Ray McGovern Unplugged

Mark Oppenheimer, a writer at the alternative weekly newspaper New Haven Advocate, is a strident critic of the Bush administration, the war in Iraq, and Israel. Recently, he had an opporunity to meet antiwar activist Ray McGovern, who claims that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration "neocons" so "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world."

Oppenheimer admits that the encounter left him very creeped out:

To say without any evidence that we're fighting a war on Israel's behalf is irresponsible. And McGovern's main evidence seems to be that Bush was "mesmerized" by Ariel Sharon, as if Jews have special powers to make feckless WASPs do their military bidding. Since when did Republicans need to have their arms twisted into imperialist foreign policies? Hasn't America always been capable of making its own bad foreign policy, without Jews or Zionists forcing our hand?

I made some of these points to McGovern...[who] replied, in an odd non sequitur, "Have you been to the West Bank? Have you been to the Gaza Strip? Have you seen the suffering?"

How curious this was. Israel has acted unconscionably in the occupied territories, but what did this have to do with the war against Iraq? Nothing. It was just a telling shift from one anti-Israel charge to another.

But here's the kicker: "After I started writing on how the administration launched the war on Iraq, I received an email from a friend of the Wolfowitz family who said he knew Paul and his father Jacob quite well," [said McGovern]. "In his email he told me he had just sent a frosty note to Paul Wolfowitz, in which he said: "Paul, your father was of course a Zionist, but was first and foremost a loyal American. I am sure that he is now rolling over in his grave after what you have done in attacking Iraq out of an overriding desire to make Israel still safer.'" The implication being that Wolfowitz and his comrades are not "first and foremost loyal American[s]."

I share McGovern's outrage at the gullible American press. And I believe criticism of Israel is warranted...But just as black people should beware of grumpy white men who obsess over how affirmative action steals their jobs, I'm wary of anti-Israel obsessives who spin theories about how Israel is sending our boys off to die. Careful intellectuals work from evidence, not vague suspicions.