U.S. Department of State

Location: What sort of reaction have you gotten from New York brokers about the $10 fee for placing  read more »

At least one former member of the Bush administration’s State Department began celebrating when ne  read more »

At least one former member of the Bush administration’s State Department began celebrating whe  read more »

Today the Times at last quotes Steve Walt fairly, in an article by Steve Erlanger and David Sanger about why Israel and the U.S. are joined in a war on terror from Gaza to Baghdad, and maybe on to Tehran.

Though, rest assured, the Times is careful to dismiss Walt and Mearsheimer's paper on "The Israel Lobby" as an antisemitic canard:

Former Israeli ambassadors to Washington like Mr. Rabinovich, Mr. Arens and Mr. Shoval all scoff at the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis, which echoes criticisms of Jewish influence as far back as the presidency of Harry S. Truman.

Wait—why stop at Truman? Pro-Israel forces in the U.S. have played a crucial role in the life of the settlement and state, going back to the Wilson administration. Saying so doesn't make you an Israel critic. It might even make you a dispassionate scholar:

1.Albert Lindemann (of UC Santa Barbara) in his book on antisemitism, Esau's Tears:

Leading State Department professionals came to resent bitterly what they considered a Jewish power so great that It was able to contravene completely the established role of the State Department. A most striking case in point was the meeting in Washington, D.C., in May 1917 between [British foreign secretary] Balfour and Justice Brandeis [lately appointed the first Jew among the Supremes]. Although he was close to President Wilson, Brandeis had no official authority to speak on foreign relations. Nevertheless, he communicated to Balfour a strong American support for the ideas of Zionism. Historian Peter Grose has commented that "as an illustration of back-channel diplomacy at its most effective, the Balfour-Brandeis meeting was exceptional. A Foreign Minister seeking understanding on a delicate political issue turned not to his official opposite number, the Secretary of State, or even to the other foreign policy advisers known to be close to the president." [Grose, Israel in the mind of America] Of course Balfour had every right, even obligation, to seek out spokesmen for American Jewry on such an issue. What is remarkable is that State Department officials, including the secretary of state, were totally ignored...

2. Melvin Urofsky and David W. Levy [of Virginia Commonwealth U. and Oklahoma U], in The Family Letters of Louis D. Brandeis:

Following the Balfour Declaration in November 1917, American Zionists pleaded with President Wilson formally to endorse the pledge that there would be a Jewish homeland in Palestine after the war. The State Department, however, adamantly opposed this request, pointing out to Wilson that the United States was not at war with the Ottoman Empire. Wilson finally decided to yield to Jewish requests and, without consulting the State Department, addressed a Jewish New Year's greeting to the Jewish people through [Reform rabbi] Stephen Wise, dated 31 August 1918. In the letter Wilson approved the Zionist program..."

The fascination here is the extent to which the Balfour declaration of 1917 in England, granting a homeland to Jews in Palestine, and Wilson's affirmation of it a year later, grew out of the only thing Jews had going for them then: access to power of highly-successful men of wealth or learning. In England it was the great chemist Chaim Weizmann. Here it was men like Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter (later to be appointed the third Jewish Supreme Court Justice) and Jacob Schiff, the N.Y. banker.

As for Truman, in 1948, C.L. Sulzberger of the Times met with David Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv, and the P.M. stated the need for an Israel lobby: The purpose of Israel is to "bring here all those Jews in the world who wish to come. That calls for a partnership between Israel and outside organizations, and all the Jews of the world must help."

Call it a good thing or a bad thing, call it influence, help, a back-channel, requests, or a lobby. Call it anything you like; just don't pretend that it is a fantasy.

At today's State Department briefing, a reporter commented that the room was freezing and spokesman Sean McCormack made a joke about, Is that my responsibility? People laughed. Later another reporter commented on how cold the room was. When the cameras pulled back, there seemed to be a dozen people in a room big enough for 1-200.

Let's call this what it is: sick. We're told to reduce our reliance on oil, we're told that the polar ice caps are melting; and here are some of the supposedly most-knowledgeable and empowered people in the world making jokes about too much air conditioning. Times like this I wish Al Gore was president.

Related entry: Warm Up the White House...

Washington Post reported a U.S. Embassy cable

Scott McConnell, editor of The American Conservative (and the former editorial page editor of the New York Post who abandoned neoconservatism in part because of the neocon disdain for "people of color"), is recently returned from a trip to the Mideast sponsored by Churches for Middle East Peace, a group dedicated to getting mainstream Christians involved in these issues.

McConnell found Damascus just as pleasurable as I found it a few months back. He met President Assad and judged him to be "wonkish" and sincere, looking to some day reap the rewards of peace with Israel, trying to modernize his country in the face of Islamicism. Then at the U.S. Embassy, McConnell relates the following encounter, very layered:

We spent part of an afternoon at the American ambassador's residence, hearing our diplomats explain how they are keeping economic and political pressure on the Assad regime and about Syria's lack of progress towards real reform. Off the record, around a table of drinks and snacks, the tone softened. They all loved being stationed in Damascus and were delighted with their encounters with unofficial Syria. I told one diplomat that the evening before we had attended a concert at the city's largest Greek Orthodox church, hearing men's, women's, and children's choirs perform religious and folk songs. It was a large and formal event, a milestone in the Damascene Christian calendar. Watching the young choir boys fussing shyly with their uniforms or their mothers coddling younger brothers and sisters or gathering the kids together after the event, one could easily imagine this as a pre-Easter break convocation at Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York or any large parochial school in the Western world. I told the diplomat that there are many in the corridors of power in Bush's Washington who want nothing more than to smash the Syrian regime in the service of the "global democratic revolution" or whatever is the slogan of the moment at the American Enterprise Institute, and this smashing would have incalculably tragic consequences for the community whose celebration we had witnessed the night before. He nodded with a look of weary resignation.

Goldman Sachs is becoming the revolving door of choice for high-powered Republicans with a talent for politics and money.

Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, Condi's number two at the State Department, is leaving the Bush Administration to join the Wall Street giant as a managing director and as vice chairman of its international division. His announcement comes less than a month after Bush tapped the firm's chairman and CEO, Henry Paulson, to be the new Secretary of the Treasury.

Mr. Zoellick hasn't said why he decided to step down from his State Department post, but word on the street (or at least in the newspapers) is that he had been jockeying for the Treasury Secretary job before Bush gave it to Paulson. Now he is heading to Paulson's old firm.

It's like Trading Places for the insider set.

-- Lizzy Ratner

The Washington Post today has an amazing cable from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to the State Department reporting on conditions in the capital. Based on the accounts of Iraqi staff, the cable shows that Iraq is dissolving into civil war. Different forms of sectarian dress are now required in different sections of the city, the upscale districts are ghost towns, and Embassy staff don't even let family members know that they work for the Americans, resentment against the occupiers is so strong.

Are these the accomplishments George Bush trumpeted last week? He would do far more for the Iraqis by conceding the American effort has failed, and seeking international cooperation to preserve a broken state.

GABRIELLE: It's 3 a.m. and I can't sleep. Other than my swelling breast size nothing seems to be going right. It's two months until my wedding day and I haven't purchased the invitations. My friend Jessica's getting married in 2007 and she's already planned her wedding down to the last petit four. I rationalize that she's not with child, battling hormonal psychosis coupled with morning sickness. But the truth is I've never been a planner. I enjoy the adventure of the unexpected.

Right after September 11th, I booked a ticket to Bali and flew out the next day. For years the lush rice patties called to me but I had no serious boyfriend to travel with. My father, trying to dissuade me, would cut out articles about Bali being a destination for honeymooners. "Deah," he would say, "I would go to Bali, but with your husband."

"Dad," I would answer impatiently, "I don't even have a boyfriend." I wasn't really angry at him, so much as I was mad that I didn't have someone to love.

My mother would optimistically chime in, "They eat people there. Like that boy, what's his name... who was eaten by that tribe..."  read more »

ROME—Exactly how scared am I supposed to be over here?  read more »

ROME—Exactly how scared am I supposed to be over here?    read more »

Responding to the most serious questions we confront as a nation, the Bush administration can routin  read more »

At a time when the United States could use friends in the Arab world, Senator Charles Schumer has be  read more »

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Wednesday, Feb. 13 Say goodnight, New York Central .  read more »

The American Embassy in Dublin, like American embassies elsewhere, looks like something that Mayor R  read more »

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Phil Baum, Abraham Foxman, Robert Rifkin and all the members of the Conference of Presidents of Majo  read more »

When foreign dictators are invited to Washington to enjoy the honor and prestige of a state visit, t  read more »

Gere Gladly SuffersThe People's Court The People's Republic of China has obviously been wasting a lo  read more »