On Sun, 19 May 2002, Max B. Sawicky wrote:
Max, this is *exactly* the same seven point list I refuted last week.
It looks like it's travelling around like a bit of internet folklore, with each guy adding or subtracting his own introduction. This guy's is a star exercise in counterfactual fallacies. It essentially assumes what is to be proven: we give them lots of money, therefore it must be in our national interest. Because otherwise why would we do it? It just wouldn't make sense. QED.
His "contributing" reasons at the end are all much more to the point and are nothing new to the list. A bit more is needed to make them fully convincing; but faked-up and outdated allegations of strategic interest are not the more that is needed. That simply keeps us from grasping the nettle, which is how to explain how a policy came to exist that isn't our strategic interest. Zunes simply rules this out in advance as impossible. He simply assumes we never do anything that isn't in our interest.
I have a question for you: Is our Cuba policy in our national interest?
I know it makes reasonable people uncomfortable, but sometimes creed and identity are more important than interest. And institutional inertia. And all the little interests that grow on those things like barnacles do not have to add up to national or strategic interest. They can be opposed to it.
It makes everything more complex. But, I would submit, if the American left would accept this essentially military point, it would make its primary job in this situation, which is to break the unconscious identification of the US with Israel, that much easier. Because arguing that military support is not in our national interest; and is not needed by Israel (which is militarily the strongest and economically the most developed country in the region); and should instead be set aside for the costs of peace -- for resettlement, for compensation, for an international set of troops to keep apart the warring sides -- is a much better argument if you want to persuade the mass of Americans than saying the US government supports Israel because it suits its evil purposes. Because besides being untrue -- it is actually presently interfering with a lot of our evil purposes -- that forgets one big enormous point, which is that the mass of Americans, and especially educated Americans, support Israel too. It's not just a tiny policy elite. And you are therefore saying they must all be evil, or dupes, or both. This is not the way to persuade people of your point of view. This is preaching to the converted in spades.
This is why the argument that our relation to Israel has outlived its strategic usefulness since the end of the cold war is so important. It's true. It's theoretically important. But most of all, it's rhetorically promising.
The intermediate-term job of the American left is to make the proposition that all military funding to Israel should be cut off a respectable mainstream idea, rather than a cry of outraged purity from somewhere in the wilderness. I think that, properly argued, this proposition can be defended from every point on the American political compass, which is what you need to make something a mainstream idea. And the "outlived its strategic usefulness -- time for a change" argument is an key arrow in this quiver.
Michael
[The seven point list that won't die:]
> Strategic Reasons for Continuing U.S. Support
> ---------------------------------------------
>
> There is a broad bipartisan consensus among policymakers that
> Israel has advanced U.S. interest in the Middle East and
> beyond.
>
> - Israel has successfully prevented victories by radical
> nationalist movements in Lebanon and Jordan, as well as in
> Palestine.
>
> - Israel has kept Syria, for many years an ally of the Soviet
> Union, in check.
>
> - Israel's air force is predominant throughout the region.
>
> - Israel's frequent wars have provided battlefield testing
> for American arms, often against Soviet weapons.
>
> - It has served as a conduit for U.S. arms to regimes and
> movements too unpopular in the United States for openly
> granting direct military assistance, such as apartheid South
> Africa, the Islamic Republic in Iran, the military junta in
> Guatemala, and the Nicaraguan Contras. Israeli military
> advisers have assisted the Contras, the Salvadoran junta,
> and foreign occupation forces in Namibia and Western Sahara.
>
> - Israel's intelligence service has assisted the U.S. in
> intelligence gathering and covert operations.
>
> - Israel has missiles capable of reaching as far as the former
> Soviet Union, it possesses a nuclear arsenal of hundreds of
> weapons, and it has cooperated with the U.S. military-
> industrial complex with research and development for new jet
> fighters and anti-missile defense systems.
>