One of the most shameless responses to Mearsheimer and Walt came from Johns Hopkins professor Eliot Cohen, who--without providing any evidence--accused them of being anti-Semites. He was offended that Mearsheimer and Walt mentioned him in passing--in one of their footnotes--as part of the neoconservative network eager to use U.S. power to reshape the Middle East. How dare they even imply (which they did not) that his loyalty might be questioned when the American flag flew from his porch and his oldest son--the third generation of his family to serve as an officer in the U.S. Army--was about to return from duty in Baghdad?⁴

Of course, Cohen's fellow neoconservatives have never had any shame in painting their opponents as would-be traitors. (Remember the "unpatriotic conservatives"?)⁵ They are now shocked to receive a tiny dose of their own medicine. But this is not about name-calling; it is about accountability for the policy positions one has articulated. Cohen had a long record of public advocacy in favor of regime change in Iraq, years before 9/11. He also called for the overthrow of the Iranian government in 2001, when the moderate and pro-reform, if ineffective, President Khatami was in charge rather than the current firebrand Ahmadinejad. And Cohen was not just an outside advocate; as a member of the Defense Policy Board, he directly contributed to deliberations that led to the current American debacle in Iraq. His book Supreme Command (2002) publicly celebrated Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's tendency to disregard the advice and assessments of the professional military in planning for the Iraq campaign and its aftermath--and we know the results.⁶

All of us can make mistakes, particularly policy analysts. I myself did not think that Mikhail Gorbachev would be both bold and blind enough to undertake reforms that would destroy his own system. Afterward, I thought and even wrote about the reasons for my--and others'--errors in judgment about Gorbachev and hopefully learned some useful lessons. What is particularly repugnant about polemicists like Cohen is that instead of taking a decent interval to analyze their mistakes, they move at full speed to wrap themselves in the American flag to attack others.

Lawrence Kaplan, in attacking realists and other pragmatic conservatives in 2000, opined: "Were foreign policy intellectuals held to the same standards of accountability as doctors and lawyers, a substantial slice of the commentariat would have been sued for malpractice or disbarred"--commenting on the "declinists" at the time of the Soviet collapse. But many neoconservatives don't want that standard applied to them. This is precisely what Mearsheimer has been doing for the last two years. In these pages last fall, he wrote:

"Neoconservatives and realists have two very different theories of international politics, which were reflected in their opposing views on the wisdom of invading and occupying Iraq. Actually, the war itself has been a strong test of the two theories. We have been able to see which side's predictions were correct. It seems clear that Iraq has turned into a debacle for the United States, which is powerful evidence--at least for me--that the realists were right and the neoconservatives were wrong."

Is this, perhaps, the real source of the vehement response to the Mearsheimer and Walt paper?

Quite a few realists, starting with Henry Kissinger (and including me), reluctantly supported the war in Iraq. We believed the assurances presented about his alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and were concerned that in combination with Saddam's reckless behavior and the U.S. commitment to regime change, they made a policy of containment unsustainable, especially after September 11. But no realist was in favor of the almost unlimited goal of transforming Iraq and the Middle East, especially with the limited resources envisaged at the time.

Let me make one final observation: Israel is an important friend and ally of the United States, but that does not mean that there is anything inappropriate about discussing openly and seriously not only the advantages, but also the challenges, with which this relationship presents the United States. Israelis do it all the time. Unless one thinks that Israel's case for American support is weak, or that most Americans are secret anti-Semites who are just looking for an excuse to abandon the Jewish state, talking honestly about the U.S. relationship with Israel should be unobjectionable. We may, and sometimes clearly should, decide to stand by Israel no matter what--like we did with our NATO allies. As a democracy, however, we should be allowed to make this and other foreign policy decisions with open eyes and on the basis of a free debate. Unfortunately, some of the loudest advocates of spreading American liberty to the far corners of the world seem distinctly intolerant of freedom at home.

1. Daniel Levy, "So Pro-Israel that It Hurts", Ha'aretz, March 25, 2006.

2. "Who's Afraid of the 'Israel Lobby'?", March 26, 2006.

3. "Oil and Vinegar", New Republic (April 10, 2006).

4. "Yes, It's Anti-Semitic", Washington Post, April 5, 2006.

5. "Guess Who Hates America? Conservatives" was the tag line of a piece by Lawrence F. Kaplan in the New Republic that attacked people like James Schlesinger, Brent Scowcroft, Senator Pat Roberts, Richard Haass and others, including me, as "false prophets" with a "yearning to see U.S. power erode" and with a "reflexive sympathy for America's detractors abroad", (June 26, 2000).

6. Benjamin Schwarz's review made this telling point: "Cohen disguise[s his] policy advocacy as objective history. . . . Cohen resurrects the old saw that war is too important to be left to the generals. But it's equally true that history is too important to leave to policy advocates" ("The Post-Powell Doctrine", New York Times, July 21, 2002).

Dimitri K. Simes is president of The Nixon Center and publisher of The National Interest.

Essay Types: The Realist