Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

I’m jealous of Phil Weiss. He gets to interview Zbigniew Brzezinski and gets paid to write about it! In his latest blog post, Phil informs us that while Barack Obama may not be for Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brzezinski sure likes Obama. I agree with Phil that Brzezinski presents an utterly compelling case for why Obama would make a much better president than either Clinton or McCain. This is what the former national security advisor had to say on the race:

“In my judgment the United States confronts, and the world, a fundamental historical discontinuity. The world of the cold war or earlier, the world of the struggle against the totalitarianism of the Nazi/Stalinist variety, is finished. We live in a complicated, much more dynamic, much more politically awakened world, in which the population of the world for the first time is politically active, stirring, restless, increasingly anti-western, increasingly anti-American. And to manage that world well one has to understand how history has changed, how the global context has changed. Hillary Clinton would be a perfectly competent president, but her view of the world in my judgment is quite conventional and traditional. That criticism is even more applicable to John McCain, who is in my view is a great patriot and a great hero but represents essentially the past. I have been impressed talking with Barack Obama and also from reading what he has been saying by the fact that he understands that this great historical discontinuity has taken place and that America has to redefine its place in the world. In fact, that America has to redefine itself. And I think that he symbolizes that needed change, and if he becomes president he can help America effectively make that change.”

Philip Weiss has written a terrific article in The Nation (and republished at CBSNews.com ), Ferment Over the Israel Lobby, providing a history of previous academic critiques of the pro-Israel lobby (including several by prominent figures who’ve been bullied into silence or could not find any publishing outlet for their work). Weiss also portrays the fallout from The Israel Lobby for its two authors including its chilly reception in Jewish, liberal and left-wing circles. Finally, he speaks to the essay’s contribution in trying to “break the back” of the neocon cabal which set the agenda of much of U.S. foreign policy (including policy toward Israel) during the Bush presidency:

Mearsheimer and Walt…may have required such [shrill] rhetoric to break through the cinder block and get attention for their ideas. Democracy depends on free exchange, and free exchange means not always having to be careful. Lieven says we have seen in another system the phenomenon of intellectuals strenuously denouncing an article that could not even be published in their own country: the Soviet Union…

Realist ideas [the academic 'school' represented by Mearsheimer and Walt] are resonating now because the utopian ideas that drove the war are so frightening and demoralizing…these ideas are appealing because they offer a better way of explaining a dangerous world than the idea that our bombs are good bombs and that Muslims only respect force. Left-wingers and liberals who find themselves alienated from the country’s warmongering leadership have to acknowledge the potential in these ideas to forge a coalition of outs. But the price of effecting such a realignment is high: It means separating from the Israel lobby (or reforming it!) and trusting that a fairer American policy in the Middle East will not mean abandoning Israel.