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Policy Analysis - Paranoid Style

(Los Angeles Times) Max Boot - In his classic 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," the late Richard Hofstadter noted: "One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality that it invariably shows." As examples, he cited a 96-page pamphlet by Joseph McCarthy that contained "no less than 313 footnote references" and a book by John Birch Society founder Robert Welch that employed "one hundred pages of bibliography and notes" to show that President Eisenhower was a communist. For a more recent instance of the paranoid style, "The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy," a "working paper" by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt - with 83 pages of text and 211 footnotes - is as scholarly as those of Welch and McCarthy. Their very first footnote demonstrates a terminal lack of seriousness: "Indeed, the mere existence of the Lobby suggests that unconditional support for Israel is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest group to bring it about." By that standard, Social Security, the 2nd Amendment, and Roe vs. Wade must not be "in the American national interest" either, because they are all defended by even more powerful lobbies. Mearsheimer-Walt can't see any legitimate reason why all these people (along with most Americans) might support Israel - support they claim is "in good part" responsible for our "terrorist problem." In reality, Osama bin Laden was far more inflamed by our support for the Saudi royal family than for Israel. But Mearsheimer-Walt never mention the existence of the Saudi lobby, whose success in influencing American policy is far more mysterious considering that Saudis, unlike Israelis, are leading participants in anti-American terrorism.
2006-03-30 00:00:00
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