Recent commentaries by both Glenn Greenwald and Phil Weiss have highlighted a recent quote by Leslie Gelb, a leader of the Foreign Policy establishment who cheerled the war on Iraq:
My initial support for the war [in Iraq] was symptomatic of unfortunate tendencies within the foreign policy community, namely the disposition and incentives to support wars to retain political and professional credibility. We `experts’ have a lot to fix about ourselves, even as we `perfect’ the media. We must redouble our commitment to independent thought, and embrace, rather than cast aside, opinions and facts that blow the common–often wrong–wisdom apart. Our democracy requires nothing less.
Greenwald highlights the quote to emphasize how much the foreign policy establishment exists to hype war. Weiss sees the quote as a confession from someone who helped to aid in a past venture and seeks to change his ways. Weiss even brings in a quote from Gelb’s brutal NYT review of Mearsheimer and Walt’s book, The Israel Lobby, as an example of how widely the press was deceived in the lead-up to the Iraq War:
Their vitriol about the Iraq war — about being so right while others were so wrong — is so overwhelming that they minimize two key facts. First, America’s foreign policy community, including many Democrats as well as Republicans, supported the war for the very same reasons that Wolfowitz and the lobby did — namely, the fact that Hussein seemed to pose a present or future threat to American national interests. Second, the real play-callers behind the war were President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Weiss rightly highlights Gelb’s statement from the M&W review:
the fact that Hussein seemed to pose a present or future threat to American national interests.
but there is even more context to his statement than Weiss’ brief quote indicates. That statement, which we soon found out to be a lie, was conventional wisdom not only because it was promoted by the Bush Administration, but in large part because it had been propounded by neo-conservatives and the Israel Lobby for years.
The quote from Gelb, which Weiss takes to be a confession, is from the conclusion of a 15-page report by the Council on Foreign Relations, Mission Unaccomplished which examines why the media got it wrong on Iraq. On page 3 of that report, he gave a more detailed explanation for his cheerleading:
… the critics were right.
Unfortunately, I was not one of them. On subjects as sensitive and important as war and peace, people in glass houses should be careful how they throw stones. I was a strong supporter of the Iraq War. I was sure Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons because he had used them against Iran and Iraqi Kurds.
He had also attacked Iran and Kuwait. And I believed that he either had or was close to achieving nuclear weapons capability, and I favored getting rid of him before that day. I would have waited for more help from our friends and allies, as President George H.W. Bush did in the first Gulf war. And I would have limited the attack to the southern Shiite portion of Iraq, while we held onto the already protected Kurdish region in the North. This would have cut Hussein off from his oil supplies and, I believe, led to his ouster by the Iraqi military.But for all the ands, ifs, buts, and maybes, the fact was I didn’t look hard enough at the country, its history and culture, the WMD facts, and above all, whether the Administration had thought through what to do with Iraq after defeating Hussein’s army. What’s more, I knew at the time that I wasn’t taking a hard enough look at these matters. To remedy this, I started two Council on Foreign Relations task forces on our policy toward Iraq, just before and after the outbreak of war.
I started seriously questioning the war within months of the fall of Baghdad, when it became obvious the Bush Administration had no idea what to do after its swift victory. My questioning soon hardened into opposition when it was clear that Hussein did not have WMD. But that was too little, too late. …
This “confession” about being misled and about not examining the facts more critically is interesting when compared with his distorted NYT review of M&W’s book. Among many misrepresentations in Gelb’s review, he claims that M&W’s book is about the “Jewish Lobby.” In fact, M&W make a special point of saying that the book is not about the “Jewish Lobby” but about the “Israel Lobby” and give very clear reasons for the distinction:
Yet the Israel lobby is not synonymous with American Jewry, and “Jewish lobby” is not an appropriate term for describing the various individuals and groups that work to foster U.S. support for Israel. For one thing, there is significant variation among American Jews in their depth of commitment to Israel. … Finally, some of the individuals and groups that are especially vocal on Israel’s behalf, such as the Christian Zionists, are not Jewish. So while American Jews are the lobby’s predominant constituency, it is more accurate to refer to this loose coalition as the Israel lobby. It is the specific political agenda that defines the lobby, not the religious or ethnic identity of those pushing it. (p. 115)
All of these references to the Jewish Lobby, while initially appearing to be a dog whistle that M&W are anti-Semites, also help to shift the blame entirely to Bush and Cheney in Gelb’s conclusion:
Their vitriol about the Iraq war — about being so right while others were so wrong — is so overwhelming that they minimize two key facts. First, America’s foreign policy community, including many Democrats as well as Republicans, supported the war for the very same reasons that Wolfowitz and the lobby did — namely, the fact that Hussein seemed to pose a present of future threat to American national interests. Second, the real play-callers behind the war were President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. They hardly have a history of being in the pockets of the Jewish lobby (more like the oil lobby’s), and the aren’t remotely neoconservatives. The more we know, the clearer it is that the White House went to war primarily to erase the “blunder” of the elder Bush in not finishing off Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.
Now, Mearsheimer and Walt fear that Israel and the lobby will shove the United States into a new war with Iran: “They are the central forces today behind all the talk … about using military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. Unfortunately, such rhetoric makes it harder, not easier, to stop Iran from going nuclear.”
They are right again about why the United States should not be making counterproductive threats about war against Iran, let alone fighting another war. But they are wrong again about the prime movers behind the bombast. Wolfowitz and Perle and company surely favor another nice little war, but they are temporarily discredited. Meanwhile, plenty of foreign policy experts and politicians now call for “getting Iran.” And by the way, so do the two most powerful men in America, who neither need nor heed lobbying — George Bush and Dick Cheney.
There is not one mention of Christian Zionists in Gelb’s review of M&W’s book. By leaving them out of the equation, Gelb conveniently accomplishes the tasks of smearing M&W as, at best, unwitting accomplices to anti-Semites who obsess about the Jewish lobby and ignoring the major branch of the Israel Lobby that sways Republicans, like Bush and Cheney, with their votes.
Gelb also laughably downplays the role of neo-cons in the Bush administration. For while it may be reasonably questioned whether Bush and Cheney actually believed any of the ideology they spouted, they certainly were willing to accomodate many of the policy goals of the Neo-cons and Christian Zionists, even as they occasionally differed (as Bush did in his final months by resisting pressure to attack Iran).
As the pressure ramps up on Obama to attack Iran or give Israel clearance to do the same, the Foreign Policy establishment which Gelb represents seems no more willing to question the possibility that much of the “common wisdom” that informs their views on the Middle East has been influenced by years of disinformation from Israel’s Foreign Ministry and “analysis” from think tanks affiliated with the Israel Lobby .
If the foreign policy establishment and the press want to avoid being cheerleaders for future warmongering, they need to question not only pronouncements from political leaders. “Opinions and facts that blow the common-often wrong-wisdom apart” can be found in unexpected, and sometimes inacccessible places, like Gaza. Our Democracy requires nothing less.
