Steve Walt's Sacrifice

The flip side of John Mearsheimer's blacklisting at the New York Times is the Sacrifice of Steve Walt. What do I mean by that?

As I've said on this blog, Walt is a very different character from Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer is hot, Walt is cool. Mearsheimer's a real freethinker. The way I've always thought of Mearsheimer is as General Billy Mitchell, an aristocrat and intellectual radical who in the 1930s was courtmartialled for a relentless campaign he led inside the military establishment/West Point over the need for air power. Today there are innumerable institutions named after Mitchell in honor of his vision. I think they made a Jimmy Stewart movie about him, too. A true profile in courage. Some day Mearsheimer will be hailed in the same way.

Steve Walt's much more of an insider. I've only met him briefly, so I'm talking a little out of my hat, but he's polished and courtly--you have to be to become a Harvard dean--and has an impeccable meritocrat's resume from Stanford to Princeton to living in affluent Brookline (birthplace of the affluent Mondoweiss). His wife is partly-Jewish and as I recall is an intellectual too, a good-government type.

A year or so back, Walt said to me that when he took the Israel lobby project on, he forswore high government service; he realized it would be out of reach for him if he attacked this issue. And he's right. If you look at all the names that are being bandied about for foreign policy positions in the next administration(s), you don't ever see Walt's name. "Almost by definition anybody in the foreign policy field who wants to get a job in government and not just be an academic will not be a profile in courage," Leon Hadar of the Cato Institute, who worked for Ron Paul's campaign, tells me. A lot of those folks work at the Kennedy School, where Walt was/is a star.

Also, Walt was biting the hand that feeds him, literally. His chair at Harvard is funded by Robert and Renee Belfer, who according to guidestar.org are trustees of the rightwing Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a thinktank Walt attacked in his paper. Could you do that? When the paper appeared, there were calls on Harvard to defund Walt; and the Kennedy School logo was stripped off of the paper on the Kennedy School's website, at the insistence of the censors. He surely also suffered some degree of social ostracism in Cambridge. 

Critics regularly say Walt is a privileged guy who made a lot of money. Maybe; that's not the point. What interests me is the sacrifice of an ambition. Steve Walt has leadership abilities. He's tall and goodlooking and can handle any room; but he chose to kiss prestige government service goodbye. I know how elite ambition operates; I was entangled in its snares for 30 years. I watched brilliant young friends nurse great ambitions at Harvard, and then prosecute them with success and satisfaction. I've seen a million frogs--people who kiss up and kick down. I've almost never seen someone bred to top leadership sacrifice an ambition. Walt did it for larger reasons, for love of ideas, for love of country. I imagine that he and his wife accept his choice by invoking those values when they are demoralized.

(Not than any journalist has told this story. I tried to get the assignment, and argued it didn't matter whether you agreed with him or not, it was interesting; my MSM feemasters yawned.)

Comments

[Rowan Berkeley]

Your descriptions sound spot-on, but I must caution you again that dependence upon so-called libertarians for critical perspectives will soon become palpably unwise.

[sword of gideon]

Pig Weiss seems to constantly take notice of what his male heros look like, interesting.

BTW The Mitchell court martial, whose courage paled next to Steven Walt of course, was in 1925. Yet another example of Pig Weiss's accuracy.

[Chuck]

"Pig Weiss"?

You must make the rabbis very proud. Keep up the work on behalf of your cause.

[lysias]

"Pig Weiss"? Why not? After all, Nazis would have called him a "verdammte Judensau".

How Nazi of you!

[the Sword of Gideon]

Just making a point. Pig Weiss has no problem with Hamas incitement in Gaza, understands, justifies it. Hence, what's the big deal.

[liberal white boy]

Hey Sog if it wasn't for Hamas and Hezbollah those Curly Headed Racist Land Thieves from Apartheid Israel would still be in Gaza and have most of Southern Lebanon colonized. I can't wait till there is peace. I'm looking forward to watching those Curly Headed Weasels carted off their stolen property.
We Killed Jesus We Will Kill You Too!
http://homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com/2007/11/international-solidarity-movement-usapo.html
West Bank Jackasses Steal Boys Donkey
http://homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com/2007/12/west-bank-jackasses-steal-boys-donkey.html

[liberal white boy]

Damn it got distracted again by
SOG the dung flinging treason monkey(he loves animal references). What I was going to say Mr.Weiss was that I remember well the day the Media announced the Walt Mearsheimer paper. I think almost every one that had a news show on CNN, MSNBC and Fox was ordered to react the same way to it. My Favorite though was Scarborough Country. Joe the AIPAC trained monkey had David Duke and Harvard's Torture Professor Alan Dershowitz on that evening to discuss the merits of the paper produced by these real scholars. A link is provided in the following post to this episode. It will make you laugh.
Iraq, Iran and Likud-o-Con Think Tanks...Is it Time to Flush?
http://homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com/2007/02/iraq-iran-and-likud-o-con-think.html

[Anonymous]

"I've almost never seen someone bred to top leadership sacrifice an ambition."

Unwillingness to self-sacrifice is precisely what defines someone not bred to top leadership. That's why we talk about chickenhawks and their chickenoffsprings reigning over a chickennation which will eventually be swept away by a "Mississippi River of pro-Israel orthodoxy which pervades..." almost everything, as any "loose coalition" of water molecules usually does.

[Rowan Berkeley]

libertarians self-destruct:
http://www.takimag.com/site/article/who_is_matt_welch/

[Charles Keating]

More soupy wars for the Chickenhawk nation! Bought on credit. Recipe copyrighted: "We have a volunteer army."

[the Sword of Gideon]

Well, liberal white boy, hereafter known has pig # 2 It figures that your a David Duke fan. How does that figure into the hero worship of the spook Jeremiah Wright, please enlighten me?

[Clara]

Only Jews can take down pastor Wright, only Jews can mention AIPAC treason cuz if you do it Liberal White Boy, you're a nazi or something.
There is no bigger pig than swords of gideon, why he can verbally sexually abuse me on the Internet with his dirty mouth and demean me for a typo. He can use pastor wrights' color to demonize the gentile while his folks are demonizing pastor wright. juz full of tricks like that. He didn't care about my color or gender when he and his friend were shooting their filthy mouths off at me.
Great going Liberal white boy.

[neocognitism]

Real revolutionaries are rarely known or appreciated in their lifetimes. It's as simple as that.

[Caryl Johnston]

Thank you for bringing up this interesting point about Steve Walt. I did not know of it. Our nation does not seem to produce people capable of such sacrifices any more, and I am touched to know that such things are still possible. If Bill Clinton had had the courage to resign in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal, and let Mr. Gore become President, the whole course of our history would have been different. Instead it selfishness selfishness selfishness and ambition ambition ambition. It has left oceans of blood behind and a declining nation.
I also appreciate your honest dealing with issues relating to the Jews. This takes real courage, God bless you.