Dave Weigel is deadly with the Nexis'ing. Jeffrey Goldberg now:
[H]ow do we know that AIPAC has a hold on Congress? This is a very good question. For Mearsheimer and Walt are so thoroughly under the spell of their own assertions that they do not seem to notice the circular (or more precisely, agit-prop) quality of what they have written. Consider a typical sentence: "The real reason why American politicians are so deferential [to Israel] is the political power of the Israel lobby." That is not a proof. That is what requires a proof.
Goldberg then:
[The American Israel Public Affairs Committee] is a leviathan among lobbies, as influential in its sphere as the National Rifle Association and the American Association of Retired Persons are in theirs, although it is, by comparison, much smaller....AIPAC is unique in the top tier of lobbies because its concerns are the economic health and security of a foreign nation, and because its members are drawn almost entirely from a single ethnic group.
Pretty sweet! Meanwhile, the article's logic that Osama bin Laden=Walt and Mearsheimer because they both have theories relating to Jewish power could be easily used to prove Osama bin Laden=Christians (both have theories related to God!) or Osama bin Laden=hippies (both have theories related to why it's better to live in caves!). It's fun for the whole family.
On a slightly more serious note, one of the tactics used to discredit the book is to argue that other lobbies are powerful too. So Les Gelb seems to think the relative power of the Taiwanese Lobby matters, and others want to mention that the NRA is influential. Agreed! This, in fact, is rather what W/M are saying. It's well understood that certain lobbies largely control certain issues: The corn lobby controls agricultural subsidies while the Cuba lobby preserves the embargo and the gun lobby makes the nation look ever more like The Punisher's basement. The point W/M are making isn't that the Israel Lobby is unique, but that it's typical -- and that maybe we should reevaluate whether the resulting policies are optimal. These sorts of articles charging interest group capture leading to suboptimal policy making are legion on such issues as, well, Cuba, guns, and ethanol subsidies. It's only when the conversation turns to Israel that the author gets smeared as an anti-semite and compared to Osama bin Laden. And that's what makes the Israel Lobby unique.
