ,would not be discouraged from establishing Jewish settlements in Palestine.His note closes with the qualification that such"settlememts" should not,in anyway interfere with the rights and properties currently being enjoyed by Palestinians.
I'm having trouble seeing how this qualifies as Establishing Israel as a nation!
The actual boundries of The State of Israel were determined in 1948 by the U.N.Securety Councel,the U.S.Being one of the five member nations with veto power,which Harry Truman did not excercize.
What a wonderful attempt to confuse an issue. Ironically enough, the subject concerns holocaust-denial, which can't help but resonate tremendously. Timing notwithstanding, imagine a world where Nazi crimes went not only unpunished, but totally UNACKNOWLEDGED!
A public holocaust-denial will get you thrown in the gulag in Europe. Yet Armenians had to fight and scrape for years to get this far, only to have Congress stumble over yet another Iraq-related situation. At this rate the Palestinian Holocaust might be graced with the mainstreams gilded gaze at or around 3875...
It would not be the end of the world if nazis were not tried for their crimes. Get over yourself. Do you have any idea how many genocides have gone unchallenged, unreported and uncared about?
Pol Pot.
Stalin.
Nagasaki and Hiroshima
Palestine.
Sabra & Shatilla masacres.
Oh and the little issue of 600 000+ murdered Iraqis by the USA government.
The list of human evil is long, sadly nothing unusual happened in WWII.
Simply questioning or denying history is getting people thrown into prison in Europe and is apparently cause for going to war in the United States. That is insane! And needs to stop.
People have the right to question and challenge history and its madness that there is small religious group that is so intolerant and so facist that it wants to throw people into jail for merely challenging the jewish view of history.
That kind of intolerance and arrogance and oppression is unacceptable.
Nothing unusual happened in WW2? I disagree with that obnoxious assertion. Simply equating the evil of a pernicious philosophy that was responsible for the destruction of a culture that was as old as recorded history with the haphazard geopolitical manoeuverings you refer to is beyond stupid. I do agree many many bad things have happened in recent times - but there's a good reason that holocaust denial is universally condemned and it has nothing to do with the Jews or their influence. It has to do with humanity's collective memory of having stared into the nihilistic abyss and by the slimmest of chances avoided its terrible ultimate consequence. Good luck to you.
Boobaloo,
I agree with you. Genocide and massacres are terrible things, but they are part of the human condition...humans do these sort of things to one another. The holocaust is one of a long line of atrocities commited by men of all races, creeds and colors against one another....what stands out about the holocaust is how well it has been marketed over the years...Stalin murdered many more people...and of course gypsies were targets of the Nazis as well, but we don't have ongoing discussions about how badly they fared...the Jewish lobby has managed to keep their holocaust in front and center of US politics...to such an extent that it has become an all-purpose excuse for modern day atrocities by Israel on the arab peoples unfortunate enough to be living on lands coveted by Israel.
I was referring to "accountability's" posts...not Responsibility...sorry
Benjamin,
I'm not sure if I can top the post by RESPONSIBILITY, but we as a society, are hypocrites.
...and if we can't lead by example, we shouldn't be leading.
...and I doubt many folks would trade what they have for Israel's issues. (Lobby or no Lobby)
...and with all the power that we have (and it IS fleeting) we still can't provide health care, higher education, drugs, special needs assistance, the means to cross over to green energy or provide proper law enforcement to our citizens. We're a mess
A friend who just returned from Israel for her first visit home said to me that the Armenian genocide denial by the state of Turkey is supported by the state of Israel.
True,
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/897273.html
Peres to Turks: Our stance on Armenian issue hasn't changed
Israel has not changed its position on the killing of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I, President Shimon Peres assured the Turkish prime minister last week.
On Tuesday, the Anti-Defamation League announced that it considered the massacres to be genocide. It apologized for putting the Turkish people in a "difficult position" in a letter this weekend, the Turkish media reported.
In his conversation with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Peres reiterated the Israeli position that Turkey and Armenia should resolve the dispute on the nature of the killings through dialogue. Jerusalem is careful not to refer to the killings as a genocide.
Following the ADL's statement, Turkey was feeling "disappointed with its friends," Erdogan said. President Peres told the Turkish prime minister that Israel does not control U.S. Jewish organizations, which pursue their own agendas.
Foreign Ministry sources told Haaretz that they believe that Peres' efforts and the calming actions of the Israeli embassy in Ankara have helped ease tensions over the ADL's statement.
The Turkish media reported over the weekend that ADL President Abraham Foxman sent Erdogan a letter stating the ADL has "utmost respect for the Turkish people."
"We had no intention to put the Turkish people or its leaders in a difficult position. I am writing this letter to you to express our sorrow over what we have caused for the leadership and people of Turkey in the past few days," Foxman's letter reportedly read.
Thank you for the excellent clarification. My sense is that the State of Israel wishes to continue good relations with this critical allegiance. A difficult position in relation to that genocide.
Does anyone in the United States remember the TV situation comedy called "The Beverly Hillbillies"? People around the world certainly do. It was quite popular among them, because it so accurately portrayed people of the United States as they appeared to be: obscenely rich, ignorant of their world, and goofy.
Only now we must add: rich, ignorant, goofy and AS A RESULT, extremely dangerous.
You've never seen the show, have you? Your characterization suggests you haven't. Jed Clampett was kind, very humble and wise, common-sensical decent man, but he and his family were always being innocently misunderstood by their more sophisticated neighbors. It was a comedy.
While I lack the ability to read the minds of tv viewers around the world past or present, I suspect they liked it, as "George Castanza" once famously said: "because it was on tv."
It's entirely reasonable to expect nations to make decisions in their own interest. What stands out in these examples cited by Mr. Barber is how much Congress was willing to act in ways that went dangerously contrary to the interests of American troops in Iraq by angering Turkey over ugly events in their past. American troops need Turkey's assistance now. Mrs. Pelosi was willing evidently to play this game as a strategy to end the war???
Thankfully, saner heads prevailed.
The Dalai Lama award is not a gesture I would put into the same category. The US acts in its interest, I think, to honor a great man who certainly deserves the honor -- and in so doing, to tacitly let China know that we run things our own way. The US is about freedom. And the Dalai Lama is our kind of guy.
Bravo moderationsmuse
The issue with China is huge.
Tibet, in the voice of the Dali Lama, is accepting a parity relationship now enjoyed by the other [56] Chinese minorities, that of inclusion and autonomy. The famous one child policy does not apply to the minorities, even the large minorities, only the Han majority.
For China, Tibet is an Exterior problem, and China is all about Interior solutions.
Difficult.
Leadership required?
GW Bush? lame before elected.
If we Americans can't even stand firmly against genocide, the ultimate atrocity, why bother to organize ourselves into a government in the first place? If Turkey can't stand to see facts labeled as facts, that's its problem.
Stanski22:
The genocide in question occurred nearly a century ago; it was perpetrated by a government that no longer exists (indeed, it was the Ottoman empire that did it); and the firm stand you advocate -- who and what would we be standing against? The extinct entity?
And if such a hollow and utterly meaningless stand offends one of our few Arab allies, how would this help?
We organize ourselves into goernments to secure our rights and foster the common good. your tough stand does neither -- in fact it does the opposite.
Exactly right jbatch.
While the timing of this resolution is certainly subject to debate, it is appalling that the argument of "this government didn't do it" is offered. No one is saying that the current government did it; they are asking to acknowledge that it happened, something which Turks (who, I believe, are not Arabs) will not concede. This is much like the continued denials in Japan over "comfort women", along with the denial other atrocities committed before and during WWII.
What we would be standing against is DENIAL. The Armenians simply want the truth told. Whether it happened 100 years ago or 65 years ago, genocide and other atrocities need to be acknowledged in the history books of the countries where these things occurred.
Regrettably, a noble cause has, indeed, been caught up in US domestic politics; that does not diminish the need to tell the truth about the slaughter in Turkey.
If this government didn't do it, why are they denying it??? It's in their own government archives for heaven's sake.
And why are they blackmailing the U.S. for that matter?
Denying your own history is a very very serious matter.
"Never again"!
Bravo, excuse my Italian.
Huzzahs - serious analysis! The pro-Israeli lobby is abetted by the parochialism of which you speak, which sides with Israel (they're white--like us! and West-leaning too!) for the narrowest of ethnic and cultural reasons. Never mind that no hayseed could visually tell an Israeli from a Palestinian --without taking into account the former's more usually affluent dress. No one should underestimate the influence of these primitive stereotypes.
which sides with Israel (they're white--like us! and West-leaning too!)
They aren't "white like us"
They are Semitic, just like the Arabs are Semitic.
Thjat being said nobody is "white like us" nobody is white.
White is a frigging mindset t this point.
One Race: human.
Many news sources have presented one of Ahmadinejad's phrases in Persian as a statement that "Israel must be wiped off the map", an English idiom which means to cause a place to stop existing.
Juan Cole, a University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, translates the Persian phrase as:
"The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."
"Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map because no such idiom exists in Persian" and "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse."
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translates the phrase similarly:
"[T]his regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history." [End Wikipedia excerpt]
My note: MEMRI is staffed almost exclusively by Israeli interpreters.
As others have noted, Walt and Mearsheimer do not refer to a "Jewish lobby." Their recent book discusses the "Israel Lobby" comprised of not just some Jews but also some Christians, including a large number of Dispensationalist Evangelicals who look forward to Jews converting to their nonsensical and perverted version of Christianity following "Armageddon" and the "Rapture" or burn in hell along with Muslims and other non-believers.
Thus far, our Middle East policy has been determined by the ignorance of virtually all of our politicians (setting aside their subservience to the "Lobby" for campaign funds and votes) and the majority of Americans regarding the region, especially its modern history (Leon Uris’s mountain of mendacity, “Exodus” and the movie being prime examples of effective mis/disinformation) that has enabled the Israel Lobby to wield decisive power over Washington for nearly 60 years regarding the Israel-Palestinian/Arab conflict. I do, however, see signs (thanks to the scholarship, courage and moral integrity of among others, Walt and Mearsheimer, Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, American Jewish Profs such as Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt et al.) that the American people (especially university students) are now undersanding that our unquestioning political support at the UN and other international fora together with our taxpayer funded "no strings attached" aid (now approaching $20 million per day) have enabled Israel to ethnically cleanse Palestine of over 80% of its native Palestinian/Canaanite population and since 1967, maintain an illegal and unquestionably brutal occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem/the Old City, the Gaza Strip (still occupied under int. law) as well as Syria's Golan Heights and Lebanon's Shaba farms.
More of us are coming to see Israel for what it is - an exclusionary expansionist state that is America's number one geopolitical liability and the prime cause (along with Bush and co's subsequent illegal, immoral and unprovoked murderous invasion/occupation of Iraq) of Arab/Muslim animosity and international terrorism, including 9/11, as so declared by the Senate 9/11 Committee and the Pentagon.
well said straightshooter.
speak up!!
We support you.
This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy."
-- Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971
The time has come for the US Taxpayers to stop propping up Israel and for God to support his chosen people in their war to hang on to (and expand)the promised land.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
