Barack Obama, George Washington and the World

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has been criticized for planning, as part of his current world tour, to meet both with Israeli and Palestinian officials in the Middle East.

Supporters of Republican John McCain, who met with the Israelis but refused to meet wit the Palestinians during a recent visit to the region, say Obama is being too even-handed in his approach.

Who is right?

Let's ask George Washington. In his 1796 farewell address to the nation, the first president declared that, "(Nothing) is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."

Comments (18)

1. Hey Rese:

   read the comments here:

   http://rawstory.com//news/2008/Fitzgerald_says_Rove_was_trying_to_0717.h tml

   Check out all the headlines on Raw Story...and read the comments about Rove, Fitzgerald, Chertoff, etc. It's getting ugly.

   Posted by plunger at 07/18/2008 @ 08:54am

2. just go to Raw Story and click on the Fitzgerald headline

   Posted by plunger at 07/18/2008 @ 09:49am

3. just go to Raw Story and click on the Fitzgerald headline

   Posted by plunger at 07/18/2008 @ 09:49am

4. Hmm they criticize him for NOT going to Afghanistan, they criticize him FOR going to Palestine. The Republican attack machine could criticize him for anything. They don't care about the politics of it they are just yelling trying to be heard.

   Posted by Cccomfo1 at 07/18/2008 @ 12:59pm

5. Another test post --and I appreciate the feedback, "ramara".

   SWALLOWING THE RED PILL:

   Musings on The Nation's sadly mistaken Obama endorsement, Kevin Phillips' new must read book on our collapsing economy, and finally, a death defying gaze into the "phantasmagorical" AIPAC conference.

   It's been alarmingly evident over the last several weeks that Obama's hard right turn has left progressives with little alternative but to emphatically state their intention to vote for a Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney candidacy in protest.

   As anyone who happened to watch the most recent Moyers Journal interviews (7/11, online viewing recommended) with the interesting and engaging conservative commentators, Mickey Edwards and Ross Douthat --authors of the new books, "Reclaiming Conservatism" and "Grand New Party", respectively-- it was quite revealing how well Obama's message and manner, of late in particular, has dovetailed so snuggly with these guys views and temperament. I found both men to be highly intelligent, articulate and genial, but like Obama they share at least one overarching and fatal flaw. They embrace the blindly delusional view of "American exceptionalism."

   If one overarching fact is to be acknowledged in an ailing society it is the need for self-examination, and the admission of often harsh realities. Probably the single most damaging force today that blocks such critical actions is the stranglehold on society by the so-called mainstream media.

   John Pilger recalls the brilliant Nobel acceptance speech by Harold Pinter from 2006:

   In his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the playwright Harold Pinter made an epic speech. He asked why, and I quote him, "The systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought" in Stalinist Russia were well known in the West, while American state crimes were "merely superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognized as crimes at all." And yet across the world the extinction and suffering of countless human beings could be attributed to rampant American power. "But," said Pinter, "You wouldn't know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest." Pinter's words were more than surreal. The BBC ignored the speech of Britain's most famous dramatist.

   Now, we fast forward to the current predicament.

   The devil next door is, quite clearly, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which are bleeding the U.S. Treasury, sapping the nation emotionally, and have decimated the currency of global American respect to an all-time low –not to mention the fast sinking dollar as oil prices spiral upwards, the deaths of countless innocent people, and the global crisis levels of displaced persons within and from Iraq.

   Of at least equal importance –-and probably much greater in my opinion-- is the devil that most of us don't know. This is the one that the sober conservative commentator, Kevin Phillips, documents in his latest book, "Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism", Viking, April ‘08.

   Excerpt:

   As for the pitfalls of the domination of the United States by finance, both "Wealth and Democracy" and "American Theocracy" dwelled at length on the unnerving precedents of what that meant for the Dutch and British. Part of what "Bad Money" deals with that I have not touched on before is the financial sector's massive use of private debt and leverage during the 1990's and then again in the first decade of the twenty-first century to expand its size, global reach, and extraordinary profitability. This is less a market-based Adam Smith brand of triumph than a mercantilist joint venture with U.S. government authority, strategic direction, funding support, and periodic Federal Reserve or U.S. Treasury bailouts of overextended financial institutions....

   Farms and factories were expendable, but certain banks and other financial institutions could not be allowed to fail. The coordinating body, handed its government franchise in 1988, following the 1987 stock market crash, was the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, built around the secretary of the treasury and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Its existence has never been secret, only the record of its discussions and the nature of its occasional interventions in the financial markets.

   And later in the book:

   The Working Group's purposes, as elaborated in a 1997 Washington Post article, were to enhance "the integrity, efficiency, orderliness and competitiveness of financial markets and [maintain] investor confidence." It set up something of a war room, maintained a global as well as a national list of key contacts, and carried out simulated emergency drills....

   Just how much power the Working Group was allowed to exercise was never publicly made clear. A year after its launch, Robert Heller, a retiring member of the Fed's Board, wrote in a widely discussed op-ed the Wall Street Journal that there was a better alternative in emergencies than rate reduction: "Instead of flooding the entire economy with liquidity, and thereby increasing the danger of inflation, the Fed could support the stock market directly by buying market averages in the futures market, thus stabilizing the market as a whole." Besides being relatively inexpensive, the focus on futures market activity made sense. No conclusions were ever reached in writing, but Heller's recommendations may have been accepted backstairs....

   Apart from the one groundbreaking article in the Washington Post, the opinion-molding journals in the United States generally let the group's operations go without serious investigation or comment. The overseas English-speaking press, however, was more intrigued. The Telegraph in London ran several articles, in 1998 and 2006, eventually describing the Plunge Protection Team as a "shadowy body with powers to support stock index, currency and credit futures in a crash." The newspaper also quoted George Stephanopoulos, the former top aide to Bill Clinton, as saying that the PPT -–the preferred handle in the press-- had "an informal agreement among major banks to come in and start to buy stock if there appears to be a problem." In September 2001, the London Observer reported that the PPT was "ready to coordinate intervention by the Federal Reserve on an unprecedented scale. The Fed, supported by the banks, will buy equities from mutual funds and other institutional sellers if there is evidence of panic selling in the wake of last week's carnage."

   Phillips' further referenced the 1997 Post article in his book with the deliciously dry description, "eye opening." Indeed.

   The Working Group's ostensible purpose is to enhance the market's "integrity." One hardly needs The Onion to elaborate.

   Today we talk pretty regularly of "bubbles" of various sorts, but in reference to the above revelations by Kevin Phillips, we might more appropriately use the term "volcanoes". The U.S. Fed and Treasury, under the auspices of the "Working Group" and the "Plunge Protection Team" have been enabling big players in the market to seek greater and greater risk in the full knowledge that a bailout –wider and deeper in scope than the one's we hear about in the news-- is waiting if things get a little "too hot".

   Well, no one who is paying attention should be surprised if at some point in the near future things get a little hotter than anyone has seen in a long, long time as the fallout from a global financial meltdown begins hurtling back to Earth. I'm not predicting a cataclysm, but if you think it's not possible I wouldn't hold your breath on that one.

   And that brings us to Barack "Brought to you by Wall Street" Obama.

   Pilger again:

   In the meantime, Iran is being softened up, with the liberal media playing almost the same role it played before the Iraq invasion. And as for the Democrats, look at how Barack Obama has become the voice of the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the propaganda organs of the old liberal Washington establishment. Obama writes that while he wants the troops home, "We must not rule out military force against long-standing adversaries such as Iran and Syria." Listen to this from the liberal Obama: "At moments of great peril in the past century our leaders ensured that America, by deed and by example, led and lifted the world, that we stood and fought for the freedom sought by billions of people beyond their borders."

   That is the nub of the propaganda, the brainwashing if you like, that seeps into the lives of every American, and many of us who are not Americans. From right to left, secular to God-fearing, what so few people know is that in the last half century, United States administrations have overthrown fifty governments--many of them democracies. In the process, thirty countries have been attacked and bombed, with the loss of countless lives. Bush bashing is all very well--and is justified--but the moment we begin to accept the siren call of the Democrats' drivel about standing up and fighting for freedom sought by billions, the battle for history is lost, and we ourselves are silenced.

   This is the same Obama that The Nation chose to endorse, against its better instincts, last January.

   Let's be frank, that was a misguided decision to be generous. All the warning signs were clearly in evidence to any semi-alert observer, yet The Nation chose to ignore them in the incautious hope that Obama would somehow become the more-or-less progressive president that we projected on him. Katrina vanden Heuvel famously said on Stephanopoulos recently, "Barack Obama is not the Messiah". But the amount of trust that The Nation placed in him with its endorsement would suggest a commensurate level of blind faith that renders Katrina's "not the Messiah" comment empty at best, and (it pains me to say this) perhaps more accurately, crass.

   Although The Nation's endorsement was likely not instrumental in Obama's securing the Democratic nomination, as a matter of principle it should be noted that endorsements, when given, should go to candidates that clearly articulate a largely progressive platform.

   But here's the central point in regards to Obama's "new" trajectory.

   We progressives have represented Obama's core support group and have held the key to his most promising door to victory --that is, the path of conviction on such popular fronts as NAFTA reform, complete withdrawal from the Iraq quagmire, reengagement with rest of the planet on global warming and foreign policy, Constitutional restoration, and massive investment at home to reinvigorate our ailing manufacturing base and sagging infrastructure.

   Instead, Obama has calculatingly and callously chosen the same tired old tactics of three yards and a cloud of dust over bold leadership and slashing new tactics.

   It is progressives who offered Obama a brand new playbook of multiple offensive sets and multiple receivers to confuse and confound the defense. We saw in his oratorical ability the talent to run our sophisticated "west coast" offense, but he has failed to deliver even a single crisp pass since securing the nomination.

   That's not "change we can believe in", but business as usual. And that's not gonna cut it.

   Yes, Obama will very likely win the White House this Fall, but he's already set himself up for a fall in the process. And if he does somehow manage to lose the election, it's likely to be largely attributable to his lack of principled leadership.

   We've seen this movie before -–too many times.

   The time is fast ripening for action on the part of all of us who see clearly the imminent danger of an increasingly corporatized and commoditized society. I conclude that The Nation needs to get fully on board or get out of the way.

   Posted by b_kool_66 at 07/18/2008 @ 2:52pm

6. AIPAC CONFERENCE: EXPOSED --Part One:

   I have stated here before that I will occasionally post lengthy articles that are of high interest in a bit of protest against the lack of linking ability here at The Nation.

   A good one follows.

   I discovered the article when it appeared at Tom Feeley's invaluable Information Clearing House website. I strongly encourage readers to visit often and support Tom's work.

   Looking Into the Lobby

   The American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual conference is one of Washington's most important--and least reported--events.

   By Philip Weiss

   09/08/07 "American Conservative" -- - For three days in the capital in early June, suspense built over the question of how the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference would greet Barack Obama. There was a lot of grousing about Obama in the hallways of the Washington Convention Center, and AIPAC officials repeatedly warned the faithful to be respectful. "We are not a debate society or a protest movement. … our goal is to have a friend in the White House," executive director Howard Kohr said in a strict tone. It wasn't hard to imagine things going poorly: Obama gets booed on national television. He feels insulted. Conservative Jewish donors and voters turn off to Obama. He becomes president without their support. AIPAC has no friend in the Oval Office.

   But of course, Obama complied. His speech became the annual example the conference provides of a powerful man truckling. Two years ago, it was Vice President Cheney's red-meat speech attacking the Palestinians. Last year, it was Pastor John Hagee's scary speech saying that giving the Arabs any part of Jerusalem was the same as giving it to the Taliban. Obama took a similar line. He suggested that he would use force to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, made no mention of Palestinian human rights, and said that Jerusalem "must remain undivided," a statement so disastrous to the peace process that his staff rescinded it the next day. Big deal. The actual meeting had gone swimmingly.

   This was my first AIPAC conference, and the first surprise was how blatant the business of wielding influence is. The conference makes no bones about this function, the most savage expression of which is the Tuesday dinner at which AIPAC performs its "roll call," where the names of all the politicians who have come to the conference are read off from the stage by three barkers in near auctioneer fashion. The pols try to outdo one another in I-love-Israel encomia. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi surely won the day when she teared up while dangling the dogtags of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah and Hamas two years ago.

   The second big surprise was that apart from coverage of the headline speakers, the AIPAC conference is a media no man's land. It would be hard to imagine a more naked exhibition of political power: a convention of 7,000 mostly rich people, with more than half the Congress in attendance, as well as all the major presidential candidates, the prime minister of Israel, the minority leader, the majority leader, and the speaker of the House. Yet there is precious little journalism about the spectacle in full. The reason seems obvious: the press would have to write openly about a forbidden subject, Jewish influence. They would have to take on an unpleasant informative task that they have instead left to two international relations scholars in their 50s--Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of last year's book The Israel Lobby.

   The press is missing a phantasmagorical event. Imagine a basement meeting in the Warsaw Ghetto transplanted to the biggest hall in Vegas, and you have something of the feeling of the thing. The staging is faultless. Little documentaries called "Zionist Stories" play on the Jumbotron, complete with footage of Auschwitz, and then the subject of the documentary comes out on stage to thundering applause. There is breakout session after breakout session on Middle East policy and Jewish identity and anti-Semitism, with star turns by Natan Sharansky, Bill Kristol, and Leon Wieseltier. The press was excluded from "Advanced Lobbying Techniques," but still this is a feast of the political condition. And posh. The roll call is described by AIPAC as the largest seated dinner in Washington. The wine flows. I went about in a daze of awe and admiration.

   My awe was for men like Haim Saban, a toymaker and giant donor to the Democratic Party. After his Zionist story, Saban came out on stage wearing a platinum tie and white shirt and silver gray suit. He has wonderful presence and something of an Arab look--black-haired, wide forehead. He was surrounded by 200 college students, veterans of the Saban Leadership Seminars he sponsors at AIPAC.

   On Middle East policy, Saban is barely distinguishable from his Republican counterparts, who are there in equal force. The main hall of the conference was filled with lavishly-produced banners featuring AIPAC donors, not a few with trophy wives, alongside statements of their mission. There was Donald Diamond, an Arizona real estate developer whom the New York Times recently profiled on the front page after he raised $250,000 for John McCain. The Times said nothing in its piece about Diamond's Israel work. But that was all the banner was about. "The U.S.-Israel relationship is the single most important determinant of democracy in the world, and we must commit to securing it," Diamond wrote. "It is so obvious to us that the Jewish community is a family and that we have to take care of each other."

   I was writing that down when an AIPAC spokesman stopped to check my credentials. The audience for this stuff isn't the public, it's people in the hall--other rich Jews who might put AIPAC in their wills.

   At most conventions, people gather out of self-interest. Therein lies my admiration: the AIPAC'ers didn't come for selfish reasons. They are devoutly concerned with the lives of people they don't know, very far away. Yes, people with whom they feel tribal kinship. When Israelis came out on the dais to speak, they were almost invariably overwhelmed by the generosity, if not the Vegas schmaltz. "There is a tremendous amount of love in this place," Meir Nissensohn, an Israeli executive of IBM, said in wonder. "If it was a beaker, it would explode." Even a sharp critic like myself of what AIPAC is doing to American policy in the Middle East was frequently moved by the pure loving feeling that surrounds you at every moment.

   Among the devout there is only one real issue: What is the latest AIPAC line? This is the organization's function. After consulting closely with the Israeli political leadership (leaning toward the right wing), AIPAC regurgitates a simple version of Israeli policy to its followers, who in turn regurgitate that line to American politicians. AIPAC'ers do this with the conviction that Israel's life is on the line. "It is we that are the guardians of that relationship," AIPAC president David Victor said. James Tisch, the Lowes executive and leader in the Jewish community, warned the audience that it might be 1939 all over again were it not for them.

   AIPAC makes sure the Israeli line is America's line by cultivating politicians before they reach the national scene. Victor described this process when he warned the audience that 10 percent of Congress will be new next year because so many seats are open: "Do we know them? Do they know us? Have they been to Israel? Do they understand the issues we care so deeply about?" Finding Israel activists in the suburbs of Detroit is easy, Victor said. "But how about finding the one right person to reach out to candidates for communities like Muscle Shoals, Alabama, or Tacoma, Washington, or Council Bluffs, Iowa? Ladies and gentlemen, the success or failure of the pro-Israel community rests on three words, our personal relationships." And people accused Walt and Mearsheimer of fostering a conspiracy theory.

   Posted by b_kool_66 at 07/18/2008 @ 2:54pm

7. AIPAC CONFERENCE: EXPOSED --Part Two:

   AIPAC flashes its relationships the way kids trade baseball cards. Bill Kristol said that Hart Hasten, a Holocaust survivor and successful Indianapolis businessman, had been crucial to shaping Dan Quayle's view of Israel, having "spent a lot of time" with Quayle when he was still a congressman. (Quayle's office later told me, "The statement Bill Kristol made was not exactly accurate. Mr. Quayle said his broad knowledge of Israel came from many people and sources, not specifically from Mr. Hasten.") Dan Senor, an analyst on CNN and former AIPAC intern, boasted that AIPAC won over Spencer Abraham when he was the head of the state Republican Party, years before he became a Michigan senator. The party was $500,000 in debt, and an AIPAC leader helped him pay that off. And of course, the famous story was told of George W. Bush going up in Ariel Sharon's helicopter in 1998, two years before he ran for president, and saying of Israel's ten-mile waist, "We have driveways in Texas longer than that."

   The anxiety about Obama is that he is so new to the scene that few people have had a chance to get to him. The relationship guy is Lee Rosenberg of Chicago, who introduced Obama. "I can personally attest that Senator Obama is a genuine friend of Israel," he said. In 2006, Obama "fulfilled a pledge he made to the Chicago Jewish community" and visited Israel. And the topper: Obama "has gotten to know" Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister who is against ever dividing Jerusalem. Rosenberg looked pale, drained--as queasily forceful as a mob boss vouching for an unknown family's bona fides.

   The good news I can report is the new AIPAC line. In some ways the organization is belligerent: speakers emphasized the need to attack Iran before it gets nukes and to invade Gaza to take on Hamas. But peace is in the air, too, now that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government is working overtime to cut a deal with the Palestinians on the West Bank and with the Syrians for the return of the Golan Heights. AIPAC reflected this policy. I heard a few conference-goers saying at microphones that the Bible gives Israel a right to the West Bank. But they received only a smattering of applause, and in one instance the moderator said the questioner was using inappropriate language.

   The soul of the conference for me was Tal Becker, the highly personable Israeli negotiator. "I see [Palestinian negotiator] Saeb Erekat a lot more than I see my wife and kids," he said, promising that if he and Palestinian moderates fail to reach an agreement, their goal is "to keep talking and keep talking and keep talking."

   Yet before you get out your handkerchief, reflect that AIPAC has for more than 30 years promoted the colonization process. In 1975, when President Ford wanted to reassess Mideast policy over Israeli intransigence, he was cut off at the knees by an AIPAC letter signed by 76 senators. Then in 1989, when James Baker went before AIPAC and told them to give up their idea of a Greater Israel including the West Bank, George H.W. Bush received a letter of anger signed by 94 senators. In both instances, AIPAC was hewing to the Israeli government line and nullifying American policymaking.

   No, AIPAC's change of heart cannot be ascribed to the good thinking of American Jews. They're not thinking at all. They have passed on their full powers of judgment to the Israeli government. In that sense, the Zionists in that hall might best be compared to Communists of the '30s and '40s, who also abandoned their judgment to a far off authority even as they argued this and that subclause codicil in intense councils. On my train ride back to New York, a little rich kid of about 14, traveling with his uncle in the seat behind me, called his parents to complain that Obama's views on Israel seemed "tailored" and "he's never really stood up for Israel." Indoctrination, pure and simple.

   The great sadness here is that American Jewry is the most educated, most affluent segment of the public. Yet on this issue there is little independent thinking. The obvious question is whether they don't have dual loyalty. As a Jew, I feel uncomfortable using the phrase, given its long history, but the facts are inarguable. Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic speaks of everything "we" should do to make peace with the Palestinians, then corrects himself to say what Israel should do. Speaker after speaker says that Israel is in our hearts. People who emigrate to Israel are applauded, and when the national anthems are played, one cantor sings the "Star Spangled Banner," but the "Hatikvah" has two cantors belting it out, with the audience roaring along. Maybe most revealing, I heard a right-wing Israeli politician sharply criticizing Olmert's policy in the West Bank. Think of the scandal it would cause if American politicians went abroad and criticized the president's foreign policy. It's no scandal here because AIPAC is a virtual extension of Israel.

   Of course, AIPAC and its roll call of politicians would say that American and Israeli interests are identical. I wonder how those politicians really feel. Their I-love-the-miracle-of-Israel rhetoric is so endless that it creates an undercurrent of doth protest too much--an impression that if there weren't so much money at stake, they would run from Israel with winged heels.

   AIPAC takes care to remind the pols of deeper reasons to help the Jews. The Holocaust imagery never stops. And there is a related theme: that Jews are the golden goose of Western society. The very last of the "Zionist Stories" AIPAC showed before Obama and Clinton spoke was of a scientist, IBM's Nissensohn. The piece emphasized Israel's contribution to high-tech industry from software to desalination, hinting at a traditional Jewish idea: for a society to flourish, it must treat Jews well. Haim Saban's story made the same point. Look what Egypt lost when it forced the Saban family to flee.

   The theme of the conference was "The U.S.-Israel Relationship: Built to Last." But that seems another case of protesting too much. AIPAC is beset on many sides.

   It surely noticed how much attention Palestinians got this spring for commemorations of the Nakba, their dispossession in 1948 and onwards. AIPAC fought back with its own dispossession narrative. About 700,000 Jews, including Haim Saban, were forced out of Arab societies following the formation of Israel. One of them was novelist Eli Amir, who grew up in privileged Baghdad and was forced into a refugee camp in 1950. Amir appeared live by satellite and berated AIPAC for not highlighting his story before this year.

   Another problem for AIPAC is the growing alienation of younger Jews from Israel's hardline policies, especially as those Jews do well here and assimilate. "I worry a lot more about the American Jewish community than I do about Israel--about which I have grave doubts," Wieseltier said.

   AIPAC is happy to work with non-Jewish Americans. At one dinner, I sat at the same table with Mark and Carrie Burns, Christian evangelical radio hosts from Illinois. Carrie said that many Christians she knows will vote on Jerusalem being in the hands of the Jews as a litmus issue. Thus AIPAC may hope to replace dwindling elite influence with populist numbers. I wouldn't hold my breath. Carrie said that at a synagogue she addressed, the first question came from a high-school girl who said, "But isn't Israel an apartheid state?"

   The Jews are quietly leaving the room. Saban described his horror at visiting his son's college, Wesleyan, and seeing a table on peace in the Middle East at which Israel was demonized. Some of the kids at that table were surely Jews.

   Especially now that an alternative lobby, J Street, has formed on its left, AIPAC seems to be making gestures in a more peaceable direction. One was the testimony from Sderot, the Israeli city bordering Gaza that American politicians must learn to pronounce or face political doom. (I think it's Stay-ROTE.) It was inevitable that someone from the region would take the stage, and it's impossible to imagine a more appealing spokesperson than Chen Abrahams, a pretty, soft-spoken kibbutz-dweller of about 40. The audience was utterly quiet as she described the terrible price her community has paid for the siege of Gaza. Nothing like the price the Palestinians have paid, I'd note. Still, if this was schmaltz, it was real schmaltz. At the end of her taped appearance, Abrahams said, "My biggest hope is for peace. I believe in talking to them, I don't believe in wiping them out." I was stunned.

   Then Abrahams came out on stage to a standing ovation, and it struck me that it might be possible to take all the loving energy in this place now directed at helping other Jews and redirect it to great effect. If the AIPAC legions were somehow convinced that Jews will only be safe in the Middle East if the Arabs among them were also safe--without checkpoints, without a siege, with the dignity and freedom that Jews have had in the West--all these arrayed powers might then be directed to a larger idea of family and produce a miracle at last.

   Posted by b_kool_66 at 07/18/2008 @ 2:56pm

8. b_kool_66 -

   How about if you post elsewhere and summarize with links here? I promise I will read and comment. But it is not fair to take over a thread here and totally change the conversation.

   Posted by ramara at 07/18/2008 @ 4:42pm

9. Wow, is he talking about progressive extremists like aka Alibama?

   Posted by RedRiver_. at 07/18/2008 @ 3:12pm | ignore this person | warn this person

   well for a rightwing extremist partisan like yourself i guess arlen specter is a lefty pinko.

   but thanks for all the unbiased, objective, non-partisan observations, plato.

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 07/18/2008 @ 7:26pm

10. Mask, where are you MASK,

    Hiding out in some dark place, guzzling the kool-aid? Where art thou, MASK?

    Friday, July 18, 2008 McCAIN CLAIMS VICTORY IN IRAQ-- Let the Gnashing of Teeth Begin

    Posted by pontificus at 07/18/2008 @ 11:04pm

11. George Bush, and the real America that supports him, wins!

    Terrorists and the kool aid drinking left! Loses! Again! They should be used to it by now!

    Posted by pontificus at 07/18/2008 @ 11:17pm

12. Victory declared in Iraq! Terrorists lose! The Left! Loses! Again! The left takes the biggest ass-whuppin' since Ronald Reagan!

    Ever wonder why you folks keep losing?

    Hint: It's because you're losers!

    ahahahahahahahahah!

    Posted by pontificus at 07/18/2008 @ 11:28pm

13. I think that now, that Bush has succeeded in Iraq, we should all pull together again as Americans. We, on the right, are magnanimously and charitably ready to welcome to take back our leftist brethren into the fold, recognizing that though they may be both intellectually and morally retarded, we are all still Americans, in one Great Nation. Yea, brothers, we are more than willing to teach you The Way, and wean you from the influence of that evil Kool Aid under which influence you have fallen!

    Posted by pontificus at 07/18/2008 @ 11:34pm

14. Posted by pontificus at 07/18/2008 @ 11:34pm Nobody wants you on the cruise, pint. No amount of veiled pleading will change that. Your innermost desire remains unfulfilled. Sorry. Maybe 2ha will take you to a strip club & some haggard meth freak will bring out your best. Good luck.

    Posted by Sorelish at 07/19/2008 @ 12:09am

15. Wow, is he talking about progressive extremists like aka Alibama?

    Posted by RedRiver_. at 07/18/2008 @ 3:12pm

    Nope, although it DOES directly apply to the current administration.

    Posted by Balrog at 07/19/2008 @ 1:22pm

16. Boy, it sure is gloomy today in the musty old halls of the left. America must have won another great victory, I guess. Gee, that's too bad for you folks. Cheer up, maybe there'll be another Al Quaida-sponsored suicide bombing tomorrow, with dozens of innocent people killed. That ought to raise your spirits!

    And if things weren't bad enough, even Obama seems to be calling for a 'responsible' withdrawal from Iraq, in complete apposition to the immediate retreat and defeat the left demands. You do have at least one consolation, though: it's almost certain that Obama doesn't mean it, he's just saying what he thinks most of America wants to hear (and he's right), but he'll turn tail and run just like any other gutless Defeatocrat if Al Quaida makes any kind of comeback. How's THAT for the audacity of hope?

    Posted by pontificus at 07/19/2008 @ 3:53pm

17. How do you reconcile the above post with the fact that Bush is now talking about a timetable for withdrawal?

    Posted by Balrog at 07/19/2008 @ 4:56pm

18. Posted by Balrog at 07/19/2008 @ 4:56pm

    "How do you reconcile the above post with the fact that Bush is now talking about a timetable for withdrawal?"

    I don't seen anything to reconcile. Bush always said we'd withdraw after we won. We've won, now we withdraw. In a responsible fashion that is. Which part of this scenario are you having difficulty with?

    Posted by pontificus at 07/19/2008 @ 5:23pm