The Middle East and Moral Relativism.
In the last week Syria has been accused of murdering Lebanese political leader Rafik Hariri and the President of Iran has called for Israel to be wiped out. However, no one at the Cafe has made mention of either event.
This at a site that denouces Democrats who supported getting rid of a tryant who ran rape rooms and invaded neighbors. Many at the Cafe spare no effort to blame the war in Iraq on supporters of Israel for the sake of Israel yet say nothing about the suppression of Lebanon by Syria. For those who denounce Israel for its treatment of Palestinians where is the outrage about the treatment of Arabs at the hands of Arabs?
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Maybe because,
The US invasion of Iraq is an important issue in American (domestic) politics. US support for Israel is also an important issue in American politics. Developments in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, while themselves inspiring, hopeful, or troubling, are not issues in American domestic politics.
"Many at the Cafe spare no effort to blame the war in Iraq on supporters of Israel"
Well, it's factually true: many war supporters are also pro-Likud. Of course, many war oppoents are also pro-Labour. So I don't think it proves any level of causation (much less conspiracy), but it is nonetheless true.
"yet say nothing about the suppression of Lebanon by Syria"
non sequitur.
"For those who denounce Israel for its treatment of Palestinians where is the outrage about the treatment of Arabs at the hands of Arabs?"
It could be lots of places. Why should outrage be vented at the time and place of your choosing?
October 31, 2005 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
TMPCafe is a public meeting place to read about and discuss politics, culture and public life in the United States.
This doesn't seem to be operative - there are people who blog and comment here who aren't U.S. citizens. There are frequent posts that deal with issues outside the U.S. (if generally related in some sense to domestic issues). And, to look at it the other way, the issues Daniel raises are certainly ones that impact the U.S.
The judgment of 'moral relativism' - that we aren't talking about these important developments because we don't care - is maybe not fair. But being goaded to think about distant issues, whose moral dimensions are tangled and whose immediate impact on the U.S. may seem remote - is something that I appreciate, and sometimes need.
October 31, 2005 1:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Devon
I was struck by the silence over these two events but was really asking it as a question. I will point out that the earthquake in Pakistan has elicited a fair amount of comment. We are fighting in the Middle, we are trying to negotiate a peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and we are involved in trying to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. It is hard to see how this is not relavent to a site where commenting about the Middle East and American policy there is a regular feature.
October 31, 2005 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree completely. First, I think that all these issues are relevant to U.S. politics, but second, I think that focusing only on issues with relevance to this country would impoverish TPM Cafe. So, if it wasn't clear, thanks for trying to generate some discussion on these topics.
October 31, 2005 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course what you brought up is relevant. Some of these people are simply trying to excuse and justify their silence about those issues, and in my view a good part of the left tacitly approves of ahmadinijad's threat against Israel.
October 31, 2005 4:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
a good part of the left tacitly approves of ahmadinijad's threat against Israel.
Um, no. First and foremost, let's watch the broad brush strokes, no?
What's "a good part?"
October 31, 2005 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Finally a voice of sanity on TPM Reader blogs.
October 31, 2005 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you mean me now I feel the pressure.
However, seriously the world is very small now and almost every part of it is interlinked. We are threatening Syria and Syria continues to try to bully Lebanon. It seems to me that for Democrats who have been accused of being weak on national defense it is worth pursuing the many different parts of the globe.
October 31, 2005 7:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
A Middle East discussion table might not be a bad idea. I agree with Daniel that there has been too little discussion of recent events in Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. I'd add that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself has actually gotten very little attention recently except in the context of the possible causes of the Iraq war.
November 2, 2005 8:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Purple State
Even though it would be very contentious I think a Middle East table would be great especially if Josh could recruit some people who know the area.
There are so many interesting stories from Turkey both trying to keep the Kurds at bay and enter the EU. Iran what is happening to their liberalization movement? Kuwait broached the subject of lifting the embargo against Israel. Within Israel there are many cultural conficts that go undiscussed. As Tom Friedman has point out often in the 1950s South Korea and Egypt had similar per capita GDPs. Now South Korea's dwarfts Egypts. Shouldn't that generate a lot of discussion?
November 2, 2005 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Daniel . . .
I think it should generate great discussion--the key will be to keep it respectful. Sometimes discussions on the Middle East dissolve into food fights. We'd want to avoid that.
November 2, 2005 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
No I was referring to myself as "this amateur" since I know I'm an amateur but I don't know others' status.
I am looking forward to the book table discussion about the "devil's game" book, although I am wondering if it poses any solutions to the problem, or if it is just another historical account.
Nothing wrong with historical accounts by the way. But since we can't change the past they are less useful than proposed solutions.
November 2, 2005 3:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, Daniel, I as a user am also very disppointed lately with TPMCafe on many counts the past few weeks. It's just my impression of the site, no one else's.
- The lefty voices have started to dominate in commentary and in "My Blogs" and "Discussion Area". They have even started to draw some conservatives who are ever so slightly trollish in response, a natural result of that. The nuance that I saw here a few months ago seems to be disappearing. There's a lot more lefty ranting and propagandistic posts. I think that's partly because the participation by people on the masthead list of contributors has shrunk, for whatever reason.
- There is little interest away from "breaking story of the day." This started with Katrina. Everyone ignored everything else and posted on Katrina. Now everyone seems to come here to vent their opinion on 'story of the day.' That's further proof to me that there is no hope for blogs to 'reform the media;' rather they are just going to continue to feed that tendency--everyone on story of the day/week. I thought this place might be different, but it is no different from how people have been voting for coverage with their TV remote control and what they click on on GoogleNews or NYTimes. Once again, that's because of the lack of contributors on other topics, to frame and start new discussions.
It's a vicious circle as everyone starts new threads to spout their own thing on the topic of the day and that chases away people interested in talking about something else. So then you start a thread on Pakistan and it scrolls away into the netherland real quick with only a free comments on it.What am I talking about? Warren Reports used to offer other topics. America Abroad used to have more posts and posters. Michael Lind used to bring up interesting topics of discussion.
I noticed that the topic of the last week of liberal interventionism really drew a lot of garbage commenting according to my standards. A lot of angry people looking for a place to vent on how much they hate liberal hawks.
Sorry, I just am not interested in reading that kind of shit. Because I learn absolutely nothing from reading angry rants about how godawful this or that group of D.C. nerds is. A site that ends up as being about venting anger about Iraq at writers on Iraq is what I have been reading for 2 years and I am tired of it. Useless to me.
Sometimes it seems to me that there are a growing number of people here who are just here to bash DLC, not realizing that most of Josh Marshall's friends and contacts appear to be DLC.
3) Contributors used to comment on threads and rate comments. A while back that stopped, except for Larry Johnson and Nathan Newman once in a great while. I think this is contributing to the lack of interesting discussion and keeping the discussion level high. Whoever from on high seems to have discouraged this, I think it was a bad decision, because you make two classes of participants: the contributors who do not deign to interact with the peanut gallery. There are great contributors here who can raise the level of participation by interacting with members, including telling one or two they are full of shit once in a while. BTW, I have looked back at early posts before I even started participating (heh, maybe it's me that caused it! :-)) and see a much higher quality of discussion when Josh Marshall and others were participating more.
Every day lately, this seems to be getting more and more just like DailyKos, not an alternative. Yes, it's very Amero-centric, specially centric on politics, not even news! Just because Josh Marshall has been doing investigative work on Talking Points Memo on the major GOP scandals does not mean that this place only has to talk about them, too. Doing that is just making a dittohead land.
Suffice it to say, Daniel, I too am disappointed with this place now. And it is especially because it just seems to be filling up with the same old same old lefty stuff happening elsewhere. I am looking for a mix of ideas and voices, and a place where elite specialist's knowledge from a variety of political slants is not trashed but welcomed.
A flood of every Tom Dick and Harry's opinion on main news topic of the day is not of interest to me. I'm looking for interesting discussions and analysis of published articles and a variety of news topics. Now that we're on a track here away from that, anyone got any advice on where to find it?
Cause I think this is a downward vicious cycle starting. Once people start up with the same old same old lefty topics and variety goes lacking. You can support the good interesting posts and try to ignore the others, but you end up with the ranters coming in to those two. And then you end up talking on countering the same old stupid stuff that you don't want to waste time on, simply because no learning is involved.
</sigh>
Time to go back to Letters to the Editor? (They edit the letters that are published--aye, there's the trick--it's not a "democracy".)
October 31, 2005 7:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
p.s. The tone of political activism lecture of many recent posts really turns me off. The ones that stress "fellow progressives should be believing as I do!" as in "here's what you should think and believe!" No interest in learning, no openness to any other views or interpretation, just preaching. I'm looking for people interested in offering different analytic views of situations, and frankly, I don't give a flying f*ck about what they believe. To me, what my political opinion is is private. Why does everyone else want to broadcast theirs? I don't need more op-ed columnists, I already know where to find plenty of them; I can't stand how obsessed people are with the ones we already have--I think of those who feel they have to counter what Brooks said yesterday as celebrity obsessed as those who have to comment on what Jennifer Anniston is up to. I want people's takes on interpreting what's going on, interpreting and sharing the analysis of and meaning of what they have read: group brain power, not individual emoting and calls to the barricades.
October 31, 2005 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Artappraiser
I have noticed that some, perhaps because Bush seems to be in so much trouble, want to make a litmus test for Democrats. One of the things that I think is wrong with American politics is the failure to confront hard things. We all complain about politicians lying to us but we punish them for telling us uncomfortable truths.
The world is complicated. While I share the view that Bush is doing great damage to our country I do not think there are easy answers to correcting the problems but looking squarely at our nation, our fellow citizens, our world and our history. This should generate posts about China, India and Japan and the whole planet.
I am reading Joseph Stigliz' book Globalization and its Discontents. He makes the same point that Lawrence Wilkerson makes about the Bush Administration. That the IMF confident in its expertise made cookie cutter policy behind closed doors and imposed it on nations, despite their history and conditions, without debate or discussion.
The Cafe should be about open discussion, not insults. Broadening the discussion not narrowing it. I hope you will continue to participate aggressively whether about Pakistan or any facet of our world.
October 31, 2005 9:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Art A, you wrote: "I don't need more op-ed columnists, I already know where to find plenty of them..."
I think I understand the main thrust of your post, which is to express frustration with the suppression of vigorous debate in the supposed interests of obtaining closure around particular advocacy stances which are thought by some to improve the chances of bringing about a change in direction in our country.
As I posted elsewhere I happen to enjoy discussions here which advance both intellectual and political purposes. It seems to me the tension between the two mindsets arises in part as a result of time frames. The political activist wants action now, which requires choices and decisions that necessarily brings discussion to a halt, at least until the subject comes up again. The intellectual abhors premature closure around debate, believing that it truncates the learning process and leads to predictably poor advocacy results.
The activist does not necessarily believe intellectual discussion is undesirable. But she feels a need to act lest Rome burns in the meantime. The intellectual does not necessarily oppose action and taking a stand on public affairs. She may believe the intellectual forethought necessary for effective advocacy or action has not yet taken place, with predictably disappointing results for the advocacy effort as well as for what to her is the inherently valuable learning effort.
It's not opinions per se that I find unwelcome or tedious. It's opinions that don't seem to contribute much of value either to the political or intellectual passions which draw people here.
JMO. :<)
November 4, 2005 9:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
I normally disapprove of post recycling, but you should either link to or copy-and-paste this as a post in "Cafe Management" -- because otherwise none of the management has a snowball's chance of seeing it -- for at least three of your points, which I'll just echo here: (1) Maintaining topic diversity is important. I don't create many blog or forum posts, but when I do, I scrupulously avoid commenting on the "hot topic," precisely because I believe it's somewhere between useless and unhealthy to do so. (2) Ideological diversity is also important. There's no sense in pathetic gestures like the NYT's hiring David Brooks, but I believe that making polite, thoughtful people of all ideological biases -- not just pinkos like myself -- feel welcome here staves of Kosification. (3) The TPM Elite really do need to visibly and regularly wade into the comments. It takes time, guys, but it's consistent with democratic (lowercase) principles, and it's what makes the Cafe different and appealing. If I just want to suck at the news-and-opinion teat, I'll read the Times and/or Post, which can attract the best writers and reporters in the nation. If I visit TPM Cafe, it's to interact with some of these people. At least pretend it's worth your time to listen.
October 31, 2005 8:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Foo wrote: "I normally disapprove of post recycling, but you should either link to or copy-and-paste this as a post in "Cafe Management" -- because otherwise none of the management has a snowball's chance of seeing it..."
I agree. I hope you will do that, art a. I'll go ahead and reply to your post, art a, but I think it is more appropriately posted at cafe management and may get more visibility there, which I feel it deserves.
November 3, 2005 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Artappraiser,
First, thanks again for your efforts to turn the spotlight onto this here activity itself. It's an essential part of figuring out what role and purpose blogs like this might have, as a form of political activity. I have a couple of thoughts on the points you've made.
First, I take it that you feel the quality has gone down in two regards: that the diversity of topics has winnowed down of late, and that there is more ranting, rigid ideology and generally useless stuff in the comments and discussion areas.
On the first point, I think I've noticed that too, of late, but I wonder if it isn't a passing thing. With five years of discontent built up, I'm not surprised that people would be narrowly focused on the Bush comeuppance (I certainly have been, off and on) for awhile. But if this is what it is, or if not, I do hope that TPM Cafe continues to provide a broad and rich set of issues - it's one thing I've been most impressed with here.
On the second, I don't know that I've seen more or less of ranting behavior, except maybe on the issue of 'liberal hawks,' but it's certainly there. Presonally, I don't care how many ranters there are - what's critical as far as I'm concerned is that thoughtful analysis remain a decent proportion of what's in the discussion. One thing I like about this medium is that it's not so much like an oral conversation that you can't just ignore what you find to be crap. As long as there is a reasonable certainty that scrolling down will take you to something worth reading, who cares? I still find the ratio of wheat to chaff fairly satisfying.
That's my first thought, the gist of which, I guess, is that I don't see what's so bad about just not reading what's unreadable. And that's what I generally do (and I'm sure that plenty of people do the same to me). But my second thought, now that I've set it up this way, is to argue against myself. I think that reading and engaging with the rants and the ranters is important, because you don't get a diversity of good opinions except by challenging those ideas that are weaker.
Until about a year ago, I worked for a left-wing organization with a lot of incredibly smart people who were exceptionally good at the nuts-and-bolts of their political work, and astonishingly unable to see the big picture. (I think this wasn't particular to my co-workers; it seems endemic to the left.) There were two things I noticed in this regard. First, that many people seemed incapable of seeing the weaknesses in the overall political strategy of the left, and generally didn't have a lot of new ideas. Second, there were so many things taken for granted - so many policy positions that everyone assumed that we had consensus about, and assumed that were obviously correct, that there was very little effort given to unpacking these assumptions and analyzing the issues we dealt with. I came away feeling like the reason that the left is so marginalized in American politics is that they assume so much consensus that too few ideas are really given any serious, sustained, analytical thought.
So maybe there's something to be said for engaging with those who bother you so much around here. If you see more posts that are doctrinaire, or just anger without substance, maybe it's worth picking those apart every once in awhile. For one thing, every once in awhile, there's something there that I find interesting, when I give it the time to look. And for another, if you are concerned to keep this the kind of place where you can find intelligent discussion from a variety of viewpoints, maybe the thing to do is to force those who you think bring it down to rise to a higher level.
November 1, 2005 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Art A, first, thanks for posting. Very thoughtful stuff and you raise issues that are important for what the site is to be and become.
You wrote: "So then you start a thread on Pakistan and it scrolls away into the netherland real quick with only a free comments on it."
My observation--perhaps off the mark-- is that most of the Discussion Topic posts do not draw a large number of comments, whether they are on a hot topic or not.
You wrote: "Sometimes it seems to me that there are a growing number of people here who are just here to bash DLC, not realizing that most of Josh Marshall's friends and contacts appear to be DLC."
The dynamics surrounding the DLC are unhelpful IMO. Lotta bad blood there. As best I can tell it stems from resentment of some who consider themselves liberals with spines, some of whom supported Dean in the primaries, towards the DLC for in their view contributing to Dean's downfall. So this is seen as payback time by some. Unfortunately, IMO. DLC folks such as Marshall and Ed have been under siege at times and I think it would be a shame if they end up saying the hell with it. It would diminish the range of views expressed here and that would not be welcome from where I sit.
I don't have the impression that most of Josh's contacts are with the DLC but certainly some of them are. I often find myself wondering what Josh thinks of how this site has played out so far. I remember he did a survey of his tpm audience a year ago or so which found that overwhelmingly they identify as liberals, and that he considers himself center-left in his views. I attribute his popularity among lefties as do more than anything else to his effectiveness in digging out stories which the MSM has been tardy (at best) getting to and finding creative ways of applying political pressure on the WH and Congress.
As I read his stuff, he does not seem to me remotely invested in the center/left foodfight that creeps in here. In fact, he seems at pains, like Matt, to try to defuse it, to acknowledge honorable intentions on both sides of this divide and to encourage people to listen to one another with an open mind and keep talking and arguing with one another about the substantive views they differ on.
I don't know what could or should be done about this. Lately I've been toying with putting up a Discussion Post "Conceits of the Democratic Center and Left" in an effort to get more substantive discussion on this issue and see what it feels like to get hammered by both sides. But it's an understatement to say I have my doubts about whether it would do much good. And I don't have other ideas about what to do, other than to try to stick up, in ratings and replies, for those who civilly and articulately and constructively advance views that depart from the dominant views expressed here. I have not been doing a good job of the latter of late. This discussion is a reminder to me that I need to do more of that.
You wrote: "Contributors used to comment on threads and rate comments. A while back that stopped, except for Larry Johnson and Nathan Newman once in a great while. I think this is contributing to the lack of interesting discussion and keeping the discussion level high. Whoever from on high seems to have discouraged this, I think it was a bad decision, because you make two classes of participants: the contributors who do not deign to interact with the peanut gallery."
Has someone from on high in fact discouraged this? I think responses by contributors to individual posts, as James Lindsay did to some extent, are welcome and helpful (minus James' smarmy attitude which I found offputting.) As for ratings, I have more mixed feelings.
You wrote: "Doing that is just making a dittohead land."
I can't agree with that. I find plenty of disagreement. Yes, I have also observed a trend in favor of the liberals on the site and I have concerns that the place could get to be an echo chamber, that those dissenting from whatever the CW seems to be here will not feel like posting and getting harassed in their view for going against the party line.
You wrote: "...it just seems to be filling up with the same old same old lefty stuff happening elsewhere. I am looking for a mix of ideas and voices..."
I agree, and because of that I don't want to see those whose views you might think of as "the same old lefty stuff" go away, either. I don't perceive any orthodox far left view on display here. In any case, their views deserve exposure--and scrutiny. I am thinking of cloudy as I write this. The views he expresses are quite different from the views expressed by those who form the center of gravity at this site.
It seems obvious to me that people come to this site for different reasons.
One group--which seems to me the dominant one--seems to think of this site primarily as a source of moral support and for ideas and analysis about how the Democrats can get back into power. I sense that that unites many who post here. Those are certainly among the reasons I come here. Among this group there seems to be a common attitude that amounts to "conservatives and moderates not welcome, this is our house." Personally I think it is a mistake to believe that efforts to chase away those who express points of view identified with preconceived notions about what "centrists" (but also "far lefties") think are helpful to this project.
Another group is interested in a much wider ranging, and much less political, exploration of various issues, with no ideological prerequisites required, and all fresh perspectives welcome. My sense is that you seem to want more of what this group is looking for. To the extent the dominant group tends to chase away those with disapproved or unconventional views, the prospects for the site meeting the desires of folks in this second group are probably diminished.
It's an oversimplification to say that the first group has primarily a political purpose (to win) and the second group has primarily an intellectual purpose (to learn). But I think there's something to that.
If I had my druthers, I would hope the site could be a place folks with each of these dominant interests will frequent. Perhaps it can't meet both sets of desires and will ultimately have to choose. I hope that does not happen because personally I enjoy the comments of folks who come here for quite diverse sets of reasons--your among them, artappraiser.
At any rate, I am interested in what Josh thinks about all this. Out of respect for and gratitude towards Josh, I would try to abide by whatever elaborations on his desires for this site that he may choose to express.
November 3, 2005 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for a very thoughtful post. I think you've captured very accurately the two dominant trends I've seen here, and to my mind, what makes this a great site is that it is a place where I can come for both my political and intellectual ends. My hope for the future of endeavors like this, as a form of political activity, is that the two strains on this site will remain intertwined and interactive.
Many of the most interesting discussions I find have very little do with the political interests that brought me here. But ultimately, these posts end up having political overtones. And the further from politics as normally understood, it seems to me, the more novel the political ideas that crop up. Some are good and some are bad, perhaps, but most of what really engages me is the political ideas that emerge off the beaten track of government policy, party politcs and the like.
Ultimately, if centrist-liberals are going to win, it will be because they put energy into learning. The ideological rigidity of the right stands out because they are in power, but the lack of new thinking, unhampered by preconceived, empirically impoverished policies, seems to me to be visible across the political spectrum. Not to say that there isn't a lot interesting going on out there, too, but it's only curiosity that will lead to new policies that address emerging needs effectively.
November 3, 2005 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lebanon is an example of the hypocroisy of both Arabs and supporters of Israel. Most Arabs were slient were about Syria's repression in Lebanon, while supporters of Israel apologize for Israel's 22-year occupation of Southern Lebanon and military operations like Grapes of Wrath. It would be nice if all parties could remove the beam from their own eyes.
November 1, 2005 7:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Given the recent trends, I am skeptical that there is room for nuanced discussion on the Middle East here. What I generally have observed is the following:
(1) angry left-winger casually repeats some Chomsky-lite comment they've seen about how the war was the result of an Israeli "hijacking" of American foreign policy or simply that America's support for Israeli colonialism s the root cause of our problems in the region
(2) upset Zionist responds by pointing out the anti-Semetic undertones in the conspiracy theory or neo-Marxist view of Middle East politics.
(3) "reasonable" left-winger attacks Zionist for using the anti-Semitic smear to silence "legitimate" criticism of Israeli policies. The "reasonable" left-winger does not object to Israel's right to exist, but wants to make clear that they hold Sharon's "brutal policies" responsible for whatever current impasse exists in the Palestiinan conflict.
There is absolutely no nuance or critical thought provided. There is no reasoned analysis of Sharon's policies - or argument as to why alternate Israeli policies are preferable. Nor is there any discussion of what a "more evenhanded" American foreign policy would be and what the logical impacts of that policy will be.
Life is more complex than there simply being a "conservative" and a "liberal" box for every issue to fit into. That is especially true about the Middle East.
November 2, 2005 2:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, from what I've seen, the discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on TPM Cafe has been very reasonable, certainly in comparison to what I've seen on other forums. It may not be as sophisticated as you like, but it least doesn't degenerate into "flame wars", which is what usually happens on blogs.
This position statement by the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy comes closest to my own views.
November 2, 2005 6:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
What surprises me about the statement you linked to is the relative vapidity of it given the credentials of the signees. I'm not certain if that it had to be watered down to get Juan Cole and Samuel Huntingdon on the same page.
Like many of the critiques of the United States' failure to be "even-handed," there is a clear explication as to what Israel needs to do (abandon all territory that was part of Jordan from 1949 to 1967) but no thought whatsoever given to how a functional and stable Palestinian entity will be established.
After Oslo, merely stating that "Palestinians should combat terror" and otherwise viewing their would-be state as a "black box" is irresponsible. It has been the much-maligned Bush Administration that has taken the first steps to tie assistance to Palestinain institutions with fiscal accountability.
Anyone who wants to see an actual solution to the Israeli-Palestinain conflict should be focusing on one thing right now - helping Gaza becomes stable, prosperous and terror-free. The Israeli public is looking to Gaza for guidance on what to do next. A success story there is essential to convincing them of the prudence of withdrawing from most of the West Bank.
November 3, 2005 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
mhpine writes
Yes, the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is welcome even as it is long overdue. What of the West Bank? Has Israel stopped building settlements there? Has Israel stopped building the Apartheid Wall there? Has Israel stopped brutalizing the Palestinians who live there? NO and NO and NO.
You would have us defer to an Israeli public that does not care at all about the brutal and inhumane manner in which it treats the Palestinians. You would have us defer to an Israeli public that has allowed a hideous admixture of racism and militarism - that in Europe is called neo-Nazism - to arise among its own citizens occupying the West Bank. You would have us follow the policy of appeasement that has allowed this evil occupation to fester for three decades.
November 3, 2005 7:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I sure hope that you are getting paid by the cliche, stock epithet, and hyperbolic phrase. If not, I hope that this opportunity to posture and preen in a pose of moral superiority has been cathartic for you.
November 3, 2005 8:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guess the Jordanians and the Egyptians should not have joined a war to destroy Israel and have lost it so badly. Perhaps the Palestians should not have tried murdering school children as a way to get the state they never had under Turkish, British or Arab rule.
Israel withdrew from Gaza and immediatly some Palestinians destroyed greenhouses that were a source of jobs and income for Gazans and for which American Jews raised millions to keep working. Hamas used Gaza to attack Israel, not the wisest course if you want to have Israel make peace with you.
Europe, the home to the actual Nazis like to expiate their guilt by yelling Nazi at the Isrealis. As long as the Isreali public believes they are in danger of being murdered life for the Palestinians is unlikely to improve.
November 4, 2005 9:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would support making Israeli withdrawal from the territories concurrent with the Palestinian Authority reforming its security forces and disarming all armed groups. That is the plan most consistent with Resolution 242 - withdrawal from territories in exchange for termination of all states of belligerency and secure and recognized boundaries. Letting Israel dictate its withdrawal schedule just gives it time to establish (even more) "facts on the ground" in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, as happened during Oslo.
Even if the Palestinian Authority were to improve its governance (which is indeed absymal), it is extremely unlikely that Gaza will become a success story. Gaza has one of the highest population densities in the world, while, as this report by the human rights group B'tselem shows, has been totally sealed off from the rest of the world by Israel. My point is not to debate the morality of Israel's restrictions (and I'm certainly not denying that Israel has very legitimate security concerns) but rather that as long as they remain in place, it is highly unrealistic to expect Gaza to turn into an oasis of prosperity and stability.
By the way, in the light of the exhange between Colore Oscuro and DanielGree below, I should probably retract my comments about the relatively civilized quality of discussion of the Mideast on this website.
November 4, 2005 10:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
One big error the Israelis made after 1967 was waiting for the Jordanians to reassert their leadership and dominance over the Palestinians. While there are some Isrealis have a rather insane desire to make the Bible the determinant of the borders of Isreal most have been calling for what is in your first paragraph since 1967.
Unfortunately as it stands now a sizable minority of Israelis believe the Arabs will never make peace and they want land as a buffer. Both demographics and improved weaponry make land a fools gold for security. As Sadat demonstrated offering peace to the Isrealis results in a sizable portion of your conquored territory being returned.
On a personal note. I re-read what I wrote unabove. There was nothing personal or uncivil in it.
November 5, 2005 7:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is unfortunate that Iran's leadership is so conservative. Iran's leadership will be removing 40 ambassadors also.
So much for my wish for "transforming relationships" in the middle east.
As the new book coming soon to TPM's Book Club illustrates, the conservative Islamic monster is a monster of our own creation.
And seeing the attitudes towards the West get worse, this amateur has no clue as to what the U.S. should do, if it can do anything, about the situation. At least if the CIA is learning lessons about keeping the long term in view, through the use of forecasting computers perhaps if not their own brains, it is a step in the right direction.
But I'm just plain clueless as to what can be done to remedy the situation. In which case putting a democracy in Iraq might actually one answer if you look at it objectively and non-partisan.
November 2, 2005 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think one reason why the "wipe Israel off the map" statement by Iran's President is not on a front burner is the reality that a nation with nuclear weapons would never be wiped off the map, unless the attacker wanted singularly assured destruction or mutually assured destruction, and want to also be wiped off the map.
The trouble is, what does this mean for terrorism? It would seem to be a no brainer conclusion that the danger of Iran supplying WMD, and at the very least non-WMD support, to terror organizations who are borderless and invisible, must now be on the rise.
Which is unfortunate indeed since I think it is hard to trace support in terror organizations backwards to find out who the supporter is. Thus we don't know who to bomb when we get bombed, and Israel doesn't know who to bomb when they get bombed.
November 2, 2005 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink