Soft Power — Max Boot responds
Max Boot has responded to my post (and one from Noah Pollak) in which I explained why, contrary to Boot’s view, I consider Samantha Power anti-Israel. I have great respect for Boot, and if he knows Power reasonably well and thinks she’s not anti-Israel that’s a point in her favor. Nonetheless, I found Boot’s response on the merits unpersuasive. Boot makes basically four arguments: (1) the charge of being anti-Israel should be reserved for extreme cases, (2) Power’s statement don’t rise to the level of the anti-Israel statements of Jimmy Carter and the duo of Walt and Mearsheimer, (3) Power hasn’t said that much about Israel, and her controversial comments have come mostly during interviews, and (4) one of the comments I cited is ambiguous. As to the first point, it seems to me that the charge of being anti-Israel should be leveled whenever the evidence supports it, and not only in extreme cases. Boot is correct that it shouldn’t be applied to people like Bill Clinton and Dennis Ross who think much more of the peace process than I do. However, none of my evidence regarding Power is based on supporting the peace process, at least as that process is commonly understood (i.e. no military invasion). The evidence has to do with accusing Israel of war crimes, adopting an extremely unsympathetic position with respect to Israel’s efforts to deal with terrorism coming from Southern Lebanon, and so forth. Boot argues that we need to be very cautious “because accusing someone of harboring ‘hostile views of Israel’ is only a step or two removed from accusing them of harboring hostile views of Jews.” But to adopt this approach is to be cowed by Israel’s less honest critics who answer the anti-Israel charge by complaining that they are being accused of being anti-Jewish. The responsibility of those who wish to defend Israel is to avoid conflating the two criticisms (anti-Israel and anti-Jewish), not to shy away from warranted charges of anti-Israel sentiment. If one rejects Boot’s first point, then the fact (if true) that Power isn’t as anti-Israel as Jimmy Carter and Walt/Mearsheimer becomes irrelevant. The charge of being anti-Israel need not be limited to cases that extreme. Nor can the fact that Power doesn’t consider herself an expert on Israel, or that most of her controversial comments were made during interviews, exempt her from that charge. One need not be obsessed with Israel to be anti-Israel. And if someone is anti-Israel without being a specialist, an interview is where you might expect that sentiment to come through. But let’s look more closely at where, and under what circumstances, Power made the statements in question. In one instance (Lebanon), she did so in a book. In another instance (war crimes), she did so (as I understand it) at a conference in which she took it upon herself to criticize the New York Times for writing in a headline that there had been no massacre at Jenin after all. In another instance (blaming Israel for our intervention in Iraq), the context was an interview, but the interviewer hadn’t asked her about Israel; the question was about Iraq. Power dragged Israel in by way of an attack against “special interests.” In each of these instances, then, Power was on the offensive against Israel; she was not merely being reactive. It’s this last example that Boot finds ambiguous. Here’s the relevant passage: It is tempting to see Iraq as the source of all our woes now, whereas I see Iraq as the symptom, in some measure, of a number of longstanding trends and defects in American foreign policy. . . . Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the national interest as a whole is defined and pursued. Look at the degree to which Halliburton and several of the private security and contracting firms invested in the 2004 political campaigns and received very lucrative contracts in the aftermath of the U.S. takeover of Iraq. Also, Americas important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive. So greater regard for international institutions along with less automatic deference to special interests especially when it comes to matters of life and death and war and peace seem to be two take-aways from the war in Iraq. Power clearly is drawing some sort of connection between deference to Israeli interests and our intervention in Iraq (as well as our tactics there); the need not be less deferential is one of her Iraq “take-aways.” There is ambiguity as to the precise nature of the connection she is drawing, but under either reasonable construction the view of Israel being expressed is far from warm. The passage I quoted could be read to mean that, based on historical habit and without any reference to lobbying, we defer to Israeli security assessments, and that doing so helped propel us into Iraq. This view would be unfair to Israel, absent evidence that Israel “assessed” that we should invade Iraq. I’m aware of no such evidence; the evidence I’m aware of is that Israel viewed Iraq as a diversion from the more serious problem of Iran. So even under the most innocent reading I can give the passage, Power went out of her way to tie Israel to what she thinks is a terrible foreign policy decision, using the war in Iraq as an unlikely springboard for arguing that we should defer less to Israeli interests. The other reading of Power’s statement is that when Power speaks of deference to special interests, she’s talking about more than just historical habit unaided by lobbying on the part of American Jews. There are several reasons why I think this is the more plausible interpretation. First, “special interest” normally does not connote habit unaided by lobbying. In fact, “special interests,” as ordinarily understood, always operate through some sort of lobbying effort. That’s certainly how the defense contractors that Power lumps together with Israel under the term “special interests” operate. Second, Power has made it clear elsewhere that she doesn’t think the Israeli “special interest” plays itself out in Washington through telepathy unassisted by lobbying. Thus, she has spoken of “a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import” that might be alienated if we were to take the kind of action she favors to “impos[e] a solution on unwilling parties” — namely the Israelis and the Palestinians. Plainly, when Power refers to “a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import” she means what others have referred to as the Israel (or Jewish) lobby. Thus, it’s unlikely that Power believes that when U.S. policymakers take action she believes is in Israel’s interests, this lobby is a bystander. So in this more plausible interpretation of her comments, Power is assigning some blame for the war on Iraq to the Israel (or Jewish) lobby here in America. In sum, one must set the bar awfully high to conclude that Power isn’t anti-Israel, and I see no reason to set the bar that high. To comment on this post, go here.
