It's certainly difficult to take such sendups as much more than face-saving gestures; even if they're offered with utter sincerity there is such an innocuous, anemic quality to it that it's a bit like offering someone "wise counsel" (mere words) when concrete, substantive help is needed. Sounds nice on a purely superficial, anemic level, but there's an underlying corruption that the supposedly sincere offeror fails to address; that moral corruption is inward and reflects a profound corruption indeed.
Of course it goes w/o saying that any moral assessment is problematic; it's not a pure or discrete science where guarantees - as with 1 + 1 = 2 - can be forwarded. But that is part and parcel of what they're trading in, the idea, within such a "realist" schema, that moral qualites can be nullified, can be finessed out of the equation - by hook and by crook.
As with Jimmy Carter, who also fails to stare hard into the mirror when declaiming his J'accuse, Walt & Mearsheimer likewise fail to look resolutely into the mirror of self-examination, and
Uh, was that war for Israel or war with Israel? ;-)
On Behalf Of!
Good cop, bad cop routine. Pathetic.
They only support helping Israel if someone is about to strike a mortal blow.
Up to that point, they believe Israel should not be helped.
It's certainly difficult to take such sendups as much more than face-saving gestures; even if they're offered with utter sincerity there is such an innocuous, anemic quality to it that it's a bit like offering someone "wise counsel" (mere words) when concrete, substantive help is needed. Sounds nice on a purely superficial, anemic level, but there's an underlying corruption that the supposedly sincere offeror fails to address; that moral corruption is inward and reflects a profound corruption indeed.
Of course it goes w/o saying that any moral assessment is problematic; it's not a pure or discrete science where guarantees - as with 1 + 1 = 2 - can be forwarded. But that is part and parcel of what they're trading in, the idea, within such a "realist" schema, that moral qualites can be nullified, can be finessed out of the equation - by hook and by crook.
As with Jimmy Carter, who also fails to stare hard into the mirror when declaiming his J'accuse, Walt & Mearsheimer likewise fail to look resolutely into the mirror of self-examination, and
Nothing but a cover, the same way Lee Bollinger attacked Ahdmadinejad at Columbia because of the heat he was taking from the alumni.
BHG