The Washington correspondent of Der Spiegel reacts to the Massachusetts election by suggesting Obama’s troubles may simply reflect “a case of the best US president at the worst time” — a great man understandably unable to bring “change” because he has to deal with so many crises:
Barack Obama has spent his first year in office fighting one crisis after another. Now he faces a political crisis of his own — the defeat in Massachusetts threatens his health care reform, his most important domestic project. Is it a case of the best US president at the worst time? …
In times of crisis, insecurity and defensiveness trump any openness to change. And since his inauguration Obama has had to deal almost exclusively with crisis management. The financial crisis, the automotive crisis, the jobs crisis, the climate crisis, the global crisis. There have never been quite so many crises.
The five crises do not quite compare with inheriting the Great Depression (FDR) or World War II (Truman), and memories are short about what George W. Bush faced in his first year: a recession caused by a burst Internet bubble; the failure of the seventh largest company in the country (Enron) and one of the Big Five accounting firms (Arthur Andersen); an attack on New York and Washington, D.C.; a stock market that crashed and an economy that tottered; the need to mobilize the country for a war in Afghanistan; a failed “peace process” inherited on Inauguration Day (with a new Palestinian war against Israel already in its fifth month); etc.
The difference is that Bush did not spend his first year blaming Bill Clinton for the Internet bubble or the inherited recession, or the ineffective response to the first World Trade Center attack and the multiple attacks thereafter, or the bungled peace process. Bush got tax cuts enacted that helped restore the economy; began his war on terror that kept the country safe for the next seven years; worked cooperatively with Ted Kennedy on major education legislation; and so on.
Obama spent his first year responding to the financial crisis with massive borrowed-money bailouts; to the automotive crisis with a government takeover and a transfer of wealth from secured creditors to unions; to the jobs crisis with a trillion dollar “stimulus” that didn’t work; to the climate “crisis” with a nonbinding international agreement featuring a blank appendix; and to the “global crisis” with … what?
Most of his time was devoted to ObamaCare, something unrelated to the five “crises” he faced and something that got more unpopular the more people understood it. He made a lot of trips and speeches, most of them reminding the country that now was the moment and telling the world that his hand was outstretched. For the coming year, he plans a huge tax increase in the guise of letting current tax rates “expire” and has no plan for the real crisis he will face: Iran.
He has not been the best president and these are not the worst of times — and the sort-of-God/best-president-ever treatment he received from the mainstream media contributed significantly to the problem he now faces. His belief that he just needs to slow down and “explain to people why we’re doing what we’re doing” is a more-cowbell response that ignores what Massachusetts was trying to tell him.
Since Zbigniew Brzezinski has been advising and pontificating at the highest levels for so long, he must have accomplished something by now. Please, somebody, tell us what that is.
I’ll tell you what he accomplished, Bob — the Iranian hostage crisis.
Brzezinsk’s comments explaining the mistaken views of Jews (false consciousness) remind me very much of Obama’s comments about why working class whites don’t support his policies (clinging to guns and bibles). In other words, here we have two traditionally Democratic constituencies that have serious problems with Obama’s policies, and rather than engage in a reasonable self-critique of those policies, Obama’s team puts these groups on the psychiatric couch to figure what’s wrong their consciousness.
The question I would have is why Obama’s people don’t put themselves on the couch and ask what form of false consciousness they are displaying by supporting their stated policies. Trotskyites of old used to talk about something known as “left wing infantilism.”
Mr Brzezinski thinks the clueless Obama is the only candidate who understands “what is new and distinctive about our age?” Brzezinski has been pushing the same failed policies since the Cold War. The world changed and left him behind; not that he ever understood it to begin with. The guy is an unabashed socialist dreamer who thinks the crackpot economic theories of Marx and Engels can be applied to all the world’s problems. He’s also big on entitlement programs.
No wonder he senses a kindred soul in Obama.
His calumny about “some people in the Jewish community” hiding behind accusations of anti-Semitism doesn’t surprise me. It’s commonly used as a preface to anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slander, or as a rebuttal to an argument in defense of Jews and Israel.
This guy did enough damage when he was in Carter’s administration. Reason tells me I don’t have to worry about any more of his disastrous policy advice because McCain will be our next President, but emotionally I’m scared witless of a possible Obama presidency and all the trap doors it would open.
Please keep these articles coming. People need to know what sort of people Obama relies on.
how is his comment in any way anti-israel?
“They very promptly wheel out anti-Semitism. There is an element of paranoia in this inclination to view any serious attempt at a compromised peace as somehow directed against Israel”
are there people who don’t agree with him here?
No lester. Don’t be anti-Semitic by disagreeing with them.
It seems at though all of Obama’s advisors come with a “passenger ejector seat.”
neo- true, even the ones he’s had for decades
Their views have only become antithetical since Obama’s presidential campaign. Before that he was, for example, thought like his good friend Rashid Khalidi, his University of Chicago colleague, now at Columbia, for whom Israel has no legitimacy.
As to Brzezinski, he keeps pretending that his and Carter’s unpopularity among many Jews is baseless and unfair when in fact it relates to their pro Arafat posture. When you sympathize with a character who vows the liquidation of the Jewish state and whose followers snap the Hitler salute it is a stretch to call the distrust and resentment that provokes, McCarthyism.
Lester wrote (quoting Zbig and responding),
—“They very promptly wheel out anti-Semitism. There is an element of paranoia in this inclination to view any serious attempt at a compromised peace as somehow directed against Israel”
are there people who don’t agree with him here?—
Well, in general terms of course I don’t agree with him. I pay pretty close attention to all this and I can’t think of any demonising, vilifying or slandering coming from Israel or American Jews that I can remember… Most of the slandering comes from “Pallywood”, phony massacres and murders and whatnot, clumsily presented and patently untrue, carried forth by willing media to present as fact when they are not. THat, I believe, is the actual DEFINITION of slander, claiming a fact against your opponent that is actually NOT a fact.
Bottom line, Israel lives in 12% of the land Balfour gave it eighty years ago. For them to give up MORE land is just beyond reason. It’s a demand for slow quiet suicide, given the intensity of the passion to destroy Israel held by so many in its immediate vicinity.
It might be different if there were any reality to the ‘partners’ in the ‘peace talks’. There is none. They loudly tell anyone who’s listening what their real intentions and goals are, and the media and the left simply plug their ears and pretend ‘peace’ is at hand if only the craven and intransigent Israelis would just realize that giving up MORE land will get it!
IN fact the ‘compromised peace’ whose lack is lamented by Zbig has never, truly never, even had a chance. It is the OTHER SIDE who will not compromise. Their message is written in the vapor trails of their rockets, if you have any imagination at all…..
If you give them all of Jerusalem, they’ll demand more and more and more, and giving and giving and giving it is only the slow movement of national suicide and destruction as opposed to the quick brutal destruction the Arabs promise them but don’t have the stones to deliver.
“compromised peace”. What a load of dung. They want Israel to compromise itself into the Mediterranean Sea, and the western Left seems dead set on lighting the way for them.
After 2000, and the real possibility that Ehud Barak would give the Palestinian state 95% of the West Bank and Gaza, I have concluded that there is no serious entity with which Israel can negotiate. The only solution is to build a wall and wait for another generation, possibly affected by a successful Iraqi society, to resume its progress to a normal society. If there is any optimistic sign outside of Iraq, I would say this is it. Zbig is as clueless as his former boss. And maybe as hateful.
dave- you are getting a little sidetracked there with the pallywood stuff. the point is that people who happen to criticize the country of israel, the way you or I may criticize france or Canada or any other nation, often get called or grouped with anit semites which is ot even logical. israel is a country, not a religion.
i happen to think israel is a strategic liability. I’m sure many israelis would aknowledge that us supporting israel does not make us stronger or better off with the surrounding neighbors, many of whom we have to deal with. syria has like 2 million iraq refugees. saudi arabia has oil, etc.
does that matter? for you maybe not. maybe it shouldn’t matter. but it’s still true.
an anti semite is someone who hates jews. hitler was an anti semite. mel gibson is an anti semite. that’s what anti semitism is. it’s very obvious and not at all relating to itellectual discussions of what is best for the entirety of the american people
Bob Miller wrote:
>>Since Zbigniew Brzezinski has been advising and pontificating at the highest levels for so long, he must have accomplished something by now. Please, somebody, tell us what that is.<<
Although I hold no brief for Brzezinski’s view on the Middle East, in fairness it must be said Brzezinski played a singular role in setting in motion many of the improvement’s in the posture of US strategic nuclear forces in the last year of the Carter administration, especially in command and control and continuity of government. This was a REAL weakness that Brzezinski addressed. Reagan’s first budget built on these programs and it was these expenditures – as much as the SDI $$ that came later – that convinced the Soviets we were serious about addressing our strategic vulnerabilities.
Of course Brzezinski could only get this through teh Carter adminstration in the wake of grave losses in our competition with the Commies: Horn of Africa, Nicaragua, the overthrow of the Shah in Iran, and, most especially, the 12/79 invasion of Afghanistan.
Lester,
Antisemitism is only easy to see if the people who hold that view choose not to obfuscate or conceal it.
Arguing about Israel as a liability to America is one of the ways it is concealed.
If an argument goes on long enough, things come to light. It was that way recently with Michael Scheuer on Gabe Schoenfeld’s blog.
I was not going too far with Pallywood, only pointing out that Zbig’s view is thoroughly countered by reality; the slander comes from the other side, not from the Jews.
Let’s be clear; Israel is a force for good in the world, and America has that in common with it as well as a history of defending religious rights in a world that wants to snuff out that one particular religion. For me, the question isn’t about liabilities or assets, or foreign policy wins and losses–
It’s about right and wrong, and doing the right thing even when it’s not popular.
Support for Israel, when they are measured against the relative depravity of their close neighbours, is a no brainer, unless you have a problem figuring out right and wrong.
Us regular guys in places like Texas don’t have that problem. Guess we’re just not nuanced enough.
Lester: “an anti semite is someone who hates jews.”
Now consider some implications.
Such a person is more likely to think ill of Israel -
because Israel is a Jewish state.
Such a person is therefore more likely to “happen to
think Israel is a strategic liability”.
It also works in reverse: someone who has strong enough
feelings on Israel being a strategic liability, _may_
develop some anti-Semitic feelings as well.
For both of these 2 reasons, a person who argues that Israel is a
strategic liability is more _likely_ to be anti-Semitic than a person that
does not hold that view. He is not _necessarily_ anti-Semitic, that
is quite true. Some of such people are, some aren’t. Those of them who are not
anti-Semites are (see below) appeasers.
There is a strategic alliance in the anti-AIPAC camp between anti-Semites
and appeasers – with, of course, some overlap.
To consider the question on its merits – is Israel a liability or an asset -
it may be useful to consider Taiwan as a parallel case,
in which however anti-Semitism plays no part. Our support of
Taiwan certainly does not endear us to the Beijing regime -
and continental China is very much bigger than Taiwan,
and is a more important country. Beijing would be very pleased if we abandoned Taiwan.
Does it _follow_ that it is in our interest to abandon Taiwan? Only if one takes for granted
that _appeasement_ is the way to promote one’s strategic interests. There is a consensus
against abandoning Taiwan – and AIPAC is not the reason.
Now back to Israel. Consider this formula “supporting israel does not make us stronger or better off with the surrounding neighbors”. It has a hidden assumption – that being “better off” with a country means leasing it by unilateral concessions, and then waiting for gratitude.
In some parts of the world, this may make some limited sense; not in this one.
With Arab states, we need a _stick_ no less than a carrot. This is
_one_ of the many ways in which Israel is an asset. When Israel’s neighbors are
afraid of Israel, they come to us. That makes us stronger, not weaker.
The latest “Axis of Evil” now consists of Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinsky and their recent disciple Obama. Since Obama claims he is no longer under the influence of Pastor Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan, he has jumped, as they say, from the frying pan into the fire. Who’s advising Obama? Or is he making his own choices? Either way- watch out America! After the current infatuation and indeed, love affair that is presently gripping America cools down a bit, as all love affairs do, we will then have to live with the evil consequences of this Axis. This smooth-talking Leftist is about as liberal as can be… Hold on to your wallets, America. If Obama reaches the White House watch out for “payback time”
The damage done by Jimmy Carter was accomplished by putting ideologue rogues in positions of executive power. Unfettered use of that power as regulators and de facto policy makers nearly wrecked the economy in only four years. Reagan won in a landslide running on the motto, “Get government off our backs”.
Evidently, BO will do the same thing if elected.
i don’t know, bob miller, he’s done at least one thing. mika is kinda hot.
don’t ask me to explain it, there is just something about a ditz that i find alluring.
How do you compromise with someone who murders noncombatants? You don’t think someone who will commit murder will lie?
When Gaza was under Egypt, the only Palestinians were the Jewish ones. When Jordan held the West Bank of the Jordan River, the only Palestinians were the Jewish ones. The only Palestinian State that can be expected to keep any agreement is the Jewish one.
The real question is: why is any Jew a Democrat, much less most of them? The “neocon” hatred, ancient world-wide conspiracy theories and overt threats directed at them from the left are astounding.
Yet they vote (D) as a bloc.
Amen Don!
The Jews gradually came, and bought the land they ended up on… the “Palestinians” were only too happy to inflate the prices and take the Jews’ money. Jews improved the local economy a thousand fold, the local Arab infant death rate declined precipitously with the advent of actual civilization in their area, and all things were improved. Until the local “Palestinians” started counting.
Once they realized how many Jews were coming, their FIRST response was to start KILLING them. That was 25 years before the founding of Israel.
Palestine was a lawless wild land, no economy, hardly any people, about the lowest level of ‘life’ it was possible for people to have. Bedouins, dirt farmers, desperate forgotten people.
The advent of the Jews was a uniformly good thing for everyone there– unless everyone there already possessed a hatred of Jews. Too many did. Beginning and end of story.
Brzezinski has indulged himself in a generalisation, and like most of them, you can find examples to fit it – and thats fine. He hasn’t really issued any specific examples for examination so its fairly uncontroversial imo.
It is however ironic that he subscribes to the Israel/Jewish lobby thing – this from a US citizen who was intimately involved in Polish domestic politics in the 70′s/80′s – which made him part of the US Polish lobby.
As to Obama – the question really is why has he surrounded himself with figures which seem to harbour very similar views on the I/P conflict? How is he going to bridge the divide if he doesn’t consider alternative POV’s?
It’s pretty funny when you come to this blog and little bubbles float across the screen calling Commentary “the most influential magazine in America” or words to that effect, but pointing to the fact that American Jewish supporters of Israel have achieved political influence is diagnostic of antisemitism. Sure, some genuine antisemites make similar claims, but that fact doesn’t falsify the claim.
Brzezinski as policymaker can’t be understood without taking his Polish sentiments into account. It’s hardly strange that some American Jews are passionate on the subject of Israel. We’re an immigrant country and ethnic foreign policy lobbies come with that territory–Cubans, Armenians, Greeks, and Irishmen for starters.
It’s a bit strange that the pro-Israel camp, after exacting obeisance from Obama on a number of matters, continue to regard him as if he were some kind of Palestinian secret agent. Obama makes some noises about diplomacy, fine as far as they go, but there’s no sign that he’s likely to give our national security strategy the kind of thorough rethinking that it needs. Would that it were so.
Grumpy
I’m not questioning the validity of the lobby issue I am however calling out Brzezinski for calling into question the influence of the Israel lobby on the US yet he himself directly acted, not in the US’s interests with regards to his views on Poland, but in Poland’s interests – which he didn’t see as a negative thing – don’t you see a tiny amount of hypocrisy there?
REad the Israeli press and you’ll find they advocate relentlessly for Americans to elect Obama.
Bizarre for people who think he’s a Palestinian secret agent, don’t you think, Grumpy?
From here it looks like Israel and its lobby isn’t suspicious ENOUGH of that guy.
#24 YbA
I wasn’t aware of Brzezinski doing anything untoward for Poland, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Most of us don’t see the log in our own eyes, even as we hone in on the speck in our fellows’. (Can I use that image in a Jewish blog?)
The role of émigrés in Cold War-era foreign policy might be a good topic for someone’s dissertation.
Grumpy, if you don’t see how Zbig and others are writing about Jewish influence as something sinister, you need new glasses. Or, just possibly, you’re one of them.
#28 Bob Miller
When they advocate unwise aggressive wars, whatever their ethnic or religious background, not consistent with the US national interest.
Pious platitude concealing chip on shoulder.
first hand opinion, dave- you guys are proving my point. you are literally saying someone who is critical of israel is likely an anti semite and likely hiding that fact.
you are saying what brezinski says people like you say!!
“people like me”?
What are they? What am I? That’s a little snotty and dismissive, from a severely superficial read of my writings.
I”m a Texan, raised nonreligious. I hold a view of Israel that I came to in adulthood, by examining history an applying my simple country-boy sense of right and wrong. Israel is much like America; they’ve made mistakes and taken wrong turns but overall they’re a force for good in the world and the world is better off for having it.
If that makes me a ‘sympathizer’, so be it; but DO NOT SAY that I’m a NONTHINKING or BIASED sympathizer of Israel.
It is precisely because I THOUGHT LONG AND HARD ABOUT IT that I have become such. That alone makes me very leery of people who have so many bad things to say about Israel. IT means they’ve looked at the same data I have, and arrived at opposite conclusions.
Since I have high confidence that I know right from wrong and that I’m a decent guy, I can’t help but presume those who disagree with me might be other than those things.
We suffer from overcomplication of simple questions. If a person concludes Israel is wrong but does so based on enormously complex calculations, he is guilty in my eyes of failing to see the simple things we are obligated to see. He covers himself with complexity and congratulates himself for being smarter than guys like me.
Well, I can read Aurelius and Augustine and Petrarch and Hume and Hobbes and Rousseau and Sartre with the best of them. I’m not ‘over-simple’. But I don’t misunderstand complexity as ‘a higher morality’ the way some of the pseudo-intellectuals do.
I know right from wrong. Israel has mostly done right, under stress, in a nearly impossible situation. I wouldn’t want to make some of the decisions they’ve made. But in my ‘dumb guy’ view, Israel has done a HELLUVA lot better in their decisions than leftists over the years have done with theirs. In the 20th century alone, leftists caused the deaths of many times more people than religion has caused in the entire history of humanity. More people died from leftism in the 20th century than even LIVED in the Roman empire in the first century!
Zbig is covering himself by trying to imply that his critics are not reasonable, so that we conclude that HE is.
But ordinary guys like me look at the whole history of Israel and its fight for existence against, seemingly, the world, and we conclude they are mostly in the right. For Zbig to conclude otherwise (and you?) simply raises my hackles, makes me suspicious that something other than simple moral reasoning is at work here.
At some point, one must engage the simple moral senses. Complexity does not relieve a person from this obligation. It’s part of being a human being. I conclude of Zbig that either he has not done so, or not yet, or else he has done so and his simple moral sense is at odds with mine.
Sorry, but this makes him not only wrong but badly motivated and dishonest about his motivations, just like he claims I am.
“Since I have high confidence that I know right from wrong and that I’m a decent guy, I can’t help but presume those who disagree with me might be other than those things.”
lol
People have to be able to size up other people. The real anti-semites, whoever they may be, don’t get a free pass because others have been wrongly accused of that.
Just the sort of smug nastiness and derision I have learned to expect from those who confuse intellect with morality. You don’t get it. Not surprised.
btw lester has lifted a quote from context and smugly laughed at it in isolation. It looks silly in isolation, but that is not the way I delivered it.
This is the kind of thing that, if I were a notable Republican, would wind up in the paper and on TV and be quoted for ever and ever. It’s what smug pseudo-intellectuals do.
Lester? A response to my actual content? Anyone there?
Maybe he’s taking a nap.
Smirking can take a lot out of you.
Dave, they’re toying with us. I guess we shouldn’t take the bait.
dave- your “actual content” is exactly the sort of mcarthyism brezinski is describing. you feel all critics of israel are anti semites. the effect is to make israel a taboo topic.
guess what? it’s not working. we can eval;uate israel on it’s merits exactly the way we’d do for any otjher country. and if you want to call people names go ahead. no one is afraid of being called an anti semite by the likes of you or commentary anymore. I personally look forward to it.
and that quote of yours is not out of context.
you are also conflating israel critics with leftists. i’m a ron paul republican and most jews are democrats! israel was founded by socialists. ever heard of a kibbutz. they have one of the most state controlled economies of any western nation.
Okay, Lester.
You have not addressed my content, only dismissed it with misleading assertions.
I never said all anti-Israel types are anti-Semites, only that many anti-Semites couch their dislike of Jews in measured educated somber summations of complex foreign policy issues. Blowing smoke. Much like your dismissal of my content.
My point was and is that Israel is not perfect but that it is a force for good in the world, in a part of the world that is in many ways a nest and breeding ground of evil. Israel has much in common with us, including the part about being a force for good in the world, and decent people understand this without much help from the elbow-patched pipe-smoking bad-haircut crowd.
Your criticism of Israel always seems to sidestep or mitigate or diminish the part about how they’re a force for good in a neighbourhood of evil. You analyze it all as if it were some parlor game but you don’t apply the simple moral senses to it. You don’t acknowledge their decency and you don’t include it in your calculations. It carries no weight with you.
Or, most likely, you do not believe they are a force for good in the world.
Which makes you in my view an anti-Semite. You refuse to see, or are somehow crippled and thus cannot see, the ‘good’ bit. You wish to treat Israel as a moral equivalent with every other player in that region, and you criticize those who recognize that Israel is in fact NOT equivalent but superior in moral terms. You call US biased. You think WE are not clear headed. But it is YOU who cannot see what is obvious to ordinary good decent people, which is the majority of Americans.
So go on with your criticism of Israel, but don’t expect people to fail to notice what I’ve noticed; you do not have the high ground in this discussion. Your antipathy betrays much.
btw your lifting of my quote did, as I said, make it look silly, and it WAS out of context.
Now respond to my ACTUAL content, big boy. If you can.
Signed, “McCarthy went overboard but he was right to be alarmed about communism, because it was dehumanizing and bloodthirsty, much like radical Islam.”
btw I’m well aware of the leftism of the beginning of Israel. It was the hot idea of those days, and they’ve loosened their economy (as have the Chinese, for the same reason, the discovery that leftism really doesn’t work in practical terms).
But if any country had a chance to make socialism work, it was Israel– because they actually did have a group mentality, us against the world, everyone pulling together, your pain is my pain, your burden is my burden.
the reason socialism fails in the real world is that no country can get its people on that mental and spiritual track. It takes shared religious values to do that. A real spirit of sacrifice for something greater than ourselves. Most nations are just too fractured to find that spirit, even for a little while. the Jews had the best chance ever of making socialism work, and even so, it has not.
As to the Ron Paul thing, that explains a lot.
#30 lester Says: ” you are literally saying someone who is critical of israel is likely an anti semite and likely hiding that fact”
I’ve said nothing about “hiding”.
Also, I did not say “likely” – I said “more likely” – and proved it, too
(by simple Bayesian reasoning that can easily be cast in exact
mathematical form). These two logical distinctions seem to have eluded you.
Since you’ve raised this issue of “hiding”, I will address it now. Do _some_
anti-Semites use euphemistic language, presenting their anti-Semitism
as anti-Zionism, or anti-Likud-ism, or anti-AIPAC-ism, or anti-neocon-ism?
No doubt.
Is it “likely”, in any particular discussion, that someone’s hidden
intentions are anti-Semtitic? I do not know – and even if I had an opinion,
I would not express it. That’s because I don’t deal with
hidden intentions; I despise _ad hominem_ arguments.
“You are only saying this because you
are …” – such words have never passed my lips or my keyboard.
The argument is everything, its author is (with all due respect) nothing.
Hidden intentions are hidden; essentially unknowable; and, anyway,
beside the point: the _good_ ones are used to pave Hell –
who knows what they do with the bad ones?
If you ever make sense – and if your
intentions on that day are the worst possible (I do not claim this is _likely_) -
your making sense will be no less welcome.
FHO,
Actually, the ROAD to hell is paved with those good intentions.
Hell’s actual paving arrangements are not, I believe, mentioned in proverbs, or even Proverbs.
But it doesn’t matter. the anti-Semites do try hard to cover themselves in rationality and logic, but they leave out the decency and moral common sense, and that gives the game away.
#42 Dave: re: hell and good intentions.
I’ve met *both* variants of this aphorism.
For example, “Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.”
–George Bernard Shaw (http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/2655).
I admit that your version is used more frequently.
*Either* version would have helped make my point; my choice was decided
by considerations of brevity. Bandwidth may be abundant now
– but a reader’s attention is always scarce. In this sense, every word counts.
I have no argument with your more substantial point.
I recall some French writer (can’t remember which one – could be Anatole France)
remarking that every Jew, however undistinguished he may be in other respects, has
the great distinction that his _enemies_ are also enemies of reason,
justice, and freedom. (I paraphrase from memory.)
FHO,
Shaw was probably doing what I figured YOU were doing; that is, misquoting the original proverb.
Then again, a Samuel Johnson webpage says it may be that the original was “hell is paved with” and the corruption turned out to be “the road to hell is paved with”.
Perhaps literati of the 17th century felt a paved road made more sense than a less imaginable paved hell.
And your semi-anonymous quotation is a much finer, more concise and less forgettable way of saying what I’ve been trying to say for two days here.
dave-
1. I don’t believe israel is a force for good in the world. I believe there are jewish people who froces for good in the world.
2. Even if Israel was a force for good in the world,. i don’t feel it is the place of our government to give them billions of dollars every year. or saudi arabia, or egypt.
Just because I like someone doesn’t mean I have to give them money
Lester–
Not exactly a revelation from you. Not much of a response to my content either, but it will do.
But you know, I do not believe foreign aid is a policy whose administerial guideline is “if you like a country, give it money”. It’s a bit more forward-thinking than that, although I share your concern in general over the outflow of large amounts of money with questionable benefits.
For myself, I would have loved to have back the money we spent on Arafat that he stole and put in French banks, where his ‘wife’ is now drawing about $2 million a month in shopping money for the Champs Elysee high fashion shops.
seems to me like the total amount of foreign aid to the Palestinians just in this century should now result in each individual Palestinian having a bank account with 20 or 30 thousand dollars in it.
Except their ‘leaders’ stole the money and either banked it or spent it on arms to kill the Jews.
And still, the Palestinian people suffer– and the media and the left and Ron Paul blame Bush and folks like ME.
Not enough food, not enough energy, not enough goods, not enough jobs, a bored and angry and suffering people, those Palestinians… and it’s all our fault, in spite of the billions we send them exactly for the purpose of alleviating that suffering.
Not their fault Arafat set the gold standard for absconding with the gold. ITs OUR FAULT– because we have a good relationship with the evil Jews.
That’s the whole problem, those damn JEWS. If there only were no Israel, wouldn’t the world be a rosy place….?
At least Israeli foreign aid goes where it should go, Lester– economic aid that boosts business and increases the sum total of world wealth and opportunity…. it even gets spent back here, as Israel buys things it needs from us.
The purpose of foreign aid is to create mutually beneficial relationships. Ours with Israel is that, in spite of yours and Dr. Paul’s and Michael Scheuer’s and the left’s criticism of it.
As a young adult without any previous interest or bias or position, I became fascinated with world history and politics. I was slow to come around, wasn’t interested in such things when I was in school, had a narrow view of the world, wanted to fish and to play golf and become a touring pro. In my late 20′s my golf skills had unfortunately found their upper limit, and my mind, against all odds, began to develop. I began to understand the human condition, the tragic flaw, nobility and corruption coexistent in each person, and started seeking answers to the great questions I had previously treated as background noise in my selfish juvenile life. Who am I, why am I here, why can’t those crazy people in the Middle East make peace?
I have read classical stuff, Roman and Greek, medieval archival stuff, renaissance literature in French and English. C’est mon deuxieme langue. I’ve visited Rome and Athens and seen Stonehenge and Notre Dame, I’ve even been to Moscow and seen the inside of St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square. Paris, London, Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Brussels and Bruges, I’ve been everywhere, man.
I have immersed myself in the history of Western civilisation, read the best minds of every generation, and flinched away from the postmodern nihilist stuff because it seemed so disconnected from humanity, so dark and hopeless.
I do not believe “what does not kill you makes you stronger”. I believe compassion and humility are what makes you strong. Experiences and suffering can be unexpected blessings later, but it does us no good to ‘steel ourselves’ by losing traditional human characteristics regarded by the postmoderns as signs of weakness. That is something postmodern leftists share with radical Islam, this simplified and cruel understanding of what makes a winner.
I do not believe God is dead, but I’m pretty sure Neitzche is.
I think Rousseau, Sartre and Hemingway are seriously overrated. Boswell had his brains in his crotch. And Lady Chatterley’s Lover is just weak.
But Socrates asked all the right questions. Hume’s logic turns out to be circular. Hobbes was a strange man. C. S. Lewis functioned on so many levels I’m still trying to take him in after 20 years of reading.
In short, Lester, I’m no dummy and I’m not narrow minded. I lack a modern institutional education, for which I am eternally grateful. What I do not lack is decency, common sense and traditional morality. One of the things that both Paulians and leftists assume is that people who hold the views I hold do so out of stupidity. Begone, silly notion. We are not stupid.
Governments are not perfect, but ours is the least imperfect in human history. People are never completely pure of heart, but Americans have done more good individually and collectively than any people at any time in history. And Israel, for all her flaws, is the ONLY nation in the middle east that is even REMOTELY like America, and for the same reasons.
What happened to your DECENCY, Lester? What has crippled you so you cannot see the good that Israel has brought to the world?
There is something seriously missing from you. I’m just sayin’.
look, if we parceled out land and favors based on merit, israel would have been given most of the middle east by about 1949. but we are not the extenders of eminent domain to the world.
the world goes by the law of the jungle. if the indians were to one day decide they want to fight us for america, we would have to go to war with them again. we couldn’t file some sort of injuction against them at the UN.
that’s where israel is today. they are 6 million pilgrims surrounded by a billion indians. had the mayflower WASPS faced such odds they would probably have been wiped out at plymouth rock.
unfortunately for us, we are virtually undefendable logistically. we have two massive more or less unguarded borders. we have a federal government that can’t and will never be able to keep track of who and whatever goes in and out.
thus, how can we “stay on offense” against terror when we are so supremely vulnerable due to our geographical size and inneffectual government?
so this is the rationale for my thinking.
You’re all over the map. Not entirely rationale, so to speak.
But since you choose to take it up as a question of realism, let me just say–
Al Qaeda has said repeatedly that Iraq is the supreme battlefield for world domination in which they must beat the Americans, and to which every jihadi should go. That is the dominant narrative in the jihadi websites and all the tapes and videos they make for their own consumption. Go to Iraq to kill Americans, it is your duty. Iraq is where we will defeat the great Shaitan.
Beats the heck out of Dubuque, Duluth or Dallas. Bush is right. Take the battle to them to keep it away from US. This alone is what has kept us safe for seven years. 9/11 was going to be just the beginning, and if Gore or Kerry had been in charge, it likely would have been surpassed by now, perhaps more than once. Remember, Bojinka was 1995. WTC #1 was 1993. These people had been winding themselves up to 9/11 for quite some time.
In terms of lacking political will to close and meter passage through our OWN borders, sadly, that is another argument for doing what the government IS willing to do, which is keep the battle AWAY from those borders. And we DO have the will for that, at least until we meet President Obama.
And you now say that Israel has merit? I thought you didn’t believe they were a force for good in the world… the two expressions are roughly interchangeable, in case you hadn’t noticed.
Israel’s argument, utterly proved by the Western Wall, by archaeology, by Roman archival references and much more, is that they are the Indians, and the Palestinians are the latecomers, the pilgrims, the beneficiaries of Roman largesse…. the Romans destroyed the Jewish capital, killed everyone who wouldn’t leave, and drove the rest into exile… then they ‘deeded’ the land to the Philistines, who were the nearby longtime enemies of the Jews. It was the last insult, the finger, if you will, from Rome to Judea. I have made your enemies lords over all you once possessed. Cry for your nation, oh Israel, for we have ground it beneath our bootheels and brought you desolation and tears.
The Romans were wierd like that. If you paid your taxes and accepted them, no problem, but if you fought them, you got that treatment.
Lest it has escaped your notice, the word for “Palestinian” in Arabic and Farsi is “Filistina”.
The Jews belong there, were driven off unfairly, and have the right to return to THEIR OWN COUNTRY. That narrative is popular and inarguable anywhere in the world, unless you’re a Jew coming home to your ancient homeland. I’ve never understood why.
The U.N. was swayed by that very argument in 1947, as were some of the Brits in government twenty years or so earlier, like Balfour. So would any reasonable person be who did not hate Jews. When the Jews began to emigrate to their homeland in the late 19th century, it was utterly primitive. Tent dwellers here and there, no real agriculture or civilisation except in the few remaining old towns of Israel. High infant mortality, low average lifespan (for Palestinian men in 1920 it was 38 years old). Jews in good faith bought land from happy Philistines at enormously inflated prices.
One day in the 1920s it occurred to some Philistines that there were too many Jews and they might ‘take over’, so the Philistines did what they had done for millennia; they started KILLING the Jews.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem threw his lot in with Hitler, admiring the effort to exterminate the Jews and sending actual battalions of soldiers to fight in the German army. Hitler initially refused (they were, after all, thoroughly not Aryan), but in the latter part of the war he needed reinforcements and accepted the soldiers from the Mufti… there are photos extant of the Mufti and Hitler happily sharing tea.
When Israel was declared by ben Gurion, they invited all who lived in Palestine to live as Israelis, citizens and brothers, equals. Of course the nearby Arabs had a message for them too; get out of Palestine until we’ve finished killing Jews, then you can go back to your homes.
They left. Arabs lost the war they started, because of overconfidence, yes-men, cowardice, disorganization, and even in spite of some really talented commanders and some great efforts. Not surprisingly, the Israelis were leery of those Palestinian arabs coming back after they had demonstrated their loyalties by leaving.
Israel has survived, as a people, for thousands of years of incredible hardship and hate. They’ve survived as a nation for 60 years of often razor-edge battles in which all was at stake. They’ve persisted when, as you say, billions hate them and wish them dead. Amazing, isn’t it, that they’re still here……?
This is one of the things about this world that makes me, seeing the big picture, draw back and shake my head and think, it’s impossible that they survived, and that they thrive today. Impossible.
you have no concept of how the world works. if the jews want israel they can fight for it. I’m a christian, it’s my holy land too and you don’t see me engaging in another crusades.
it doesn’t matter who is wrong or right. there is no president of the world who gives people land and takes it from other people. the israelis can have israel they just have to dfend it. if germany wants to take over the US we will have to fight them. and vice versa. you understand?
israel has a huge wall to keep out suicide bombers. they have a massive intelligence and security apparatus and a very small country to keep track of.
we don’t have the resources to protect america the way israel has the resources to protect israel. therefore, we can’t piss of possible terrorists the way they do or we will get another 9/11. do we agree there cannot be another 9/11?
it’s logistical, not moral.
Lester, I just wrote about a hundred years of the world working. I think I have a pretty good grip on it.
So you’re a Christian? What are your thoughts on the Jews as God’s Chosen People? On the Holy Land’s part in the future events of Revelations? What, exactly, do you believe about Israel and Christ and the Second Coming and Armageddon and all the things Christians deal with in their holy scriptures? A New Jerusalem with streets paved in gold? The Rapture? The 144,000?
The firmness of your reductionist argument of world politics, Law of the Jungle, makes me suspect a lack of firmness of your Christian worldview. I’m not so sure of all those things myself, but Christians do tend to be allies and supporters of Israel. Except you.
America has the most powerful military in the world. Israel is impressive, but they are 4 million Jews and a couple million others surrounded by hundreds of millions of people who want them dead. A unique and terrible situation, not comparable to any other, now or ever.
And as to ‘we can’t piss off terrorists’, I am inclined to see it opposite– they’d better not piss US off. They did, and they have paid a terrible price. All over the Jihadi websites they are moaning about how they’ve been decimated and beaten in Iraq. The guy who wrote the Jihad book that started Al Qaeda has now written a new book saying violence was the wrong idea, violence is a sin against Islam, we shouldn’t have done it that way, it has gotten us nothing but misery, yada yada. There is a large debate in radical Islam now about whether they’re on the wrong track and should swear off violence, and it’s all because of how well we’ve been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If we had not gone to IRaq, Jihad would be stronger than ever. The world would be consumed in terrorism and they would be trying to overthrow governments right and left. As it is, they’re just trying to survive, and they’re questioning their own direction over the past twenty years.
Epic result, great news, fantastic job in Iraq… unless you’re Lester.
Or Keith Olbermann.
“but Christians do tend to be allies and supporters of Israel.”
chirstians don’t “tend” to be anything. there are billions of christians with all sorts of opinions.
yuo are not seeing what I am saying bro. your rhetoric is about right and wrong. that’s not what this is about. I’m not saying the arabs are right and israel is wrong or vice versa.
I’m saying if you FEEL that you are right, that has no bearing on wether you survive or perish. mohammad atta wrote his last will and testement the night of the first qana massacre in 1996. as we know, he ended up being one of the 9/11 hijackers.
all the right and wrong in the world or arguments about what people should or shuoldn’t do doesn’t cahnge what actually happened: blowback.
I don’t like to trot this out but I very very nearly lost two memebers of my famly on 9/11. one was making her way down the stairwell of tower two when the second plane hit.
muslims will never accept israel and never accept us hegemnoy and I am not willing to sacrafise my life or others lives to make some sort of point aobut the bible. tha’ts my stand
Whatever informs your opinions, Lester, it isn’t ‘reality’. IF it was, you’d be taking into account recent events and updating your opinions to reflect them.
There are way more people in the middle east who want to accept Israel than you think. “Muslims will never accept Israel” is bunk. SOME muslims will never accept Israel, and others actually ADMIRE it. AT present, Muslims all over the Arab countries are expressing bitterness that their OWN governments are too corrupt to hold their leaders accountable in things like bribery. They are impressed by the transparency and clarity of the Israeli democracy, currently very publicly about the business of removing its highest leader for corruption.
The ‘other muslims’ who will never accept Israel are decidedly less influential than they were a couple of years ago. I do not insist here and now that they will be made irrelevant, but all the same, things are changing. I would have said, had I been alive fifty years ago, that Israel would never have made it this far because of united Muslim intransigence and blood thirst for the Jews…. but they did.
I’d have said after the 1982 war that the world had turned on them and would now support their destruction, slowly or quickly. The world did not do so.
They are better established than ever.
Even a thirty year media war on them, Vietnam style, full of vicious propaganda, has not entirely worked. The Al Dura affair has been proven bunk; the kid was shot by his own people and used cynically by the Pallys to fire up the yokels to murder. They might have shot him on PURPOSE, for that reason.
We do not want ‘hegemony’, we just want the governments of the middle east to be less enthusiastic about attacking us and our allies, a group to which Israel belongs.
And I did not ask you if you were willing to sacrifice your life to make a point about the Bible, Lester, I asked for your thoughts on the many topics which interest Christians. Your response shows what I had already thought, that you are not particularly interested in your Christianity or even in a circumspect evaluation of events. You come to this discussion committed to your position (which is not entirely clear, as you’ve not really responded to any of my points, merely restated yours somewhat chaotically), and determined to belittle people who see things differently.
This is not unique; the Paul folk have this habit.
And your “some of my best friends are black” bit, the reluctant telling of the family links to 9/11, is actually not relevant. Most people who lost, or nearly so, on that day are rightly angry at the terrorists for actually DOING it. They’ve been attacking us since the 1970′s and it’s been steadily working itself to higher heights. Bush didn’t cause 9/11. Bush wasn’t even IN politics when Arafat’s crowd was shooting US ambassadors, nor when Saddam was sheltering the terrorists who took that cruise ship and shoved Mr. Klinghoffer over the side.
Bush was the drunken son of a vice president in his first term when Hezbollah killed 243 Marines in Beirut, where I used to live (if you want to do the six degrees thing).
Your world view seems to be ‘don’t provoke them’. And as you’ve said over and over, you do not want right and wrong to even slightly figure into American foreign policy decisions.
Unfortunately, your Paulian brethren are none too slow to claim AMERICA is wrong in doing this or that. Wrong. Morally wrong, spending too much of our hard earned money, morally wrong in sending boys to die, yada yada.
Those who say the loudest that right and wrong doesn’t matter are usually the fastest ones to claim THEY’VE been wronged.
“There are way more people in the middle east who want to accept Israel than you think”
I know lots of muslims and not one of them likes our foreign policy or israel. do yuo know alot of muslims?
“They are impressed by the transparency and clarity of the Israeli democracy, currently very publicly about the business of removing its highest leader for corruption.”
again, the dozens of muslims I know have never mentioned this. I don’t doubt for a minute israel is better to it’s citizens than arab nations are to theirs. israel could bea tyranny and most muslims would feel the same way about it that they do knwing it’s a democracy: they feel the land was stolen and that israels relationship with the US allows them to bully the palestinians. it’s like if they tried to build a yankees museum near Fenway park.
“that you are not particularly interested in your Christianity or even in a circumspect evaluation of events.”
because I don’t want the people of the united states to be vulnerable to terrorist attacks? yuor understnading of christianity is very flawed.
“Most people who lost, or nearly so, on that day are rightly angry at the terrorists for actually DOING it”
not the ones I know. my dad wasn’t angry at the vietnamese either. he was angry at the government for sending him there. not everyone identifies the country with the government. they arne’t the same thing.
“Your world view seems to be ‘don’t provoke them’.”
exactly. why trouble trouble?
Ahah, the real meat of Lester.
Vietnam was wrong, Iraq is like Vietnam, Iraq is wrong, Bush is evil, America is evil empire, stop being evil and the charming wonderful advanced ROW (rest of world) will leave us in peace.
Yawn.
I’ll bet you’re a big advocate of watching “Loose Change” to get an education as to what REALLY happened on 9/11.
You have thoroughly proven that a conversation with you is likely to be fruitless, and so this is my final post. Get in your ‘last word’ dig and be done with it. My right is your wrong, Lester, we are that far apart in how we see the world.
It is immature (and speaks of bad faith and ill will) to begin with the position that those who think like I do are evil and wrong and want misery in the world and want bad things to happen to America. When I try to bring you down to specifics, you change the subject. when I try to find out how you arrived at your conclusions, you simply state them in a different way. Your lifts from my posts continue to lack the context that explains them, and your answers ignore that context.
In brief, amigo, you’re more slippery than compelling. I’ve hung in there on the possibility that our conversation might be interesting to others, but that possibility is now past.
I’m done.
In my opinion, it is usually laughable to even mention Obama and fellow Illini Lincoln in the same sentence, but it appears that there at least is one area in which they share a interesting dilemma..gaining the support of 2 disparate constituencies. When faced by abolitionists with the need to free the slaves in border state, Kentucky in order to insure the presence of God on his side. Lincoln courageously and wisely demurred. “I would like to have God (and implicitly the radical abolitionists) on my side, but I must have Kentucky.” Similarly, Obama needs strong support of both Jewish voters and the anti semite Black Liberation, Farrakan Muslim voters. Lacking both wisdom and courage, Obama refuses to make choice, choosing to mouth support for Israel, while retaining on staff folks who with a wink, wink, make sure that the anti semites know that all is well. This is exactly the same strategy Obama used on free trade. Hells fire and brimstone to the masses on the evils of NAFTA and the loss of American jobs in public, while sending reps quietly to assure our Canadian friends that he is only kidding, in his public rantings. Lincoln wound up our greatest President, ultimately winning the support and affection of both constituencies. Obama will wind up the junior senator from Illinois. Many talk of the problems Obama faces when not assisted by a teleprompter, I think he has a much tougher problem when faced with an issue on which he can’t vote “present”