When Netanyanhu's Colleagues Say Nyet

So what's with the current and former Israeli officials whose recent comments on Iran and Palestine run contrary to the views of Prime Minister Netanyahu? At the National Interest, published by the former Nixon Center, Paul Pillar says the statements are evidence of the exceptional vigor of Israel's democracy. He also warns that supporting a country isn't always the same as supporting its government:

If it were, it would be the same— Republicans in particular ought to get this comparison—as saying that a foreign government endorsing any of Barack Obama's policies was equivalent to support for the United States. Passionate attachment to any foreign country has a bad enough effect on the security and interests of the United States. The effect is even worse when the attachment is to a particular foreign leadership that isn't even acting in the best interests of its own country.

Let's Talk Again When There're Arab Democracies

At "The National Interest," Paul Pillar describes why the Arab revolution is bad news for Israel:

First, increased popular sovereignty in Arab states gives heightened attention to the lack of popular sovereignty for Palestinian Arabs living under Israeli occupation. Second, continued (and even intensified) criticism of Israel from Arab states that are more responsive than before to popular sentiment belies the Israeli contention that animosity toward Israel is chiefly a device used by authoritarian rulers to distract attention from their own shortcomings. Third, the emergence of new Arab democracies in the Middle East will remove the single biggest rationale—that Israel is the only democracy in the region—for the extraordinary special relationship that Israel enjoys with the United States.

You Can Always Count On The Nixon Guys

It falls to Paul R. Pillar at "The National Interest," the Nixon Center's journal and blog, to enunciate, from the neorealist's perspective, the perils of a foreign policy rooted in the mentality of American exceptionalism:

It leads to the mistaken belief that the involvement of the United States is indispensable in many endeavors best left to others.

In general, it inhibits appreciation of the limitations to what the United States can accomplish. Those limitations may involve anything from U.S. military forces reshaping a foreign country to U.S. intelligence services trying to figure out what is going on in a foreign country.

All of these tendencies have gotten the United States into trouble—sometimes deep, very expensive trouble—and could do so again.

Forbidding Left Turns Would Save Lives, Too

Willing to do without the new airport security procedures? Fair enough. Without them, there may be a terrorist attack or two -- but hey, they'll kill way fewer people per year than auto accidents, writes Paul R. Pillar:

[H]ere's the best way to make sense of what TSA is doing, and of how and why the public is reacting the way it is. The brouhaha reflects our insistence on achieving absolute security against terrorist attacks, our quickness in spewing recriminations when absolute security is not achieved, and our refusal to face up to the difficult decisions of how much security to seek and at what cost.