Washington Post columnist and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson takes a hard look at The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by Harvard's Stephen Walt and University of Chicago's John Mearsheimer and finds creeping anti-semitism. According to Gerson, Walt and Mearsheimer argue that the
"Israeli government and pro-Israel groups" have shaped President Bush's "grand scheme for reordering the Middle East."
As a former Bush insider, Gerson doubts that the "Israel lobby" had much influence on Bush Administration policy. He does offer what I think is a very nice rejoinder to the assertion by Walt and Mearsheimer that "the U.S. has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel." Gerson retorts that statement is "the equivalent of arguing that Britain had a Nazi problem in the 1930s because it was so closely allied with Czechoslovakia."
Gerson goes on to ask why Americans and our country's policymakers tend to support Israel. To wit:
Perhaps many Americans actually prefer Israel's flawed democracy to the aging autocrats and corrupt monarchies of the region.
Yes.
Perhaps they root for a reliable ally that is surrounded by nations still committed to its destruction.
Yes.
Perhaps many Americans recall that the Jews, just six decades ago, lost one-third of their number to genocide and believe that this persecuted people deserves a secure home and sanctuary.
Yes.
Perhaps Americans understand that anti-Semitism was the greatest source of evil in the 20th century and is not dead in this one.
Communism was the greatest source of 20th century evil, but anti-semitism was a pretty close second.
Gerson ends:
Every generation has seen accusations that Jews have dual loyalties, promote war and secretly control political structures.
These academics may not follow their claims all the way to anti-Semitism. But this is the way it begins. This is the way it always begins.
True, all too sadly true.
I'd say there's about a 50% chance that we'll see an openly anti-Semitic speaker in prime time at the antiwar party Democrat convention next summer.
Yes, I know that Jews are a traditional and still significant Dem constituency. Just look what happened to Joe Lieberman. The "nutroots" are flaming anti-Semites. So is Jimmy Peanut.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/22/2007 07:13 ||
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I'd say there's about a 50% chance that we'll see an openly anti-Semitic speaker in prime time at the antiwar party Democrat convention next summer.
Oh? Jimmah Speaking?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/22/2007 13:25 Comments ||
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Yes, I know that Jews are a traditional and still significant Dem constituency
And that still remains one of the most self-destructive and stupifying situations in the world.
By Jonah Goldberg In 2004, at the height of the Dan Rather Memogate story, I wrote in National Review: Across the media universe the questions pour out: Why is Dan Rather doing this to himself? Why does he drag this out? Why wont he just come clean? Why would he let this happen in the first place? Why is CBS standing by him? Why ... why ... why? There is only one plausible answer: Ours is a just and decent God.
Well, God has not forsaken us. Dan Rather seems divinely inspired to crash more times than a Kennedy driving home from an office party. The multimillionaire semi-retired newsman is suing for $70 million, $1 million for every year hes been alive since he was five years old. Which is fitting, because thats what he sounds like. The gist of his lawsuit is that CBS used him as a scapegoat in the Memogate story to pacify the White House. The swelled-headed former anchor, who used to brag incessantly about his toughness and independence, also whines in his suit that the network forced him to apologize under duress when no apology from him was warranted, and that the former managing editor of CBS News was not responsible for any such errors.
Indeed, according to Rather and his lawyers, the only mistakes made were by CBS management, which, in its eagerness to appease angry government officials, had the temerity to apologize for passing off fake documents as real ones in a news story intended to sway a presidential election...
Goldberg in fine form. There's more of the same at the site...
This article starring:
Dan Rather
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2007 00:00 ||
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Rather should be happy he is not in jail for trying to throw a presidential election with patently false documents. He has singlehandedly managed the nearly impossible task of further disgracing an already thoroughly disgraced profession.
#2
The beauty of this lawsuit, which has most legal observers laughing so hard that their neck veins look like one-pound sausage casings with five pounds of ground chuck in them, is that if it goes to trial (shortly after unicorns file my taxes), CBS will be put in the position of having to prove that the story was bogus, while Rather will be forced to look even more like a grassy-knoll theorist, climbing back to the top of the laughingstock tree. So I say again: You go, Dan! Ill bring the popcorn.,
Dan climbing back to the top of the laughingstock tree! I can hardly wait. ROLF!
We should thank ole Crazy Dan for he Jump Started Us Bloggers, Inadvertinly of course with ONE of his great BLUNDERS, [great opportunity for us though] to start unraveling the big shot Networks.
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
09/22/2007 3:17 Comments ||
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$1 million for every year hes been alive since he was five years old.
i c wut u did thar
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
09/22/2007 3:35 Comments ||
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Pleez let this go to trial! You will hear the one of two noises from the Blog-o-sphere(tm):
1. A collective orgasmic giggle and sigh from the sane parts, like here.
2. A loud screech-kaboom followed by silence, as if a million Kossacs cried out in frustration, then aspoloded.
(note- I'm not afraid to use hyphens -- so there!)
Posted by: N guard ||
09/22/2007 6:40 Comments ||
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CBS will settle.
Posted by: Natural Law ||
09/22/2007 9:08 Comments ||
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That's what I'm betting on.
Courage...
Posted by: Dan Rather ||
09/22/2007 9:12 Comments ||
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Posted by: Frank G ||
09/22/2007 11:02 Comments ||
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Now we know, in the end its all about Dan Rather.
But those of us with an IQ above Dan's age already knew that. It reminds me of how happy I was when Peter Jennings died.
#10
Yeah, I mentioned this before, but it is just sooo damn funny. Snark from The Daily Gut:
They should give him 70 million photocopies of a dollar bill...it's not like he could tell the difference.
#12
But you have been paying attention to the important, #11 tw.
I saw you at the Watching-Oil-Paint-Dry™ competition - and everybody knows that's more important, and more productive, than watching networkweird "news."
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/22/2007 16:03 Comments ||
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I know they want to so it goes away but that vindicates Gunga Dan without any review of the phony documents. CBS can't settle and keep any shred of integrity (what little is left, if any).
From Investor's Business Daily. The article has a recitation of many things we know about George Soros but provides lesser-known facts as well. This man is our enemy, make no mistake about it. I'll carry this article into Sunday for additional commentary.
The Left: The smear ad published against Gen. Petraeus has drawn attention to its sponsor, MoveOn.org. But the fingerprints of the group's chief financial backer, George Soros, were all over it. Who is this man and what is he up to?
To read Soros' own spun story, he's a Jewish survivor of Nazi-occupied Hungary who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, studied economics in England, became a U.S. citizen in 1961 and made a multibillion-dollar fortune as a financier who pioneered hedge funds.
Over the years, Soros has written books giving his philosophical take on global affairs and acquired a reputation as something of a "stateless statesman." He calls himself a philanthropist and has given away $5 billion of his now $8.5 billion fortune through his principal vehicle, the Open Society Institute. The institute, in turn, has passed cash on to far more radical groups, such as MoveOn.org.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/22/2007 16:32 ||
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"The war on terror cannot be won,"
If I were an insensitive boor, or a total wacko right-wing nutjob, I'd say something like "Well Mr. Soros, a well placed round somewhere in the proximity of your head would be a good start."
#3
mcsegeek1, you'd have to line 'em up... Him and his son Jonathan, who seems to be following in his footsteps (he is currently involved in MoveOn.org to a greater degree tha his father).
Also, an eye woud have to be kept on Robert Soros, Andrea Soros, Alexander Soros, Gregory Soros.
The following passage describes a pair of characters from Anthony Trollopes second book of the Barsetshire sequence, Barchester Towers. They are; Dr. Grantly, son of the late Bishop of Barchester and thereby a privileged individual who has the luxury of being far more indulgent than his opponent, Mr. Slope. Arisen, as he has, from a hardscrabble background, Mr. Slope is far more cunning and covetous of the position and wealth that have so come so easily into Dr. Grantlys grasp. However, both of them are singularly devoted to the religious system that ensconces them in their places of power. So much so, that they each fall victim to the lures of commanding their fellow man, be it from the pulpit, a church council or whispering into the ear of a newly appointed Bishop.
Both men are eager, much too eager, to support and increase the power of their order. Both are anxious that the world should be priest-governed, though they have probably never confessed so much, even to themselves. Both begrudge any other kind of dominion held by man over man. Dr. Grantly, if he admits the Queens supremacy in things spiritual, only limits it as being due to the quasi priesthood conveyed in the consecrating qualities of her coronation; and he regards things temporal as being by their nature subject to those which are spiritual. Mr. Slopes idea of sacerdotal rule are are of quite a different class. He cares nothing, one way or the other, for the Queens supremacy; these to his ears are empty words, meaning nothing. Forms he regards but little, and such titular expressions such as supremacy, consecration, ordination, and the like, convey of themselves no significance to him. Let him be supreme who can. The temporal, judge, or gaoler, can work but on the body. The spiritual master, if he have the necessary gifts, and can duly use them, has a wider field of empire. He works upon the soul. If he can make himself be believed, he can be all powerful over those who listen. If he be careful to meddle with none who are too strong in intellect, or too weak in flesh, he may indeed be supreme.
Let him be supreme who can, fairly summarizes the concealed or submerged ruthlessness of these two individuals. Despite the mitigating qualities of Dr. Grantlys more accommodating attitudes regarding minor vices or perks of office, both he and Mr. Slope are seduced by the lure of power. Neither of them finds anything wrong with an all powerful church or the substitution of its doctrine as law. Meshed into this polite English novel are the bare bones of theocracy and the evil it represents. Both men are anxious that the world should be priest-governed and this is their fatal flaw. Neither find fault with lack of democratic governance or absence of constitutional law.
It is remarkable how Trollope anticipated by much more than a century the same motivating factors that now drive Islamic terrorism. "Let him be supreme who can" and that "the world should be priest-governed" embody the exact same threats we now face with theocratic Islam. However more benign Trollope's characters might seem, they most certainly are not. They represent the same sort of evil that we now confront. While Trollope's passages may not resonate with the ringing sentiment of Charles Dickens or George Eliot, he certainly deserves his place in the upper reaches of British authors. Any of you who might doubt this are invited to read, "The Way We Live Now". Few better condemnations can be found regarding elitism and its corrosive effect upon society.
#1
I love Mr. Trollope's North America, he journal of his travels through the United States and Canada shortly before the Civil War. I'll make a point of looking for "The Way We Live Now". Thanks, Zenster!
by Sze Leng Chan, Christian Today Australia Correspondent
The religious liberty arm of the World Evangelical Alliance has rebuffed last week's report from the UN claiming that the source of Muslim extremism is the "defamation" of Islam.
I would propose that the very heart of the issue is not defamation of Islam or baseless Islamophobia, expressed Elizabeth Kendal of the WEAs Religious Liberty Commission, but the fact that the dictators of Islam are now as ever consumed and driven by 'apostaphobia!' I cannot describe how much I detest use of the "I" word.
Indeed the new openness brought to the world through globalisation and developments in information and communication technologies is causing the power stakeholders and religious dictators of the non-free world to be seriously gripped by apostaphobia a well-founded fear of loss of adherents, which is manifested primarily as uncompromising repression and denial of fundamental liberties, by violent and subversive means, she said Monday.
Kendal, who serves as the principal researcher for the WEA RLC, was writing in response to a report to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) written by Doudou Diene, the UN's special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
According to Diene, the "defamation" of Islam generates dangerous Islamophobia, which leads to the repression of Muslim rights and in turn drives Muslims to extremism. Koran + Muslim = Terrorism
He believes that Islamophobia should be defined as a baseless hostility and fear vis-a-vis Islam, and as a result a fear of and aversion towards all Muslims or the majority of them.
In his report, Diene recommended that the international human rights covenants be reinterpreted and amended to deal with Islamophobia. I worry about gas prices, Britney's kids, Chinese products and Al Gore; no time for I-fear.
#2
He believes that Islamophobia should be defined as a baseless hostility and fear vis-a-vis Islam, and as a result a fear of and aversion towards all Muslims or the majority of them.
Nothing "baseless" about the planes, trains and automobiles going boom and insufficiently pious muslims being beheaded. Therefore not a phobia. Muslims are terrified of other muslims as well, not just the west. No phobias with this reality.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
In 2004, at the height of the 
