Back in May, Jonah noted just how flawed the Walt and Mearsheimer “Israel Lobby” paper was. Its logic was tendentious and it was full of basic factual errors. This didn’t surprise given the authors’ reliance on internet research.

What may surprise, though, is the enthusiastic endorsement of the Walt and Mearsheimer paper just given by the new issue of Foreign Affairs, the Council on Foreign Relation’s flagship publication. “The hardheaded analysis that Mearsheimer and Walt so cogently present cries out for careful consideration. It just might set in motion a useful paradigm shift in the United States’ Middle East policy,” Carl Brown writes. Increasingly, though, polemic trumps analysis, and the ends justify the means at CFR. While the Council coasts on its centrist image, its Middle East program has quietly gone over the edge.