More Arrant Foreign Policy Nonsense

Caption: Artist's conception of me after seeing yet another debate between our "leaders" on foreign policy. Wake me up when they start to make sense.

Image credit: derbon/Flickr

Via Taylor Marsh, comes this little gem of a report describing how an enlightened democracy discusses foreign policy:

Senate Republicans signaled stiffening resistance Tuesday to the Obama administration's possible nomination of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of State.

GOP strategists said lawmakers would use such a nomination as an opening for an extended examination of how the administration handled the Sept. 11 militant attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador. Although the Senate rarely rejects a president's Cabinet picks, the strategists said, the process could be so painful and lengthy that Obama might come to regret his choice.

...

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, told reporters he considered Rice "tainted" by her role in the administration's handling of Benghazi, and recommended that the White House instead choose Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, whom administration officials have also been considering for the diplomatic post.

GOP Senators Cool To Idea Of Susan Rice As Secretary of State

Don't get me wrong. Susan Rice was colossally wrong about what happened at Benghazi. Why she said all that, I don't know. Supposedly, that's what the CIA told her. But, that's the CIA that has been run until early this week by David Patraeus, whose long career of telling his bosses what they wanted to hear has led to two costly and useless "surges" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But that's the real point here. If being colossally wrong about foreign policy issues was a barrier to having authority over them, not only would Rice not have her job, but neither would most of the rest of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy team, nor Senator Kyl, nor John McCain or many of the members of his committee.

The debates conducted on foreign policy in DC these days usually would be justifiably subtitled “Which stupid nonsense do you want to believe?” Iran is a threat? Give me a break. Israel has the right to exist, and this means it can wall off and shell anyone it sees as a threat? Pretty obviously absurd, when you put it that way. But this is what we debate nowadays, as in “what should we do about the terrible danger posed by Iran?”, or “how awful are the Palestinians, and do they deserve to live?”

Meanwhile, in order, Europe, China, and India are likely to become bigger economies than ours in the foreseeable future. We don’t talk about the implications of these things, and what they mean to our security. We don’t talk much about climate change, and the obvious effect that is going to have.

Alright, I’m making myself depressed again. I’ll stop now.

Profiles In Fierce Advocacy: Sometimes The Mikes Are On When You're Saying What You Think

Caption: A wireless microphone and a small office/home router - everything you need to get someone else's careless mutterings on the Internet.

Image credit: Wesley Fryer

Oh my. Just saw this at Al Jazeera:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, a "liar" in a conversation with his US counterpart, Barack Obama, accidentally broadcast to journalists at last week's G20 summit in the French resort of Cannes.

"I cannot bear Netanyahu, he's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama, unaware that the microphones in their meeting room had been switched on.

Reporters in a separate location listened in to a simultaneous translation as Obama responded, according to a French interpreter: "You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you."

France's Sarkozy called Netanyahu 'a liar'

Yet President Fierce Advocate seems to bend to Netanyahu's will whenever there's a conflict between our interests and those of Netanyahu and his band of thieving warmongers. I'd have written "Israel's interests", but I really don't think that's the case. The best thing for Israel right now would be to be persuaded to make peace with its neighbors, and learn to cooperate with them rather than shell them.

Politicians will eventually learn to never say anything they're actually thinking when there are microphones in evidence that they can't control. That will be a sad day, because then we'll have fewer ways of showing just what hypocrites they are.

Middle East Kabuki

There's another round of Middle East peace talks under way. If you aren't already skeptical of talks that feature Benjamin Netanyahu on one side and Mahmoud Abbas on the other, with Barack Obama mediating, then consider this extraordinary statement from University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer in an interview on Al Jazeera today:

These talks are not going to lead to a permanent agreement. This is basically a charade. And in fact the peace process has become a charade.

The main obstacle, but certainly not the only obstacle to a peace agreement, is the fact that the Netanyahu government has no interest whatsoever in giving the Palestinians a viable state of their own. Of course the Palestinians understand that.

The Israelis are benefitting [from the talks] mainly because it provides very good cover for them to continue the occupation and the colonisation of the West Bank and to keep the Palestinians in Gaza in a giant open-air prison.

When the Netanyahu government first came to office it made the fundamental mistake of thinking that it did not have to pretend that it was really interested in peace, that it could just colonise the occupied territories without saying that it was genuinely interested in creating a Palestinian state.

But the Netanyahu government has learned that you have to engage in this charade to allow you to continue to colonise the occupied territories.

Reaction to Middle East peace talks

With continued unqualified support from the United States, there doesn't seem to be much reason for Israel to compromise with its neighbors and allow the creation of a Palestinian state. As he mentioned later in the interview I saw today on Al Jazeera TV, Israel effectively controls Gaza, and has far more control of the West Bank than any other entity could manage. Gaza is about the size of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and has about as many people. It would barely qualify as an old-style city-state on its own, and the West Bank, the other part of a notional Palestinian state, is separated from Gaza by Israel. It's hard to imagine these two bits of territory being a viable country, even in the best of circumstances.

What was extraordinary about this was that I've never heard an American expert put this quite so baldly before. For the last few years, I've been thinking this is the most likely outcome. A Palestinian state would depend on Israel's good behavior for its security anyway. You probably can't name many countries that are physically separated by another country that is hostile to them. The only one I can think of, Pakistan, didn't last long.

So, why are the talks going on? Here's what I think the participants get out of it:

• Obama gets to look like a statesman.
• Netanyahu gets to look like he's interested in peace
• Abbas continues to get foreign aid.

I really don't think there's more to it than that. I'd love to be proved wrong.

Subversive Act Of The Day

It's probably not going to be a regular feature, but every once in a while something happens that makes me just want to provide a link to spite someone. Today, that someone is a bunch of numskulls who go by the name Camera, a pro-Israel lobbying group. As Phil Weiss notes:

Another sign of despair, that the battle is now joined inside the castle gates: Israel lobby group Camera is taking on CNN senior Jerusalem correspondent Ben Wedeman, trying to do to him what was done to Octavia Nasr. Seham tells me, "Wedeman has great politics. His reporting on the war on Gaza was the only reporting by the western media that I could watch. I am sure he was expecting this."

Israel lobby targets another CNN correspondent

What was Wedeman guilty of, according to Camera? He linked to, and said something nice about, an article by Juan Cole about relations between Turkey and Israel after the Gaza Flotilla raid:

Whenever a journalist is attacked for referencing an academic, it is an attempt to make that scholar´s work taboo and to forbid its public mention. It would be perfectly all right for an advocacy group to say “In that blog posting, Cole gets the Turkish economy and its impact on relations with Israel wrong for reasons X, Y and Z.¨” But CAMERA did not engage with my substantive points. They simply propagandized.

The Israel Lobbies and Breitbartism: Dirty Tricks, Taboos and the threat to American Democracy

The people who do this sort of thing are despicable. They aren't adding to any discussion about our involvement with Israel and the Middle East; all they're trying to do is make sure that the only voice that's heard is theirs.

I had read this article within a day or two of its having appeared. I had not thought to pass along the link or comment on it, figuring that if people weren't already going to a place that has about a thousand times the traffic this blog does, it wasn't likely I was going to affect that very much. Plus, I really didn't have much to add. But now, I think it's time to quote the thing just to spite those little assholes at Camera. So here are the introductory paragraphs:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday in Toronto in the wake of the G20 conference that Turkey will no longer routinely give Israeli military aircraft permission to fly in Turkish airspace. The announcement came as Turkey forbade an Israeli military airplane (taking officers on a visit to the sites of Nazi death camps for Jews in Poland) to fly over its territory. The Turkish press denies that the destination of the plane influenced the decision.

Future Israeli military overflight permissions will be granted on an ad hoc basis.

From the Guardian: ‘Israel’s Ynet news website reported that other military flights had also been quietly cancelled. “Turkey is continuing to downgrade its relations with Israel,” an unnamed official told Ynet. “This is a long-term process and not something that began just after the flotilla incident. We are very concerned.” ‘

Turkey Forbids Israeli Military Overflights

Looks good already, doesn't it?

It goes into some detail about recent moves by Turkey to unthaw its relations with some of its neighbors, Iran and Syria in particular. As the quote mentions, relations between Turkey and Israel have been getting worse of late, thanks to the Israelis having boarded and killed some passengers on a Turkish ship that was trying to break through Israel's blockade of the Gaza strip. This is a problem for Israel, because besides the United States and a couple of countries so unimportant I can't even name them at the moment, Israel didn't have a better friend than Turkey. Thanks to their foolishness last month, they now find themselves more alone than ever.

Ultimately, discussing this issue either in the United States or anywhere else besides Turkey and Israel isn't going to make much difference to Israeli security. It does weigh on our decision to support Israel, though, and we need to be able to have knowledgeable, skeptical people like Prof. Cole in that discussion.

UPDATE: I hope other bloggers take up this idea. Letting people like Camera win is going to make our foreign policy decisions worse, not better.

UPDATE 2 (Jul. 25): Finally corrected the title of this article, thanks to Dana Hunter's keen eye. Those wanting to know what a "subsersive" act is will have to go elsewhere - possibly something with a XXX rating.

Quote Of The Day

Glenn Greenwald on the reaction by Israel and the U.S. government to the outrage over their attack on the aid flotilla:

How could anyone with the slightest intellectual honesty claim that Israel and its Navy were the victims of a boat which Jon Stewart said last night looked like "P Diddy's St. Bart's vacation yacht"; or that armed Israeli commandos were the victims of unarmed civilian passengers; or, more generally, that a nuclear-armed Israel with the most powerful military by far in the Middle East and the world's greatest superpower acting as Protector is the persecuted victim of a wretched, deprived, imprisoned, stateless population devastated by 40 years of brutal Israeli occupation and, just a year ago, an unbelievably destructive invasion and bombing campaign? The casting of "victim" and "aggressor" is blatantly reversed with such claims -- which is exactly the central premise that has been driving, and continues to drive, U.S. foreign policy as well.

The Israeli flotilla attack: victimhood, aggression and tribalism

There are examples of the soullessness and depravity of our ruling class everywhere these days, but we seem to have reached a new height recently. That our leaders would characterize this as anything more threatening to Israel than a thing that needs to be independently investigated (President Obama's initial reaction) is absurd. It is, as Greenwald goes on to point out, a perfect example of how our own "thinking" allows us to view a group of religious fanatics living in one of the poorest places on earth as a mortal threat to our society.

There are things that are scary or disturbing that are not threats to our existence as a nation. We need to learn to recognize this fact, and deal with those things accordingly. Their handling of this incident makes Israel looks like a bunch of simpering bullies. It's easy to despise such people, and difficult to view them as victims, even when they are.

I suggest that people take that to heart when they ask why there are people in the world who hate our guts.

UPDATE: What do I mean be depravity? Paul Craig Roberts, formerly President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Treasury, elaborated yesterday:

Question: What can be done?

Roberts: The American people are lost in la-la land. They have no idea that their civil liberties have been forfeited. They are only gradually learning that their economic future is compromised. They have little idea of the world’s growing hatred of Americans for their destruction of other peoples. In short, Americans are full of themselves. They have no idea of the disasters that their ignorance and inhumanity have brought upon themselves and upon the world.

Much of the world, looking at a country that appears both stupid and inhumane, wonders at Americans’ fine opinion of themselves. Is America the virtuous “indispensable nation” of neoconservative propaganda, or is America a plague upon the world?

A Plague Upon The World: The USA is a “Failed State”

To my mind, allowing such a thing to continue, or encouraging it as the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats have done, is depraved. How could anyone with a functioning heart and mind do what they've continued to do, despite evidence that Roberts is right? I urge readers to check out the rest of that article. I have a quibble here and there, but for the most part, I think that Roberts is all too sadly correct.

What Bibi Taught Us

Updated Saturday, March 27

Caption: Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office, May 18, 2009

Image credit: The White House/Wikimedia

President Obama did one thing right this week. No, it wasn't signing the health care "reform" bill, or the "correction", or the "correction to the correction". No, it was reminding Israel's bombastic leader who the senior partner in our alliance is, as the Israeli publication Ha'aretz reports:

Details emerging from Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington remain incomplete, but the conclusion may nonetheless be drawn that the prime minister erred in choosing to fly to the United States this week. The visit - touted as a fence-mending effort, a bid to strengthen the tenuous ties between Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama - only highlighted the deep rift between the American and Israeli administrations.

The prime minister leaves America disgraced, isolated, and altogether weaker than when he came.

Instead of setting the diplomatic agenda, Netanyahu surrendered control over it. Instead of leaving the Palestinian issue aside and focusing on Iran, as he would like, Netanyahu now finds himself fighting for the legitimacy of Israeli control over East Jerusalem.

Netanyahu leaves U.S. disgraced, isolated and weaker

Leaving Bibi to find his own way to dinner wasn't a bad touch, either. As Patrick Lang put it:

Bibi was "dissed." Good, he needed the lesson. I think there will be more such lessons. Obama is a patient man. I now see that he favors the "ambush" style. Israeli hubris and arrogance favors an "adversary" who employs such method.

They will not learn the lesson implied in this Ha'aretz editorial because to do so would require a basic change in the way they think [of] themselves in relationship to the outer world and gentiles. They carry this burden in trying to deal with difficult situations. In the same way they will continue down the road of trying to deal with the Palestinians by treating them as sub-humans. That road leads to a dead end.

"Netanyahu leaves U.S. disgraced, isolated and weaker." By Aluf Benn

Lang spent some time as an observer of the Israeli Defense Forces. He comes by his opinions of Israeli society at least partly by observation. Netanyahu's treatment of Vice President Biden two weeks ago should convince just about anyone that at least when it comes to Netanyahu and his immediate circles, their attitude toward the rest of the world sucks.

Something James Ala wrote last week seems prophetic in this context:

It is clear by recent events that Israel is totally contemptuous of the U.S. executive. The last U.S. President that Israel paid any heed to was the big dog, Hillary’s husband.

Big bad Bill got respect because he placed his foot up Bibi’s backside the last time the Likud leader got a bit too big for his britches. The WH at the time basically engineered the electoral defeat of Bibi back in the glory days of the 1990’s. Bill’s brass-knuckled brush back of the Israeli leader set the course for the near miss of Clinton’s Oslo efforts.

The ADL Attacks The Four Star

Bibi will eventually learn his lesson. Americans have a lesson to learn, too. As Pat Lang also noted indirectly, this should remove any doubt people might have had that Obama is either weak or incompetent at politics. This was a move you'd expect of a competent leader of a world power when dealing with a lesser power that has become a troublesome ally.

It should make clear that something I wrote some time ago is really true, Obama isn't going to do anything he either doesn't want to do or doesn't have to. Assuming that he's tentative or timid is a mistake, and it's one that quite a few people have made, particularly among progressives. In short, he isn't failing to do the right thing on health care or regulating finance because he's afraid to; he's refusing to do it because he doesn't want to, and no one has figured out how to make it worth his while.

Perhaps if I keep writing this, with sufficient examples, people will pick up on this. I'm not holding my breath, though. As Bibi is proving by surviving repeated humiliations at the hands of American presidents, stupid dies hard.

UPDATE: Over at Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, James Ala has written a response to this article. I think the only real disagreement he had is this:

[Netanyahu] lost the top spot the last time because he pissed off the Big Dog and he found out exactly what kind of bite the Arkansas mongrel packed. Clinton basically ran him out of office. Thus, in one respect, you are not correct Cujo359, Bibi has zero learning curve. His learning curve is flatter than a Kansas landscape. Thus one more time a U.S. President has kicked him to the curb because Bibi didn't know when to stop.

What Bibi Taught Us—A Response to My Favorite Canine

In one sense, it doesn't matter if Netanyahu learns the lesson or not. If he doesn't, he will probably be voted out. He almost certainly will if this contretemps leads to reduced support by America. That loss of support is a possible, if unlikely, outcome.

There's also something to be said for the idea that sometimes people require repeated lessons. If nothing else, Bibi is stubborn. Like James, though, I also think the man is stupid. I just haven't watched him enough to be sure how stupid. Time will tell.

The other point James made that I found interesting is that he thinks this all had its genesis in Obama's lack of response to Netanyahu's implicit declaration last year that the concept of "natural growth" of Israeli settlements in occupied territory would continue. I suspect he's right. It was a mistake for Obama to not respond to that point at the time. No doubt that mistake led Netanyahu to assume that Obama would simply allow continued expansion as his predecessor had.

Incidentally, while doing research to recall just what happened back then, I found this article by The American Prospect on the settlements. In it, the author called real estate agents in Israel to see if there were homes for sale in the settlements. Guess what? There were. So much for "natural growth".

How this all plays out will depend on many things that I can't predict. It should be clear now, though, that the Obama Administration doesn't support the expansion of settlements under any circumstances. Anyone who doesn't get that now would make Bibi look like a genius. The question is what the White House intends to do beyond words and snubs.

The Boy Who Cried Reductio Ad Hitlerium

Image credit: Arrr!.

Much has been made already of Leon Wieseltier's ridiculous implication in this month's The New Republic that one-time TNR editor and now Atlantic writer Andrew Sullivan is anti-semitic. If you want to spend an hour or so reading a thorough refutation of this, go to Glenn Greenwald's article on the subject, and then follow the links. There's really not much to add to all that, other than to point out the obvious.

Of course, pointing out the obvious is what I do. Greenwald brushes up against it here:

What's most striking about this attack is how inconsequential it is. It was once the case, not all that long ago, that an accusation of "anti-semitism" was the nuclear weapon of political debates, rendering most politicians and pundits (especially non-Jewish ones) petrified of being so accused. A 4,300-word prosecution brief published by The New Republic, accusing a major political writer of being a Jew-hater, would have been taken quite seriously, generated all sorts of drama, introspection and debate, and seriously tarnished the reputation of the accused.

No longer. Neoconservatives have so abused and cynically exploited the "anti-semitism" charge for rank political gain -- to bully those who would dare criticize Israeli actions or question U.S. policy towards Israel -- that it has lost its impact.

TNR's ugly and reckless anti-semitism games

There are several purposes to labeling someone's position, as Wieseltier has done to Sullivan's. One is, as Greenwald observes, intimidating people into not touching a subject. That is definitely a feature of this particular debate. It has long been a feature of debates about our policy toward Israel, the Palestine, and the Middle East in general. Most any hint of criticism for Israel's behavior is routinely met with such charges, as is almost any suggestion that a more balanced policy would be preferable. Glenn has covered this well, as have others.

Another purpose is, depending on the circumstance, to either label a person's idea with some undesirable trait or with an undesirable person or movement. The latter is often referred to humorously as reductio ad hitlerium, roughly translated as "reducing to Hitler". It gets that name due to the fact that one of the classic examples of this strategy is to associate an idea with something that Hitler did or supported. The fact is, of course, that Hitler did and said many things, some of which are done and said by most societies. He had an industrial policy, for instance. That doesn't automatically make having an industrial policy a bad thing for a government to do. The real strategy here is to change the subject from the merits of the idea being discussed, to either the motivations of the person or persons whose idea it is, or to instill unreasoning apprehension about the idea. It's a cheap point, and lots of people try to make it.

Perhaps the most infamous example of this sort of "reasoning", of late, was Fox News personality Glenn Beck's tirade in which he announced that he had decided that President Obama and the Democrats were not socialists after all, as he and many other conservative pundits have charged, but fascists. Who honestly thinks that these two concepts of a society are so similar that it takes months of observation to tell whether someone advocates one, the other, or neither?

This is why I resist such labeling. Accusing someone of being a racist, a sexist, a socialist, a fascist, or an anti-semite is a cheap and dishonest way to win an argument. If done successfully, it neatly obviates the need for the person making the charge to justify his own ideas.

There is also another danger, which the Greenwald quote illustrates. Continually making specious allegations of anti-semitism, racism, or what have you inevitably cheapens the impact of the label. The boy who cried wolf is a story that everyone should keep in mind. Certainly, anyone with any sense will no longer believe Leon Wieseltier the next time he cries "anti-semite". There really are anti-semites, racists, and sexists out there, and recklessly labeling anyone and everyone with such terms will inevitably make us less inclined to pay attention the next time someone does it.

Afterword: I'll also note, in passing, that Wieseltier's first bit of "evidence" that Sullivan is an anti-semitic:

“Trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity to readers of The New Republic is not easy.” On June 2, 1944, W.H. Auden penned that sentence in a letter to Ursula Niebuhr. On January 26, 2010, Andrew Sullivan posted it as the “quote for the day” on his blog. Displaced and unglossed quotations are always in some way mordant, and bristle smugly with implications. Let us see what this one implies.

Something Much Darker

is nothing of the sort. As Sullivan observed, Auden's quote was a lament that many of TNR's readers at the time were people whose outlook is more secular than religious. This, I suspect, is probably still true. Though I'm an atheist, I agree with Auden. None other than well known secularist Richard Dawkins explained why in his book The God Delusion:

Rivers of Medieval ink, not to mention blood, have been squandered over the 'mystery' of the Trinity, and in suppressing such heresies as the Arian heresy. Arius of Alexandria, in the fourth century AD, denied that Jesus was consubstantial (i.e., of the same substance or essence) of God. What on Earth could that possibly mean, you are probably asking? Substance? What 'substance'? What exactly do you mean by 'essence'? 'Very little' seems the only reasonable reply. Yet the controversy split Christendom down the middle for more than a century, Emperor Constantine order that all copies of Arius' book should be burned. Splitting Christendom by splitting hairs, such has been the way of theology.

The God Delusion - pg. 33

[This is my transcription of the page. It can't be cut and pasted electronically.]

As this hilarious Mr. Deity episode demonstrates, it's a concept that makes no sense to anyone who is trained to think logically.

Clearly, positing anti-semitism is no more necessary to explain Sullivan's sense of the irony of this quote than belief in Catholicism is necessary to explain mine. Both Catholics and secularists can find humor in it, though doubtless for different reasons. Sullivan's response to that particular point was that he was poking fun at the unusually large number of Jews on the TNR staff, of course. That just further supports the idea that there are many possible reasons for finding such a quote humorous, and anti-semitism isn't necessary to explain most of them.

An Explanation That Makes Sense

I've been wondering what to make of this statement by Vice President Joe Biden over the weekend, as quoted by Taylor Marsh:

“Whether we agree or not. They’re (Israel) entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that’s going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed. What we believe is in the national interest of the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world. And so there are separate issues. If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice.”

Biden Statement Unleashes Nervous Nellies

Being something of a nervous Nellie when it comes to the Middle East, I had to wonder what was going through his mind. On one level, Biden was stating the obvious - Israel is a separate country. We have no jurisdiction over them. On the other hand, it's clear that, as the leading arms dealer and source of aid to Israel, we have some influence. It's easy to see why some folks might assume this was Biden saying that Israel was free to do what it wanted.

That doesn't fit my image of Joe Biden, though. He's far too astute to give Israel the green light to do something like that. For that matter, President Obama's not that stupid, either. Juan Cole seems to have found a plausible explanation, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Biden's comment "has a dual function of sending the message to Netanyahu that if he wants to cowboy it he is riding alone, and of warning the Iranians that Netanyahu might just be wild man enough to risk such a unilateral if Iran continues to be so intransigent with regard to seeking enrichment capabilities," Cole told me in an e-mail. "It is actually quite elegant."

Biden His Time On Iran ...

That sounds more like it. We'll see whether the leaders of Israel and Iran take it that way, but this is at least the sort of message that we ought to be sending.

Hypocritical Wanker Of The Day: Jane Harman

Image credit: Official Congressional portrait

Occasionally, I've written phrases of the form, "you don't have to be an expert to understand this, just a human being". What I always assume when I write such things is that the people I'm addressing have the imagination and self-knowledge to understand how they would feel or react in a given circumstance. Often, I'm disappointed to find out that there are many people who don't understand. These are the sorts of people who think, for instance, that the Palestinians will calm down if Israel just gets tough on them. What they fail to realize, of course, is that the problem is that Israel has been tough on them, by creating the conditions that put them in small, densely populated areas, and then bombing or invading them whenever they feel the need. Anyone who thinks people will calm down in such circumstances has to be an emotional idiot - someone not the least bit aware of how he reacts to stress and fear.

It appears that Rep. Jane Harman (CA-36) is such a person, as Glenn Greenwald writes today:

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about one of the most shameless and absurd spectacles to appear in Washington in some time: the self-righteous, self-obsessed rage expressed by Blue Dog Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) -- leading defender of Bush's illegal domestic eavesdropping programs -- upon learning that one of her conversations had been legally eavesdropped upon as part of a criminal investigation into the actions of a suspected Israeli agent. Over the weekend, Harman (along with half of the U.S. Congress) appeared at the AIPAC conference and continued her new anti-eavesdropping crusade, actually vowing to lead an investigation into potential eavesdropping abuses to assure that it would never happen again. Atrios notes just some of the points that makes her behavior incomparably shameless.

Someone Needs To Give Jane Harman An Award For This

As one of the articles Glenn referred to states:

[Y]ou are told that under orders from the president, the National Security Agency set up “unique access points inside the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure.” You are assured that this is legal. You are a trained lawyer.

What do you do?

Well, if you are one particular Congresswoman, you don’t think that’s its highly suspicious that the NSA is operating inside the United States. You don’t find a way to research the legality of the program, by getting hypothetical answers from constitutional and intelligence experts. You don’t read the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to see if the program sounds legal.

Harman: It’s Not My Fault I Couldn’t Figure Out Domestic Wiretapping Was Illegal

Now, of course, Harman is up in arms, because the government was wiretapping her. Someone leaked this fact to the press, along with what that wiretap allegedly exposed, which was Harman at least considering trading support for AIPAC for campaign contributions. In any event, the hypocrisy of one of the biggest champions of illegal wiretapping protesting her being exposed by a legal wiretap is rich, to say the least.

So, as the title of Glenn's article suggests, Harman is, indeed, receiving an award for this. Around here, we have the perfect award. There's no monetary value to this award, but then Ms. Harman ranks as one of the richest members of Congress. It's the perfect award for someone who has everything.

Congratulations to Jane Harman for becoming our new Hypocritical Wanker Of The Day. The best thing about this award is that, if history proves to be any guide, she'll be able to keep it for some time.

An Intriguing Question

Today at Salon, Glenn Greenwald asked an interesting hypothetical question:

Suppose (for the sake of discussion) that: (a) the U.S. learns exactly where Osama bin Laden is located in Pakistan; (b) there is ample evidence that bin Laden (i) perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and (ii) is in the advanced stages of planning new imminent attacks on the U.S.; and (c) the Pakistani Government is either unwilling or unable to apprehend bin Laden in order to extradite him to the U.S. for trial. Further suppose that efforts to compel the Pakistanis to do so through the U.N. are blocked (because, say, China or Russia vetoes any actions).

What, if anything, is the U.S. (under current facts) permitted to do about Osama bin Laden, who -- we're assuming for purposes of these discussions -- clearly perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and is in the process of plotting new attacks? As far as I can tell, the options would be: (a) drop a bomb on him and kill him with no due process; (b) enter Pakistan, apprehend him, and bring him to the U.S. for a trial (i.e., rendition); or (c) do nothing, and just leave him be.

The L.A. Times, Obama & renditions

Actually, he asked two interesting hypothetical questions, thanks to one of his readers:

Suppose (for the sake of discussion) that in 2007: (a) Afghanistan learns exactly where George W. Bush is located in the U.S.; (b) there is ample evidence that W. (i) illegally detained and tortured its citizens and (ii) is continuing these policies with the intention of doing so indefinitely; and (c) the U.S. government (both Dems and Republicans) is either unwilling or unable to apprehend W. in order to extradite him to the the Netherlands for trial. Further suppose that efforts to compel the U.S. to do so through the U.N. are blocked (because, say, the U.S. vetoes any actions).

What, if anything, is Afghanistan (under current facts) permitted to do about Bush, who -- we're assuming for purposes of these discussions -- clearly committed war crimes and is continuing to do so? . . . .Why are the rules different for us?

The L.A. Times, Obama & renditions

To answer the last question first, besides the obvious, which I've illustrated in graphic form with the picture that begins this article, I can't think of any good reason. Needless to say, the bar would be higher for Afghanistan, unless you assumed hypothetically that there's no chance we'd try to snatch Bush back.

My objections to extraordinary rendition as Greenwald has defined it is that it has usually ended with people either being tortured, whether by us or someone else, or left in prison indefinitely with no trial or indictment. As he observes, the previous Administrations that did this allegedly did it either to people who were to stand trial, or who had been convicted in absentia.

We aren't the only country that's ever kidnapped someone to put him on trial. Perhaps the most famous instance of this happening prior to 9/11 was Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann, an accused Nazi war criminal, was kidnapped in Argentina by Israeli agents and taken to Israel for trial.

My own feeling is that the act of rendition itself may be necessary for some time, since there's no way of enforcing any edict of the World Court or other international justice system in a country that doesn't agree to abide by it. Perhaps in the long run, though, the only acceptable way of doing this will be to go through an international court to obtain a warrant. Messy as that idea sounds, it's probably better than letting everyone do it on his own.

What do you think?

Gaza: Palestinian Toll Passes 1,000

Image credit: Palestinian Ministry of Health via BBC News.

It's hard to ignore this conflict. I've tried. It's not because I want to avoid it, it's just that so many others have written about it already. Today, though, we've passed a milestone of sorts:

On Wednesday, as the Gaza death toll passed an estimated 1,000 people and concerns about the humanitarian situation inside Gaza grew, nine Israeli human rights groups called for an investigation into whether Israeli officials had committed war crimes in Gaza. The groups said that tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza had nowhere to flee, the Gaza health system had collapsed, many people were without electricity and running water, and some were beyond the reach of rescue teams.

“This kind of fighting constitutes a blatant violation of the laws of warfare and raises the suspicion, which we ask be investigated, of the commission of war crimes,” the groups said in a news conference.

U.N. Building in Gaza Strip Is Hit by Strike From Israel

As the title of the article says, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) also bombed a couple of United Nations buildings that they claimed were hideout for Hamas:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel expressed regret for the strike but said that Israeli forces were fired on by Hamas militants from just outside the United Nations compound and then ran inside to take cover, according to Mr. Olmert’s spokesman, Mark Regev. “It is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place,” Mr. Olmert said in broadcast remarks, according to Reuters.

The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had told him the strike on the compound was a “grave mistake.” Mr. Ban, who was in Israel Thursday to press fore a cease-fire, said he expressed "strong protest and outrage" to Israel.

U.N. Building in Gaza Strip Is Hit by Strike From Israel

I keep running into people who never tire of explaining how Hamas are just a bunch of terrorists and Israel is an upstanding democracy. Here's yet another indication that Israel has no trouble being duplicitous. They have barred journalists from the combat zone in defiance of their own supreme court. Why should I trust them?

The IDF also hit a U.N. supply convoy last Thursday:

Israeli forces fired on a U.N. aid convoy Thursday in Gaza, killing at least one contract worker and prompting the U.N. to halt some of its operations in Gaza, U.N. officials said.

The U.N. has "lost confidence" in the Israeli military's attempts to allow humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency's director said.

Israeli Strike Kills At Least 1 Aid Worker, U.N. Says

No doubt terrorists were hiding in the bags of rice.

The plain fact is that for every Israeli killed in this conflict, almost eighty Palestinians have died. The BBC elaborates:

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said 1,013 people have died in the conflict which started 19 days ago.

More than 300 of the dead are said to be children, 76 are women and more than 4,500 people have been injured, of whom 1,600 are children and 678 are women.

Thirteen Israelis have been killed, including three civilians and one soldier from rockets fired from Gaza and nine soldiers killed in fighting in Gaza.

More Than 1,000 Killed In Gaza

When you add up the Palestinian women and children killed in this conflict, and divide that number by the number of Israeli noncombatants killed by rockets, the number is more than 100. The casualties are nearly as disproportionate as those of the Iraqis and allies during the Persian Gulf War.

The IDF have used white phosphorous on civilian targets. This is generally seen as a violation of international law, and is certainly a barbaric weapon to use on unprotected civilians.

Israel extracted their pound of flesh long ago. Their stated aim of ridding the world of Hamas is obviously impossible. It's time for this conflict to end, and for our own government to stop giving whole-hearted support to this continued slaughter.

If you agree, here's on online petition encouraging the President and Congress to speak up to end this conflict.

UPDATE: Oh, my. I just saw this at Sic Semper Tyrannis:

If the BBC is to be believed, IDF soldiers are deliberately shooting women and children in Gaza. Their TV reporting from the scene today interviewed doctors in hospitals who asked the obvious rhetorical question as to why they have children patients with multiple small arms wounds. One child had two bullets in the head. In the head, in the head, not fragments from large caliber weapons. These were small arms bullets. Israeli government spokesmen and demonstraters in New York are still "going on" about the peculiarly humane Israeli way of making war. The protestations are wearing thin. B'tselim, the Israeli human rights conscience is seeking to know whether or not these accusations of inhumanity are correct. I, for one, will accept their judgment.

Real soldiers do not target children

[link is from original] Patrick Lang is a Vietnam veteran and a career special forces officer. Coming from someone with that background, this is especially damning if, as he notes, the story turns out to be true.

Olmert Gets Everything Wrong But The Timing

If only this had happened a couple of weeks from now ...

A couple of days ago, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert bragged about how he'd persuaded President Bush to abstain on the United Nations resolution demanding a cease-fire between Israel and the Gaza Strip:

Upon receiving word that the US was planning to vote in favor of the resolution - viewed by Israel as impractical and failing to address its security concerns - Olmert demanded to get Bush on the phone, and refused to back down after being told that the president was delivering a lecture in Philadelphia. Bush interrupted his lecture to answer Olmert's call, the premier said.

America could not vote in favor of such a resolution, Olmert told Bush. Soon afterwards, Rice abstained when votes were counted at the UN.

PM: Rice Left Embarrassed In UN Vote

Any Americans noticing a teensy problem here? Like as in a foreign head of government is bragging about being able to have our President dragged off a stage to talk to him about how he should vote on a U.N. resolution? Reactions to this announcement over at Sic Semper Tyrranis like this one:

Yet the topic of what extent US national interest and Israeli national interest intersects is never allowed to enter public discourse at a national level. In fact, the entire subject appears to be a forbidden topic to the powers that be. I often wonder why Americans put up with this nonsense.

Olmert Ordered US Abstention: Comment by Medicine Man

sum up pretty well why this should have been a huge mistake on Olmert's part if he wants the U.S. - Israel relationship to continue as it has. Why make the head of state of your most useful ally appear to be your puppet? The question that Medicine Man asks, in one form or another, would occur to most Americans if they knew about this.

That's what makes Olmert's timing so exquisite. The President is a Republican today, and so the news, TV in particular, won't tell us about this. It's embarrassing to their guy. Oh, sure, that mouthy lady and the Sports Night guy would have, but no one who's serious pays attention to them, right?

If this had happened two weeks from now, Barack Obama would have been President, and you can bet that Fox "News" would have picked up on this in a flash. They would have made the connection between Israel's interests and our President's behavior, and made the inference that they were too closely related. Then CNN would have done their level best to ape Fox's skepticism, and this would have been, to use a West Wing expression, a "thing".

That, I think, is why Olmert will get away with this, at least for now. Just wait a couple of weeks, though. Soon, we'll be a much more independent nation.

As appalled as I am at the reason that will be true, maybe that's a good thing.

Patrick Lang On The IDF

Patrick Lang has written an interesting essay on the operation of the Israeli Defense Forces. It is based mostly on his personal observations of IDF ground units and discussions with acquaintances who are IDF soldiers. Well worth a read, because it goes a long way why Israeli policy towards the people who live in Gaza and the West Bank seem to be very different in practice than their government states it is.

Another Washington Post Pratfall

Josh Marshall caught the Washington Post shilling for the Republicans yet again. Seems the WaPo editorial board, not the least bit deterred by having been tragically and colossally wrong about the existence of WMDs in Iraq and Plamegate, have decided that Nancy Pelosi "should not attempt to supplant the secretary of state when traveling abroad". Calling Pelosi's statement that she had carried a message of peace to the Syrians a "pratfall", the WaPo editorialists apparently didn't bother to check what the Israeli press had written just days ago. Josh has lots more to say, and I recommend you read it and his links, but here's the punchline:

So we've had a lot of fun over the last few days with the RNC political shop and Drudge leading a lot of dopes around by the nose. But let's hear a bit more about this. The message the Israelis sent to Damascus was intended to convince the Syrians that the Israelis were not planning to attack the Syrians in concert with an American attack on Iran. There was concern in Israel that this might lead to a preemptive Syrian attack. A message like that from Israel to Syria might be very unwelcome to some people in the White House. Did the White House pressure Olmert? If there was no message, why was the existence of the message being discussed by Israeli officials before Pelosi went to Damascus? Will the White House deny pressuring Olmert? And did any of this occur to the folks who write the Post's editorials?

More dirty tricks from the crooked crowd in the White House?

While we're all offering advice to each other, I'd like to suggest that the Washington Post fire the brain-dead Bush sycophants who write their editorials. They're clearly not able to do the most basic fact checking.

Taylor Marsh has some interesting questions about Israeli PM Ehud Olmert's part in all this.

UPDATE: Not to be outdone when it comes to shilling for the Bush Administration, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed claiming Nancy Pelosi committed a felony by going to Syria. Too bad their editorials don't come on paper any more. Their only real value is as tinder for the fireplace.