MEARSHEIMER AND WALT: IT'S THE AMERICAN LOBBY! Apparently the book is a little different from the book. The New York Sun was one of the first to hint at this:

In this latest iteration, the professors have tried to clean up their act-- but only on the surface. The "Lobby" has been revised to the lowercase "lobby." Gone in this new presentation is much of the inflammatory rhetoric-- the verb "manipulate," the term "stranglehold," the accusation that AIPAC is a foreign agent rather than an American interest group. The new version of this argument, with its stamp of approval from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, may be more acceptable for sale at a Barnes & Noble near you, for open discourse in the New York Times, on National Public Radio, and at the Council on Foreign Relations.

But from beneath the surface, try though the professors may have to suppress it, what Messrs. Mearsheimer and Walt themselves define as anti-Semitism manages to poke through.

But the change may have been far more drastic than that--if David Bromwich is to be believed:

The truth is that many new facts are in this book, and many surprising facts. By reconstructing a trail of meetings and public statements in 2001-2002, for example, the authors show that much of the leadership of Israel was puzzled at first by the boyish enthusiasm for a war on Iraq among their neoconservative allies. Why Iraq? they asked. Why now? They would appear to have obtained assurances, however, that once the "regime change" in Iraq was accomplished, the next war would be against Iran.

A notable pilgrimage followed. One by one they lined up, Netanyahu, Sharon, Peres, and Barak, writing op-eds and issuing flaming warnings to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein was a menace of world-historical magnitude. Suddenly the message was that any delay of the president's plan to bomb, invade, and occupy Iraq would be seized on by "the terrorists" as a sign of weakness. Regarding the correct treatment of terrorists, as also regarding the avoidance of weakness, Americans look to Israelis as mentors in a class by themselves.

Apparently it was the US itself which sold Israel--which saw Iran as the larger threat--on the idea of invading Iraq. Only then did Israel do its part to support the US decision.

This would be in line with a post from last week about Lawrence Wilkerson, formerly with the State Department:

In an interview with the news agency, he said that "the Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy - Iran is the enemy."

According to Wilkerson, different sources in Israel explained to senior US officials that "if you are going to destabilize the balance of power, do it against the main enemy."

Wilkerson noted that the main point of their communications was not that the US should immediately attack Iran, but that "it should not be distracted by Iraq and Saddam Hussein" from a focus on the threat from Iran.

It's one thing for evidence contrary to the M&W book to turn up--but according to Bromwich, Mearsheimer and Walt have apparently backtracked to the degree that their entire argument has seemingly been turned on its head.

Alenda Lux, who points this out in an email to The Corner, writes:

So, if Bromwich is correctly summarizing Mearsheimer and Walt’s argument, not only do they have the arrows in their causal logic pointing in the wrong direction, but their argument that American foreign policy is all to protect Israel is cast into doubt when Israeli hawks (Netanyahu for goodness sake!) can only be convinced that war with Iraq is good for Israel because the next step would be war with Iran.

Beware The American Lobby!

Technorati Tag: Israel and Israel Lobby and Mearsheimer and Walt.