Joshua Green points out something that appears to have eluded only Bob Woodward: Norm Mineta is a worthless layabout.
John Cole started Balloon Juice early in 2002. Those who have followed along know that this has been quite the journey.
Some perspective from Victor Davis
Some perspective from Victor Davis Hanson:
The proposed solution to the crisis in the Middle East is predicated on one notion: the return of the West Bank and all the other lands occupied by Israel after June 10, 1967. As the current conventional wisdom goes, our diplomatic efforts should be directed toward that single goal. Israel must give back conquered land. In return its Arab neighbors will promise to recognize its existence, make peace, and normalize relations.
One way of determining whether such an agreement would lead to peace would be to imagine what really might happen should Israel give up all of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. Fortunately, we need not be utopian about the future, but rather simply revisit the past before June 5, 1967. Then Israel possessed none of those territories. Yet there was no peace – but simply a series of pauses between wars not unlike the present predicament. A quick perusal of a number of general histories about the pre-1967 era – especially Michael Oren’s forthcoming magisterial work Six Days of War – reveals a chilling similarity with the present calamity.
Did the Arab states accept Israel’s right to exist between 1947 and 1967, when it remained within its U.N.-mandated (Resolution 181) borders? Hardly. Three wars were fought to destroy Israel itself, not to restore the West Bank for the Palestinians. We must remember that for all the talk of Palestinian grievances over the present occupation, Muslims are now allowed free access to their mosques in a manner Jews and Christians were not accorded for their own places of worship under Jordanian control. Desecration of religious shrines and cemeteries was a pre-1967, not a present, phenomenon.
Seriously- All they want are the pre-1967 borders. I’m chuckling at the transparency of this ‘peace’ plan.
In recent developments in the
In recent developments in the Middle East, Palestinian terrorists have stopped blowing up Jews and Christians long enough to force them at gunpoint to give them sanctuary in the Church of the Nativity.
The armed men, some of them Palestinian policemen, forced their way into the church after running battles with Israeli troops firing from helicopter gunships and from tank-mounted machine guns.
At nightfall, the bodies of four dead gunmen lay sprawled just off Manger Square, where the church is located.
It marked the first time fighting had spilled over into the Church of the Nativity, one of Christianity’s holiest shrines.
Israeli forces have entered Bethlehem several times during the past 18 months, but they are under orders not to harm holy places, and have kept their distance from the church. That, however, makes it an attractive sanctuary for Palestinian gunmen.
Just in case you were keeping track, that makes them terrorists, hypocrites, liars, and now, cowards.
If you have not been
If you have not been paying attention to his website lately, in between his all too frequent vacations, Damian Penny is simply on fire lately on the Israel/Palestine issue.
If you own a blog,
Interesting article about blogs. Via
Interesting article about blogs. Via Doc. Weevil.
Greg Hlatky has stumbled across
Greg Hlatky has stumbled across H.R.2459, a bill proposed to create a cabinet level Department of Peace, which will, as Mr. Hlatky noted, have both foreign and domestic chores. This is not, as Mr. Hlatky also noted, an April Fool’s Joke.
Other than the fact that we already have three departments responsible for keaping the peace (domestically, the Justice Department, overseas, the State Department and chiefly the Defese Department), the proposal is just a bunch of hogwash from the usual suspects. Feel free to send in any job titles that you think might be relevant for the newly created Department of Peace. Here are mine:
Undersecretary for Armpit Hair on Women
Undersecretary for Patchouli Distribution
Grateful Dead and CSNY Archivist
Undersecretary for Jesse Jackson’s Overseas Travel.
House Initiative For Peaceful Protests and Individual Expression (HIPPIE for short).