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Referring to the previous Blog by Omar: the initial piece on the Israel lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt appeared in the London Review of Books in March and is available here.  The article is provocative but not evidence of anti-Semitism on the part of the authors. This tired response does a disservice to both Israel and the United States and poisons public discourse. It is of course, possible to disagree; to review the discussion that followed publication of the article go to the energetic debate via letters to the editor that appeared subsequent to the article’s appearance; these are linked at the article’s conclusion. It is worth reading the entire ensuing comments to gauge the credibility of the authors as well as of their critics.

I end with a quote from Mearsheimer and Walt in their response to the critical letters.

“…We close with a final comment about the controversy surrounding our article. Although we are not surprised by the hostility directed at us, we are still disappointed that more attention has not been paid to the substance of the piece. The fact remains that the United States is in deep trouble in the Middle East, and it will not be able to develop effective policies if it is impossible to have a civilised discussion about the role of Israel in American foreign policy…”

Further discussion of the issues, including discussion in Foreign Policy is linked from Mearsheimer’s website.

Respecting this blog’s commitment to inform and comment on the absurdities of the day, we refer you to William Saletan’s piece in today’s Slate on Giving Head: the First Human Penis Transplant.  Quotes from his report: “At one time or another, every middle-aged guy wishes he had the virility of a man half his age. In this case, that wish came horribly true…. a 44-year-old Chinese man lost all but the last half-inch of his penis. To replace it, they offered him the 4-inch member of an anonymous 22-year-old brain-dead patient whose parents had agreed to donate the organ…. You have to feel bad for this guy…. ‘He could not urinate in a standing position,’ the doctors write. ‘His quality of life was affected severely.’… Let’s start with the tactless question: Is the inability to urinate while standing an unacceptable loss of quality of life? Is every woman entitled to a penis?.”

While the case report tells of a beautifully successful surgical procedure, “…At day 14 postoperatively because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off.” In their follow-up report, the doctors remain baffled. ‘What happened after the operation was still beyond our and the patient’s imagination because this was the first attempted transplantation,’ they plead.
Forgive the expression, but that excuse won’t cut it.

Pope Benedict’s speech on relations among religions has created an (unfortunately literal) firestorm. There has been much toing and froing in the press about what he said, what he meant, was it a bad thing to say, etc. The response from Muslims has been immediate and predictable, burning churches, (apparently) shooting a nun, threatening violence, etc. Thankfully, Anne Applebaum posted a piece on Slate yesterday (Sept 18) that reminds us of our commitment to the defense of freedom of speech. She reminds us that

”… nothing the pope has ever said comes even close to matching the vitriol, extremism, and hatred that pours out of the mouths of radical imams and fanatical clerics every day of the week all across Europe and the Muslim world, almost none of which ever provokes any Western response at all. And maybe it’s time that it should: When Saudi Arabia publishes textbooks commanding good Wahhabi Muslims to “hate” Christians, Jews, and non-Wahhabi Muslims, for example, why shouldn’t the Vatican, the Southern Baptists, Britain’s chief rabbi, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations all condemn them—simultaneously. Equally, I see no reason why Swedish social democrats, British conservatives, and Dutch liberals couldn’t occasionally forget their admittedly deep differences and agree unanimously that the practices of female circumcision and forced child marriage are totally unacceptable, whether in Somalia or Stockholm. Surely on this issue they all agree….”

The response of Christopher Hitchens (also posted on Slate on the 18th) to the event is puzzling. Hitchens was an active defender of the right of a Danish newspaper to publish cartoons seen as offensive by Muslims, and rightfully so. In this instance he has taken the opportunity to beat up on Cardinal Ratzinger and the Catholic Church without defending their right to the same freedom of speech.

Back from two weeks in Europe I was amazed to see our under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy doing a rant on Hardball with Chris Matthews. There is something totally weird about someone in charge of public diplomacy shrieking about the need to support the concept of torturing people. But that is what Karen Hughes did – on the day that Canada released a report describing our having sent an innocent man to Syria to be tortured for information that he obviously did not have. Her style was similar to that of Nancy Grace, the nutty lawyer who convicts people on TV: shrill, arrogant and naïve. For this kind of nonsense to come from our head of public diplomacy is more sad than ironic.

“The Cheney presidency”

In Saturday’s Boston Globe Robert Kuttner presented a strong case against the Bush/Cheney presidency but also against the mediocrity of the White House press corps. Kuttner comments that

“…The media focuses relentless attention on the president, on the premise that he is actually the chief executive. But for all intents and purposes, Cheney is chief, and Bush is more in the ceremonial role of the queen of England….So let’s take half the members of the overblown White House press corps, which has almost nothing to do anyway, and send them over to Cheney Boot Camp for Reporters. They might learn how to be journalists again, and we might learn who is running the government…”

Watching Bush’s press conferences is painful and not just because of Bush’s inability to string together more then a few words. The more painful part for some of us is watching the press lob softballs in what used to be a hardball game. But Kuttner also reminds us that by spending so much of their resources on White House coverage the press often misses the real story. The press corps’ reliance on “access” to the administration simply gives the game away.

In a bizarre repetition of the 2003 run-up to the invasion of Iraq we are seeing reports out of Washington that the intelligence community is insufficiently scary on Iran. With some of the same neocon crowd that gave us the Iraq fiasco calling for tactical strikes on Iran it is not too soon to remind ourselves of the “sexed-up” intelligence that led to the Iraq mess. And it is worth noting that a significant percentage of Americans still believe that we found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, making acceptance of a unilateral military strike against Iran at least minimally plausible. The failure of the press in the run-up to Iraq has been well documented – this is an opportunity for redemption. No Judith Millers, no Scooter Libbys, no blind rush to believe people in high places as they work to manipulate the press.