Andrew Sullivan wonders how on earth, in this post, I could have likened him to Henry Ford and his website to Ford’s anti-Semitic rag, The Dearborn Independent.
Simple. Sullivan wrote a post yesterday arguing that neoconservatives gulled him into supporting a war against the Saddam Hussein regimer whose true, hidden, secret purpose was to create a permanent occupation of Iraq and a state of permanent war in the Middle East and Israel. And why? To benefit Israel and its most irredentist elements, a cause that is, by this analysis, more important to us neoconservatives than the fate of the United States. Since this plan was obviously not laid out step by step in an easy-to-use guidebook for Sullivan, the poor and innocent scribe so easily duped by us fiendishly clever fellows in the neocon clan, it must have been devised in secret by a — dare I say it — cabal. Of — dare I say it? — Jews.
I am, Sullivan suggests, to excuse him from any imputation of having fallen into the classic contemporary anti-Semitic caricature because he wrote a few posts attacking the Catholic Church for its behavior toward a Holocaust denier. Thanks, but no thanks.
While Sullivan may think my post cheapened COMMENTARY somehow, let me assure him that exposing the use of anti-Semitic tropes is a key part of COMMENTARY’s mission, always has been, and always will be. And, in any case, being accused of cheapening discourse by someone who spent two months making disgusting rhetorical use of a virtual speculum is high comedy indeed.
At least Charles Lindbergh knew how to fly a plane.
