Here is some real news: the AP acknowledges that Iraq could end up as a plus. Well, whaddaya know!

Analysis: Stable Iraq could influence Mideast

BAGHDAD (AP) — As violence in Iraq recedes, neighboring states are pondering how to deal with an unwieldy country that could re-emerge as a key player along with Saudi Arabia and Iran in one of the world’s most strategic regions.

The role of regional power broker may seem far-fetched for Iraq — a devastated land best known for car bombs, death squads and suicide attackers.

Still, countries of the Middle East cannot ignore the potential role of a resurgent Iraq, a nation of 28 million people, bordering Iran to the east, Syria and Jordan to the west and sitting on one of the world’s major pools of oil.

Well, whaddaya know! A new day may dawn after all …

In case you missed SecDef Robert Gates’s wonderful speech delivered at Oxford last week, I recommend that you read it. Here’s a highlight:

To manage diverse challenges in the years ahead, we – America and Europe together – will need strength and solidarity such as we have demonstrated in the past. Our policies and responses must show a mixture of resolve and restraint – the proverbial arrows and olive branches of Truman’s eagle. To be firm but not fall into a pattern of rhetoric or actions that create self-fulfilling prophecies; to heed the lessons of both 1914 and 1938 but not be trapped by them.

We need to be careful about the commitments we make, but we must be willing to keep commitments once made.

Yes, that sounds about right. Deliciously, when the New York Times reported on Gates’s speech yesterday, underscoring how the West understands that the Russians have legitimate interests, etc., etc., and how we in the West should in general avoid extremes of both force (as in WWI) and restraint (as in WWII), the article ended with this short paragraph [e.a.]:

Mr. Gates spoke here after a separate meeting in London on Friday with the Czech defense minister. The two signed a declaration of strategic defense cooperation and a status of forces agreement for stationing American personnel in the Czech Republic as part of a missile defense radar site, a plan that has outraged Russia.

Now, that is speaking softly and carrying a big stick. Long live SecDef Gates, and may he have a worthy successor!

—-

related post

Seven years after 9/11, the NYT’s Michael Slackman visits Cairo and finds a lot of people who insist on believing that America attacked itself on that day in order to pick a fight with Muslims. Slackman concludes that this obstinate conspiratorial thinking is an American failure:

Again and again, people said they simply did not believe that a group of Arabs — like themselves — could possibly have waged such a successful operation against a superpower like the United States. But they also said that Washington’s post-9/11 foreign policy proved that the United States and Israel were behind the attacks, especially with the invasion of Iraq.

“Maybe people who executed the operation were Arabs, but the brains? No way,” said Mohammed Ibrahim, 36, a clothing-store owner in the Bulaq neighborhood of Cairo. “It was organized by other people, the United States or the Israelis.”

It must be comforting to be Michael Slackman and to think that if only America and Israel would prove themselves worthy, then everything would be all right with the world.

That mind-set plays well in Europe

And, apparently, the “world wants Obama as president.” Maybe so, but the world doesn’t get to vote in our election.

And saying that America is to blame for its poor image abroad doesn’t play very well at home. In his acceptance speech at the RNC, John McCain said:

My fellow Americans, when I’m president, we’re going to embark on the most ambitious national project in decades. We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us very much. We will attack the problem on every front. We will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells offshore, and we’ll drill them now. We will build more nuclear power plants. We will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas. We will encourage the development and use of flex-fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles. … It’s an ambitious plan, but Americans are ambitious by nature, and we have faced greater challenges. It’s time for us to show the world again how Americans lead.

And the crowd roared.

Some countries don’t like us very much. They didn’t like us before 9/11, and they still don’t like us now. That, my friends, is their problem.

Cindy McCain is a doofus, but the motherfucking Russians are out for blood. They’ve just assassinated another journalist.

I admit to not wanting to believe my eyes and ears, but Russia is a nightmare and I can’t ignore it any longer.

Now the Ophtalmologist from Damascus is playing footsie with them:

Syria raised the prospect yesterday of having Russian missiles on its soil, sparking fears of a new Cold War in the Middle East. President Assad said as he arrived in Moscow to clinch a series of military agreements: “We are ready to co-operate with Russia in any project that can strengthen its security.”

I was kinda hoping that the Israelis were trying to peel Syria away from its embrace of various evildoers after Damascus was softened up by the Mugniyeh assassination and the obliteration of the nuclear facility (and there was also the recent assassination of his right-hand man).

Oh well! I guess no one is worried about the Middle East anymore now that Russia’s back on the map and outta control, man.

Tonight the BBC reported (and you can see it in this piece too) that Russia threatened to attack Poland with nuclear weapons!

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice travelled to Warsaw for the ceremony, after 18 months of negotiations.

The deal has angered Russia, which has warned the base could become a target for a nuclear strike.

Washington says the system will protect the US and much of Europe against missile attacks from “rogue elements” in the Middle East such as Iran.

And what do the Poles say?

Before the conflict in Georgia there was a reasonable amount of popular opposition in Poland to the missile defence deal.

But new surveys show that for the first time a majority of Poles support it, with 65% expressing fear of Russia.

I wish I didn’t have to look at the Georgia vs. Russia situation through the prism of domestic politics—or, even worse, culture war—but there has been a veritable stampede of apologists for Russia, which I find disturbing.

Jeff Weintraub agrees:

Thomas de Waal is probably right to offer the plague-on-both-their-houses judgment that “The immediate trigger of this conflict [was] both Moscow’s and Tbilisi’s cynical disregard for the well-being of these people” in South Ossetia. But given the way that the war has developed since then, the Presidents of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were also quite right to declare in a joint statement that Russia’s attack on Georgia was the latest manifestation of an “imperialist and revisionist” policy aimed at restoring Russian hegemony over what the Russians call their “near abroad.” That is the heart of the matter, and discussions about whether Saakashvili is really a good guy or a bad guy, a wise leader or a foolish one, sufficiently or insufficiently democratic (compared to which other leaders in the region?), are really just distractions or evasions.

By itself, none of this tells us what would be the best policies for the US and Europe to follow in response to this crisis and its fallout. The immediate response of many so-called “realists”–spread from left to right across the political spectrum–has been that we should simply let Russia go ahead and re-establish its hegemony over neighboring post-Soviet states, since doing anything else would be more costly and dangerous than it’s worth. I disagree, but that’s at least an arguable position.

What I find more objectionable are hypocritical efforts to obscure this cynical (but hypothetically realistic and unsentimental) conclusion in clouds of pseudo-sophisticated and pseudo-moralizing rhetoric and sloganeering. The fact that this has been the knee-jerk reaction of too many alleged “progressives” has been depressing, though unfortunately not entirely surprising. Many of the same people who (correctly) condemn great-power bullying and aggression against small countries when the US does it, and who fulminate against “disproportionate” military responses when Israel supposedly undertakes them, jump to make excuses for both when Russia is the one doing it.

So many people still showering Russia with love.

The Washington Post clarifies matters in an editorial on the “state of play”*** in Georgia:

Mythmaking in Moscow
Georgia wasn’t committing ‘genocide,’ and the Russians aren’t keeping the peace.

That’s just in case you weren’t paying attention. Here are the details, with “assertions of fact” that are false in the WaPo’s original italics:

Georgia committed genocide against the people of South Ossetia. This charge was initially leveled by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and has been taken up by others, including President Dmitry Medvedev, who on Thursday came up with the interesting formulation that South Ossetians “had lived through a genocide.” Mr. Medvedev has referred to “thousands” killed, and Russian officials frequently have cited 2,000 South Ossetians killed (out of a population of 70,000). They have said Georgia razed the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. These purported depredations are given as the main motivation for Russian military intervention. … Independent journalists back up the account provided by Human Rights Watch. The Wall Street Journal, for example, yesterday reported finding Tskhinvali, where most of the fighting took place, mostly intact and with “little evidence of a high death toll.”

Russians in Georgia are “peacekeepers” on a humanitarian mission to protect civilians. This formulation has alternated with repeated Russian statements, repeatedly disproved, that Russian forces were not in Georgia at all, or were leaving, or were about to leave. In fact, journalists, human rights observers and others have documented that Russian troops have ranged far into Georgia, including the city of Gori and the port of Poti. They have razed, mined and looted Georgian army bases and destroyed civilian houses and apartment buildings.

———

*** It only looks like theater. The stakes are real enough.

Observed from a certain perspective—as geopolitical theater, that is—the situation in Georgia looks pretty much the way Abe Greenwald describes it [e.a.]:

If [Georgia deliberately staged a provocation of Russia during the Olympics in order to call attention to itself] it is certainly the most cynical bit of statecraft employed by any present-day democracy. (In any event, there is no doubt that Saakashvili is looking for our sympathy now.) But did it work?

Georgia has our attention (or is sharing it with John Edwards). [Since that's true, it means the stagecraft worked. *** ed.] McCain, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush have issued assorted statements on the matter, French president Nicolas Sarkozy has dashed through the motions of European diplomacy, and President Bush has sent Condoleezza Rice dashing after him. Additionally, American Navy vessels are heading toward the Black Sea–to deliver aid. But a week after Russian tanks and jets set Georgia ablaze–and three days since the announcement of a ceasefire–Russian troops patrol Georgian cities with virtual impunity. No nation has defended Georgia and no Georgian ally has even given her the means to defend herself. Moreover, no agreements have been drafted explicitly securing Georgia’s territorial integrity. In this way, Saakashvili got the West dead wrong. [Oops! Like I said: the stagecraft worked. But from this description of reality, it looks like Georgia lost. Maybe stagecraft isn't all it's cracked up to be! --ed.]

Greenwald also draws an interesting conclusion from these still-ongoing events (and pseudo-events—i.e., the photo ops and meme-planting opportunities that constitute a propaganda war) [e.a.]:

Victim status doesn’t get you what it used to. There was a time when an American friend or a strategically critical state under attack got more than color commentary from the White House and a boat full of Ace bandages. When Russia rolled into Afghanistan in 1979 we didn’t give Afghans our sympathy; we gave them guns–big ones. When Saddam tried to annex Kuwait, we went in and sent him back home. Today a real invasion will get a symbolic vote, a high profile condemnation, and a Facebook group.

Hmmm. Can this possibly be true? Do world events impinge on us Americans only as the cartoon representations that both the blogosphere and the MSM traffic in? Does the violence in Georgia and South Ossetia touch us, or do we view this merely (if we view it at all) as a media event—fodder for blogospheric and watercooler chat: “news,” information, entertainment, amusement, gossip, conspiracy theories?

One commenter presents an alternate view:

This article is based on a huge, unproven assumption, that Georgia was trying to get victim status. Russia wants control of that pipeline going into Western Europe. Why? So Putin can control Europe. I think this analysis is amazingly simple minded (leftist).

Who started what will come out as the facts become known. The why is clear. Russia wants control of Western Europe’s oil and gas supplies and invaded Georgia to secure that control.

I certainly agree that most of the “analysis” on offer—whether from the MSM or from the blogosphere—is ignorant, no matter how well intended. Because of the propaganda- and cyber-war aspects of this conflict (not to mention the fact that it’s not yet over), we simply don’t know much of anything.

Instead, we are left to speculate about our own reactions, and to consider the reactions of others around the world. Greenwald also writes:

But it’s the old America that friends and states with democratic aspirations remember, and they continue in vain to appeal to us. I am currently in Azerbaijan and if I’ve been asked once I’ve been asked a hundred times: “What does America think about the Armenian occupation of our country?” Whether it’s a reporter or a graduate student doing the asking, their desperation is a little heartbreaking and I answer honestly: “You’re [sic] conflict isn’t even a blip on our radar.”

Yep, that’s pretty much true. That conflict isn’t on our radar … except as it relates to our domestic politics.

update: so sophisticated and nuanced is David Remnick in his views that I can’t quite figure out which side he comes down on, but he does make an important point:

Putin is not Hitler or Stalin; he is not even Leonid Brezhnev. He is what he is, and that is bad enough.

What Putin is, of course, is a cold-blooded killer, albeit a smoother one than what we’re used to from Russian autocrats:

[H]e is the autocrat who calls on the widow of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

So what? He is still a cold-blooded killer. And his ascendant Russia is a scary kinda place, worth keeping an eye on.

———-

*** The stagecraft worked in that it caught and grabbed our attention. But stagecraft is a tactic.

If you’re using a tactic, you are—admit it or not—at war. It’s best to admit it, and then to study it so that you get good at it (as, for example, Barack Obama did by studying Saul Alinsky and putting the methods he learned into practice.)

The dramatic rescue of Ingrid Betancourt also exposed an interesting mind-set in Europe, as The Economist notes:

How dare the Colombians rescue Ingrid Betancourt?

THAT, more or less seems to be the reaction from slabs of the European press, notably in the Francophone world, to the astonishing military operation that rescued Ms Betancourt and 14 other hostages from the FARC guerrillas in Colombia.

The grudging reactions come from left and right in France, where successive governments had pushed the Colombian government hard to accept demands made by the FARC, and negotiate the release of Ms Betancourt, a politician from a small ecological party with dual Colombian and French nationality. French leaders, including Nicolas Sarkozy, had also put much faith in the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, as a negotiator with the FARC. Instead, in the end, it was the Colombian army under the tough right-wing president, Álvaro Uribe, that rescued the hostages in a daring undercover operation.

Not that this didn’t stop Sarkozy from claiming as much credit as possible, to the deep annoyance of many, as The Times (London) noted last week:

The French Senate gave an emotional standing ovation to the 46-year-old politician and magazines and television were still saturated by the image of what Paris Match called “the new global icon”.

But dissent surrounding Ms Betancourt, who was freed last week from the Colombian jungle after six years in captivity, has now spread from the internet to mainstream opinion, with some saying that France has overdosed on “Ingridmania”.

“It is irritating,” said Dominique Dhombres, a television columnist for Le Monde newspaper. “It’s a beautiful story about a beautiful woman, but she has been turned into the Madonna of modern times . . . Everything else has been forgotten and it suits Sarkozy fine,” he told The Times.

Perhaps M. Sarkozy is trying to compete (in an oh so gentlemanly way) with Mme. Sarkozy, who, incredibly, is peddling her music at the moment:

Here’s your chance to listen to the new musical oeuvre from Carla Bruni. In a marketing build-up worthy of Madonna or a Stones release, Mrs Sarkozy’s record company has put Comme si de rien n’était (As if nothing happened) on the internet for free listening.

This must be the first time that the presidency of a leading nation has promoted a pop album. The Elysée Palace has been working closely with Naive records to maximise the launch of breathy love songs by the first lady. The repercussions have even gone as far as Japan, which was miffed by Bruni’s decision not to join the other spouses at this week’s G8 summit. She decided to stay in Paris to advance the release date. Today, she was on France-Inter radio doing the first of a series of promotional interviews which culminate with a long live session on TF1 television news — the most watched show — on Friday evening.

Listen: I’ve been telling you that infotainment rules. (In France, they even have a new word for it: “pipolisation***.”)This is what I mean! It’s Marketing Above All^TM

The sultry first lady of France is peddling love songs written for her husband!

Think about it!

—————
*** pipolisation is probably akin to Bush Derangement Syndrome, but, as with all things French, it is more clearly defined (specifically, as a mental illnes):

“Serge Hefez, a practicing psychiatrist, has identified a new mental illness among the French: obsessive Sarkosis, an unhealthy fascination with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

As I listened to my patients during consultations, many of them mentioned Sarkozy by name,” Dr. Hefez said. “He’s penetrated some of their deepest fantasies. I noticed all this passion in people speaking of him, and I thought there is something particular about this man — he’s like a reflection of us in the mirror.”

The French project themselves onto Mr. Sarkozy, too, Dr. Hefez said.

“He’s the incarnation of the postmodern man, obsessed with himself, turned toward pleasure, autonomous and narcissistic,” the psychiatrist said. “And he exhibits his joys and sorrows, all his private life, his sentimental doubts and pleasures. He represents the individualism of the society to the extreme, that it’s the individual who counts, not the society.”…

Television covers Mr. Sarkozy’s every gesture, in both homage and mockery, itself an effort to create distance from the phenomenon that it perpetuates and magnifies. It is all part of what the French have come to call the “pipolisation” of political life, a term, presumably derived from People magazine, that refers to the idolatry of celebrities and soap opera. Dr. Hefez considers the trend an example of “democracy turning against itself, as Tocqueville foresaw.”…

In the wake of the flawlessly executed rescue operation that liberated fifteen hostages (including three Americans and the cause celebre Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt), who had been held in the jungle, in chains around their necks, by the Colombian terrorist group FARC for more than five years, Charles Krauthammer describes the hard problems facing the world that have only hard-power solutions:

Everyone knows it will take the hardest of hard power to remove the oppressors in Zimbabwe, Burma, Sudan and other godforsaken places where the bad guys have the guns and use them. Indeed, as the Zimbabwean opposition leader suggested (before quickly retracting) from his hideout in the Dutch embassy — Europe specializes in providing haven for those fleeing the evil that Europe does nothing about — the only solution is foreign intervention.

And who’s going to intervene? The only country that could is the country that in the last two decades led coalitions that liberated Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Having sacrificed much blood and treasure in its latest endeavor — the liberation of 25 million Iraqis from the most barbarous tyranny of all, and its replacement with what is beginning to emerge as the Arab world’s first democracy — and having earned near-universal condemnation for its pains, America has absolutely no appetite for such missions.

And so the innocent languish, as did Betancourt, until some local power, inexplicably under the sway of the Bush notion of hard power, gets it done — often with the support of the American military. “Behind the rescue in a jungle clearing stood years of clandestine American work,” explained The Washington Post. “It included the deployment of elite U.S. Special Forces … a vast intelligence-gathering operation … and training programs for Colombian troops.”

Upon her liberation, Betancourt offered profuse thanks to God and the Virgin Mary, to her supporters and the media, to France and Colombia and just about everybody else. As of this writing, none to the United States.

The United States will get no thanks. Nor should the United States expect any thanks in this political and geopolitical climate.

Nevertheless, the United States should continue to do this kind of job.

Anybody disagree?

Unsurprisingly (at least to me), the Irish have declined to sit under the EU umbrella, and have decided to remain a sovereign nation. The Guardian “reports” in a fit of pique:

The long campaign to forge a new dispensation for the European Union descended into panic and uncertainty yesterday when Ireland turned its back on its 26 EU partners and voted down the Lisbon Treaty.

EU leaders in Brussels and governments across the union, particularly Germany and France, were stunned by the Irish verdict, which amounted to a huge vote of no confidence in the way the EU is run.

The referendum in Ireland was the sole popular vote in the EU on the grand plan to give Europe a sitting president and foreign minister, and reconfigure the way the EU is governed. The result left the project severely wounded, perhaps fatally.

Almost the entire article is given over to how screwed the EU is as a result of this. Only when we reach the last paragraph are readers told why the Irish voted down the notion of being dominated by a “European” parliament [e.a.]:

The no vote was boosted by concerns over sovereignty, possible tax harmonisation, neutrality, and fears that the treaty could erode Ireland’s abortion ban, all issues that analysts say are fatuous.

So let me get this straight:

• sovereignty [the fundamental right of every nation-state  --ed.];
• tax “harmonisation” [calling Mr. Orwell!  --ed.];
• geopolitical neutrality [regardless of the national security interests of your people, and of stakes?  --ed.];
• culture-specific social laws [even if I personally am an enthusiastic supporter of overturning abortion bans---and I most certainly am---I would never think to impose my social-engineering beliefs on those of another culture; it is proving hard enough to maintain them in our own (familiar) culture  ---ed.].

These concerns are fatuous? In what universe?

As you will have noticed, I’m neither running for public office nor interested in a position in the punditocracy or the commentariat. If I were, I’m sure I’d have to think about the appropriate time and place to exercise vigorous public self-criticism and self-flagellation and renounce and reject and denounce my agreement in 2003 with the decision of our Asshole in Chief to topple Saddam Hussein.

In fact, though, I do not renounce my decision. Considering what we knew and feared at the time—and considering the way that Saddam reacted to the pressure placed on him (evasively)—it seemed like the right decision. I have no reason now to second-guess what was my best judgment at the time (which is one reason I support Hillary Clinton; she thinks the same was I do about t his—and she has a lot more to lose and still she has stuck to her guns ***).

Yesterday, on 60 Minutes, one of the architects of the war, Doug Feith, spoke to Steve Croft:

Kroft begins by asking, “Why did the United States invade Iraq?” Feith responds, “The President decided that the threats from the Saddam Hussein regime were so great that if we had left him in power, we would be fighting him down the road, at a time and place of his choosing.”

If Feith doesn’t look or sound much like a warrior that’s because he isn’t; he’s an intellectual, a hawkish, neo-conservative defense policy wonk, who occupied one of the top rungs on the Pentagon ladder, playing a key role in shaping the military’s response to 9/11 and the decision to go to war with Saddam Hussein.

Asked why was the decision made to go after Saddam Hussein after 9/11, when even then, the United States government realized Saddam didn’t have anything to do with the attacks, Feith answers, “What we did after 9/11 was look broadly at the international terrorist network from which the next attack on the United States might come. And we did not focus narrowly only on the people who were specifically responsible for 9/11. Our main goal was preventing the next attack.”

Kroft follows up, asking, “So you’re saying you didn’t think it was that important to go after the people who were responsible for it — more important to go after people who weren’t responsible for it?”

“No,” Feith explains, “I think it was important to go after the people who were responsible for 9/11. But it was also important to disrupt the international terrorist networks and prevent whatever plans there were for follow-on attacks.”

Kroft observes that using those standards, the U.S. could have invaded North Korea or Syria or Iran. Feith concedes the point, but counters that Iraq was a special case, in large part, because of Saddam’s record.

Saddam had already attacked Kuwait, Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia; that he had defied the United Nations, evaded economic sanctions, used weapons of mass destruction on his own people and had the know-how, if not the wherewithal, to build a nuclear weapon. Feith believes the U.S. invasion was justifiable as an act of self-defense. In his book, he uses the term “anticipatory self-defense.”

“In an era where WMDs can put countries in a position to do an enormous amount of harm,” he tells Kroft, “the old of idea of having to wait until you actually see the country mobilizing for war doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Whatever you think of Feith’s rationale (and of my support for it!), there’s no question that the next president will encounter the same geopolitical problems and the same terrible uncertainties. That person will get calls at 3 a.m. and at 5 a.m. and at 10 p.m. and at midnight.

Today, Henry Kissinger posits an even scarier scenario—a world situation without precedent:

The long-predicted national debate about national security policy has yet to occur. Essentially tactical issues have overwhelmed the most important challenge a new administration will confront: how to distill a new international order from three simultaneous revolutions occurring around the globe: (a) the transformation of the traditional state system of Europe; (b) the radical Islamist challenge to historic notions of sovereignty; and (c) the drift of the center of gravity of international affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Indian Oceans. …

No previous generation has had to deal with different revolutions occurring simultaneously in separate parts of the world. The quest for a single, all-inclusive remedy is chimerical. In a world in which the sole superpower is a proponent of the prerogatives of the traditional nation-state, where Europe is stuck in halfway status, where the Middle East does not fit the nation-state model and faces a religiously motivated revolution, and where the nations of South and East Asia still practice the balance of power, what is the nature of the international order that can accommodate these different perspectives? What should be the role of Russia, which is affirming a notion of sovereignty comparable to America’s and a strategic concept of the balance of power similar to Asia’s? Are existing international organizations adequate for this purpose? What goals can America realistically set for itself and the world community? Is the internal transformation of major countries an attainable goal? What objectives must be sought in concert, and what are the extreme circumstances that would justify unilateral action?

This is the kind of debate we need, not focus-group-driven slogans designed to grab headlines.

———–
*** Michael Tomasky, writing today in the Guardian, says that if and when Hillary finally loses, it will be because of her “refusal to renounce her support of the war,” for which he lays blame at the feet of Mark Penn.

Whatever. The only people who give a shit about which side you were on in the run-up to Iraq are partisan Democrats vying for jobs in Washington and/or the media elite, and of course the whippersnappers, for whom this is the Great Moral Question of the Day.

No one else cares.

Dave Marash beats around the bush a lot, but eventually he explains, more or less, why he left Al Jazeera English [e.a.]:

Just as Al Jazeera Arabic can rightfully claim to be a first-class news organization with high professional standards, but one that authentically represents the point of view and interests of the region defined by the Arabic language, less defined by but certainly involved in the Islamic faith, and most particularly the gulf region, I think that Al Jazeera English is a very competent, very professional news organization that does a particularly great job south of the equator, but tends to report almost everything from the point of view of either the Arabic-speaking world or at the very least what you might call the post-colonial world. And since I’m not authentically those things, I don’t belong there.

Huh?

Marash notes a shift in perspective, dating to the flexing of the Saudi Arabian muscle during the time of the Mecca Agreement (last year), when, Marash suggests, there was a shift in the balance of power in the region [e.a.]:

BC: What changed?

DM: I think that the world changed about nine, ten months ago. And I think the single event in that change was the visit to the gulf by Vice President Cheney, where he went to line up the allied ducks in a row behind the possibility of action against Iran. And instead of getting acquiescence, the United States got defiance, and instead ducks in a row the ducks basically went off on their own and the first sort of major breakthrough on that was the Mecca agreement, which defied the American foreign policy by letting Hamas into the tent of the governance of the Palestinian territories. This enraged the State Department and was one crystal clear sign that the Mideast region was now off campus, was off on its own. And it is around this time, and I think not coincidentally, that you see the state of Qatar and the royal family of Qatar starting to make up their feud with the Saudis, and you start to see on both Al Jazeera Arabic and English a very sort of first-personish, “my Haj” stories that were boosterish of the Haj and of Saudi Arabia. And you start to see stories of analysis in The New York Times where regional people are noting that Al Jazeera seems to be changing its editorial stance toward Saudi Arabia. I’m suggesting that around that time, a decision was made at the highest levels of [Al Jazeera] that simply following the American political leadership and the American political ideal of global, universalist values carried out in an absolutely pure, multipolar, First Amendment global conversation, was no longer the safest or smartest course, and that it was time, in fact, to get right with the region. And I think part of getting right with the region was slightly changing the editorial ambition of Al Jazeera English, and I think it has subsequently become a more narrowly focused, more univocal channel than was originally conceived.

Marash also explains what drew him to the concept in the first place:

[T]he thing that I loved best about the original concept was the sort of fugue of points of view and opinions, because I think that’s what desperately needed in the world. We need to know, for example, in America, how angry the rest of the world is at Americans. Our own news media tend to shelter us from this very unpleasant news. So if you watched and every piece seemed tendentious and pissed you off, and I don’t think that would be the case, but even if worst case the channel turned shrill and shallow, you would still want to watch them on the principle that millions—tens of millions—of people watch them every day and you need to know what’s going on in their brains.

Know thine enemy. Marash got closer than most.

Pakistan’s opposition leader Benazir Bhutto addresses her election rally in Lodhra, near Multan, Pakistan, Tuesday.

Two days ago:

Bhutto Vows to Fight Extremists

LODHRAN, Pakistan, Dec 25–Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Tuesday accused President Pervez Musharraf of failing to stop the spread of militants and promised to crack down on the groups if she wins next months parliamentary election.

… “The areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan became a haven for extremists, and the extremism and terrorism is flowing down into other areas,” she said.

If elected, her party would clear the extremists from Pakistan, she claimed.

Jules Crittenden asks all the right questions:

Jihadis, ISI, or some combination?

Does this unite them against jihadis or just further fragment Pakistan to the jihadis benefit?

Does the election even go ahead, or is it straight to martial law? Short-term or long-term suspension, and in the event of an election, who rises?

If they buy the “dog Musharraf dog” line, or if it’s true, how bloody will the demonstrations be, and will they lead to a coup? If there’s a coup, who and what ends up on top?

No good answers to any of that yet.

Terrible, and terrifyingly destabilizing.

The Flack passes along the news (from Newsweek) that al Qaeda’s main spokesman, Zawahiri, feeling burned by the media, is trying another tack—he’s now making himself available for long-distance interviews by journalists, via email questions submitted to al Qaeda’s media arm, As-Sahaab (The Cloud).

Newsweek rightly labels this a publicity tactic, and it’s a shrewd one, because it garners al Qaeda a different kind of global media attention from what they’re used to [e.a.]:

This is the first time Al Qaeda has made a formal call to journalists, although it will not be the first time the radical Islamic group has granted interviews to Western media. Counterterrorism experts believe that the posting is genuine and that it is part of Al Qaeda’s evolving tactics to use the Web as part of its propaganda arsenal. “This is a continuation of the efforts by Al Qaeda’s senior leadership to push themselves forward in the public viewpoint,” says Maj. Reid Sawyer, editor of “Terrorism and Counterterrorism” and a lecturer of terrorism studies at Columbia University

Zawahiri hopes to put himself on equal footing with world leaders by doing an “Al Qaeda Press Avail,” as the Flack calls it. As a PR pro, he’s calling bullshit on it [e.a.].

By feigning media access, the organization cultivates an image of civilized engagement among the unsuspecting masses, all the while perpetrating or planning unspeakable actions.

“Jarret Brachman, a former CIA analyst now in the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point describes this as playing to the YouTube generation. ‘It completely fits Al Qaeda’s communications strategy over the past two years, which is how to get people more invested in the movement.’”

And Zawahiri is not alone in gaming the court of public opinion by playing the “freedom of the press” card. A free media today seems more of a propaganda tool and less of a requirement to qualify as a modern society.

The Flack is certainly right to note that all kinds of international players are now gaming the court of public opinion. I wouldn’t characterize our free media as a propaganda tool, though, but rather as a rich propaganda outlet or channel-–one that the world’s most mischievous and/or bad actors (dictators and/or theocratic totalitarians) are very savvy about exploiting via PRopaganda^TM (PR-fueled “dramatic narratives”) because they are so savvy about actual propaganda in their own autocracies, dictatorships, and/or totalitarian theocracies.

Influencing public opinion is a black art in totalitarian societies and dictatorships. It is often subtle. (Even autocrats and theocrats find that it is much more effective to persuade the people to come around to their point of view than it is to have to police them and punish them all the time. Understandably, people get impatient and upset with that kind of violence and will try to revolt. So if you want to suppress them and keep them pacified, you have to be less obvious about your control over them, more refined, more convincing. Dictatorships that want to last need the silent consent of their people, so they spend an inordinate amount of time building theories and revisionist histories and other narratives that “justify” their existence. These narratives are constantly “streamed” through their societies—via textbooks, classrooms, party conference papers, academia, and of course the media, which is controlled by the state.)

Of course the world’s bad guys are going to have superlative media skills.

The Flack writes:

Think Putin, Ahmadinejad, Assad and all the other despots who’ve gutted their nation’s free media, without any real retribution.

Well, not quite. These men haven’t gutted their nations’ free media. What free media? Iran has no free media. Syria has no free media. Russia has only a nominally free media since Putin took power.

The absence of freedom (of the press, among other things) in these countries—and the (dictatorial, theocratic, autocratic, or totalitarian) mode of power their leaders hold over their people—is exactly the problem with them.

It’s important that American media organizations and media-related professionals understand how easy it is for them to be used as propaganda outlets by the world’s bad actors.

But if execs like CNN’s Jonathan Klein, for example, are any indication, our media conglomerates are so uninterested in the content of what they air (as long as it brings in plenty of dough) that they notoriously turn a blind eye to the beyond-the-news-cycle impact of glorifying, say, Vladimir Putin:

Platon for TIME

Below the radar, something is happening on the Israel-Palestine front post-Annapolis. Earlier this week in Europe, Tony Blair succeeded in getting more than $7 billion in (promised) aid for the Palestinians, which will be channeled–if it comes through, and that’s always a big if—through Abbas’s Fatah.

I’m guessing that Hamas wants in. Duh.

Big cheese Ismail Haniyeh, the deposed Palestinian prime minister, is reportedly looking for a truce with Israel, the NYT reports.

A scan of Google News, which lists 1,495 news articles related to this story, indicates the response to Hamas’s offer of a truce:

Peres: Haniyeh trying to divert attention from Hamas crimes
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Dec 19, 2007
COM STAFF AND ELI LESHEM Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s announcement that his group is willing to hold cease-fire negotiations with Israel is a …
Hamas leader’s truce offer dismissed Sydney Morning Herald
Ministers split on ‘hudna’ offer Jerusalem Post
Hamas leader says he’s open to talks CNN
International Herald Tribune - The Associated Press
all 1,495 news articles »

Peres: There’s ‘no need’ for negotiations with Haniyeh
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Dec 19, 2007

I wonder if these headlines from just a few days ago have anything to do with Israel’s coolness toward Hamas’s offer:

The Associated Press

Hamas Supporters Rally to Show Strength The Associated Press - Dec 15, 2007 Leader Ismail Haniyeh vowed in speeches on the 20th anniversary of the movement’s founding that Hamas will not compromise its hardline views despite growing …

Hamas warns of new intifada
Gulf Daily News, Bahrain - Dec 15, 2007
Hamas leader in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh said the movement was growing more popular because of its stance against the US and Israel. “Today is the day of Jihad, …

Hamas: We’ll never recognize Israel
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Dec 16, 2007
Haniyeh waves a Palestinian flag in front of Hamas supporters during the rally in Gaza City. Photo: AP Tens of thousands of Palestinians participated in a …

 

On 20th anniversary, Hamas vows never to recognize Israel

Ha’aretz, Israel - Dec 15, 2007
In a fiery speech, Haniyeh cited the achievements of Hamas and “the resistance” throughout the region. He cited Israel’s withdrawal from south Lebanon in …

Then there was this a few weeks ago:

Haniyeh: Annapolis conference is stillborn
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Nov 22, 2007
By AP Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Thursday called the upcoming US-hosted conference on the Middle East “stillborn,” and predicted it would not bring any …

Haniyeh: Annapolis deal won’t be binding
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Nov 26, 2007
Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh: “The people believe that this conference is fruitless.” “Any settlement that does not include the return of the …

There’s more about the Israelis vs. Gaza at Contentions, here and here.

Robert Baer claims that Bush walked away from his Iran mission because everything is going his way everywhere else and Iran is just too hard:

The real story behind this NIE is that the Bush Administration has finally concluded Iran is a bridge too far. With Iranian-backed Shi’a groups behaving themselves, things are looking up in Iraq. In Lebanon, the anti-Syrian coalition and pro-Syrian coalition, which includes Iran’s surrogate Hizballah, reportedly have settled on a compromise candidate, the army commander General Michel Suleiman. Bombing Iran now would upset the fragile balance in these two countries. Not to mention that Hizballah has threatened to shell Israel if we as much as touch a hair on Iran’s head.

Then there are the Gulf Arabs. For the last year and a half, ever since the Bush Administration started to hint that it might hit Iran, they have been sending emissaries to Tehran to assure the Iranians they’re not going to help the United States. But in private, the Gulf Arabs have been reminding Washington that Iran is a rabid dog: Don’t even think about kicking it, the Arabs tell us. If you have to do something, shoot it dead. Which is something the United States can’t do.

Right! American can’t do it so we should just forget about it.

We should at least be happy with the good news: Armageddon is postponed.

Norman Podhoretz, while revising his paranoid suspicions from yesterday (which were pointed out not by his son, as I incorrectedly suggested yesterday, but rather by Gabriel Schoenfeld; and let me extend my apologies to my readers for the error), still sees Armageddon:

even if the President is still intent on keeping the military option alive, and even if the fine print in the new NIE gives him room to do so, it will now be infinitely more difficult to persuade the Iranian leadership that military force remains a possibility.

I have for some time now been predicting that before leaving office George W. Bush will order air strikes against the Iranian nuclear facilities. I have made that prediction with what the NIE would describe as “moderate confidence,” but the best I can do now is offer it with “low-to-no confidence.” For despite the President’s evident resolve to keep the military option on the table, the effect of the new NIE here at home will almost certainly make it politically impossible for him to take military action even if it becomes clearer than it already is that nothing else can prevent the Iranians from getting the bomb, or even if further investigation should reveal that the intelligence behind the NIE is faulty. Already, indeed, serious questions have been raised about the reliability of this intelligence.

In any event, there is one set of judgments I have made to which I am sticking: that neither diplomacy nor sanctions nor an internal insurrection can prevent the Iranian mullahs from getting the bomb, and that if they should get the bomb, deterrence would not work to keep them from using it.

I think Podhoretz has the right instinct about Iran—that it is unstoppable and udeterrable. (The pseudonymous Spengler at Asia Times has also been saying this for years.) I just don’t know if he’s got the right prescription for dealing with Iran’s attitude.

However, even Matthew Yglesias, who is allergic to unilateral military action, says that there’s still plenty of reason to be worried about Iran.

So I guess the Dems can’t quite take their eye off that ball yet.

One very popular Republic sure has been caught flat-footed , though.

Kuhn: I don’t know to what extent you have been briefed or been able to take a look at the NIE report that came out yesterday …

Huckabee: I’m sorry?

Kuhn: The NIE report, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. Have you been briefed or been able to take a look at it —

Huckabee: No.

Kuhn: Have you heard of the finding?

Huckabee: No.

Pathetic.

Courtesy of our friends at the New York Post,

Islamist fanaticism is having a Bad PR Day.

And that’s a good thing.

update: I note that Eric Trager is rooting around to find out what the sudden turn of events running up to Annapolis means.***

As I write, at

9:45 AM ET, November 26, 2007

this story is nowhere to be found on Memeorandum, and it’s buried on p. A 11 of the dead-tree NYT, but it’s could signal a turn of fortune in the Middle East, too.

It looks like Condi Rice has managed to land not only Saudi Arabia but now also Syria for the heretofore mirage-like conference at Annapolis:

The Annapolis meeting, a major initiative pressed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will begin negotiations on a peace treaty to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while simultaneously committing Israel and the Palestinians to carry out long-postponed obligations contained in the first stage of the 2003 peace plan known as the road map.

The presence of major Arab countries, now including Syria, is meant to provide Arab sanction and support for the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to make the concessions required for peace.

The NYT’s Steven Erlanger doesn’t allude to the implications, but this is huge. This means that Syria is allowing itself to be “peeled away” from Iran, leaving Hamas minus one sponsor.

The Israeli spokesman clarify what’s at stake here:

Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, said, “The Saudi and Syrian presence is very important and is an American success.” While the Syrians are not sending the foreign minister — a diplomatic distinction that has meaning — Ms. Eisin said that from Israel’s point of view, the rank of the representative was much less important than the Syrian presence.

“Hamas is appalled, which is why we have reason to be satisfied,” Ms. Eisin said.

About the results of the meeting, Ms. Eisin said, “We’re hopeful but not optimistic.”

Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, noted that Syria had agreed to cancel a planned “anti-Annapolis summit” meeting and attend instead. “If the idea of the meeting is Arab-Israeli dialogue, Syria matters,” he said. “It would be even more positive if this were an indication of a change in Syria’s orientation” — away from Iran and toward the Saudi- and Egyptian-led Sunni Arab consensus.

There is a steaming pile of bullshit about Rice’s supremely important role in this accompanying article in the NYT,  but even if you can believe only a tenth of what’s in the piece, there’s no question but that this is a coup.

I hate to sound optimistic, but I begin to see on the horizon a loose but fully international alliance that includes Muslims, Christians, and Jews—and it so happens that it’s a disruption of the so-called “Shia arc.”

At the very least, it seems as if a page is being turned.

————-
*** Trager writes:

Over the past few weeks, consensus has continually held that little should be expected from the Annapolis conference, which opens tomorrow. Op-ed after op-ed and poll after poll have dictated that Israeli and Palestinian leaders are too weak, if not too far apart in their positions, for any meaningful progress towards peace to take place.

Yet it’s hard to reconcile the notion that Annapolis is little more than an impressive photo op with the serious diplomatic capital that Arab states have invested in it. Over the weekend, Saudi Arabia announced that it would send Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, marking the first time that the Saudis are participating in talks with Israelis present. Representatives of Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Sudan, Tunisia, and Yemen will also participate. Indeed, the Annapolis conference has achieved such profound legitimacy that Syria—believing that it risked regional isolation by not attending—announced that it would send its deputy foreign minister.

What’s this the L.A. Times is reporting? cooperation between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq?

Despite persistent sectarian tensions in the Iraqi government, war-weary Sunnis and Shiites are joining hands at the local level to protect their communities from militants on both sides, U.S. military officials say.

In the last two months, a U.S.-backed policing movement called Concerned Citizens, launched last year in Sunni-dominated Anbar province under the banner of the Awakening movement, has spread rapidly into the mixed Iraqi heartland.

Of the nearly 70,000 Iraqi men in the Awakening movement, started by Sunni Muslim sheiks who turned their followers against Al Qaeda in Iraq, there are now more in Baghdad and its environs than anywhere else, and a growing number of those are Shiite Muslims.

Commanders in the field think they have tapped into a genuine public expression of reconciliation that has outpaced the elected government’s progress on mending the sectarian rift.

Of course if you’ve been reading Engram’s blog, you know that there was never, strictly speaking, a civil war in Iraq—it was way more complicated, and way less complicated—than that.

Not having been subjected to his rule—and thus to the notorious spinning that came out of his office—I have the luxury of considering Tony Blair’s comments and arguments on their merits. He hasn’t moved an inch on Iraq:

In my view if it wasn’t clear that the whole nature of the way Saddam was dealing with this [WMD] issue had changed I was in favour of military action. And, I am afraid, in one sense it is worse than people think in so far as my position is concerned. I believed in it. I believed in it then, I believe in it now.” But did he feel remorse about a war and an occupation that left 4,000 Americans dead, 150 British dead, 75,000 Iraqis dead by the most conservative estimate and more than 3 million refugees?

“There’d be something wrong with me if I didn’t, or an acute sense of responsibility which I . . . will have for the rest of my life,” Blair said. “But I can’t say what I don’t believe about this; whatever it began as, it is part of this wider struggle today and . . . if there’s anything I regret. . . it is . . . not having laid out for people in a clearer way what I saw as the profound nature of this struggle and the fact that it was going to go on for a generation.”

And for once his conclusion was, very uncharacteristically, gloomy. “The enemy that we are fighting I am afraid has learnt . . . that our stomach for this fight is limited and I believe they think they can wait us out. Our determination has got to match theirs and our will has got to be stronger than theirs and at the moment I think it is probably not.”

Read the whole thing.

According to the eccentric New York Sun, Britain and France are duking it out over who’s going to be America’s bestest friend:

Not to be outdone by President Sarkozy’s amorous overture to President Bush in Washington, Prime Minister Brown of Britain has used the first major foreign policy speech of his premiership to insist that Britain is America’s closest ally.

After decades of Anglo-French rivalry, in which France has vehemently deplored the global influence America and Britain have attained and what every president of France since Charles de Gaulle has described as “Anglo-Saxon culture,” Mr. Sarkozy claimed during his visit to Washington last week that France, not Britain, is now America’s best friend and partner.

Mr. Brown, who has been portrayed on both sides of the Atlantic as having distanced himself from America to avoid the charge against his predecessor, Tony Blair, that he was Mr. Bush’s “poodle,” fought back last night, claiming in a speech at a banquet thrown by the lord mayor of the city of London that the French president’s bid to usurp Britain’s traditional place alongside America would not succeed.

They love us—they really, really love us!

French president Nicolas Sarkozy was in town this week. Did you hear? No? Me neither.

However, I did hear a few weeks ago that Sarkozy had walked out on a 60 Minutes interview with Leslie Stahl in the first few minutes of taping. At the HuffPo, they thought his rudeness was stunning.

Watch French President Sarkozy walk out of a 60 Minutes interview he called “stupid” and a “big mistake.”

Steve Boriss has an altogether different view:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy walked-out of an interview with 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl when she asked about his troubled marriage. His last words were “If I had to say something about Cécilia, I would certainly not do so here.” Well, that certainly seems reasonable. So the question that must be asked is not why Sarkozy would act the way he did, but why a seasoned American reporter like CBS’ Stahl felt she could act the way she did, by asking such a personal, inappropriate, and disrespectful question.

I dunno. While I was in Europe earlier this fall, I watched the BBC when I had access to satellite TV. Its anchors ask very rude questions, and they are pitbulls—which I’ve complained about enough in the past. But I was reminded that this is also useful and necessary behavior when those same anchors are confronting apologists for, say, genocide in Darfur—and the anchors on the BBC World Service routinely do confront representatives of the world’s “bad actors” on television.

Their “evenhanded” approach to Israel (which is expressed in constant strong disapproval) buys them permission to criticize “other” bad actors, too, see? That kind of relativism is how we achieve “balance” on the scales of political correctness, which, in the early 21st century, seems to have replaced the political principle of human dignity as the thing we civilized Westerners are most committed to. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Rudeness goes with the territory of journalism, not to mention the territory of American democracy and French republicanism. No one forced Sarkozy to seek power and fame and fortune, or a place on the world stage. And he is not made of glass.

Of course the 60 Minutes incident upset the applecart for him, PR-wise. It was obviously meant to be the beginning of a rollout, leading up to Sarkozy’s visit with his buddy Bush and his speech to Congress. Instead, he managed to alienate the MSM so badly that TV coverage was scant. For those of you who blinked and missed it, here’s CNN’s coverage.

By contrast, here’s how the UK’s Guardian narrated the event:

Sarkozy gets rapturous welcome as he mends relations with US

The long years of animosity between the US and France formally ended just after 11am yesterday when the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, entered the House of Representatives to applause and yelps of approval. Congressmen gave him a standing ovation and queued to shake his hand.

What accounted for the “rapturous” welcome? Sarkozy’s rousing image of America the Good:

On behalf of my generation, which did not experience war but knows how much it owes to their courage and their sacrifice; on behalf of our children, who must never forget; to all the veterans who are here today and, notably the seven I had the honor to decorate yesterday evening, one of whom, Senator Inouye, belongs to your Congress, I want to express the deep, sincere gratitude of the French people. I want to tell you that whenever an American soldier falls somewhere in the world, I think of what the American army did for France. I think of them and I am sad, as one is sad to lose a member of one’s family.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The men and women of my generation remember the Marshall Plan that allowed their fathers to rebuild a devastated Europe. They remember the Cold War, during which America again stood as the bulwark of the Free World against the threat of new tyranny.

I remember the Berlin crisis and Kennedy who unhesitatingly risked engaging the United States in the most destructive of wars so that Europe could preserve the freedom for which the American people had already sacrificed so much. No one has the right to forget. Forgetting, for a person of my generation, would be tantamount to self-denial.

But my generation did not love America only because she had defended freedom. We also loved her because for us, she embodied what was most audacious about the human adventure; for us, she embodied the spirit of conquest. We loved America because for us, America was a new frontier that was continuously pushed back—a constantly renewed challenge to the inventiveness of the human spirit.

My generation shared all the American dreams. Our imaginations were fueled by the winning of the West and Hollywood. By Elvis Presley, Duke Ellington, Hemingway. By John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth. And by Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, fulfilling mankind’s oldest dream.

What was so extraordinary for us was that through her literature, her cinema and her music, America always seemed to emerge from adversity even greater and stronger; that instead of causing America to doubt herself, such ordeals only strengthened her belief in her values.

What makes America strong is the strength of this ideal that is shared by all Americans and by all those who love her because they love freedom.

America’s strength is not only a material strength, it is first and foremost a spiritual and moral strength. No one expressed this better than a black pastor who asked just one thing of America: that she be true to the ideal in whose name he—the grandson of a slave—felt so deeply American. His name was Martin Luther King. He made America a universal role model.

The world still remembers his words—words of love, dignity and justice. America heard those words and America changed. And the men and women who had doubted America because they no longer recognized her began loving her again.

Fundamentally, what are those who love America asking of her, if not to remain forever true to her founding values? [e.a.]

Indeed. Politicians should take note of Sarkozy’s tone and vision. The one who can adapt it for today’s audience will capture the White House. That’s my bold prediction.

Also, Hollywood, which is still busy presenting an evil and redemption-free image of America to movie audiences—and paying the price—should pay attention.

Moralizing anti-Israel “realist” Stephen Walt is on the road trying to pre-sell his upcoming screed to Jews:

Walt — who penned the ["Israel Lobby"] paper with co-author John Mearsheimer — had come to hawk the book-length version of their findings to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, in September.

“Both I and my co-author are pro-Israel,” [uh-huh --ed.] he said on Tuesday evening, in front of the audience gathered at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. “Our book does not question Israel’s right to exist [how decent of you  --ed.], and we make clear that lobbying for Israel is as American as apple pie.”

Really? Here’s what I wrote about that in March 2006, when I first mentioned these two poisonous flame-throwers, whose conspiratorially copy-styled “Israel Lobby”-with-a-capital-L tells you all you need to know about their not-so-subtle insinuations:

Let others give this the fisking