Still Running Off at the Keyboard

MID-EAST POLITICS

I do not understand politics.

I think it's because I'm too much of a black and white person who looks for a clear right and clear wrong on any issue. Politics is the realm of grayness.

As confusing as American politics can sometimes be, Mid-East politics is the whale to the American canary. Today's article at FrontPage Magazine is no exception.

The article concerns two university staffers, Political Science Professor John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, and Dean Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. They are writing on "the Israel lobby" about which they are not enthusiastic, claiming among other things that the Israel lobby was responsible for getting us involved in the Iraq war.

Author of the article Lowell Ponte claims they are essentially writing nonsense since their larger "working paper" on the topic is not peer reviewed nor published in a scholarly journal.

So what I'm wondering is whether the claims made in FrontPage that these scholars have a screw loose is a reflection of the bias of FrontPage itself, which Ponte claims in the article is a "reflexive Israel supporter", or whether any of the claims made by the two scholars can be taken to be accurate?

In any case, I thought this was interesting:

One of the crudest tactics in formal debate, as Speech 101 students are taught, is "poisoning the well." If the side opposing you has an expert, smear the expert ad hominem. If this tactic succeeds, you can then duck having to respond to that expert's logic or evidence.

That particular passage of the article I understand very well!

Anyone care to wade in with an opinion about the rest of the article?