On his blog, Mark Silva describes the scene at a Walt and Mearsheimer discussion at a D.C. bookstore. This snippet is particularly relevant for today’s 9/11 anniversary:
“I will argue that that influence has been largely negative,’’ Mearsheimer said last night –the lobby has pushed U.S. policy in directions that are inimical to the interests of the U.S. American support for Israel over the Palestinians “fuels terrorism against the United States,’’ he argues, citing an “abundance’’ of anecdotal and statistical evidence that Israel’s “brutal’’ treatment of Palestinians has angered large sectors of the Arab world. “Not surprisingly,’’ he says, “that anger fuels terrorism toward the United States.’’
Osama bin Laden has been concerned about the plight of the Palestinians since he was a young man, said Mearsheimer, citing an old interview with the al Qaeda leader.
Contrast that with Norman Podhoretz, who hit the nail on head explaining that Al-Qaida is really at war with the West:
The point is that if Israel had never come into existence, or if it were magically to disappear, the United States would still stand as an embodiment of everything that most these Arabs consider evil. Indeed, the hatred of Israel is in large part a surrogate for anti-Americanism.
