The Good Kind of Contrarianism

David Ignatius reports from Jerusalem:

Efraim Halevy, the former head of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, titled his memoirs "Man in the Shadows." But now that he's out in the sunlight, the 72-year-old retired spy chief has some surprisingly contrarian things to say about Iran and Syria. The gist of his message is that rather than constantly ratcheting up the rhetoric of confrontation, the United States and Israel should be looking for ways to establish a creative dialogue with these adversaries.

This is quite right, and it's very sad that we've reached a point where it's regarded as incredibly "contrarian" to note that drifting to war without undertaking a good-faith effort at a diplomatic settlement would be a bad idea.

Comments

Obviously this means the Islamofascists have infiltrated the Mossad!

Posted by Rob | November 12, 2007 9:36 AM

Yes indeed, we saw how well "creative dialog" worked in Munich in 1938.

Posted by SLC | November 12, 2007 9:41 AM

Ha! I logged on here to make a joke comment about Neville Chamberlain, but I see that SLC actually beat me to it.

Um...that was a joke, right SLC?

Posted by Glenn | November 12, 2007 9:47 AM

Every dioplomatic effort is munich
Every foreign enemy is hitler
Every liberal is Stalin.

It's so simple being republican.
You just know everything.

Posted by Northern Observer | November 12, 2007 9:53 AM

Re Glenn

I'm glad that Mr. Glenn thinks that the analogy between Mr. Halevy and Neville Chamberlain is funny. Obviously, Mr. Halevy, at age 72, shows signs of Alzheimers.

Posted by SLC | November 12, 2007 9:55 AM

I wish I could be surprised that SLC and his fellow travelers have once again failed to call for the immediate nuking of every Muslim country on earth. And people wonder why we refer to him as Neville Chamberlain!

Posted by grh | November 12, 2007 10:07 AM

I think SLC may be on to something, people. According to wikipedia, Efraim Halevy was born in 1934 -- in the UK. 3 years later, Chamberlain becomes the PM. Coincidence? I think not.

Posted by Glenn | November 12, 2007 10:12 AM

Explain to me again which country is using rhetoric that includes "wiping nations off the face of the Earth"?

Presumably, Matt can find those references in Google all by himself.

Posted by James Robertson | November 12, 2007 10:12 AM

Re Northern Observer

Mr. Northern Observers' labeling me a Rethuglican is seriously in error.

Re grh

Somehow the notion of nuking every Moslem country doesn't seem to follow from the observation that conducting negotiations with the mullahs in Iran and the Assad kleptocracy in Syria is a waste of time and energy.

Posted by SLC | November 12, 2007 10:15 AM

"Explain to me again which country is using rhetoric that includes "wiping nations off the face of the Earth"?

Presumably, Matt can find those references in Google all by himself.

Posted by James Robertson | November 12, 2007 10:12 AM"

Fact 1) Ahmadinijad is not in control of Iranian foreign policy. Fact 2) Good statesmen know when a demagogue is playing to the home crowd (say, when a figurehead makes foreign policy announcements) and when they are actually showing a real threat. Fact 3) "wiping Israel off the map" may not even be possible to say in Persian and may have been mistranslated.

Once again, SLC goes on his "I support Israel no matter what but I hate actual Israelis as people" crazy tour. He's admitted he hates the Israelis as a people. When he gets called on out the obvious cognitive dissonance, he ignores it. Then he wants Israel to follow the most self-destructive path possible. What does this add up to?

Posted by Reality Man | November 12, 2007 10:31 AM

SLC,

Can you think of no examples in which "creative dialog" proved to be, well, creative. Northern Ireland, maybe? South Africa? And, no, this is a serious question. If there are examples where creative dialog proved creative then please explain, in a serious rather than a merely dismissive manner, why Halevy is wrong about the current circumstances. Halevy should be very well informed. His opinion and those of others like himself should, unless a real error can be demonstrated, carry a lot of weight.

Posted by djeri | November 12, 2007 10:36 AM

Israelis obviously have no moral right to support any Israeli policies which differ from those advocated by crazy war-mongering Americans.

Who the hell do they think they are, anyway?

Posted by El Cid | November 12, 2007 10:54 AM

Re El Cid

Of course the Israelis have a perfect right to commit suicide if they so desire. That doesn't mean I have to say its a good idea.

Re Reality Man

1. I am no more prejudiced against Israelis then against anybody else. As my Syrian friend, Mr. Kanaan says, Dr. SLC is prejudiced against everybody.

2. Mr. Reality Man appears to be a clone of Juan Cole relative to his claim that Mr. Amadinejad never said he would like to remove the State of Israel from the map. That claim has been totally discredited on numerous occasions on this blog.

Re djeri

It's not a productive exercise to conduct a "creative dialog" with folks who wish one to go out of business (e.g. Hamas, Hizbollah, Iran, etc.), anymore then it is a productive exercise to conduct a "creative dialog" with a mugger.

Posted by SLC | November 12, 2007 11:41 AM

SLC,

I consider myself a friend of Israel and often appreciate your comments here in this den of Zionist-bashers. :-) But do you really imagine that you are in a better position to analyze the possibility of useful dialogue with Israel's enemies than the chief of the friggin' Mossad? WTF? Yes of course, Israel's enemies are very hostile to Israel. That's why they are "enemies." But you can't make peace with your friends, right? If Israel engages in dialogue with Syria, Iran, whoever, what exactly is it that you are afraid will happen? Do you think the Israelis are too dumb to look out for their own self-interest in such talks?

Posted by Gator90 | November 12, 2007 11:56 AM

It's not a productive exercise to conduct a "creative dialog" with folks who wish one to go out of business

I rather imagine that statement would have come as a surprise to both the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Fortunately, SLC was not, as far as we know, advising either side at that time.

Posted by Glenn | November 12, 2007 12:10 PM

Re Gator90

Unfortunately, the current Government of Israel has a proven record of corruption and incompetence. It can't be trusted to look out for the best interests of the State of Israel.

Re Glenn

The difference between the situation faced by the State of Israel relative to the situation faced by the US is that the opponents of the latter lacked the military power to force the former out of business. I would also point out that the US and the former Soviet Union were separate by many thousands of miles, while Israels' enemies abut its borders.

Posted by SLC | November 12, 2007 12:20 PM

SLC,

The Soviet Union had a massive nuclear arsenal that could have destroyed the United States, let alone "put it out of business." Also, Alaska and Eastern Siberia are not separate by "many thousands of miles."

Posted by William Burns | November 12, 2007 12:27 PM

Let me be a tiny bit contrarian here and suggest that people should never reflexively adopt the views of supposed policy "experts" without some degree of knowledge of the context or comparable views.

The fact that one experienced veteran of the Mossad has a particular policy view does not counteract the possibility that another experienced veteran of the Mossad has an opposing policy view.

I may think SLC's views are thoroughly and predictably insane, but that is not because my opinions do or do not line up with a particular "expert" viewpoint.

A larger point might be that in the conformist context of US mainstream coverage of Israeli politics & policies, such views as the quoted Mossad agent's views, which are contrarian to the crazy hawks, are simply not heard enough to portray any sort of real spectrum of views, and thus the lazy and uninformed conclusion is that "all" Israeli experts back the craziest and most hawkish policies.

If SLC were right or wrong, he would be so regardless of whether or not 0, 1, or 100% of Mossad veterans agreed with him.

However, if people only encountered, say, the crazy views of SLC, and never encountered any contrary views, they might lazily conclude that SLC's views were the only views.

Posted by El Cid | November 12, 2007 12:27 PM

The Soviet Union had a massive nuclear arsenal that could have destroyed the United States, let alone "put it out of business."

Precisely. The reason, of course, that it didn't do so was the certain threat of annihilation in return from the US's own nuclear arsenal. Hm... sound like any middle eastern country we know? One with say, 100-200 or so nukes?

Posted by Glenn | November 12, 2007 12:33 PM

SLC,

By that standard there was no reason for creative dialog in Northern Ireland.

Posted by djeri | November 12, 2007 12:40 PM

El Cid,

I agree about the experts. That wasn't the point of my question.

Posted by djeri | November 12, 2007 12:43 PM

Just to pile on here: "many thousands of miles"=twenty minutes flight time for an ICBM.

Posted by DMonteith | November 12, 2007 12:59 PM

Wonders never cease. A guy retires from an important position at the Ministry of Silly Walks and then... just walks around like a normal person?

On a more serious note, if some serious FUBAR happens, Israel will be on the receiving end of a fallout, abd we will remain on the other side of Atlantic. This makes parts of Israeli industrial-military complex look at actual issues rather than ideological purity etc.

Posted by piotr | November 12, 2007 1:17 PM

"To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."
-Winston Churchill

Posted by heckblazer | November 12, 2007 1:20 PM

Eh, Churchill was a pantywaist compared to manly men like SLC.

Posted by Glenn | November 12, 2007 1:30 PM

"If SLC were right or wrong, he would be so regardless of whether or not 0, 1, or 100% of Mossad veterans agreed with him." --El Cid

Quite true, and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. But if one is going to dismiss the viewpoint of another whose factual knowledge and access to information are self-evidently far greater than one's own, I do think it behooves one to articulate a rationale beyond "I said so and whoever disagrees with me is an ignorant slut" (which is pretty much how I'm reading SLC).

Being an "expert" of course does not make one right, but I can't help thinking that Israel's highest intelligence official might know a touch more about the inner workings of the Iranian and Syrian governments than SLC does.

BTW, SLC, you didn't answer my question: what do you fear will happen if Israel engages in dialogue of which you disapprove?

Posted by Gator90 | November 12, 2007 1:48 PM

"I would also point out that the US and the former Soviet Union were separate by many thousands of miles, while Israels' enemies abut its borders."

Actually the two countries were only a few miles apart.

Posted by mad6798j | November 12, 2007 2:11 PM

Unless you don't count Alaska as really America, which is possible I guess.

Posted by mad6798j | November 12, 2007 2:13 PM

Re Gator90

The problem is that the current Government of Israel cannot be trusted not to give away the store. For instance, I would not put it past Olmert and his cronies to cede East Jerusalem to the PA for a piece of paper which will turn out to be totally worthless. Similarly relative to the Golan Hights.

By the way, Mr. Halevy is the former head of the Mossad.

Posted by SLC | November 12, 2007 2:59 PM

Actually, Halevi is squarely in the mainstream consensus. Hysterical remarks in the press aside, Iran is a big, important, traditional regional power that we (the US AND Israel) will need to develop rational relations with sooner or later. I'm for sooner, while we still have most of the Iranian people on our side. We had a great chance to do something of a Grand Bargain in 2003, but the Bush people were unsurprisingly unable to take advantage of the opportunity.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 12, 2007 5:35 PM

SLC: "2. Mr. Reality Man appears to be a clone of Juan Cole relative to his claim that Mr. Amadinejad never said he would like to remove the State of Israel from the map. That claim has been totally discredited on numerous occasions on this blog."

It has never been discredited by anybody since Ahmadinejad didn't say it. It was a clear mistranslation (the amusing thing is it was mistranslated initially by the Iran's own news service, if I remember correctly.) Numerous experts in the Persian language have cleared that up, but ninety percent of the new stories done by the incompetent MSM continue to state the misquote.

But that doesn't matter to SLC who is known for repeating discredited statements numerous times on this blog. He's repeatedly said that Israel never supported the war in Iraq even when that was repeatedly demonstrated to be false by numerous quotes from virtually all the Israeli leaders. He relies entirely on some second-hand quotes from Colonel Wilkerson which occurred early in 2002, whereas all the Israelis climbed on the bandwagon in later 2002. None of this matters to SLC, however - he's always right, everyone else is always wrong.

Another psychotic Zionist thug.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 12, 2007 8:46 PM

Re Richard Steven Hack

Mr. Hack, another convicted bank robber, ex-con and bottom to the brothers. A man who advocates assassination of police officers. Nothing that is produced by the keyboard of such a piece of filth is to be taken seriously. The other Israel bashers on this blog should be embarrassed by their association with this scumbag.

Posted by SLC | November 13, 2007 8:03 AM

Don't worry, SLC, you aren't being left out: the sane community is proudly able to remain thoroughly embarrassed by a wide variety of you nutjobs.

Posted by El Cid | November 13, 2007 8:33 AM