"War--all war, requires bloodshed. And it is true that when we are engaged against people who want to kill us, we have to be willing to return the favor."

Who do you suppose she's talking about?
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I tested my comments with an old friend whose family includes advisors to every Democratic President since Carter and who also has family in Shin Bet. He wasn't even sure he could say he was at war with Al Qaeda. He was right of course.

11/25/2002

Tasini's Challenge

"The whole thing is painful to watch. At least to me. I still can't help liking the guy."

One way that power corrupts is that those who fought for it for moral reasons begin to see themselves as moral because they have it. Policemen like to say they are the law. I've said this a dozen times.
I'm in no position to say whether Lieberman was ever not a hypocrite, but he is one now, and he's been for a long time.
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Juan Cole
What is Hezbollah?

"Individualism is not a Fact, it is an Ideology"

Stupid fucking idiots. Scumbags. Worthless piece of shit, incurious, anti-intellectual, pseudo-prepubescent sandbox-dwelling technocrats.
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As any novelist will tell you, and most economists will attempt to deny, life for an adult is the daily struggle not to be determined by one's history. Simply saying that you're free of the past doesn't make it so.

I have to add this since the idiots are talking about Frank Herbert[!?]: Literature is the empiricism of the self; it is the record of perception, not speculation. Science fiction, conceptual and speculative fiction, like the works of Ayn Rand, are predicated on the same error of individualism:
"I'm alone! These ideas are mine... All mine!"
Then why are hippies, klub kids, and libertarians all so much alike? And why are they all so stupid? Why are they are all self-conscious, but so un-self-aware?

This is Freshman Comp. stuff. Everything I fucking write is Freshman Comp. stuff.

Qana strike: civilians in the line of fire
By Mark Perry, Conflicts Forum, July 30, 2006

The claim that Israel is somehow indifferent to the deaths of innocents in Lebanon -- and Israel's own claim that Hezbollah uses human shields to mask its operations -- are both superficial explanations of a much more complex political problem. According to both Israeli and American defense experts, the Qana tragedy is the direct result of the failure of the U.S. and Israel to provide a political resolution to the current crisis.

There is little question that, eighteen days after Israel's ferocious military response to the abduction of two of its soldiers and the killing of eight others, the IDF has yet to show that it is capable of decisively defeating Hezbollah in open battle or significantly degrading Hezbollah's military capacity. As a result, IDF senior officers have stridently argued that Hezbollah infrastructure strong points and marshalling stations not yet included in IAF strike packages because of their proximity to civilian concentrations be "put on the table."

Over the last 48 hours, and in the run-up to Condoleezza Rice's return to the region, pressures have mounted inside Ehud Olmert's cabinet to expand the IAF's target list to include these marginal sites, despite their proximity to high concentrations of Lebanese civilians. The calculation of the IDF's senior command, and the argument they used with Olmert, was that while expanding the target list might lead to increased civilian deaths in Lebanon the prospective military gains from successfully degrading these high value but high-cost targets was too good to ignore.

Olmert and his defense minister hesitantly gave permission to expand the target list on Friday afternoon, I have been told. Included on the target list were Hezbollah command and control centers in Tyre and in the string of towns south and east of that city. Striking these sites, it was thought, would have a decisive political -- and not just military -- impact, by degrading Hezbollah's missile capacity. Significantly bringing down the actual numbers of rockets launched against Israel would allow the U.S. and Israel to declare that the current operation was a success, thereby establishing the ground from which the U.S. could argue that the "terrorist threat" from Lebanon had been defeated. Bringing down the number of rocket strikes on Israel would also allow the IDF to claim a victory in its campaign -- an absolute necessity given the current Israeli political environment.

Reports from the ground in Lebanon confirm that the IAF has expanded its target envelope, hitting sites that were considered off limits just 48 hours previously. Unfortunately, as nearly every military expert knows, precision weapons are not that precise -- and a miscue of even ten meters can make a huge difference. This is what happened at Qana. Nor, it seems, do IDF officers take seriously the more graphic defense of IAF targeting, as justified because Hezbollah uses human shields. Israel also co-locates many of its basing operations in cities and amongst the civilian population -- simply because of the ease of logistics operations that such co-locations necessitate. "The human shield argument just doesn't wash and we know it," an IDF commander says. "We don't expect Hezbollah to deploy in the open with a sign that says 'here we are.'"

Israel has almost succeeded in doing what the Germans and the rest of Europe failed to do: destroy Jewish culture.
---

Josh Marshall's comments defend a crime, a Dixiecrat definition of culture, and a Republican parody of affirmative action.

"Isn't there a party left out here? There's the opinion of the Arab states and the opinion of America, which you mention. What about the Israelis, whose state your discussing otherthrowing or dismantling? Do they figure into the picture?

As for the issue of a binational state, a central premise of Zionism has always been that after millenia of oppresion and degradation in Europe and the Muslim Middle East, Jews would never be safe and secure unless they had a state of their own and an ability to defend themselves. That, I would say, is the Israelis core opposition to a binational state. And I think history gives them a lot of backing for that argument.

I would also add this. The Palestinians have a very genuine and just beef with the Israelis. Europe? I think Europe has very little standard to criticize Israel about anything. Same applies to the Muslim world generally on the other side of the equation.

For my part, I believe in that central premise of Zionism articulated above. The problem is it led to a disaster for the Palestinians. They've suffered grievously. That needs to be made right both for the Palestinians and the Israelis, who will never really be able to do more than survive until there's a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. And not just in tiny chunks of it.

As for the Europeans and the Muslim world generally, I think the statute of limitations on their historic guilt is far from run out."

By Marshall's logic, Europe should be paying reparations to most of the planet, and women everywhere should be able to retire immediately.
Also: in the annals of man's inhumanity to man, Muslim mistreatment of Jews is roughly equivalent to the crimes of Christianity against itself. Europe is still the exception, and European exceptionalism is still the rule.
The petty, wounded nationalism of an American liberal. I wouldn't give a shit, except for that fact that Americans are so fond of condescending to absolutely everyone else.

This is good. Not for the neocons but for the middle east and the world.
My god, Michael Rubin is an idiot!

"Lebanon: A Jewish Moderate's [sic] Lament"
The comments are interesting. I'm in the mix.

I'd like Mr Rosenberg to tell me why I have a right to return to a place I've never been, and why the Palestinians do not. I am not denying the fact that the people of Israel are there and are not going to leave; I am asking him to defend the sense of moral -and intellectual- superiority that justifies the locking out of people from their homes. I would like to hear someone who is not a supporter of Kach or Kahane Chai tell me, not why a bi-national state is impossible (it isn't) but why it is undesirable.

Give me the liberal moral defense of a modern state built upon racial lines.

Josh Marshall is making the Dixiecrat argument, and he's being called on it.
Times are changing.
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Sat. update: "Times are changing..."
fast.

DeLong is wrong. As usual.
Quoting from comments on comments [none of mine]:

"This post, like a number of others recently, is too hard on the journalist. Unlike, say, the UK, we don't have an adversarial or partisan tradition of press coverage in the U.S. The journalist has to report what both sides say."
He doesn't have to. He just does. It is, as you say, a tradition and traditions cease to apply when they are not observed. But it's not the fact that he reports what both sides say that is the problem. It's that having done so he (and most of his American journalistic colleagues) refuses to then take what both sides say, compare them with other evidence and come to a conclusion. It's not about being adversarial, it's about being brave enough to make explicit judgments.

But you can't make judgments and be 'objective.' Language itself is a slippery slope. Where is the line after all between idea and ideology? And who chooses?
No: you can not assume that the press will not suck up to power. DeLong's economic realism -he's not idealistic enough to be even a social democrat- somehow becomes idealism when he's dealing with the press. The press should for some reason be incorruptible. By that logic prosecutors should double as defense attorneys, and people- some people, but who?- should be able to be counted on to act without self-interest. DeLong thinks self-interest is noble when the products that come out of it are "cool" but he sets himself as an example of classical virtue. Greed is a value except when it's not.

In fact: The world exists but an objective view of it does not. The British press is better than ours because it is both higher and lower, and The Simpsons are on Fox.
Self-interest is inevitable but is not a moral value.
Case closed.
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Anyone who's witnessed DeLong going apeshit over Chomsky, social anthropology or Jared Diamond understands DeLong better than he understands himself. Confidence, arrogance, and a lack of self-awareness...

update #2
Down the memory hole:
Israeli contribution to conflict is forgotten by leading papers.

Where's DeLong? He feigns objectivity. He lies to himself and to the rest of us. Be engaged and history will be the judge. All awareness is partial, all justice imperfect. As with this crap. "Utilitarian Materialism vs Deontological Idealism."
How about Economic Liberalism and Individualism vs. the Anarcho-Conservativism of working class Catholic communities?

Which side are you on?

Things are heating up for the liberal punditocracy

Of course, as a Jew (or demi-jew) I know that anti-semitism has never gone away.

Ten years ago how many blacks clenched their teeth listening to white lectures about Farrakhan? How many did so for good reason?
A: Most of them.

I'm done.

CNN

Teatro Colon

Life During Wartime

Wrong

"They have to be seen to be doing law rather than doing politics."
They're doing both, though the quote makes Posner sound like less of a vulgarian than he is.
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Q: What's the difference between an architect and an engineer?

Utilitarian Materialism or Deontological Idealism?

Zionism is Racism.
In this country the the best we're gonna get from the pundits on any side is that Israel's actions are a brutal PR disaster.

Conservatives, being not only hypocritical but dim, will disagree.
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more simple logic here if you want.
(thanks Brian)

"Little Masters of the 16 Century"
I was introduced to Jim Goodfriend by an old teacher of mine. I've bought a few things from them in the year since my mother died, including this.
Nice people.

Riverbend

Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions

Stupid Question Number One: "What should Israel do? Just sit on its hands while Hezbollah rains missles on it?"
Answer: Exactly!