Really, this post is just for the family
Various friends and relations have castigated me for not advertising my media whoredom with sufficient rapidity. Sooo…. just to catch up: 1) Tyler Cowen says nice things about this blog in the pages of Foreign Policy. 2) I was interviewed for yesterday’s edition of NPR’s All Things Considered, on the new round of sanctions against ...
Various friends and relations have castigated me for not advertising my media whoredom with sufficient rapidity. Sooo.... just to catch up: 1) Tyler Cowen says nice things about this blog in the pages of Foreign Policy. 2) I was interviewed for yesterday's edition of NPR's All Things Considered, on the new round of sanctions against Iran. 3) Evan Goldstein has a subscriber-only article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the whole Israel Lobby business. My cameo appearance: Walt and Mearsheimer's critics... insist there must be a more-compelling explanation for why two scholars with deeply entrenched intellectual inclinations would push such an argument at this juncture in their careers. And so a parlor game of sorts is under way within the discipline to explain what many find so inexplicable. The theory enjoying the most credence holds that their crusading zeal against the Israel lobby is fueled by lingering resentment from the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq, when Mearsheimer and Walt were high-profile critics of the Bush administration's policy of militarized regime change. In addition to writing a major article in Foreign Policy decrying the 2003 invasion of Iraq as an "unnecessary war," they published a flurry of op-eds and led the effort to place an open letter in The New York Times with the headline "War With Iraq Is Not in America's National Interest." Yet by all accounts, those efforts barely made a ripple in the broader public conversation. "I think this flummoxed the living hell out of them," says Daniel W. Drezner, an associate professor of international politics at Tufts University. "I think it was inconceivable to them that no one listened." When asked about that analysis, Mearsheimer concedes that the debate over Iraq policy was "very frustrating." As he rehashes that period, it is evident that he continues to be irritated by the uncivilized terms on which he feels the debate was conducted. "Critics of the war were called all sorts of names ? you were called soft on terrorism, you were called an appeaser, you were accused of not being very smart," he says. But both he and Walt emphatically reject the suggestion that Iraq is at the root of their recent work on the Israel lobby. And Iraq does seem to be only part of the story. I'd agree that "part of the story" is a fair assessment. [Um... why wasn't your past history disclosed in the story?--ed. It's the Megan McArdle problem... the "full disclosure" of everyone quoted in the article would require, er, another article.] 4) Gideon Rachman was kind enough to mention a forthcoming article of mine in his Financial Times column. [What's the article about?--ed. That's the subject of my next post. Tease!!--ed.]I believe I'm all caught up now.
Various friends and relations have castigated me for not advertising my media whoredom with sufficient rapidity. Sooo…. just to catch up:
1) Tyler Cowen says nice things about this blog in the pages of Foreign Policy. 2) I was interviewed for yesterday’s edition of NPR’s All Things Considered, on the new round of sanctions against Iran. 3) Evan Goldstein has a subscriber-only article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the whole Israel Lobby business. My cameo appearance:
Walt and Mearsheimer’s critics… insist there must be a more-compelling explanation for why two scholars with deeply entrenched intellectual inclinations would push such an argument at this juncture in their careers. And so a parlor game of sorts is under way within the discipline to explain what many find so inexplicable. The theory enjoying the most credence holds that their crusading zeal against the Israel lobby is fueled by lingering resentment from the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq, when Mearsheimer and Walt were high-profile critics of the Bush administration’s policy of militarized regime change. In addition to writing a major article in Foreign Policy decrying the 2003 invasion of Iraq as an “unnecessary war,” they published a flurry of op-eds and led the effort to place an open letter in The New York Times with the headline “War With Iraq Is Not in America’s National Interest.” Yet by all accounts, those efforts barely made a ripple in the broader public conversation. “I think this flummoxed the living hell out of them,” says Daniel W. Drezner, an associate professor of international politics at Tufts University. “I think it was inconceivable to them that no one listened.” When asked about that analysis, Mearsheimer concedes that the debate over Iraq policy was “very frustrating.” As he rehashes that period, it is evident that he continues to be irritated by the uncivilized terms on which he feels the debate was conducted. “Critics of the war were called all sorts of names ? you were called soft on terrorism, you were called an appeaser, you were accused of not being very smart,” he says. But both he and Walt emphatically reject the suggestion that Iraq is at the root of their recent work on the Israel lobby. And Iraq does seem to be only part of the story.
I’d agree that “part of the story” is a fair assessment. [Um… why wasn’t your past history disclosed in the story?–ed. It’s the Megan McArdle problem… the “full disclosure” of everyone quoted in the article would require, er, another article.] 4) Gideon Rachman was kind enough to mention a forthcoming article of mine in his Financial Times column. [What’s the article about?–ed. That’s the subject of my next post. Tease!!–ed.]
I believe I’m all caught up now.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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