The other day, I passed along a particularly offensive post by Michael Goldfarb to Glenn Greenwald. The comment by Goldfarb was disgusting even by his low standards, and I am glad that Glenn took some time to take the Weekly Standard’s OD Original Dungeonmaster to task. What is so disturbing about it is that Goldfarb is just glibly contemplating the possible positive outcome of killing a bunch of civilians. Those are not the thoughts of a healthy mind, notwithstanding the fact that we know from past experience that their deaths will serve as a rallying cry to inspire more martyrs. In other words, vile and counter-productive- a genuine twofer.
If twisted folks like Goldfarb are an example of the next generation of conservatives, then the Republican party has more to worry about than a disparity in conservative media.
wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian
Glenn Greenwald is a man of the left. His post on the results of the Rasmussen Poll results on American feelings about all this is especially acute.
In the event that anyone wants to know what is going on in Gaza try here:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10106.shtml
Potted Plant
Some of Goldfarb’s blog post sounds like he endorses the idea of Israel acting like the Keyser Soze of nations.
El Cid
Those of us with ancient memories recall how U.S. pundits including noted ‘liberals’ often remarked how they regretted the civilian deaths of Reagan’s Central America wars, but if those deaths helped hasten a successful conclusion, it was all good.
As the New Republic put it then:
smiley
OT:
Headline at MSNBC:Richardson to withdraw as Commerce secretary.
The New Mexico governor cites pending investigation of business dealings.
Steve S.
Calling people like this "conservatives" or "tribalists" still strikes me as doing them a tremendous favor. Goldfarb is an unreconstructed racist and apologist for murder. In fact, a truly accurate description would include epithets like "nazi" or "fascist", but since I don’t want to Godwin a thread before it even begins I will not say these things. Hell, why not call him an "antisemite", since he advocates policies that make war against Jews more rather than less likely? Oh well, maybe "conservative" will just have to do.
srv
Perception is reality, and from that ethic, Goldfarb represents the norm in this country. If you didn’t get it after Sabra and Shatila, you aren’t going to get it now.
Effectively, the policy differences between Goldfarb and Obama cannot be measured in this debate. I doubt that will change.
flounder
If you changed a few of the nouns in Goldfarb’s statement (swap USA in for Hamas), it would mirror the words of Osama bin Laden.
And given Goldfarb’s connection to McCain, does this mean that McCain is "pallin’ around with terrorists"?
Bootlegger
He claims that Hamas is not "rational" in the same way as "us". So, if the US was occupied he’s basically saying that all our new overlords have to do to get him to fall in line is kill some of his family. I don’t think I want that asshat on my side of the resistance.
Shalimar
The leader in question whose family was killed with him had already had a son go into Israel as a suicide bomber. How does Goldfarb know that indiscriminately killing that family would give other leader’s pause to think about their own family? Isn’t it just as logical that the other leaders will send their family members into Israel as suicide bombers too since they are going to be killed regardless? Bloodbath only leads to further bloodbath.
jrg
It’s a testament to how fucked up our political discourse is when prominent conservatives can advocate genocide, and our Republican president can lie to get us into a war that kills millions of Muslims, but Jonah Goldberg makes money writing shit like "The quintessential liberal fascist isn’t an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade-school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore."
Steve S. nails it. The Weekly standard is advocating genocide, for God’s sake. At what point is it fair to call these people Nazis? Are modern Republicans so fucking stupid that they really think "Nazi" actually means "Vegetarian"?
TenguPhule
Yes.
SATSQ.
Ash Can
I agree with Steve S. up there. To call wackos like this "conservative" is to do them an undeserved favor. Worse, to do this is to play along with them as, over the past few decades, they’ve all but redefined the word (and many others besides). Neo-cons throw words and phrases around like litter, using them to mean whatever suits their purpose at the moment, with no regard for authorities such as dictionaries or standard usage. I’m familiar with (and very fond of) the quote/axiom that people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. My personal corollary to this is that people are NOT entitled to their own definitions either.
bago
If: a loss in population A Justifies a loss in population B.
and: a loss in population B justifies a loss in population A.
then: The only way this loop can terminate is for population A or B to reach a number close enough to zero such that one of the conditionals cannot be made true.
In other words, a negative feedback loop that can only terminate upon the completion of genocide.
Fritz
The notions that one can and should separate civilian deaths from military deaths in warfare and that one can conduct war without terror are not really bolted on very tightly. After all, we are within living memory of the firebombing of Dresden — so it ill-behoves Americans to be altogether smug on the subject (OK, the Brits did that, not the Americans. But they were and are our allies.).
Bootlegger
@bago: Is this rational, "in the way you and I define rational"? Goldfarb claims the others make a logical fallacy, but won’t follow his own logic through to the conclusion. Sigh.
SGEW
Ethnic cleansing will continue until morale improves.
srv
@Fritz: We firebombed Tokyo, and Hiroshima had negligible military value. Just another vanilla war crime.
Bootlegger
@Fritz: Also, aren’t we suppose to be "better than that"? Otherwise the moral high ground we’re claim seems more like looking into the wrong end of a telescope.
Fritz
@Bootlegger: Dunno about "better than that". Frankly, it has always struck me that if you have "rules of warfare" then you are engaged in war for insufficient reasons. Maybe I am an idealist, but I believe one should only engage in warfare when it is of critical national importance (like survival), and at that point there are no rules except that one must win.
Ash Can
@Fritz: Your theory makes sense, but the problem is that real life is never as simple as that. It’s the same reason economists tend to be the butt of jokes.
SteveinSC
I am just sick of the United States being a stooge for the Israeli right wing and its brutalization of the inhabitants in the region. We have got to hope that Obama can bring some balance to our policies, policies which are now driven by right-wing religious fanatics (e.g. Hagee), AIPAC and their White House cabal. It is patently clear that neocons are little more than a seditious gang whose adventures in Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon are part and parcel of a well-orchestrated effort to suborn the policies of the United States, aided and abetted by their accomplices in the press.
As much as I despise the religious crowd (Christian, Jew, Hindu, and most particularly the ignorant, atavist Moslems), we cannot stand by and accept the casual destruction of human life and remain a civilized nation.
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
If police pursued a suspect into a mall and opened fire on him or fired explosives at him, people would be horrified at the carnage. It would be worse if they used helicopters to do it.
jones
This, and every generation of liberals, see nothing wrong with Israeli casualties from Palestinian bombing. So nothing really changes with you guys.
rachel
@jones: I think you need to stomp on that straw man a little harder.
Laura W
Dershowitz v. Zogby on Larry King.
The Moar You Know
@jones: Huh. We get Wifred the Shoe Chucking Idiot here, accusing us all of complicity in murdering Palestinians because we fail some purity test of his which is never explained, and then we get you in here accusing us all of complicity in murdering Israelis because of…some purity test which you also fail to explain.
Most liberals would like both the Israelis and Palestinians to knock it the fuck off and live side and side in peace. But if you must have blood, this liberal is OK with Israelis and Palestinians wiping each other from the face of the earth, in the most gruesome and violent ways possible, so long as I don’t have to listen to your butthurt whining and insane religious bullshit ever again.
jrg
Really? Who wrote that upthread? Do you have a link, or are you just pulling that out of your ass?
SteveinSC
Jesus Christ, Dershowitz again. I thought this affront to the human race, early apologist for torture, had climbed back under the rock he calls home. Would someone drive a fucking wooden stake through whatever passes for a heart in this neocon asshole?
kay
@jones:
Ach. We can agree on one thing, I hope. We can agree that it’s absolutely necessary and right to get supplies to hospitals in Gaza, now, because there are many, many civilian casualties.
The NYTimes spoke to a Norwegian doctor by phone. He works in conflict areas. He says it’s the worst he’s ever seen. He has nothing: no drugs, no monitors, no fuel and they’re working 24 hour shifts. One doctor did 5 amputations today.
Just as we wouldn’t desert Israeli civilians if they were in this situation, we can agree that we can’t allow the casualties that are pouring in to go untreated.
President Bush has chosen not to act on this immediate and pressing problem, and the Hamas government is in shambles. That leaves Israel.
Bootlegger
@Fritz: Yes, of course. My tongue was firmly planted in cheek.
wilfred the shoe thrower
No, you fail a humanity test, as does Goldfarb, Peretz and your fellow commenters who were recently defending the targeted murder of children and the destruction of universities.
As for the political test, take it up with Greenwald.
wilfred the shoe thrower
.
Yeah:
kay
@wilfred the shoe thrower:
Oh, wilfred, they’re falling down a hole here, the Israelis. We can bicker all day if the pedestrian jumped in front of the car, or was pushed out in front of it, or whether the driver was in the marked lanes, or is authorized to travel that road.
The driver still has to stop, and offer aid.
If they don’t get some humanitarian aid in there, they’re hit and run, and there’s broad agreement on that. That’s a whole new level.
Fritz
kay — normally medics come in behind the troops.
neill
god damn michael goldfarb’s shit-filled soul to hell.
i hope someday to have the opportunity to tell him that to his face.
TenguPhule
It would take a crowbar dropped from space to be absolutely sure.
TenguPhule
Irony of the Day.
TenguPhule
If said suspect had turned said mall into a fortified area and launched missile strikes from out of it and said suspect had either full support or no resistance to setting up said fortifications in the mall from the residents and further, the police couldn’t tell who was who (and knew that getting it wrong the first time will get them killed), then yeah, it’s not so simple a question any more.
So, which nation is willing to put up peacekeepers in both regions? Otherwise, the Israeli government will just tell them to shut up. Because it’s just a repeat of the last ceasefire, and the one before that, and the one before that.
And the guys currently in power are not as nice as the liberal Israelis who got ejected from office.
Shit, they make Ariel Sharon look like Gandhi.
TenguPhule
Agreement is easy.
Doing something about it, that’s the trick.
It’s election season in Israel and the Likud really wants to keep it’s majority.
So yeah, they’re going to have to suffer some more under their Republicans as we had to suffer under ours.
wilfred the shoe thrower
Pity the Phule: Today’s talking point " It’s all politics"
Juan Cole rakes the israelis over the coals:
A must read post:
http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/have-bush-and-neocons-ruined-it-for.html
kay
@Fritz:
I think that’s part of their problem, for the Israelis. They’re in there now. That’s the new level. Wilbur and I were bickering over the Hamas responsibility to safeguard civilians, that’s why he’s claiming I defended killing children. That was back when they were bombing from the air, and I saw Gazans themselves as the only practical, immediate avenue.
Now Israelis are claiming that Hamas are no longer in power and that they’ve bisected Gaza. Now if they don’t stop and offer aid it’s on them, Israel. If they’re holding Gazans inside Gaza, and they are, as a practical matter, they have responsibility for the captive civilians they hit, in any set of circumstances. No one else can get in or out, now, today.
wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian
Kay, your heart is in the right place but you’re not paying close enough attention. The israelis have already answered the question:
As long as Bush and the rest of the government give them a blank check they’ll cash it.
Grumpy Code Monkey
I see two options:
1. Establish a separate Palestinian state, with unlimited right of return, in exchange for Hamas (and every other Palestinian political entity) formally acknowledging Israel’s right to exist and ceasing hostilities immediately. Oh, and Jerusalem becomes an independent enclave, belonging to no nation, administered by Buddhists.
or
2. Put the Palestinians on an equal military footing with Israel and let both sides shoot it out.
Is there a third option I’m missing?
Fritz
Grumpy — there are lots of other options. But please remember that your option 2 has already been tried a few times in the past.
So your "right of return". I assume you don’t mean, as Israel means in their formulation, an unlimited right for Palestinians from around the world to return to the new Palestinian state. Instead I believe you mean a right to "return" (in quotes because most of them have never been there) to a different country.
TenguPhule
You forgot the ponies.
1. Not happening. The ‘right of return’ refers to Palestinian claims on Israeli lands in Israel itself pre-1967. The ones people have already been living on and pay taxes on.
Never gonna happen.
2. Yes, let’s give Hamas the ability to kill more civilians. Yeah, real men of genius! /golfclap
TenguPhule
Summarized.
4tehlulz
Ship them all to Uganda and just turn the whole area into an archaeological dig.
Publicola
@wilfred the shoe thrower:
Wilfred: Do you support or condone the targeted murder of Israeli civilians by Hamas (and/or other Palestinian) suicide bombers?
Publicola
@TenguPhule:
Ehud Barak makes Sharon "look like Gandhi"? This is a joke, right?
Publicola
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
That "two-state solution" is one possible outcome, eventually. (Though Hamas, at least as we know it, would not play a role there – for Hamas eternal opposition to Israel is a religious duty. And has been pointed out elsewhere, in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict "right of return" means Palestinian return to pre-’67 Israel, which ain’t gonna happen.)
The other two possible outcomes are 1) a single-state where Arabs and Jews share the same nation in what was historic Palestine (the "single-state solution"), or 2) genocidal war which could draw in many nations, including the United States. One of the the latter two options will eventually happen if Israeli settlements keep expanding in the West Bank unabated.
Not a realistic option.
See above. To lower the odds that a single-state solution or genocidal war will happen, the United States should condition its "aid" to Israel on stopping Israel’s settlement expansion. That’s currently a politically untenable here in the U.S., but hopefully that will change.
wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian
For a second there I thought you might actually know what you’re talking about, but this silly question is really too much. But since you asked – no, of course I don’t. Now I’d like to ask a question:
Do you support the right of Gazans to defend themselves and their families against the invasion of their land?
Inevitable, logical and just. And before anyone starts with the doomsday scenarios please remember how we heard them all before when the question was a unified South Africa instead of a white state and satellite Bantustans.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Yeah, right of return is problematic (he said with a flair for understatement). There is such a thing as right of conquest; it’s not like we Murkins are itching to give land back to the native nations. However, I do think Israel would have to make real concessions on those lands if any sort of peace process is to move forward. I realize that neither Hamas nor the Israeli government give a rat’s ass about peace, but I’d like to think that most Israelis and Palestinians would rather just go about their lives and not worry about this shit anymore.
wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian
Yeah, anti-Semites. You’ve chalked up over 100 dead women and children in 10 days. Rachel Corrie jokes.
Fucking gobshite wanker.
kay
@wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian:
Well, thanks, Wilfred, for acknowledging I have a heart, although now I’m an inattentive half-ass humanitarian, or something.
Reading the Israeli statements is maddening, I agree. We’ve had so much of that from our own government.
"There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza".
They remind me, weirdly, of John McCain. His bullshit decisive pronouncements that weren’t even remotely true.
Publicola
@wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian:
Good to hear that. Your one-sided rhetoric, wherein you go on and on about Palestinian civilian deaths but with no mention of Israeli civilian deaths, where you defend Hamas as not being religious fundi-wingnuts, and where you defend support of Hamas as a "sensible" (whatever that means to you in this context) response to Israeli actions that undermined the secular-oriented Palestinian Authority suggested to me that you may have supported Hamas’ civilian suicide bombings. Again glad to hear this is not the case.
Yes. Does that "defense" include firing rockets into civilian populations in Israel, or suicide bombings against civilians in Israel? Hell no.
The single-state solution may well be inevitable – especially if the Israelis keep building settlements and their attendant infrastructure in the West Bank. Talk about yin-yang – the Israeli rightists’ moves to try to take over the West Bank for a larger Jewish Israel may well instead lead to the demise of the Jewish state.
wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian
Speaking of one sided rhetoric:
That’s Juan Cole on one sided rhetoric. Here’s Glenn Greenwald’s take on emphathy, which is what I presume you are suggesting I lack:
Do you think that many Americans have ever been asked to imagine what that feels like? Have you?
4tehlulz
Does this mean you are acknowledging that there is such a thing as an Israeli "civilian"?
Publicola
@wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian:
Greenwald’s dead-on there.
With respect to via mass media or by our national leaders I think that only happens rarely, if at all.
Carter has done a good job in that regard as an ex-national leader – of course for doing so he’s been branded anti-Israel and anti-Semite by many on the right; no surprises there.
Yes.
– Former Israeli Foreign Minister and U.N. Ambassador Abba Eban
November 9, 1986
wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian
Of course. I also believe that plenty of Israelis are as disgusted with their right wing leadership as many people in the world are. In fact, in another life I knew and worked with such people, but they are long gone from Israel these days.
And do you acknowledge that there is such a thing as an innocent Palestinian civilians?
4tehlulz
>>And do you acknowledge that there is such a thing as an innocent Palestinian civilians?
This may shock you, but yes, and what Israel is doing with this Operation Look Tougher Than Bibi is criminal and insane.
TenguPhule
I’m sure Palestinians are all in a rush to become Zimbabawe II.
TenguPhule
/golfclap
Bravo, delicious stupidity is delicious
Yes, because pointing out how anti-survival deliberately lying in front of a moving bulldozer that can’t see you is funny.
Now calling it murder without solid proof, *that’s* a joke.
TenguPhule
Except that all evidence on prior threads says you’re a liar.
Steve S.
There is only one solution, that is complete disengagement by the United States from Israel. The United States IS the problem, not the Palestinians or Israelis, who are simply acting like the brutal, self-centered apes that all humans are. It will take a little time, but the solution will eventually find itself once Israel is in the position of not having unlimited military and diplomatic cover at its disposal.
Of course, we all know that the U.S. won’t be ditching its 51st state any time soon, so the conflict will continue for the foreseeable future.
There might be an epidemic of insanity in the interested parties and they all sit down and forge a meaningful peace, but I see that possibility as miniscule.
Wile E. Quixote
@Grumpy Code Monkey
Kill them all and let God, whoever that may be, sort them out.
Oh, and could someone please explain to me exactly what the fuck Israel has ever done for the United States other than attack our ships and kill our sailors, spy on us and consume billions of dollars in American foreign aid?
James
The same actions committment by the US, Israel or their allies as those committed by "enemies" are always reported in glorious or at least neutral terms. Israel bombs civilians is not terrorism; some Palestinians launching rockets is terrorism. Israelis calling Palestinians "animals" is acceptable; calling Israelis barbaric is "anti-semitic." In other words, it’s a double standard. All this hype and fear mongering over supposed desires to destroy Isreal neglects to mention that Israel is a imperialist state. Before 1948, Israel was Palestine. There was no equivalent concern over the suuposed destruction of Israel than there was over the destruction of Palestine. Israel has no right to exist where it does. Palestinians have been a subjected people ever since 1948, Israel has been allowed to deny Palestinians rights, aid, food, etc, it has been allowed to engage in terrorism and illegal wars against its neighbors and the Palestinians and it has all been supported by the US. The Palestinians are supposedly the "bad guys" for defending themselves, fighting against an imperial force.
TenguPhule
And it’s people like you that are the problem, not a part of the answer.
Except you know, the part where they don’t fight against ‘the imperial force’, Hamas and company fire on civilian cities.
So yeah.
wilfred the shoe thrower
There are other kinds of cities? Gaza city must be a terrorist city then?
You’re getting upset, feverish even. Tell yourself some Rachel Corrie jokes, or better yet, consider the overnight toll of dead Palestinian children –
19.