Andrew and the Jew-Baiters

Andrew purports to have been entertained by the following, from a Jew-baiting blogger:

Eric Cantor. Even more of a nobody than Pawlenty and a nastier piece of work. Congressman and deputy minority whip, Cantor looks like the pricky proprietor of the Jerk Store; essentially an unregistered Israeli lobbyist with a domestic voting record to make Grover Norquist quiver with delight. Would make NRO's Corner happy but have everyone else running for the hills.

Eric Cantor, as readers of this blog know, can be a jackass, and is someone who lies about Barack Obama's (pro-) Israel record. But  "unregistered Israeli lobbyist"? This is vile, like Pat Buchanan-vile. Robert Wexler is pro-Israel, too. Is he an unregistered Israeli lobbyist? What about Rahm Emanuel, and Barbara Boxer, and Frank Lautenberg, and Henry Waxman, and Howard Berman? Are they dual-loyalists as well? Or is their tribal-based treason excused because they're Obama supporters? I wish Andrew would go back to bashing the Jew-baiters, rather than reveling in their smears. 

Todd Palin, Iron Dog Champion

An interesting piece about a sport I didn't know existed.

Palin: More Experience Than Obama, Biden, and McCain

In running something, that is. She's been in charge of a state (a large one, so I'm told) for two years. The three men in the race have run senate offices. So McCain, in other words, chooses experience. The blog-wife, who is no Republican, thinks this is a very smart move.

Except Maybe it Won't be Fake News, After All

If Craig Crawford is right, anyway.

Two Weeks of Fake News

Count me out. Actually, count me in Jack Shafer's camp.
I'm checking out for the duration, except probably not. In the meantime, if you want to read something important, read this, from the Times.

Politics and the Art of Reporting

Ta-Nehisi wants real, bottom-up political writing, to explain what's actually happening in America. Good luck. Especially this week.

Biden's Faustian Bargain

I'm very curious to see if Joe Biden still believes what he told me three years ago about the War on Terror:

"The Lord Almighty, or Allah, whoever, if he came to every kitchen table in America and said,
'Look, I have a Faustian bargain for you, you choose. I will guarantee to you that I will end all terror threats against the United States within the year, but in return for that there will be no help for education, no help for Social Security, no help for health care. What do you do?' My answer is that seventy-five per cent of the American people would buy that bargain."

Jack Shafer on New Yorker Triptik Ledes

Late in the afternoon of Thursday, August 21st, 2008, the media columnist for the Internet magazine Slate, Jack Shafer, who is a highly-caffeinated, intermittently dyspeptic Michigan native of indeterminate age and pronounced libertarian political views, posted a short item concerning the ostensible over-use by The New Yorker of what might be called time-stamped ledes, which is to say, opening paragraphs of articles that situate the reader in a particular place at a particular time. Shafer, who keeps an office at the Slate bureau on Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington, D.C. not far from the headquarters of The Washington Post, which recently purchased Slate from the Microsoft Corporation, of Redmond, in the state of Washington, seemed to be mocking a venerable convention when he wrote:

    Defenders of the dated lede say that such time markers provide readers with an anchor to help them weather the whirl of data about to wash over them. The date pileup assures readers that there will be no narrative surprises, that all to be revealed will first be foreshadowed. Plus, it gives the fact-checking department something to check! Detractors heave phooey on the magazine's devotion to straight chronology and dismiss the dated lede as "once-upon-a-time" hackwork. They yearn for magazines that refuse to script linear TripTiks.

Some writers at The New Yorker, and at least one ex-writer for The New Yorker, choose not to "heave phooey," in Shafer's indelicate phrasing, on the "dated lede." They argue, instead, that it is important to guide the reader quickly to the substance of the article, particularly in this age of fancy-pants magazine writing, such as what shows up, on occasion, in the pages, so to speak, of Slate, sometimes under the byline, unfortunately, of this very blog writer, who is not unaware of the fact that his gentle scolding of Shafer will cause "phooey" to be heaved upon him.

Biden on the Paramount Importance of Fighting Terror

One last excerpt from that 2005 article on Biden and the Democratic hawks. This is the sort of thing that sounds discordant today (especially on Martha's Vineyard, which is a very September 10th sort of place, September 9th, even) but it certainly has power in parts of the country ill-disposed to Obama:

(Biden) has come to realize, he said, that many Democrats still haven't grasped the political importance of September 11th, and again he recalled how he had urged Kerry to keep his campaign message focussed on terrorism. Kerry, Biden said, would tell voters that he would "fight terror as hard as Bush," but then he would add, "and I'll help you economically." "What is Bush saying?" Biden said. "Terror, terror, terror, terror, terror. I would say to John, 'Let me put it to you this way. The Lord Almighty, or Allah, whoever, if he came to every kitchen table in America and said, "Look, I have a Faustian bargain for you, you choose. I will guarantee to you that I will end all terror threats against the United States within the year, but in return for that there will be no help for education, no help for Social Security, no help for health care." What do you do?'
"My answer," Biden said, "is that seventy-five per cent of the American people would buy that bargain." ♦

Biden More Hawkish Than Bayh

It's amazing, the things you learn by reading your old stories. Such as this quote from my 2005 story on the Democrats and their national security woes:

"There are some really bright guys and women in my party who underestimate the transformative capability of military power, when coupled with a rational policy that is both preventative and nation-building in nature," he said. He told me about a recent visit to Los Angeles, where he met with a group of wealthy liberals and laid out the following scenario: "Assume you're the President, and I'm your Secretary of Defense or State or C.I.A. director, and I come to you and tell you we know where bin Laden is, he and four hundred of his people, and they're in this portion of Pakistan the Pakistanis won't go into, and they told us not to go in. This is going to cost us five hundred to five thousand lives, of our soldiers, but we can get him. What do you do?" Biden said they had no answer. "The truth is, they put their heads down," he said.

Joe Biden's Truthiness Problem

Not long after John Kerry went down to defeat in 2004, I spend a couple of delightful hours with his colleague and rival, Joe Biden, for a New Yorker article on the Democratic Party's national security deficit. Biden told me many interesting stories, several of which were true. Others, not so much. Like this one, which was meant to convince me that Kerry was clueless on the subject of terrorism. Here's a key excerpt:

"I'm listening to the radio," Biden said. " 'Today' "--here he adopted a radio announcer's voice--" 'the President of the U.S. said dah-dah, dah-dah, dah-dah, and he said he's sure Senator Kerry agrees with him. Senator Kerry, unable to resist a dig'--that's what the announcer said, that was the phrase--'said today had we acted'--I'm paraphrasing--'had we acted properly in Tora Bora, we wouldn't have this problem.' "
Biden continued, "I'm on the phone, I e-mail, I say, 'John, please, say three things: "How dare bin Laden speak of our President this way." No. 2, "I know how to deal with preventing another 9/11." No. 3, "Kill him." ' Now, that's harsh. Kerry needed to be harsh. And it was--Jesus Christ." Here Biden threw up his hands. "He didn't make any of it. Let's get it straight. None of it. None of those three points were made."
This was not quite the case. In Kerry's first comment, made during an interview with a Milwaukee television station, he criticized Bush for missing an opportunity to kill bin Laden at Tora Bora, as he often had during the campaign. But, not long after that, Kerry spoke to the press, saying, "As Americans, we are absolutely united in our determination to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. They're barbarians, and I will stop at absolutely nothing to hunt down, capture, or kill the terrorists wherever they are, whatever it takes, period."
Biden, apparently, did not actually reach Kerry until that night, so Kerry made this statement without Biden's help. In any case, Biden failed to recount the dénouement; leaving it out better served the point of his story, which concerned the troubles that faced the Kerry campaign and, by extension, the Democratic Party--a party that Biden hopes to see revived. It was then, Biden went on, that he realized Kerry would lose the election.

Continue reading "Joe Biden's Truthiness Problem" »

Martha's Vineyard Republican Watch Humor Explainer

What, exactly, is wrong with this country?
Here's an e-mail I received in reference to my previous post:

The last time I checked, Martha's Vineyard had zero Electoral College votes. Obama will win MA regardless of how MV votes. So what was your point?

I didn't realize Martha's Vineyard had no Electoral College votes. Effing Nantucket does, that's for sure. Check Wikipedia if you don't believe me. Just give 10 minutes to make sure Wikipedia backs me up.

The Republicans of Martha's Vineyard

Hardcore Republican territory up here, like Houston, but with more Volvos.  I've made a vow to interview all the Republicans I can find, not only in Edgartown but in Chilmark and Vineyard Haven as well. I probably won't get any vacation at all, what with the thousands of Focus On the Family-type evangelicals who summer here. But that's the price of blogging. Obama's going to have a hell of time winning this island, I'm telling you. 

The Rick Warren Interview: No Compromise With Evil

On Saturday, Pastor Rick Warren hosts John McCain and Barack Obama for two hours of conversation at the Saddleback Church in California.  Warren, one of the friendliest fellows I've ever met (and someone who is helping me design what we've taken to calling a "megagogue," which is to say, an enormous synagogue, including a bowling alley), spoke to me earlier this week about what he hopes to accomplish at his candidate forum. We also spoke about the challenge of evil on the international stage: He argued that the Iraq invasion was justified by Saddam Hussein's behavior, and he believes that America has a moral duty to intervene in cases of genocide.

Jeffrey Goldberg: What do you hope to get out of your summit meeting?
Rick Warren: The idea is really around civility. Can we disagree without being disagreeable? As the great theologian Rodney King said, "Can we all just get along?" That's the notion.
JG: So you're against blogging?
RW: Right now civility is a losing battle. It's easy to demonize from a distance. When people sit behind a screen they lose all civility. The anonymity makes people more ad hominem.  One of my three life goals is to help restore civility to civilization. I just think the Internet has made us ruder.
JG: Small goal.
RW: All three of my goals are impossible, but I'm trying. To restore civility, to restore responsibility to individuals, getting people to stop playing victim. And to restore credibility to churches, because in many ways they've been co-opted by politics.
JG: How do you think Obama and McCain are doing on civility?
RW: Pretty good until this week.
JG: Who's doing worse?
RW: Honestly, behind the scenes, having dealt with both of these campaigns, the staffs take it much more harshly than the candidates themselves. There's a lot of ego in the campaigns. I would hope that maybe this is one little dam trying to keep things from bursting into total chaos. I've known both of these guys for a long time. They are exactly opposite of each other. Their worldviews, different styles of leadership, different views of the direction of America, but I happen to like both of them. What I want to do in the forum is maybe help America see some of the things that I see in each of them.
JG: Talk about one issue we've talked about before, genocide, and the American response to genocide. What are you, as a human, a Christian, and an American, commanded to do when you know a genocide is taking place, a documented genocide?
RW: In the Old Testament, it says that if you have the power to do something good, then you have to do it. You're not to avoid helping somebody in their time of need. Shoot, the Torah says that if you find a cow in a ditch you've got to help it out. Even if it's the enemy's cow, you've got to help it out. We've got this compassion fatigue in America. It's why we have a slow genocide going on in Darfur.
JG: So America has a duty to help.
RW: The answer is, we must do all we can. People say America is not the policeman of the world. We may not be, but the Bible says, if you have been blessed, then you are to care for people who can't care for themselves, you are to speak up for people who can't speak for themselves, and to defend the defenseless.
JG: Some people argue that we're not so great ourselves.
RW: The difference is that there are no death squads in America. The worst you can get here is that you can get blogged, you can get Lewinskied, on the Internet.  There is a difference between that and living under oppression, living with fear for your life. That's why whether or not they found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is beside the point. Saddam and his sons were raping the country, literally. And we morally had to do something. If you have a Judeo-Christian heritage, you have to believe it when God says that evil cannot be compromised with. It has to be resisted, it has to be overcome.
JG: Talk about your forum with McCain and Obama. Obama seems to have different views on a whole range of subjects from you.
RW: I've got my personal opinions. I'm conservative, but I don't take sides. I have seen political differences turn into political hatred, and I've seen political hatred turn all of a sudden to, "My neighbor is Satan."
JG: I don't think you're naïve enough to think that McCain and Obama will be able to resist the temptation to go negative on each other over the next three months.
RW: Absolutely not. My goal is to get them to be civil for enough time so that we can get past the rhetoric. People will finally realize what Obama believes and what McCain believes. These two are fundamentally opposites.
JG: How do you describe these differences in concrete terms?
RW: People say that evangelicals haven't decided who to vote on. In their hearts many evangelicals think, "Neither of these guys is one of us." A person can be a Christian, believe in Jesus, without sharing the same worldview, and I think a lot of evangelicals say, "Barack may know the language, or McCain may know the language, but do they share my worldview?"
JG: Some people wonder why this event is happening in a church.
RW:  I believe in the separation of church and state, but I do not believe in the separation of politics from religion.  Faith is simply a worldview. A person who says he puts his faith on the shelf when he's making decisions is either an idiot or a liar. It's entirely appropriate for me to ask what is their frame of reference.

The Repellent Dr. Corsi

Pete Wehner takes him apart, and not too soon.

The Secret Obama E-Mails

My friend and colleague Joshua Green recently dug up a trove of Hillary Clinton campaign e-mails that portray a candidate in crisis. Well, I've been pretty busy myself this week, and, with the help of the Atlantic's Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, I've discovered a series of secret e-mails from inside Obama headquarters that portray a campaign in crisis as well. Here is a small sample:

Bathroom Sex, Minneapolis-Style

The Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport has a lot of handsome and overpriced stores, but the bathrooms are in terrible shape. I was in the airport yesterday, for reasons too complicated to explain, and I was there for quite a while, and had quite a lot of coffee, so I visited all the bathrooms, including the Larry Craig Memorial bathroom. It was very dirty and unappealing, almost Wal-Mart dirty, not at all a place I would go for hypocritical Republican gay secret sex, if I were the type who went in for that sort of thing. My suggestion, for reasons of hygiene, is not to wide-stance it there, and not because the police are watching. My recommendation -- and this is meant for all those Republicans who will soon be traveling to Minneapolis for the convention -- is to go for the try-not-to-touch-anything-and-get-out-as-quickly-as-possible stance.

Evan Bayh, Iran Hawk

Things come around, don't they? When I last interviewed Evan Bayh, in early 2007, he had just ended his campaign for the Democratic nomination for President; he had been going nowhere, not only because he was charisma-free, but because he was too hawkish for the Democratic base. Now, of course, he's in contention to become Barack Obama's running mate.

Here is what he told me about the Iraq war, and about the threat from Iran:

"You just hope that we haven't soured an entire generation on the necessity, from time to time, of using force because Iraq has been such a debacle. That would be tragic, because Iran is a grave threat. They're everything we thought Iraq was but wasn't. They are seeking nuclear weapons, they do support terrorists, they have threatened to destroy Israel, and they've threatened us, too."

Tim LaHaye on the Chosen People

One addendum to my previous post on the identity of the antichrist. Tim LaHaye, the man who brought us the "Left Behind" series, and who thus sparked much of the current interest in the antichrist's imminent appearance, countered Jerry Falwell's claim that the antichrist will be Jewish by asserting that he will, in fact, be Rumanian. Which doesn't mean that LaHaye doesn't have special thoughts about the Jews. Here's what he told me several years ago:  

   "Some of the greatest evil in the history of the world was concocted in the Jewish mind. Sigmund Freud, Marx, these were Jewish minds that were infected with atheism. The Jewish brain also has the capacity for great good. God gave the Jews great intelligence. He didn't give them great size or physical power--you don't see too many Jews in the NFL--but he gave them great minds."

Obama Is Not Actually the Antichrist

Because, as those of us who follow these things know, the antichrist is Jewish. Several years ago, I went to see Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, where he confirmed this to me, and offered up the observation that I, technically speaking, could be the antichrist. I've been following Ross on this subject, and it's a bit silly to think that true pre-millenarian wackadoos believe that Obama could be the antichrist, because true pre-millenarian wackadoos know that the antichrist is a Jew.  Unless of course Obama is in fact Jewish. But you can't be Christian and Jewish and secretly Muslim at the same time. Or can you?

Ta-Nehisi Symbolism Alert

Whenever I read the phrase "Two Jews and a black," I am of course flooded with bad feelings, for the obvious reasons. But when I saw the headline for this Ha'aretz story, I was filled with joy, because I believe very deeply that blacks and Jews should help white Christian people swim faster.

An Iran Attack Could Endanger American Jews

The impact of Israeli strategic decision-making on the physical safety of Diaspora Jewry is one of those borderline-taboo topics in American Jewish life. For obvious reasons, Israelis, and their Jewish supporters abroad, don't want to have undermining thoughts about a theoretically negative consequence of Zionism, a movement that is meant to make Jews safer, not more threatened.

 The problem is simple: Muslim extremists often conflate Israel and the Diaspora. They do this for two reasons: One, they are anti-Semites, and so tend to see all Jews, and not merely "Zionists," as their enemies; the second is a practical one -- it is easy to strike at soft Jewish targets outside of Israel, easier, certainly, than executing mass terror attacks against Israeli targets these days. And so what you have, on occasion, is an attack like the one directed against the AMIA Jewish center in Argentina in 1994, in which eighty-five people were murdered.

 That operation was almost certainly sponsored by Iran through its proxy, Hezbollah; it is reasonably certain that the recently-assassinated Hezbollah external apparatus chief, Imad Mugniyeh, was involved in the bombing; and it is generally believed that the attack was meant to avenge the Israeli assassination of Abbas Mussawi, the former leader of Hezbollah, two years earlier. Of course, Hezbollah doesn't need excuses to kill Jews, but excuses are useful for public relations.

There have also been cases in which lone gunmen, out to punish Israel for its alleged sins, have taken out their vengeance on non-Israeli Jewish targets. The attack at the Seattle Jewish Federation in July of 2006, in which a man named Naveed Haq killed one person and wounded six others, is a case in point.

The leaders of American Jewish organizations are generally hesitant to bring up the subject of Diaspora blowback when they talk to Israeli officials, and not without justifiable reason: Israel is a sovereign state, and makes decisions based on the needs of its national security. And Israeli officials bridle at the thought of Diaspora Jews telling them what to do. They also bridle at the idea that the existence of Israel actually endangers Jews in the Diaspora, rather than strengthens them. I would never argue that Israel hasn't strengthened, in particular, the American Jewish community, giving it both backbone and meaning. And I wouldn't argue that Israel should refrain from acting as a rescuer of persecuted Jews worldwide simply because it blurs the line between the interests of the Diaspora and the interests of the Jewish state.

But the existence of groups like Hezbollah means that Israel should weigh, among other factors, the potential impact of a strike on Iran on Diaspora Jewish institutions. Already, I've been told, Jewish institutions across South America are on alert for a "revenge" attack because of the assassination of Imad Mugniyeh. Jewish institutions in North America are another story. Outside of New York, in particular, most institutions are fairly oblivious to some very obvious threats, and most Jewish leaders don't realize that Iran, or Hezbollah, or for that matter, al Qaeda, think about their institutions as legitimate targets for terrorist attack. (In April, the number-two official in al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, issued an audio recording calling for operations "against Jewish interests," promising to "strive as much as we can to deal blows to the Jews inside Israel and outside it, with Allah's help and guidance."

I'm not naive enough to think that Israel won't act in its perceived national security interest simply because its actions might endanger Jews overseas. And I wouldn't like to see Israel paralyzed into inaction out of such a fear -- though, on this particular issue, the threat of the Iranian nuclear program, I'm far from convinced that Israel should act militarily.

The only thing that can be done is for Jewish institutions to prepare themselves for attacks that would almost certainly be launched in the wake of an Israeli strike. And, as of right now, the American Jewish community is not prepared at all.

Iran Takes the Lead on Human Rights

More Durban ridiculousness. Joel Brinkley has details.

Beware of the Nihilist

An interesting thought from Rabbi David Wolpe:

Beast and Human

A prayer recited each morning reads, "The advantage of man over beast is nothing, ki hakol havel -- for all is vanity." My teacher Rabbi Simon Greenberg pointed out that the Hebrew word ki can also mean "when." The prayer then teaches that human beings have no advantage over beasts when we think everything is vain; that is, without consequence or meaning.

The conviction of life's meaningfulness is not the same as the conviction that it will always prove easy, pleasant or kind. It is the confidence that our choices are significant, that life is more than accident and happenstance. One who concludes, "Well, it doesn't matter what we do anyway," has forfeited the singular spiritual advantage humans have over beasts -- the ability to perceive and create meaning.

"He who makes a beast of himself," said Samuel Johnson, "gets rid of the pain of being a man." In the biblical book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzer, the most powerful king in the world, loses his mind and grazes on grass like an animal. This tyrant who treated the world as his whim, for whom nothing was ultimately meaningful but his own pleasure and power, ended as a beast. In our world there are those similarly convinced that there is no ultimate standard or meaning. Beware of the nihilist -- certainty of purpose is bound up with being human.

This is Maybe Not Such Good News

The Russian ambassador to the United Nations certainly isn't helping the cause of forestalling an attack on Iran by trying stricter sanctions first.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the New Frederick Douglass

In this week's episode of "Know Your Bloggers," Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about black nationalism and hummus. Here is a transcript of our conversation:

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Do you realize that you're the first black blogger at The Atlantic since Frederick Douglass?

TA-NEHISI COATES: He doesn't count. Frederick Douglass had a white father -- and he married a white woman. Thus by the evolved standard of our new post-racial America, Douglass wasn't really black. Thus, I claim the crown. My father was a Black Panther. I'm from West Baltimore. I haven't married the mother of my son. You don't get much blacker than that. I am The One. I am The Only.

JG: What about Harriet Tubman? Didn't she blog for The Atlantic? You're not going to write her out, are you?

TC: No, no. Harriet's the truth. Just not that Douglass character. But Harriet's a woman, so she doesn't qualify. There are no black women.

JG: You say that you are the One. But Barack Obama is the One. Does that mean that there are, in fact, Two?

TC: Ugh, how many times do I have to say this. Obama isn't black. I keep trying to tell people this. No black man could win in Iowa. Did you see him dancing on Ellen? Barack is half of One. I am The One.

JG: Do you like hummus?

TC: Dude I effing LOVE hummus. Hummus is awesome! My folks were black hippies and embraced anything that looked alternative -- and tasted good. In the '80s -- at least in West Baltimore -- that was hummus. Of course the real question is, do you like falafel?

JG:  I love falafel! Next question: What's your favorite Led Zeppelin song?

TC: "The Battle of Evermore." Come on, I played Dungeons & Dragons.

JG: Are you now, or have you ever been, a neoconservative?

TC: No, I'm not a neoconservative -- but I did laugh at the anti-war marchers in Union Square. Regrettably, they're now laughing at me.

JG: Who is the greatest Jew ever, Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ?

TC: Bob Dylan. He's one of the biggest reasons my Dad went into the Panthers. Which ultimately led him to meeting my mom. Which subsequently led to the birth of The One. Us black people have Jews to thank for everything -- even our very existence.

JG: Finally, the words we've been waiting to hear. On behalf of the Jewish people, let me just say, you're welcome. The inevitable follow-up: How, exactly, did Bob Dylan bring your father to the Panthers?

TC: Oh, man, you gotta buy, and possibly read (more concerned about the former than the latter) my book to get that story. You think I do this thing for free, Jeffrey?

JG: I'll buy yours if you buy mine. In my book, I tell how the Panthers made me a Zionist. Seriously. Page 48. Last question: What do you have against Jesus?

TC: Black Jesus or blond, blue-eyed Jesus? Black Jesus is a tool to get us to believe in the white man's religion. Blond blue-eyed Jesus is, well, blond blue-eyed Jesus. I think I could worship a Cablinasian Jesus. Maybe that explains why I'm for Obama.

Iranian Nukes and the Strait of Hormuz

Noah Pollak argues that America can't, in fact, live with a nuclear Iran.

I Am An Extremely Male Internet User

I've done what Andrew suggests, and had my web surfing analyzed for maleness. My likelihood of being male, according to this clever website, is 97 percent. Which means that I'm five percent more male than Andrew. I will not make any jokes at this juncture.

Censorship Alert

Asra Nomani has the details. It seems as if an American professor of Islamic studies had a direct hand in forcing Random House to kill a novel.

"We Are Muslims, But Not Really"

The invaluable Michael Totten reports on an Israel cafe invasion of Kosovo. A good thing, I think.

A Faulty Premise on Iran?

A reader dissents:

I'd like, most respectfully, to point out that the key premise of your most recent post seems a bit irrational.  You suggest that successful testing of a nuclear device by Iran would spur chaotic nuclear proliferation.  You go on to mention the Saudis, Turks, Egyptians, and Algerians.
 
Surely Israel is viewed an even greater threat and more fundamental adversary by these countries than Iran.  Yet Israel has had the bomb for decades!  Why is it that Iranian success would prompt these countries to develop weapons when Israel's long-standing possession of nuclear arms has not?
 
The premise suffers from an additional weakness -- it assumes that Iran willl successfully develop a nuclear device some time in the near future.  Since when did Iran become such a scientific powerhouse?  What is known of the Iranian nuclear program suggests that they are years away from being able to obtain fissile materials in sufficient quantities -- and there are very significant technical hurdles to be leapt in terms of the construction of a weapon, even when enough plutonium is on hand.  Despite innuendo, I'm not aware of any credible report of an Iranian program to build nuclear weapons.  Your argument ought to recognize the high level of uncertainty regarding successful nuclear weapons development by Iran.
 

Israel, Iran, Joe Klein, and Andrew Sullivan

    In a recent post, Andrew took Joe Klein's side in his fight with nearly everyone at Commentary - a fight that will only end when I invite all these squabbling Jews (and at least one honorary M.O.T.) to my seder, where we'll hash out the whole arid you're-a-traitor-no-you're-the-traitor dispute over two-liter bottles of Manischewitz blackberry wine.

   Andrew asks if neoconservatives believe that there is any area "in which it is even possible to conceive of America's interest being different from Israel's," and he suggests that this question is becoming frighteningly relevant, as Israel embraces the idea that existential self-interest demands that it pre-empt the Iranian nuclear program militarily. "The world and the West can live, after all, with a deterred and contained nuclear Iran. Israel cannot," Andrew writes.

     I know Andrew as a supporter of Israel, a Zionist, even, and so I do not read much into his exclusion of Israel from either "the West" or "the world." Suffice it to say that I believe that Israel is the West's responsibility - Europe's in particular, for all the most obvious reasons - so I'm not fond of the suggestion that Israel should stand alone against theocratic fascism.
 
    But I would rather grapple with one of Andrew' governing assumptions; that Israel is the country far-and-away the most threatened by Iran's nuclear ambitions. Israel is certainly threatened, but so, too, are other direct American interests throughout the Middle East, and beyond. It is not meaningless that Iran is the only country in the world that has "Death to America" as its foreign policy, but what interests me more are the consequences of the chaotic nuclear proliferation that will almost definitely follow the successful testing of an Iranian nuclear device. Iran's traditional adversaries, the Saudis, as well as the Turks, will surely develop nuclear weapons, as will, quite possibly, the Egyptians and the Algerians. The Syrians, of course, have already tried.  The Saudis are probably more agitated by the Iranian program than the Israelis. 

    Can we really live with a Middle East that has eight or ten nuclear powers? And will our allies succumb to Iranian pressure and one day line-up against us? Right now, we have enormous influence in the Gulf states, influence that helps us fight terrorism and assure the smooth flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. All this changes if Iran becomes a proven nuclear power. Our Gulf allies will have to make impossible choices, between the country that has guaranteed order in their region, and the rising Shia power.
  
 Something else changes: Terrorist groups that threaten, or have threatened, American targets - terrorists in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon - will come under the protection of the Iranian nuclear umbrella. Hezbollah's rockets have helped the group establish a local deterrent to Israeli attack; an Iranian bomb would strengthen Hezbollah in Lebanon, and well beyond Lebanon.
   An Iranian bomb would also set off new tension between India and Pakistan, an ally of Saudi Arabia that would almost certainly turn to Pakistan for help with its program, making the Indians, who are already distressingly close to Iran, exceedingly nervous.
 
   As I said, I'm opposed to the idea of bombing Iran for any number of reasons. One of them is that I don't think the West has deployed truly effective sanctions against Iran yet. I don't know why we should skip past a tougher sanctions regime and move right to bombing. I also want to see the American experiment in Iraq succeed, and it will fail if either America or Israel bomb Shi'ite Iran. It will fail, ultimately, of course, if Iran becomes a nuclear power, but I'll take that theoretical failure, for the moment, over the obvious and immediate failure that comes on the heels of an attack on Iran. I also don't want to see Iran's pro-American population turn anti-American, which is what will happen following an attack by either America or Israel.

    Ultimately, what I'm arguing about is something that runs against the grain of Jewish narcissism that is on display whenever neo-conservatism is discussed: For Joe, and the left, and for the neo-conservatives on the right, this argument has become about Israel and its future. But it is actually about a great deal more than Israel. Of course, Israel's national security is an American interest, and I was glad when John McCain told me that, "The United States of America has committed itself to never allowing another Holocaust," and I was just as happy when Barack Obama told me that he wants to "make sure that the people of Israel, when they kiss their kids and put them on that bus, feel at least no more existential dread than any parent does whenever their kids leave their sight."

  But a full discussion about Iran's nuclear program could be held without anyone making a single reference to Israel. It would be a great thing to try to do one day.


 
 

The Feds Vs. Gotti (Again)

The federal government apparently has made a decision that it won't be bested by John "Junior" Gotti. Once again, federal prosecutors have stacked up charges against him, charges that don't seem quite so overwhelmingly dispositive. I hold no particular brief for Gotti, though I have, in my brief encounters with him, found him quite interesting and borderline-charming, even. Here's an excerpt from my 1999 New York Times Magazine profile of Junior:

Junior, an ardent collector of Native American memorabilia, told me two weeks ago that he looks to Indian history for strength and for lessons about the abuse of government power.

"If you look at the history of the Indians, you see that they were oppressed by the Government," he told me during a brief conversation in an elevator at the White Plains Federal Courthouse in Westchester County, where he is to stand trial. "It's just the same with Italian-Americans. We're oppressed just like the Indians. It's history repeating itself."

In person, without benefit of tabloid magnification, Junior is a reasonably sized human being. He is not tall at all, and, after adhering religiously to the Atkins Diet--a lot of meat, no pasta--he is merely bulky. He is dressed for court in a black polo shirt buttoned to the collar and a black-and-white checked jacket.

He was especially keen that day to talk about the exploits of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians, who were the target of a particularly vicious Government campaign overseen by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. "Chief Joseph was an extremely dignified, intelligent leader," Junior said. The elevator, which was carrying us to a courtroom where prosecutors would soon ask a judge to revoke his bail, was stuck on the bottom floor, but Junior, lost in his reverie, didn't notice. "Chief Joseph was the main strategist for the Nez Perce," he said, the autodidact in him impossible to suppress. "But his brother was the field general. A lot of people don't know that."

We talked for a moment longer, about a book of Nez Perce history called "I Will Fight No More Forever," and he said, his voice full of enthusiasm, "I'm reading a book about Crazy Horse right now that's really--" Just then the elevator door opened. Standing there were the Ruggiero brothers, Angelo and John, sons of his father's closest mob ally, the late Angelo (Quack-Quack) Ruggiero. The Ruggieros were joined by several other friends, a few of whom, according to the text on their jackets, were affiliated with auto-salvage firms in Queens. As soon as Junior saw them watching us, he turned cold and mumbled, "We'll talk about this later."

Herman Melville on the Situation in Afghanistan

There's a great moment early in "Moby Dick" that speaks to the timelessness of trouble in Afghanistan. Very early in the book, as Ishmael ponders his unhappiness, and considers the benefits of a sea voyage -- "driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation," that sort of thing -- he imagines, grandiosely, his place in the world. Melville writes:

And doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:
              
             "Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States
             "Whaling Voyage by One Ishmael"
             "Bloody Battle in Affghanistan"

"Moby Dick" was published in 1851. The first Anglo-Afghan War had already ended ten years before.  I'm not sure a "surge" is going to accomplish what its advocates hope it will accomplish; Afghanistan is fairly impervious to outside control.

Humor Deficit Alert, Part 173

A letter came in over the transom about my post on Eric Cantor:

You begin with the line "Eric Cantor, the Virginia congressman, and
sole Jewish member of the House Republican Conference (I believe that
there are at least two Jewish Democrats in the House, maybe even
more)...
There are actually a fairly large number of Jews in Congress (in
relative terms). I don't see a convenient cross tab with party affiliation.

The letter was written by an academic at Princeton, which is interesting, because I generally find academics from Berkeley the world leaders in humorlessness.  I won't out him because, hey, this isn't The New York Times.

By the way, reports suggest that there are more Jews in the Senate than Episcopalians. Who says this isn't the Promised Land?

Eric Cantor's Foolish Obama Slur

Eric Cantor, the Virginia congressman, and sole Jewish member of the House Republican Conference (I believe that there are at least two Jewish Democrats in the House, maybe even more) is now being talked about as a possible vice presidential pick for John McCain, and this news reminded me that Cantor has never retracted a particularly stupid attack launched against Barack Obama a couple of months ago. You'll recall that in an interview with me, Obama referred to the Middle East conflict as a "constant sore." The Republican House leader, John Boehner, and Cantor, one of his deputies, willfully misreading Obama's comment, and, trying to scare Jewish voters away from Obama, accused him of calling Israel itself a "sore." Here is what Cantor said:

It is truly disappointing that Senator Obama called Israel a 'constant wound,' 'constant sore,' and that it 'infect[s] all of our foreign policy.' These sorts of words and characterizations are the words of a politician with a deep misunderstanding of the Middle East and an innate distrust of Israel.

This, of course, is complete nonsense, and I let Boehner's office, and Cantor's office, know that it was complete nonsense. So far, though, no sign of a retraction. Cantor, who is said to be brighter than Boehner, should know better than to launch such foolish, unethical and refutable attacks.

Leslie Dach, Wal-Mart Democrat

The Wall Street Journal today reports that Wal-Mart, the world's premier union-busting seller of cheap Chinese imports, is warning its managers of dire consequences should the Democrats win big in November:

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

 Regular readers will recall that Wal-Mart's p.r. and government-relations chief, Leslie Dach, is a prominent Democrat who served as communications director for the Dukakis campaign.  Dach was hired by Wal-Mart specifically to give the company cover with Democrats. It is the hope of Wal-Mart's adversaries that Dach brings the same luck to Wal-Mart that he brought to the Dukakis campaign, but so far, Wal-Mart, aided by naive environmentalists who take the company's ostensible commitment to going green at face value, appears to be escaping the wrath of Democrats this year. Which raises the question: At one point, if ever, will Democrats acknowledge that Leslie Dach is a mercenary who works against the core values of their party?