Mearsheimer and Walt Just Don't Get It

Mark Krikorian writes at The Corner about a major hole he sees in their argument:

But wait a minute — these guys really don't seem to understand America at all. And I don't mean our affection for Israel a beacon of democracy, blah, blah — I'm talking about our visceral identification with the Jewish people specifically, something inherent in our national character. Sure, the pro-Israel lobby is powerful and effective, but most of the time it's going with the flow of American attitudes rather than redirecting them. It's not just those wacky Christian Zionists they identify as part of the elite Lobby, bending America to their will — our association with the Israelites of the Old Testament (and by implication, their modern heirs) is part of our foundational mythology and shapes our modern attitudes. When John Winthrop told his flock that "we shall be as a city upon a hill," the allusion was to the City of David atop Mt. Zion. They and subsequent settlers explicitly saw themselves as making an exodus from the fleshpots of Europe to wander in the wilderness, which is why both Franklin and Jefferson proposed images of the Children of Israel leaving Egypt for the the Great Seal of the United States, and why Lincoln called us God's "almost chosen people." I'm sure there are whole books written about this, but my point is that I think secular, post-American urban elites often don't understand the public's connection to Israel, amorphous and even unconscious as it might be in many cases.

While Noah Pollak point to David Gelernter's new book Americanism, The Fourth Great Western Religion, as dealing exactly on this point.

Don't forget about Michael Oren, who wrote an article last year in The Wall Street Journal tracing the US interest in the reestablishment of the Jewish state back to the 17th century and in a letter to the editor at the LA Times, demonstrated how US interest in the Middle East in general goes back to John Adams.

Then there is Oren's book, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present, where he describes how--according to the review by the Washington Post

since the days of the Puritans, many Americans have been obsessed with the idea of "restoring" Palestine to the Jews; and that from the colonial era to the present, many (and perhaps most) Americans have regarded Islam as a barbaric, violent and despotic religion. Whether these purposes and perceptions have been intelligent or misguided, based on reality or fantasy, Oren shows that they have been the dominant features of our foreign policy tradition in the Middle East.

Just how powerful do Mearsheimer and Walt want us to believe AIPAC is?

Technorati Tag: Israel Lobby and Mearsheimer and Walt.