Hu Jintao is simultaneously President of China, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, and chairman of China's Central Military Commission. Last year Newsweek labeled him the "second most powerful man in the world," and he has undoubtedly watched the events of the past few years with keen interest and no small amount of satisfaction. Here's what I imagine he's thinking these days...

"We are realists here in the People's Republic, and in a sense we have been for centuries. Even during the most radical phases of our history -- such as the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution -- our foreign policy was prudent and keenly attuned to the balance of power.
 
The United States has had the world's largest economy for more than a century, and despite some self-inflicted wounds, it is still the world's most powerful country. We recognize this fact, and our current strategy of "peaceful rise" reflects what we have learned by studying the U.S. experience. America became a great world power by remaining aloof from the quarrels of the other major powers and letting them destroy each other in ruinous wars, while it built its own economic strength and gradually established itself as the dominant power in its own region. When it did fight wars, it picked weak and easily defeated opponents or it waited until the last minute to get involved in wars with other great powers. The United States was the last major power to enter both World War I and World War II, and it made sure that other states bore the heaviest burdens during the fighting. As a result, both wars ended with the United States in the strongest position.
 
Our strategy of "peaceful rise" reflects a similar set of calculations. We want to stay out of pointless quarrels with others and avoid costly military commitments, at least until our economic strength equals that of America.  For this reason, we are happy to let the United States take the lead in troubled regions like the Middle East or Central Asia. Why shouldn't we want them to squander their strength trying to fix intractable global problems, while we retain good relations with all parties? It just makes sense.

I do miss President George W. Bush, of course. We had good relations with the United States while he was president, and he even came to visit us during our Olympics. I probably should have thanked him personally for all the foolish things he did, like letting Bin Laden and the Taliban slip through his fingers in Afghanistan and then invading Iraq in 2003.  He did cultivate closer ties with India and that development didn't make me happy, but on the whole, his threats and bluster frightened many U.S. allies and made U.S. relations with states like Iran even worse than they were before. Needless to say, these policies created valuable opportunities for China, and we've been quick to take advantage of them. While America was distracted and wasting hundreds of billions occupying hostile countries -- we were establishing profitable commercial ties in the oil-rich Persian Gulf and quietly expanding our influence in our own Asian backyard.
 
President Bush also helped us by presiding over scandals such as Abu Ghraib, Hurricane Katrina, and the treatment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo. To be frank, I never understood why some Americans are so obsessed with protecting "rights." In fact, I was pleased to discover that former Vice President Cheney agrees with me; he understands how a strong executive deals with potential troublemakers! I sometimes think he'd make a good Vice President here. 

Anyway, the good news for us is that these events made the United States look both incompetent and hypocritical and made it harder for Washington to criticize my own domestic policies. I owe former president Bush a real debt of gratitude; I should probably call him and say thanks.
 
I confess that I wanted John McCain to win the 2008 election, because I thought he would keep America on the same failed course. And having someone like Governor Palin as Vice President was almost too much to hope for. So naturally I was worried when Barack Obama got elected; he seemed smart and level-headed and is obviously a gifted politician. He's much more charismatic than Bush and to be frank, he's a lot more charismatic than I am. So I asked myself: Would he be able reverse America's recent missteps and restore its international reputation? And at first, it seemed like he might do just that.

But now I'm not so concerned. President Obama may have good instincts and intentions, but his aides don't seem to be giving him very good advice. He is going to get most U.S. troops out of Iraq (a smart move for him, but not so good for me) but he's getting a lot of pressure to put more troops and money into Afghanistan. I hope he does, because that will leave the United States with fewer resources to devote to containing China.  Moreover, President Obama doesn't seem to be making any headway with Iran or the Middle East peace process, and failure there will make that big speech in Cairo look rather silly. Obama also wants China and India and other developing countries to make big concessions on greenhouse gas emissions, but he's having trouble getting his own Congress to adopt a serious program and I doubt we'll face much genuine pressure at the upcoming summit in Copenhagen. That's a relief.
 
And I can't help smiling to myself whenever I think about America's domestic political system. Americans like to lecture China about the importance of "free speech" and other quaint Western concepts, but at least I don't have to deal with madmen spouting nonsense on television and radio and special interest groups making it impossible to enact reforms that the nation as a whole badly needs. I may have some minor problems in Xinjiang, but I hear states like California are rapidly becoming ungovernable and that the universities we used to envy are losing their edge. I even hear that Harvard isn't so rich anymore. This makes me smile too, because a well-educated population is the key to future power and a society that is content to be ignorant cannot remain a world power for long.

Meanwhile, my economy is beginning to grow rapidly again, while the United States piles up debt and lots of people there are looking for work. I do like that nice young Treasury Secretary; he understands that he needs my help to keep the world economy afloat and he isn't going to try to browbeat us very much.  The silly new tariff on imported tires is annoying and we will of course issue a loud protest, but even that reactionary magazine The Economist said it was "bad politics, bad economics, bad diplomacy, and hurts America."

So from where I sit, the view looks pretty good. America likes to say that it is the "leader of the free world" and I'm happy to let them have that title -- for now -- provided they stay focused on other issues and let China's peaceful rise continue. The more "global leadership" they insist upon taking, the more resources they will expend, the faster they will decline, and the sooner we will be in a position to supplant them.

I do have one lingering concern, however. America's leaders may come to their senses, and go back to the unsentimental realism that guided their rise to greatness in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They might discover what Sun Tzu taught -- "There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare" -- and stop insisting on bearing all the world's burdens themselves. But then I remember what their foreign policy "debate" is like, and I recall that both Democrats and Republicans seem equally eager to interfere all over the world, and suddenly that danger doesn't seem very great. In fact, the future looks bright."

MAYELA LOPEZ/AFP/Getty Images

I was thinking about two former American government employees this weekend, and how the differences between them tell us a lot about why the United States is in so much trouble today.
 
The first person is Eugene Kranz, the legendary NASA flight director immortalized in the film Apollo 13. I watched a rerun of the film on Friday night, and was struck again by his remarkable leadership of the team that improvised the astronauts' rescue after an in-flight explosion crippled their spacecraft and placed their lives in peril. Many readers probably remember the moment in the film when Kranz tells his colleagues: "Failure is not an option." This line may have been apocryphal, but when I survey the landscape of problems we face at home and abroad, I wish we had more people like Kranz in key leadership positions.

Yes I know, it's just a movie, but Ed Harris's portrayal is consistent with what we know about Kranz himself. Above all, Kranz was a leader who took full responsibility for his actions. Here's what he told his colleagues after the tragic fire on the launching pad of Apollo 1, a fire that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee:

Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we... Not one of us stood up and said, 'Dammit, stop!'...We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. ... From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: 'Tough' and 'Competent.' Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do...Competent means we will never take anything for granted...When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write 'Tough and Competent' on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control."

That is the kind of attitude that lands men on the moon, builds a healthy economy, and when necessary, wins wars.

Now compare that frank and honest statement with the behavior of another former government employee: Richard Perle. In a recent article in The National Interest and a public appearance at the Nixon Center, Perle has tried to sell the story that neither he nor his fellow neoconservatives had any significant influence on the foreign policy of the Bush administration, and especially the decision to invade Iraq. Specifically, he denounces the supposedly "false claim that the decision to remove Saddam, and Bush policies generally, were made or significantly influenced by a few neoconservative 'ideologues.'" He suggests that no one has ever documented this claim, either conveniently ignoring the many books and articles that did exactly that, or misrepresenting what these works actually say.

Given that Iraq turned into a debacle that the United States is having trouble escaping, it is hardly surprising that Perle is denying his role now. But that's not what he said back when the war looked more promising. In an interview with journalist George Packer, recounted in the latter's book The Assassins' Gate, Perle described the key role that the neoconservatives played in making the Iraq War happen. 

If Bush had staffed his administration with a group of people selected by Brent Scowcroft and Jim Baker, which might well have happened, then it could have been different, because they would not have carried into the ideas that the people who wound up in important positions brought to it."

The "people who wound up in important positions" were key neoconservatives like Douglas Feith, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and others, who had been openly calling for regime change in Iraq since the late 1990s and who used their positions in the Bush administration to make the case for war after 9/11, aided by a chorus of sympathetic pundits at places like the American Enterprise Institute, and the Weekly Standard. The neocons were hardly some secret cabal or conspiracy, as they were making their case loudly and in public, and no serious scholar claims that they "bamboozled" Bush and Cheney into a war. Rather, numerous accounts have documented that they had been openly pushing for war since 1998 and they continued to do so after 9/11. As neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan later admitted, he and his fellow neoconservatives were successful in part because they had a "ready-made approach to the world" that seemed to provide an answer to the challenges the U.S. faced after 9/11.

The bottom line is simple: Richard Perle is lying. What is disturbing about this case is is not that a former official is trying to falsify the record in such a brazen fashion; Perle is hardly the first policymaker to kick up dust about his record and he certainly won't be the last. The real cause for concern is that there are hardly any consequences for the critical role that Perle and the neoconservatives played for their pivotal role in causing one of the great foreign policy disasters in American history. If somebody can help engineer a foolish war and remain a respected Washington insider -- as is the case with Perle -- what harm is likely to befall them if they lie about it later?

Let's keep a few facts in mind. Perle and his neoconservative buddies helped develop and sell a policy that has left over 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead and more than 30,000 wounded, was directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, and will end up costing the United States more than a trillion dollars. Yet instead of having the integrity and courage to acknowlege his role and admit his mistakes -- as an honest man like Gene Kranz would -- Perle now offers us a squid's ink cloud of lies and prevarications. Although his absurd claims have been promptly and properly challenged, does anyone seriously think he will pay a larger price? The National Interest was all-too-willing to publish his rewriting of the historical record, and no doubt prestigious organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations will be happy to give him a platform at future meetings. Look for him on the Lehrer Newshour and CNN too; heck, he could even end up with his own show on Fox News.

Let's face it: there is little or no accountability in Washington, where being wrong means never having to say you're sorry; indeed, you don't even have to admit responsibility for past mistakes, no matter how serious. It's just the American taxpayer who ends up footing the bill, along with the soldiers who fought and died for these blunders.

As Frank Rich and others have figured out, we are in trouble today because we have allowed a culture of corruption and dishonesty to permeate our institutions and pollute our public discourse. Until that changes -- until our public institutions contain a lot more truth-tellers like Gene Kranz and fewer liars like Richard Perle -- we are not going to know where we stand, where we are headed, or whom to trust.

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A quick follow-up to Tuesday's post about U.S. options if the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict becomes unworkable.

Several commenters suggested that even the presence of 500,000+ Israeli settlers outside the 1967 border is not an insurmountable obstacle to a two-state solution, because even that large number could be moved back to Israel in the context of a peace deal or and the majority of the settlers could actually be incorporated inside a redrawn border with the Palestinians receiving land of equal value in some sort of swap. This is certainly true in theory, but it gets harder with each additional settler and as Israeli opinion shifts rightward. Hamas' growing popularity is obviously another significant obstacle, and these two trends are reinforcing each other right now.  Nothing is impossible in politics, I guess, but movement is in the wrong direction at present and it is hard for me to imagine it reversing in the absence of strong outside pressure.

Matt Yglesias suggests I may be underestimating Israel's ability to retain U.S. support even if the two-state solution is abandoned and Israel creates a de facto apartheid state. He may be right -- especially in the short term -- but it is going to be a much harder sell, because this outcome is so at odds with American values and because discourse on these topics is becoming more open, even among Israel's supporters here in the United States. Matt himself is a good example of this phenomenon, and he's not alone. He's correct that the United States tolerated apartheid in South Africa for a long time and for a host of not-very-convincing Cold War reasons, but we weren't sending South Africa billions of dollars of aid every year and the geopolitical consequences of that policy were not as significant. (Southern Africa was never as important a strategic interest as the Middle East is). Over time, it will hard to sustain the current "special relationship" if the apartheid scenario comes to pass, and all the more so once the Arab population of greater Israel exceeds the Jewish population. That's the scenario that Prime Minister Olmert has been warning against, and it ought to be giving fresh energy to our diplomatic efforts now. It is this scenario that has motivated groups like J Street, and more hardline organizations like AIPAC ought to be thinking hard about it too and reconsidering their own positions.

The question is: what can they do to help Israel achieve a genuine and workable two-state solution and thus avoid all these worrisome alternatives?

For advice on what Obama should do, check out Ben-Gurion University professor Neve Gordon's new essay in The Nation. I'd be more optimistic if the new administration didn't have too much on their plate already. Obama's team doesn't just need to prove they can walk and chew gum at the same time; sometimes it looks like they need to walk, chew gum, juggle three eggs, compose a string quartet, dance a jig (or if you prefer, the hora), cook a five-course banquet, rotate the tires, wind-surf, and play slide guitar -- all at once.

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Yesterday's New York Times contained three interesting items that deserve to be read together. Taken as a whole, they tell you a lot about the fundamental challenge facing Barack Obama.

The first item was Frank Rich's op-ed column, a jeremiad about Washington's insider culture. Rich nicely describes a world where out-of-touch elites with the right connections continue to enjoy ready access to power. Rich focuses his attention on Tom Daschle's fall from grace and the prominent role of economic advisors "who are either alumni of the financial bubble's insiders club or of the somnambulant governmental establishment that presided over the catastrophe." His broader point, however, is that Washington is infused with a culture of non-accountability and intellectual incest that helps explain why so many policy initiatives are ill-conceived or ineptly executed, or both.

The second article was a page 1 profile of special envoy Richard Holbrooke, who is now Obama's point man for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke is a long-time Washington insider who served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and was the driving force behind the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the Bosnian civil war. (He was also managing editor of Foreign Policy back in the 1970s). Since 2001, he has been vice-chairman of Perseus LLC, a Manhattan-based private equity firm. According to the article, "During the Bush years, Perseus was Mr. Holbrooke's base, providing him with what friends say was a relatively undemanding job and lavish compensation as he bounced from topic to topic, almost as if seeking a problem tough enough to rivet all of his attention." Unfortunately, one of the topics he landed on was the invasion of Iraq, which he strongly supported. Holbrooke said Colin Powell's infamous U.N. Security Council speech "documenting" Iraq's fictitious WMD programs (an episode Powell later recalled as the "lowest moment of his life") was "a masterful job of diplomacy." While critical of the Bush administration's pre-war diplomacy, Holbrooke nonetheless argued that Saddam Hussein "was the most dangerous governmental leader in the world," and that the United States had "a legitimate right to take action."

Which brings us to item No. 3 (also on page 1): an unflattering article describing how Afghan President Hamid Karzai has gone from being Washington's best hope for success to being regarded as a weak and ineffective leader of what may be the most corrupt regime in the world. Buried in the article is a telling sentence: "Many Afghans and Western officials here believe that it was the Iraq war, more than any other factor, that deprived Mr. Karzai of the resources he needed to help the Afghan state stand on its own and to prevent the resurgence of the Taliban." That's right: the same Iraq war that Holbrooke backed.

Put these three separate articles together, and you get a good sense of how U.S. policy gets made. Powerful people with the right connections rise to important roles in government. When not in power, they land lucrative jobs that still leave them with lots of time to engage in public life, spending most of it hobnobbing with other people with similar backgrounds, advantages, and world-views, while building the connections they will need to get back into power later on. (Holbrooke apparently spent some of his Perseus earnings hosting an annual dinner for Hillary Clinton, replete with a set of A-list guests). And then the political wheel turns, and they return to public life, eager to solve the very problems they helped create.

Like most elites, the current policy establishment is a forgiving culture that cherishes conventional wisdom and rarely punishes anyone for being wrong -- even about big things -- provided that they know the right people. F. Scott Fitzgerald had it exactly wrong: for at least some American lives, there's no end to second chances.

My point here isn't to single out Ambassador Holbrooke, who is talented and tenacious and has some genuine accomplishments to his credit, and who is hardly a poster child for the adage "to get along, go along." In fact, given our current circumstances, I wish we had a few more Holbrookes to put to work on our current challenges.

My aim is simply to highlight Obama's basic dilemma. He has huge problems to solve and not a lot of time to do it. So he needs to work with the institutions and individuals that are currently entrenched in the Washington-New York nexus. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, "you go to work with the government you have." But it is those same institutions and individuals who created the mess we're in. If Obama tackles that dysfunctional power structure head-on it will go to the mattresses to defend itself, thereby making it harder to address the immediate problems we face. But if he doesn't establish new ways of doing the public's business, the old problems will persist and derail his efforts anyway. I don't see an obvious way out of this box, so I'm hoping the President is a lot smarter than me.

Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offered a predictably unhelpful response to President Barack Obama's conciliatory message to the Muslim world last week. Ahmadinejad's answer: first the United States has to "apologize" for its opposition to Iran's nuclear program and for a host of other transgressions.

I've got news for him: we've already done so -- at least in part -- and he's not going to get another apology any time soon. Obama may be hoping for a fresh start with Tehran, but he is not going to start the process by apologizing for anything. And he's certainly not going to take any steps that might bolster Ahmadinejad's popularity between now and the Iranian presidential election in June.

Yet Ahmadinejad's statement does raise a broader question: should states apologize at all, even when they've done something they regret?

You might think that realists wouldn't put much stock in apologies; aren't they just meaningless "cheap talk?" Don't realists worry more about balances of power and conflicts of interest, and don't they emphasize that international politics is a rough business where states routinely do nasty things to weaker parties? Given that world-view, what's the point of saying you're sorry?

In fact, even realists think being willing to apologize sometimes matters. But as Dartmouth's Jennifer Lind argues in her book Sorry States: Apologies in World Politics, the act of apology can be tricky too, and can easily backfire.

There are at least three good reasons for states to apologize when they have behaved badly towards others.

First, apologizing to those you have wronged is an acknowledgement of their equal status; it is a recognition that they are of sufficient stature to deserve an expression of regret. Refusing to apologize sends the message that you think the wronged party is too insignificant to warrant any contrition. To do so betrays contempt for the party we have wronged, and treating someone with contempt is bound to fuel a desire for revenge.

Second, far from being "cheap talk," apologies can be a costly signal that conveys a genuine and sincere desire for a new relationship. Why? Because apologizing to a former adversary is politically risky, and only leaders who are genuinely sorry would be willing to run the risks and bear the costs.  When a state acknowledges responsibility and expresses regret, it also opens itself up to demands for compensation or various forms of sanction and it may even lend legitimacy to opponents who then try to take advantage of the admission. The fact that there can be genuine costs to an apology explains why mere words still carry genuine meaning to the wronged party.

Third, apologizing tells others that no matter what we may have done in the past, we understand where the boundaries of acceptable conduct lie. If a country commits a heinous act and then refuses to apologize for it, others have reason to question whether its leaders are even aware that they have crossed a moral boundary. When someone shows no understanding of where the lines are, there is every reason to think they would cross them again without a second thought. To take an obvious example, had Germany failed to acknowledge the Holocaust and to openly apologize for it, people everywhere would have reason to think that Germans might easily do something similar again. The same logic explains why Pope Benedict's decision to reverse the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying priest is troubling; if the Vatican thinks Holocaust-denial is a minor matter that should take a back seat to the unity of the church, what does that tell us about the priority it places on crimes against humanity?

Even for realists, therefore, apologies can be a necessary tool of diplomacy. Apologizing for past mistakes is sometimes the best -- maybe the only -- way to wipe the slate clean and provide others with some basis for giving a country a second chance. Being a great power may mean that you never have to say you're sorry, but sometimes it is still a good idea.

But not always. Lind's book also shows that the question of apologies is more complicated than the simple picture I just sketched. She points out that states sometimes reconcile in the absence of an official apology -- as France and Germany did after World War II -- especially when former rivals realize that they have powerful strategic reasons to bury the hatchet and move on. Moreover, sometimes the act of extending an apology triggers a domestic backlash that undercuts the very leaders who are trying to promoting reconciliation, reinforcing existing suspicions and frustrating efforts to build a new relationship.  In order to balance these conflicting imperatives, states may be better off eschewing efforts to "name and shame" and relying on less accusatory forms of remembrance and regret, such as memorials to victims (on both sides), international commissions to advise on the writing of textbooks and other educational materials, and joint scholarly programs designed to address sensitive historical events.

With respect to the United States and Iran, this is good advice. To build a new relationship, both sides will have to come to terms with the various hostile acts that each has committed over the past fifty-plus years. But no Iranian leader is likely to apologize to the "Great Satan" and no U.S. president could go beyond past expressions of regret without risking a backlash here at home. A better path is to emphasize the interests that the United States and Iran do have in common -- such as a shared desire for a stable and unified Iraq, and a growing concern about the Taliban's resurgence in Afghanistan -- while addressing the obvious points of contention (e.g., Iran's nuclear program). If we can make progress on the concrete diplomatic issues, we can also begin unofficial efforts to understand how and why U.S.-Iranian relations deteriorated in the past. American and Iranian scholars could usefully explore these issues through academic exchanges and then disseminate their findings more broadly, allowing each society to learn from past mistakes but without demanding humiliating expressions of regret that neither is likely to get.

BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images

Over at the New Republic, Jonathan Chait is in a lather about J Street, Ezra Klein, and me, mostly because we've independently suggested that unconditional and uncritical support for Israel might not be good for the United States or for Israel either. The essence of his argument is mostly guilt-by-association, but along the way he also hurls a barrage of nasty adjectives at my book with John Mearsheimer on the Israel lobby. And like some other critics, his comments suggest that he didn't bother to read it first.

To be specific, Chait says the book "portrays Israel as a force for evil throughout its existence." He offers no evidence to support that false claim. Had he read the book, here are some passages that might have given him pause.

There is a strong moral case for Israel's existence, and there are good reasons for the United States to be committed to helping Israel if its survival is in jeopardy" (p. 5).

The authors of this book are 'pro-Israel' in the sense that we support its right to exist, admire its many achievements, want its citizens to enjoy secure and prosperous lives, and believe the United States should come to Israel's aid it is survival is in danger" (pp. 113-14).

Israel's creation and subsequent development is a remarkable achievement."  (p. 355).

My co-author and I were critical of some Israeli policies, while emphasizing that:

[We are] not focusing on Israel's conduct because we have an animus toward the Jewish state, or because we believe that its behavior is particularly worthy of censure. On the contrary, we recognize that virtually all states have committed serious crimes in their history. . . and that some of Israel's Arab neighbors have at times acted with great brutality" (pp. 80-81).

We also noted that:

almost all of the many gentiles and Jews who now criticize Israeli policies or worry about the [Israel] lobby’s impact find [anti-Semitic] views deeply disturbing and categorically reject them. . . They believe that Israel acts like other states, which is to say that it vigorously defends its own interests and sometimes pursues policies that are wise and just and sometimes does things that are strategically foolish and even immoral. This perspective is the opposite of anti-Semitism. It calls for treating Jews like everyone else and treating Israel as a normal and legitimate country. Israel, in this view, should be praised when it acts well and criticized when it does not....Americans who care about Israel should be free to criticize it when its government takes actions that they believe are not in Israel’s interest"  (p. 195).

In short, Chait's characterization of our book is a fiction; he just made it up. He undoubtedly thinks that attacking us in this way will help keep Israel safer. He's wrong. The policy of unconditional and uncritical support that the New Republic has fervently defended for years isn’t working for either the United States or for Israel -- and plenty of other staunchly pro-Israel individuals -- e.g., Daniel Levy, Matt Yglesias, Roger Cohen, Ha'aretz editor David Landau, M.J. Rosenberg, Gershom Gorenberg, Gideon Levy, Akiva Eldar, Aaron David Miller, etc. -- have figured this out too.

Why is Chait so exercised? I think it's because he realizes the discourse about Israel in the United States is changing before his eyes, and that increasing numbers of people -- both Jewish and gentile -- now realize that a more normal relationship would be better for both countries. If Chait were a true friend of Israel, he'd agree.

The New York Times reports that President Obama will appoint former Senator George Mitchell as his chief envoy on Israel-Palestine. According to Jewish Week, ADL national director Abraham Foxman thinks Mitchell is an inappropriate choice because he is "fair," and has been "meticulously even-handed." As Matt Yglesias points out, fairness is a quality that we normally prize in an envoy.

Foxman says this approach is wrong because our policy hasn't been "even-handed" in the past. But has he noticed that our long-standing policy of one-sided support hasn't been working out so well for the United States, or for Israel? Experienced Middle East diplomats like Aaron David Miller and former Ambassador Dan Kurtzer understand that our mediation efforts will fail if we act like Israel's lawyer, and make it clear that we need envoys who are seen as credible by both sides. To repeat myself: it's time to redefine what being "pro-Israel" means. I think Obama may get this, even if Foxman doesn't.

Over at the Atlantic web Site, Megan McArdle and Ross Douthat spent part of last week engaged in a lengthy discussion of the situation in Gaza and the role of the Israel lobby, with Andrew Sullivan chiming in briefly. This is one sense gratifying, because John Mearsheimer and I decided to write about the lobby in order to encourage more open discussion of a subject that had become something of a taboo here in the United States, especially in mainstream foreign policy circles.

I won't get into all the details of their exchanges (which included an interesting discussion of various counterfactuals and other examples of ethnic politics), but I did want to raise one question. Although Douthat and McArdle offer a number of critical appraisals of our work on this subject, did anyone else noticed that the discussion of our book never contained any concrete evidence that the participants have actually read it? In his entries, for example, Ross Douthat denounced it as "tendentious, simplistic and wrong" and suggests that we "echo tropes of classical anti-semitism." He's welcome to his opinion and is of course free to express them on his blog, but he has yet to offer a single specific quotation or concrete example from the actual book to buttress his case. So far, his only evidence are references to other people who reviewed the book and didn't like it.

Although more sympathetic to our position, Megan McAardle says that we "tend to assume conspiracy where affinity is a better explanation," even though, as detailed below, we repeatedly rejected any notion of "conspiracy" and instead described the lobby as a normal American interest group, albeit an unusually influential one. So I am beginning to wonder if they have actually read the book.

The problem with relying on other people's opinions is that virtually all of the mainstream critics here in the US misrepresented our arguments badly, frequently accusing us of saying the exact opposite of what we actually wrote. At the risk of boring you, let me offer a few examples:

1. As I pointed out last week, we wrote that the various groups that comprise the Israel lobby are "engaged in good old-fashioned interest group politics, which is as American as apple pie,” and we repeatedly stressed that "lobbying on Israel's behalf is wholly legitimate." Apart from a regrettable tendency to try to silence critics or to smear them as anti-Semites, we even said that the tactics employed by the main groups in the lobby "are reasonable, and simply part of the normal rough-and tumble that is the essence of democratic politics" (pp. 5, 13, 147, 185). In fact, we also expressed the hope that pro-Israel forces in the United States would remain active in politics, but begin to advocate policies that would be better for the U.S. and Israel alike (pp. 352-55). Nonetheless, Jeffrey Goldberg's review in The New Republic called our book “the most sustained attack...against the political enfranchisement of American Jews since the era of Father Coughlin."

2. We defined the lobby as a "loose coalition of groups and individuals who actively work to move American foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction," and we emphasized that our definition "does not mean that every American with favorable attitudes towards Israel is a member of the lobby." Instead, we wrote that to qualify as part of the lobby one had to "actively work" to strengthen and defend the "special relationship" of nearly-unconditional support that now exists between the U.S. and Israel (pp. 5, 113-14). There are therefore plenty of Americans who have favorable attitudes toward Israel who are not part of the "Israel lobby." Yet Walter Russell Mead falsely charged that "Mearsheimer and Walt have come up with a definition of the 'Israel lobby' that covers the waterfront, including everyone from Jimmy Carter and George Soros to Paul Wolfowitz and Tom Delay."

3. We wrote that "the Israel lobby is not a cabal or conspiracy or anything of the sort" and repeated this assertion five times (pp. 5, 13, 112, 114, 131, 150). Nonetheless, Ruth Wisse published an op-ed in the Washington Post saying that "Mearsheimer and Walt allege that a Jewish cabal dictates U.S. policy in the Middle East, helping Israeli interests and hurting U.S. ones."

4. We wrote that "we are not challenging Israel's right to exist or questioning the legitimacy of the Jewish state," adding that we believed "the United States should stand willing to come to Israel's assistance if its survival were in jeopardy." We also wrote that we "support its right to exist, admire Israel's many achievements, [and] want its citizens to lead secure and prosperous lives" (pp. 11-12, 113, 341-342). Nonetheless, former Israeli Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich falsely claimed that our book "not only expressed criticism of Israel's policy but also questioned its legitimacy."

5. Leslie Gelb's review of our book in The New York Times referred repeatedly to a "Jewish lobby," even though we never used that phrase ourselves and explicitly argued that it was an inappropriate and misleading term (p. 115). It is inappropriate because many American Jews do not "actively work" to support the special relationship and because some individuals and groups that do actively work in this way (such as the "Christian Zionists") aren't Jewish. Gelb's mischaracterization (and his review's title, "Dual Loyalties,") made it sound like we were directing our criticisms at an entire ethnic group and hinting its members were disloyal, which is of course false.

6. Even David Remnick, whose comment in the New Yorker was one of the more fair-minded mainstream appraisals, said that "Mearsheimer and Walt give you the sense that, if the Israelis and the Palestinians come to terms, bin Laden will return to the family construction business." In fact, we said the opposite. After documenting how the Israel-Palestinian conflict had influenced bin Laden’s attitudes and aided terrorist recruitment, we wrote that “U.S. support for Israel is hardly the only source of anti-Americanism in the Arab and Islamic world" and noted that the issue of Palestine was "not their only grievance." As we emphasized, "some Islamic radicals are genuinely upset by what they regard as the West's materialism and venality, its alleged "theft" of Arab oil, its support for corrupt Arab monarchies, [and] its repeated military interventions in the region, etc." (pp. 65-70). We also stated that "Israeli-Palestinian peace is not a wonder drug will solve all the region's problems; it will by itself neither eliminate anti-Semitism in the region nor lead Arab elites to tackle the other problems that afflict their societies" (p. 348).

I could go on, but you get the point. Given this array of misstatements and distortions (most of them in highly visible publications), it is not surprising that other pundits formed a negative impression of the book, which is no doubt what our critics intended.

Here it is perhaps worth mentioning that the book also contains: 1) lengthy and explicit denunciations of the "shameful legacy" of anti-Semitism; 2) a frank discussion of the bogus charge of "dual loyalty," which we describe as a "canard" and an "anti-Semitic slander," adding that “any notion that Jewish Americans are disloyal citizens is wrong” (p. 147); and 3) an acknowledgement that the long history of anti-Semitism makes it understandably hard to discuss this subject in a calm or dispassionate way. We knew full well that we were entering a minefield, and went to considerable lengths to make it clear what we were saying and what we weren't.

Contrary to various other charges, we also wrote that the lobby does not "control" U.S. foreign policy (though it does have considerable influence) and we did not advance a "mono-causal" explanation for U.S. Middle East policy, including the controversial decision to invade Iraq. With respect to the latter, we argue that pressure from the neoconservatives (an influential element of the broader interest group) was a necessary but not sufficient condition for war (a point that many other authors and public figures have made) and we emphasized that the neocons could not cause the war by themselves. America's dominant global position was a crucial contextual factor, 9/11 was a key precipitating event, and it was Bush and Cheney who made the ultimate decision for war. We also make it clear that the war wasn't Israel's idea (they were in fact initially opposed), although key Israeli leaders eventually jumped on board and helped sell it here in the United States. The book's conclusion calls for a more normal relationship between the United States and Israel, which we believe would be better for both countries. And to repeat, we also express the hope that supporters of Israel here in the United States will remain actively engaged in the political process in order to help bring about that much-needed change.

Unfortunately, you wouldn’t know most of these things about our book if you relied on mainstream reviews in the United States or the recent discussion at the Atlantic web Site. It doesn't have to be that way, of course: it's entirely possible to take issue with some of our arguments while representing them fairly. For an example of how this is done, watch for Jerome Slater's forthcoming essay in the Winter 2009 issue of the scholarly journal Security Studies. Slater agrees with us on some issues and disagrees strongly on others, but the key point is that he does this in a fair-minded way and for the most part portrays our claims accurately.

To step back for a moment, this whole episode illustrates a larger problem with the quality of public discourse here in the United States. Can we expect to address important public policy problems constructively when critics routinely deal with arguments they don’t like in such a misleading fashion, and when prominent pundits seem comfortable lambasting scholarly works they show little sign of having read? If this is the level of "truthiness" that public intellectuals and pundits now aspire to, we are in bigger trouble than I thought, and in ways that go beyond the reaction to any particular book.

To be clear, neither John Mearsheimer nor myself consider our book to be the last word on the subject; that's just not how scholarship works, especially in controversial areas. We welcome open discussion and vigorous debate and we recognize there are aspects of this issue about which reasonable people are bound to disagree. That's fine with us, because lively but fair-minded discussion can help us all figure out where our views might need revision and bring us to a clearer understanding of these difficult issues. But in order to have that sort of exchange, people really do have to read the book first.

As Barack Obama prepares to take the oath of office, the conventional wisdom is that he faces the greatest challenge of any president since Franklin Roosevelt. It's easy to see why: the U.S. economy is in the most serious slump since the 1930s, and he had been handed a losing war in Iraq and a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. America's global image has fallen to unprecedented lows, and he won't have a lot of discretionary resources to throw at big global problems.

Yet not all is doom-and-gloom, and our current difficulties also present real opportunities if Obama is wise enough to seize them. What's the silver lining here?

First, the Bush administration's disastrous legacy is an obvious asset for Obama, because virtually any change from Bush's approach -- whether in style or in substance -- is likely to win kudos overseas. This benefit won't last if Obama's policies turn out to be more of the same, but for the moment it gives the new team a lot of running room.

Second, Obama is becoming President at a moment of relative peace and stability world-wide. This claim may seem surprising when we think of the past six years in Iraq and Afghanistan or the bad news from Darfur, Gaza, Pakistan, and elsewhere, but the reality is that overall level of global violence has declined sharply since the end of the Cold War. Even more importantly, the risk of major-power conflict is probably lower now than at any time in the past century. According to the Human Security Project at Simon Fraser University, the number of armed conflicts dropped dramatically from 1993 to 2006, and the average lethality of both state-based and non-state based conflicts (measured as number of fatalities per year) has also decreased steadily in recent decades. Although certain regions (e.g., Central Asia, sub-Saharan Africa) have seen upticks in violence, the overall global trend is encouraging. The conflicts that are still underway are tragic and will require attention, but most of them do not pose a threat to vital U.S. interests.

Third, the economic problems that have hammered the United States have also affected our major rivals. It is not as if the U.S. economy is in free-fall while potential challengers are soaring. The current downturn also poses problems for China, has put a serious crimp in Moscow's ambitions, and compounded Iran's already-difficult economic situation. We would obviously be better off with a thriving economy, but the current recession is not a short-term threat to America’s core national security interests.

Fourth, Obama is taking office with high levels of support from a population that for the moment seems to have realistic expectations. The American people know we are in trouble and that it will take some time to fix the situation, a message that Obama has reinforced skillfully. The Democrats have solid control of the House and Senate, but their failure to win a veto-proof majority will force them to reach out to a few GOP members in order to advance their program. This reality will temper the far-left wing of the Democratic Party and make it harder for the far-right in the GOP to blame everything on Pelosi, Reid, and the new President.

Taken together, these various factors mean that President Obama has a great deal of latitude in the conduct of foreign policy. As I've written previously, our current circumstances will require the United States to set clearer priorities and stop trying to do everything. The good news is that the American people are likely to support this shift. Many foreign countries will welcome less heavy-handed U.S. leadership, while others will start working harder to keep us happy if we play hard-to-get more often.

Above all, the biggest mistake Obama could make would be to follow too closely in his predecessor's footsteps, or to pay too much attention to the people whose advice helped derail his predecessor. They might be excellent dinner companions, but their policy recommendations have been tried and the results are in.

There are still serious dangers out there, of course, and the conduct of U.S. foreign policy is not going to be easy. Here's one of my lingering worries: in the past, prolonged economic depressions have been fertile breeding grounds for hyper-nationalism, fascism, anti-Semitism, and other social and political pathologies. If similar movements were to re-emerge today, the comparatively low level of global violence that exists now -- especially among the major powers -- would be jeopardized. It follows that getting the U.S. and world economy back on track is a key national security priority, as important as any specific diplomatic initiative.

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Back in December, veteran foreign correspondent William Pfaff asked the right question: how much faith do other states still have in American competence?

Back in 2005, the failed occupation in Iraq and the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina led many foreign observers to question whether America's leaders knew what they were doing. The aura of effectiveness matters, because American influence depends in good part on the belief that U.S. leaders (both public and private) are knowledgeable, honest, and above all competent individuals who can figure out what needs to be done and then actually get it implemented. When other governments think U.S. officials can be trusted to make smart choices and deliver them, they are more likely to follow our lead. But if they suspect that our leaders are bunglers, they will keep their own counsel or look elsewhere for guidance.

America's reputation for competence was based on genuine achievements: the Manhattan Project, the Marshall Plan, the moon landings, a broad array of scientific and technical achievements (signified by a steady stream of Nobel Prizes), some remarkable institutions of higher learning, the creation of media and entertainment industry with unprecedented global reach, decades of fairly steady economic growth, a successful melting-pot society, a belated but well-intentioned effort to address the legacy of slavery, and the eventual triumph over the Soviet Union. One might also add iconic examples of accomplishment such as Charles Lindbergh, Fred Astaire, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jonas Salk, Margaret Mead, Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. Even when events like Vietnam cast doubt on American wisdom, these setbacks did not damage the larger sense that America was a country that worked pretty well.

Today, however, the drip-drip-drip of bad news and the growing sense that malfeasance and moral rot are widespread risks permanent damage to America's global image. Consider what the past eight years has done to our brand name: the fraud-filled "reconstruction" of Iraq and the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina, the dark scar that is Guantanamo, the feckless performance of Alberto Gonzalez, the corruption conviction of Jack Abramoff, and the failure to capture Osama bin Laden. Add to that the Wall Street meltdown, the Madoff scandal, the Blagojevich follies, and the Big 3 automakers' lame pleas, and you have a picture of America that raises more doubts than hopes.

Of course, like many other factors in international politics, confidence in American competence is a relative concept: it's not as if Japan or the Europeans are making consistently smart choices and executing them well. China's Olympics were undeniably impressive, but then there's the melamine scandal and numerous reports of widespread corruption. I guess there's some dubious comfort to be had from the fact that other states have lots of problems too.

Back home, the election of Barack Obama was an electrifying event that has temporarily restored some hope in American ideals and demonstrated our society's still-remarkable capacity to surprise. But the bleeding will resume if the new team does not demonstrate that it has well-designed strategies for dealing with our current problems, and if they don't quickly demonstrate the ability to put those plans into effect and make them work. And let's be honest: despite their ample experience and glittering resumes, the track records of some of his key appointees do not inspire as much confidence as one might like.

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While reading the official transcript of Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton's opening statement at her confirmation hearing yesterday, I had a brief moment of excitement somewhere around paragraph twenty-five.  Here's what made me sit up straight (emphasis added):

Of course, we must be realistic about achieving our goals. Even under the best of circumstances, our nation cannot solve every problem or meet every global need. We don't have unlimited time, treasure, or manpower. And we certainly don't face the best of circumstances today, with our economy faltering and our budget deficits growing.

So to fulfill our responsibility to our children, to protect and defend our nation while honoring our values, we have to establish priorities. Now, I'm not trying to mince words here. As my colleagues in the Senate know, "establishing priorities" means making tough choices. Because those choices are so important to the American people, we must be disciplined in evaluating them -- weighing the costs and consequences of our action or inaction; gauging the probability of success; and insisting on measurable results."

"She gets it!" I thought. But then I read on and discovered what "making choices and setting priorities" actually means. Among other things, it means:
 
1. "Deepening our engagement" with Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries in central Asia;

2. "Actively" pursuing a strategy in the Middle East that addresses Israel's security needs and the Palestinians' "legitimate" political aspirations, challenges Iran to end its nuclear program and sponsorship of terror, persuades Syria to abandon dangerous behavior and "strengthens relationships" with Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other regional states;

3. Making new efforts to secure nuclear materials, get other states to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons, ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and renew negotiations for a Fissile Material Cutoff treaty;

4. Working to strengthen U.S. alliances in Europe and Asia, to include NATO, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and India;

5. Pursuing cooperative relations with Russia and China, while standing up for core U.S. values;

6. Working closely with Canada and Mexico on economic issues and drug trafficking, and returning to a policy of "vigorous engagement" with the rest of Latin America;

7. "Combating al-Qaida's efforts in the Horn of Africa; helping African nations to conserve their natural resources; stopping war in Congo; ending autocracy in Zimbabwe and human devastation in Darfur; supporting African democracies like South Africa and Ghana; and working aggressively to reach the Millennium Development Goals in health, education, and economic opportunity";

8. Leading an "urgent, coordinated response to climate change," and continuing active efforts to address global AIDS, global poverty, global health, global education and, of course, promoting democracy and human rights;

And after covering every continent, she declared that this laundry list was just "a few of our top priorities" (my emphasis) and said she expected to "address many more in the question-and-answer session." And she did.

These goals may all be perfectly worthy in themselves, and it would have been undiplomatic for her to spell out the countries, regions, or issue she deemed less important. Nonetheless, Clinton's remarks were not those of someone eager to make choices or set priorities, even though she deployed clever new concepts like "smart power." Clinton did not say which of these problems merited the most resources or the most immediate attention, which problems were the most easily solved and which might be intractable, or how the United States might deploy its power strategically, so that our actions in one area made solving other problems easier, instead of operating (as we often do) at cross-purposes.

It was an impressive performance in some respects -- she's mastered her brief, showed admirable poise, and made it clear that she's on the same page with the president-elect. But taken as a whole, her testimony was entirely consistent with the well-engrained tendency for great powers to assume that what happens anywhere matters everywhere, and especially matters to them. I'm no isolationist, but it would be refreshing to hear a more rigorous assessment of our vital interests and a clearer acknowledgement of the limits of U.S. power, especially these days.

The good news: her presentation was clearly not this. Not surprisingly, it reminded me of this. But has anyone told her that it's not the 1990s anymore?

Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Several prominent bloggers (including Andrew Sullivan, Juan Cole, and Matt Yglesias) have taken note of Ehud Olmert's remarkable statement claiming credit for getting the United States to abstain from the U.N. Security Council Resolution on Gaza, even though the United States had helped write it. Sullivan suggests that the episode reveals just how differently the government of Israel was treated compared to other governments during the Bush years.

He's right, but this pattern of behavior didn't start in 2001. As a number of participants have chronicled, the Clinton administration let the government of then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak determine the direction and pace of Arab-Israeli peace negotiations and Barak often treated Clinton and his aides in a remarkably peremptory fashion. Even Dennis Ross's memoir The Missing Peace (which is generally sympathetic to the Israeli perspective), betrays repeated irritation at Barak's highhandedness (see especially pp. 530-532, 539, 550-551, 578-580). The apotheosis was Clinton's abortive meeting with Syrian President Hafez al Assad in Geneva in March 2000. Undertaken at Barak's insistence, Clinton later complained to the Israeli PM that the meeting made him feel "like a wooden Indian sitting there doing your bidding."

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Over at the Atlantic Web site, Ross Douthat and Jeffrey Goldberg have been giving each other high-fives after an apparent competition to distort what I write. Responding to such criticisms is normally a mug's game, but a few comments seem appropriate at this juncture.

To be frank, it's hard for me to take Goldberg seriously when he writes on Middle East issues. After all, he wrote a 12,000 word review of our book on the Israel lobby that managed to misrepresent its arguments on virtually every page. To take but one example, my coauthor and I wrote that the various groups and individuals that make up the Israel lobby are "engaged in good old-fashioned interest group politics, which is as American as apple pie," and we repeatedly stressed that "lobbying on Israel's behalf is wholly legitimate." What did Goldberg say in his review? After linking us to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Osama bin Laden, he told his readers that our book was "the most sustained attack...against the political enfranchisement of American Jews since the era of Father Coughlin." Huh? And then he denounced us as anti-Semites at a public gathering in New York City.

Yet a year or so later, Goldberg himself wrote an op-ed for The New York Times complaining about the pernicious influence of assorted right-wing American Jews, and claiming their political activities were bad for Israel. (Of course, he denied that those activities might also be bad for the United States too, which is odd given his assumption that the interests of the two states are so closely aligned.)

Now Goldberg refers to me as someone who thinks "the Jews start all wars." Does he have any evidence to support this very serious accusation? Of course not. He's just using the same tired smear tactics that Israel's defenders commonly rely on when they can’t refute what someone actually wrote.

If anyone's curious, here's my off-the-top of my head coding of Arab-Israeli wars since 1948:

1948: Palestinian Arabs attack nascent Jewish state; several Arab states     eventually join in. Zionists/Israelis win, and approximately 700,000     Palestinians are expelled or flee from the new Jewish state.

1956: Israel, France, and Great Britain attack Egypt. U.S. pressure eventually forces all three to withdraw from the territories they captured in the war.

1967: Israel launches surprise attack on Egypt and then Syria. Jordan foolishly enters the war and loses the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

1969: Egypt launches the "War of Attrition" against Israeli forces along the Suez Canal Zone. Fighting ends via ceasefire agreement in June 1970.

1973: Egypt and Syria launch surprise attack against Israeli forces on the Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula and are eventually repulsed by the IDF.

1982: Israel invades Lebanon and IDF occupies southern portion until 2000.

2006: Hezbollah captures/kills IDF soldiers in cross-border raid, Israel escalates to open warfare against Hezbollah and broader Lebanese society.

So I don't think "the Jews start all wars" and I never did. Maybe Goldberg thinks I "blame the Jews" for the Iraq war. If so, he’s wrong. We did write that the influence of the neoconservatives was one of the main causes of the war, a point that the neocons used to brag about and one that many other writers have made. That claim is simply not very controversial at this point: it was the neocons who dreamed up the idea and pushed it when nobody else was, so it's hard to imagine our doing it absent their influence. We also showed that once Bush was moving towards war, many of the key organizations and individuals in the Israel lobby backed the idea and helped sell it to the American people. But we also made it clear that not all the neocons are Jewish, that they "did not cause the war by themselves," that 9/11 was a critical precipitating event, and that the final decision was made by Bush and Cheney. Most importantly, we pointed out that American Jews were significantly less supportive of the invasion of Iraq than the American population as a whole, and we emphasized that "it would be a cardinal error attribute the war in Iraq to 'Jewish influence' or to 'blame the Jews' for the war."

I've given up expecting Goldberg to get much right on these issues, but it would be nice if he'd stop accusing people he disagrees with of saying things they never said or believing things they never thought.

As for Douthat, he chides Daniel Larison of The American Conservative for saying something mildly favorable about our book, and suggests that one can judge its worth by the "universally negative" reviews it received in the United States. Like Goldberg, he hints that the book is anti-Semitic, though he's a bit more subtle about it.

Douthat is correct that the mainstream reviews of the book were mostly negative, which is hardly surprising if one looks at who was chosen (or agreed) to review it. Given the hot water that Zbigniew Brzezinski got into when he said a few nice things about our original article, one can understand why people who liked the book might have been reluctant to say so in print.

In fact, the pattern of reviews does allow for an admittedly crude test of one of our arguments. We showed that people who criticize Israeli policy or the influence of the Israel lobby are virtually certain to face a firestorm of criticism and personal attacks in the United States. This is partly because such tactics are part of the standard MO for some key actors in the lobby, but also because mainstream media in the United States have tended to be protective of Israel in the past (this may be changing somewhat now). If we are right, one would expect mainstream reviews of our book in the United States to be negative, but reviews elsewhere should be more favorable. And that proved to be the case. For example, eight of the nine major reviews in the United Kingdom were positive and we received numerous favorable reviews elsewhere in Europe. Some might respond by saying that this pattern of evidence is just a sign of lingering European anti-Semitism, but then how does one explain the four positive reviews (one of them positively glowing) that we received in Israel itself, including a lengthy, thoughtful, and generally favorable review in Ha'aretz?

In any case, judging any book -- let alone a controversial one -- simply by ticking off reviews seems like an imperfect way to judge its merits. When I assign books to my students, I really do expect them to read them, and not just go out and crib from somebody's review. So here's a suggestion for those of you who are interested in this issue. Read whatever reviews you want. Heck, go ahead and read Goldberg's own screed. Then get yourself a copy of the actual book, read it, and make up your own mind. Some of you will agree with it; others undoubtedly won't. But if you detect a disconnect between what the reviewers told you about the book's contents and what you read with your own eyes, ask yourself why this is so.

Courtesy of Philip Weiss's blog, here is another thought experiment from New America Foundation's Daniel Levy. Note: it's not a transcript; it is Weiss's summary of a portion of a conference call that Levy conducted two days ago:

[Levy] said: We all hear, oh, the U.S. would do the same thing if Canada or Mexico were firing rockets at us. We would have a duty to respond. And yes, I think, Israel has a duty to respond, Levy said.

But then he went on to explode that analogy, and get at the core issue: Lack of Political Sovereignty. Canada and Mexico are states. Palestinians have no state. Remember, he said, that Gaza is just 4 percent of the Palestinian territories. The other 96 percent are still occupied. They have been for 40 years. And imagine that the 4 percent had been under siege, since they were unoccupied 3 years ago. And the occupied parts were crisscrossed with checkpoints and colonies.

Would it really be that surprising if in Canada or Mexico there was a hardline opposition that took over the government? And was deeply opposed to the occupier? 'I'll leave that to your imagination.'"

It bears repeating that the real value of these analogies (or "thought experiments") is not to justify any particular course of action (although plenty of politicians have been using them that way). Reality is too complicated for that, and its usually easy to argue that a particular analogy doesn't fit the concrete case one currently confronts. Rather, the real purpose is to help us examine the facile, good-versus-evil stereotypes and conventional assumptions that constitute much of the discourse about difficult political issues, and especially the Israel-Palestine conflict.

My new FP blogging associate David Rothkopf objects to my initial thought experiment, which asked whether U.S. policy might be different if the Israeli and Palestinian situations were reversed. In doing so, he demonstrates how hard it is for some people to retain their objectivity and rhetorical poise on these issues. He accuses me of being on an "jihad" against Israel (note the loaded language), and claims that I've joined an "anti-Israel lobby" whose ranks include former President Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

I'm flattered to be placed in such distinguished company, but here Rothkopf is committing the all-too-common error of assuming that critics of certain Israeli policies (and critics of the current "special relationship") are "anti-Israel." In fact, the special relationship (i.e., the policy of nearly-unconditional and uncritical support) is increasingly harmful to the Jewish state, as it makes it almost impossible for the United States to oppose Israeli actions that are misguided (such as settlement-building, or Israel's ill-founded strategy in the Lebanon War of 2006). The United States would be a better friend to Israel if we had a more normal relationship, and if U.S. leaders could talk more openly about these issues.

As for Carter, consider what former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami writes in his excellent book Scars of War, Wounds of Peace:

Carter did not hesitate to criticize Israel publicly, threaten her and even put pressure on her.  As it turned out, it was this kind of President—George Bush [the elder] in the later 1980s is another case in point—who was ready to confront Israel head on and overlook the sensibilities of her friends in America that managed eventually to produce meaningful breakthroughs on the way to an Arab-Israeli peace" (p. 167, my emphasis).

The current President Bush is often described as the most "pro-Israel" President in history. Yet his policies have helped make Hamas stronger and more popular, and his cheerleading for Israel’s ill-advised war in Lebanon in 2006 ended up costing more Israeli lives and left Hezbollah in a stronger position in Lebanon. His policies also facilitated settlement expansion and made a two-state solution harder to achieve, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 ended up improving Iran's strategic position, which is hardly good for Israel. All this reinforces a point I made a few days ago: it is high time to redefine what "pro-Israel" means.