{"id":1043,"date":"2006-03-20T20:07:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-20T20:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:39","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:39","slug":"fat_drunk_and_s_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1043","title":{"rendered":"Fat, Drunk, And Stupid Is No Way To Run The Kennedy School"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Michael Totten’s joint, Lee Smith<\/b> Tony Badran<\/strike> writes the post<\/a> I’ve been meaning to about the hysterical (as in ha-ha hysterical) Harvard study<\/a> on the pernicious power of the “Israel Lobby” in defining US foreign policy.<\/p>\n

A few great grafs:<\/p>\n

Pretty much any American who has ever been in a motorized vehicle knows that the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy is Washington’s relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and has been so since the mid-30s. It is a vital national interest \u2013 not just because cheap fuel permits Americans to drive SUVs, but because protecting the largest known oil-reserves in the world ensures a stable world economy. Moreover, the US military counts on access to that oil in the event it has to wage war \u2013 an activity that demands a lot of oil.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Walt and Mearsheimer’s article explains how “the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics,” which I agree with, because like many Americans I’ve ridden in a car before and I believe that the ability to get people and things from one place to another is a big part of successful domestic politics. It’s not entirely clear that the authors of this really long article have ever been in a car before, because when they’re talking about domestic politics, they’re not talking about cars, or the economy or even our military, but “the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby.'”<\/p>\n

\n…<\/b><\/p>\n

\nTrue or False: “By contrast, pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which makes the Israel Lobby’s task even easier.”<\/p>\n

\nTrue \u2013 not. Psyche. Yeah, true if you exclude the obviously limited influence that oil companies have exercised in US policymaking over the last seventy years. And it’s not just the oil companies doing Gulf bidding; virtually every American ambassador who’s served in Riyadh winds up with a nice package to keep selling the Saudi line back in Washington. Yes, you’re right, AIPAC’s annual budget is a whopping $40 million dollars \u2013 or precisely equivalent to the private donation Saudi prince Walid Bin Talal recently gave to two US universities to start up Islamic centers. What? Come on Steve, he gave half of it to Harvard! OK, give me the car keys. The keys to the car, it’s how you got here. In a car. It has four wheels and a motor. It runs on gas. Gas comes from a place called Saudi Arabia\u2026. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Go read the whole thing. Biggest Guy spent a few days hanging out at Harvard when we were doing the college-tour thing and he wrote the school off as “lame”.<\/p>\n

Hmmm. If this is what Cambridge’s best and the brightest have to offer, he’s even smarter than I thought he was… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lee Smith shreds the JFK School study on the influence of Israel on US policy. Hilarity ensues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}