I thought I’d try to continue to bring you tidbits of real information while the rest of the Western world tunes in to The Perils of Palin, I was delighted to come across a BBC interview with General David Petraeus, who had a lot to say about Iraq [e.a.]:

Leaving his post, [Petraeus] said there were “many storm clouds on the horizon which could develop into real problems”.
Overall he summed up the situation as “still hard but hopeful”, saying that progress in Iraq was “a bit more durable” but that the situation there remained fragile.
He said he did not know that he would ever use the word “victory”: “This is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade… it’s not war with a simple slogan.”
He said al-Qaeda’s efforts to portray its jihad in Iraq as going well were “disingenuous”. It was, in fact “going poorly”, he said.
Of his strategy of establishing joint security stations in key locations, Gen Petraeus said that “you can’t secure the people if you don’t live with them”.
He said it was now fair to say that the Iraqis were standing up as US forces stood down. The confidence and capability of Iraqi forces had increased substantially, he said.

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.)

I know nothing about Georgia, but TigerHawk’s observations about Stateside political reactions to events there struck me as a very sensible reading [e.a.]:

The Politico fairly objectively examines how John McCain and Barack Obama responded to Russia’s invasion of South Ossetia. Both statements were clearly crafted to achieve a political objective, while at the same time preserving each candidate’s flexibility in the event that he is elected and actually has the burden of command. Money quote:

Obama’s statement put him in line with the White House, the European Union, NATO, and a series of European powers, while McCain’s initial statement—which he delivered in Iowa and ran on a blog on his Web site under the title “McCain Statement on Russian Invasion of Georgia,”—put him more closely in line with the moral clarity and American exceptionalism projected by President Bush’s first term.

That is certainly one way of looking at it.

Another is that Barack Obama took the same position as a European Union that is very worried that Russia will cut off its supplies of natural gas and the most politically weak president since Jimmy Carter’s hostage year of 1980. …

George W. Bush has given up out of political weaknesses and organizational exhaustion, Barack Obama is giving up out of transnational romanticism, and John McCain is signaling the world that the United States under his leadership will be a reliable ally.

Wretchard has a lot more at the Belmont Club.

CNN is reporting more than 2000 killed in South Ossetia, according to the Russian ambassador. Reuters reports that the Russian commander has been wounded.

Spencer Ackerman attended the hearings of “war criminal” Doug Feith today and left deeply unsatisfied:

About an hour ago, I followed Doug Feith on his way out of the Rayburn Building as he tried to flag a cab down on Independence Avenue to escape the women of Code Pink. “Torturer!” they yelled. “War Criminal!” Feith had a small retinue of Capitol Police officers to protect him from the five or so ladies — one Hill cop instructed a Pinker that she couldn’t unfurl an anti-Feith banner in a Rayburn “vestibule” even though she was clearly outside — and they shrugged off suggestions that they should arrest Feith for crimes against the Constitution. Feith, for his part, bit his lip and tried to ignore the yelling. But the cab took forever to come. “War criminal!” “Torturer!” No response. …

Jesus, I thought. Isn’t that enough, ladies? The cab came. Feith got in and sped away. Code Pink dispersed. But I kept thinking about it. Good Lord. To be called a war criminal everywhere you go, for ever and –

Then I came to my senses. Yes, the yelling was obnoxious. But Feith shares responsibility for the most disastrous U.S. war in 35 years; for abandoning the fate of a different U.S. war far more central to U.S. national security; and for creating and implementing an architecture of torture. Over 4700 Americans are dead as the result of policies Feith either partially designed or, in any case, fully endorsed. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans are dead as the result of policies Feith either partially designed or, in any case, fully endorsed. al-Qaeda is materially stronger, as an organization and as a broader movement, as the result of policies Feith either partially designed or, in any case, fully endorsed. And the worst he’ll ever have to endure is five women in pink screaming at him the obvious truth about what he is? It doesn’t even out.

That, plus his book got no play in the media.

What were you thinking Feith should endure, Spencer? (Man up, man. You’re much, much smarter than this.)

Iran just test-fired some long-range missiles in response to warnings from the G8, reports the IHT:

The missile tests drew a sharp response Wednesday from the United States.

Gordon Johndroe, the deputy White House press secretary, said in a statement at the Group of 8 summit meeting in Japan that Iran’s development of ballistic missiles was a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

“The Iranian regime only furthers the isolation of the Iranian people from the international community when it engages in this sort of activity,” Johndroe said.

He urged Iran to “refrain from further missile tests if they truly seek to gain the trust of the world. The Iranians should stop the development of ballistic missiles which could be used as a delivery vehicle for a potential nuclear weapon immediately.”

The missile tests were reported after the Group of 8 leaders urged Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. Moreover, Iran displayed its military capability just a day after the United States and the Czech Republic signed an accord to allow the Pentagon to deploy part of its controversial ballistic missile shield, which Washington maintains is designed in part to protect against Iranian missiles.

Here’s a picture of their range, from the BBC:

David Carr, writing in the New York Times, notes the dearth of media coverage of Iraq:

Even as we celebrate generations of American soldiers past, the women and men who are making that sacrifice today in Iraq and Afghanistan receive less attention every day. There’s plenty of blame to go around: battle fatigue at home, failing media resolve and a government intent on controlling information from the battlefield.

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has slipped to 3 percent of all American print and broadcast news as of last week, falling from 25 percent as recently as last September.

One “expert” offers the usual bland and unrevealing “explanations”:

“Ironically, the success of the surge and a reduction in violence has led to a reduction in coverage,” said Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. “There is evidence that people have made up their minds about this war, and other stories — like the economy and the election — have come along and sucked up all the oxygen.”

There is nothing ironic about the reduction in violence leading to a reduction in coverage. It is totally to be expected. The viewing audience, both for TV and for the movies, has proved to be allergic to the subject of Iraq, as Carr himself notes [e.a.]:

[W]hen Katie Couric, CBS’s embattled anchor, went to Iraq to report the story, she and her network were rewarded with their lowest ratings in over 20 years. Hollywood producers who had hoped there would be a public interest in cinematic perspectives on this war have been similarly punished.

Despite those callous Americans who are “punishing” well-intentioned media types who insist on bringing Iraq to their attention, some noble stalwarts continue to tell the story of Iraq [e.a.]:

Earlier this spring, Alissa J. Rubin of The New York Times wrote about flying in a C-130 in Iraq, accompanied by soldiers, including one in a coffin at the back of the plane.

“I wondered what exactly he had died for. And although I did not know him, I felt melancholy as we flew onward, accompanied now by ghosts and memories of loss,” she wrote.

I wonder if it has ever occurred to Carr that this kind of coverage—or, rather, the mind-set that frames this kind of Iraq coverage—is one of the reasons for the audience’s lack of interest in media coverage of Iraq. It’s poisonous, and worse than no coverage at all.

When a reporter writes that she wonders what exactly a just-dead soldier died for, that isn’t a display of compassion, as Carr suggests. Because while Ms. Rubin is scoring “compassion” points with her own cohort, she is pouring salt into the wound of that soldier’s grieving family.

But never mind. Chances are, his family won’t be reading the New York Times. Chances are, they’ll be at a commemoration like the one I attended today:

—in a district where the supposedly bitter folks cling to their guns and their religion, a district that voted for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama by about 75% to 25%—no one expressed the least doubt about what our war dead have died for, and continue to die for: their country, if it came down to that.

There were no movie cameras recording the event I attended in rural America. There were no luminaries, or representatives from the government. Soldiers, sailors, local guys from the VFW, a pastor, the high school marching band, and maybe 100 local residents gathered to remember their neighbors, and their neighbors’ kids.

It was very moving. I wish David Carr had been there. Perhaps he would have understood that Ms. Rubin’s kind of reporting is worse than no reporting at all.

On November 2, 2007, the New York Times, once known as the “newspaper of record,” published a story about Barack Obama’s intended foreign policy. The story was based on a lengthy interview with the candidate. It was headlined as follows:

Obama Pledges ‘Aggressive’ Iran Diplomacy

Here are the relevant excerpts, which detail in depth the kinds of things Obama said he was willing to offer Iran:

[H]e asserted that Iran’s support for militant groups in Iraq reflected its anxiety over the Bush administration’s policies in the region, including talk of a possible American military strike on Iranian nuclear installations.

Making clear that he planned to talk to Iran without preconditions, Mr. Obama emphasized further that “changes in behavior” by Iran could possibly be rewarded with membership in the World Trade Organization, other economic benefits and security guarantees.

“We are willing to talk about certain assurances in the context of them showing some good faith,” he said in the interview at his campaign headquarters here. “I think it is important for us to send a signal that we are not hellbent on regime change, just for the sake of regime change, but expect changes in behavior. And there are both carrots and there are sticks available to them for those changes in behavior.”

The reporters sought clarification about the “sticks.”

Mr. Obama declined to say if he would consider military action if Iran did not abandon its presumed nuclear weapons program or if he would settle for a strategy of deterring and containing a nuclear-armed Iran.

“My decision making, with respect to military options versus diplomatic options, a containment strategy versus a strike strategy, is going to be informed by how is that going to impact not just Iran,” he said, “but how is that going to impact the stability of the region and how’s that going to impact our long-term security interests.”

To underscore the point, Obama’s then-top foreign policy adviser, Samantha Power, gave an interview to the New Statesman in which she confirmed Obama’s views about aggressive diplomacy:

The way to do it, according to Power, is “to be in the room with the bad guys but not to check your principles in at the door”. Obama would engage with Iran’s President Ahmadinejad. He would sit down with North Korea and Syria. Is there anyone he wouldn’t talk to? “Not among elected heads of state. He won’t talk to Hamas, but he would talk to Abbas.”

This morning, Jennifer Rubin described the Obama campaign’s efforts to blot out Obama’s words—and intentions—: to rewrite history and to cover up the truth with lies, as Bob Dylan once wrote (except that he was castigating the media, whereas I am castigating the slippery and increasingly untrustworthy and unreliable Barack Obama).

Susan Rice, Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisor, is at it again. She is on a mission to save Obama from himself, insisting that he never promised to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad–and that he never said without preconditions.

The bizarre additional explanation this time is that it was some other unnamed leader of Iran he may have had in mind for a get together. Two problems :1) it is a lie and 2) huh? As to the first, there is ample documentation–from Obama’s own mouth–that it was Ahmadinejad he had in mind and that he would meet without preconditions (in the first year of his presidency, no less). The media has been reporting as much for a year and it was a prime source of disagreement with Hillary Clinton. If his campaign persists in this line of defense, he risks not just losing the foreign policy debate but his reputation for practicing the New Politics. (In other words he will, in the eyes of the public, not simply be a novice in foreign policy, but a liar.)

One commenter’s remarks are worth reprinting (almost) in full:

Its interseting that the Obama campaign is spinning out of control this early. Did we only have to scratch the surface? I thought it would take more.

James Rubin’s original claim that McCain was “smearing” Obama didn’t seem to take hold. It was about the 5th time I have seen a reporter or professor use the term “smear” to protect Barack Obama from analysis.

Obama doesn’t know if he should appeal to his liberal base, or start running in the general election. As he is getting his act together, these writers have invoked “smear” to anyone who would dare challenge his flip-flops. [Jamie] Rubin, of course, wants to ignore very simple facts. He used a partial quote!

Now, as Jennifer Rubin points out, Susan Rice claims Obama has been on the bandwagon the whole time. Except for the inconvenient truth called documentation. This is really getting strange. I wonder how the Obama campaign is going use the words “snippet” and “smear” to get out this mess. Well, it so happens that Ahmadinejad is another strange uncle that Obama can’t disown or never talk to.

Another commenter, considering today’s political climate and the fact that the media is now an open player in presidential (and even world) politics (which I wrote about here), offers a word of warning:

Obama has really backed himself into a corner here. Watching him try to get out of it is thoroughly enjoyable. When it’s all said and done, however, I don’t think he’s quite going to be able to do it.

But I admit he just might. I know the MSM isn’t as powerful as it used to be, but it is still formidable, and every drop of leverage and influence it can muster will be mobilized on Obama’s behalf for the next 24 weeks. That is a great advantage to have, and we who oppose Obama’s candidacy should not be naive about the MSM’s potential to make the difference for him.

Another commenter makes a funny:

The question of who speaks for the Obama campaign - supporters in the media, advisors like Susan Rice, endorsers like Gary Hart, or the candidate himself - is even more difficult to figure out than who speaks for Iran.

When all else fails, seek laughter. It helps.

Oh yes, and compare and contrast this kerfuffle with what is happening in the real world, where, the Jerusalem Post reports (and the White House strenuously denies), President Bush is considering attacking Iran’s nuclear installations before the end of his presidency.

See lots of interesting back-and-forth about the advisability (or inadvisability) of confronting Iran here and here.

This, in particular, is worth contemplating:

Nuclear capability will give Iran the kind of umbrella of impunity that will allow it to double its mischief in the region without fear of retribution. Do you like the way Hezbollah and Hamas behave in their respective domains? You will love it when Iran has nukes! Do you find it hard to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict now? Try when Iran’s nukes enable its proxies to up the ante. Are you worried about Shia unrest in Kuwait and Bahrain? Prepare for more trouble when Iran’s nuclear bomb casts a shadow on those countries. Do you think oil prices are too high? Save for a cold winter, when Iran’s speedboats swarm the Gulf and harass supertankers. Do you really think anyone will risk a nuclear showdown for any of the above?

Consider this as well: Iran might lend its nukes and ballistic missiles to friends like Venezuela, to get San Francisco within range. It would not be overstretching–Hugo Chavez will surely pick up the bill to pay the costs of the exercise. Unbelievable? Why?

The left, committed pacifists, and increasingly unself-confident and paralyzed liberals are embroiled in a massive failure of the imagination. Good people find it hard to imagine that real evil exists in the world. This kind of thinking needs to end. One way or the other, it will end.

I am a born fighter, and I want to nip it in the bud before it happens. Where do you stand?

(via the Georgetown Book Shop)

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.

Does America face an existential threat? Andrew Sullivan introduces the question by quoting Daniel Larison’s Pshaw response to Jed Babbin:

Rhetoric that speaks of an “existential threat” is simply not credible, and anyone who deploys such an over-the-top argument will rapidly lose credibility with everyone outside an intense core of true believers.

But what Babbin actually said was much more nuanced—and is also at least partially true:

The enemy is a two-headed monster. First, it is an ideology: radical Islam. Islam is a religion, radical Islam is an ideology. And like Communism and Nazism before it, it must be defeated. The second head is comprised of the nations that sponsor terrorism.

This brings the inevitable conclusion: Regardless of what happens to Iraq’s nascent democracy, a war must be fought to defeat the terrorist ideology, and to compel the nations that sponsor terrorism against us and our allies to cease doing so. Unless and until that occurs, the war goes on.

Babbin makes it sound like a bloody kinetic war that will go on forever. That’s not very smart. Thus, Larisan is correct when he warns that Babbin’s argument—which stresses a true threat to the West from radical political Islam backed by indiscriminate bloodthirsty carnage—even if the argument is true, will discredit you with most people outside a tiny circle of “true believers.”

But that doesn’t mean that the people inside that tiny circle are wrong—or that the vast majority of people who profess to think about such things and instead parrot one another inside a vast echo chamber—i.e., the biens-pensants—are right. What it means is that Babbin isn’t very adept at making the argument.

There are many ways to fight the battle, and we will need every weapon we possess, but there’s no doubt that there is a challenge—and a threat—to America and the West to freedom and democracy from radical political Islam.

Whether radical political Islam backed by blood-curdling intimidation tactics, aka “terrorism,” constitutes an “existential” threat is a semantic argument and, as such, a distraction.

The reality is that the freedoms we take for granted here in the West are under persistent attack from political Islam, in ways large and small. The other reality is that there seems to be only a small fraction of people who care enough to keep talking about it in public.

Here’s a group that is serious about getting the message out. It includes the Danish newspaper editor Flemming Rose, who first published the Mohammed cartoons.

No, I’m not talking about Barack Obama’s pretty, meaningless, but inspiring words (the exact same unoriginal words used by Deval Patrick, offered up to him and to Obama by their mutual media strategist, David Axelrod, as I mentioned here yesterday).

I’m talking about the poison emanating from the mouth Ahmadinejad:

Also Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent verbal attacks against Israel were unacceptable. …

The meeting [with Israel's UN ambassador Dan Gillerman] followed yet another verbal attack against Israel by Ahmadinejad .. .

“The world powers established this filthy bacteria, the Zionist regime, which is lashing out at the nations in the region like a wild beast,” the Iranian president told supporters at a rally in southern Iran.

In the hour-long conversation with Ban, Gillerman said it is “outrageous for a member state to use racial, Nazi like statements against another member state.”

He said that such expressions warranted the condemnation of Iran by the international community.

Ban, who agreed to meet on very short notice, said such statements are “unacceptable and unforgivable,” according to Gillerman. Ban vowed to deal with the matter soon but did not explain how he intended to do so.

Iran wants Israel to take the threat of military force off the table. Good luck with that!

But, sadly, Neil Young has

lost all hope that music can change the world …

He made the remarks while presenting a documentary about a 2006 antiwar tour that he took with Crosby and Stills and Nash, reports the New York Times.

Wait. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had a reunion tour in 2006? Oops! Missed it!

Anway,

“I know that the time when music could change the world is past,” Mr. Young said. “I really doubt that a single song can make a difference. It is a reality.”

Indeed it is. Sad, that.

Mr. Young made no distinction between the Vietnam War, during which Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young earned a reputation for political activism, and the war in Iraq, which their tour condemned with songs like “Let’s Impeach the President.”

Hmmm, was it music that ended the Vietnam War? No difference between Vietnam and Iraqa? Eh, never mind. I still love ya, Neil.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world.

We might as well get used to it, because I think we’re going to be hearing stuff like this for a long time:

Egyptian FM threatens to break Palestinians’ legs if they breach border again

He blamed Israel for the humanitarian crisis and hardship that Gaza is experiencing, and for “responding to the Palestinian (Hamas) missiles with collective punishment.”

He also criticized Hamas for launching those missile attacks, describing the confrontation as a “laughable caricature” resulting in self-inflicted wounds.

Ridicule is not what Hamas wanted to hear:

Sami Abu Zuhri … called [the remarks] “inappropriate” and said he did not believe they reflected the official Egyptian stance.

We’ll see, I guess.

The Egyptian Sandmonkey is back to blogging, I see. He’s got a message for his government:

PLEASE

SECURE

THE 

BORDERS, 

BITCHES 

..before anymore bad shit happens!

That is all!

More from the Sandmonkey here and here.

From the Israeli perspective, things aren’t much better, of course. Ynet reports that the IDF has found evidence of Hamas having adopted Hezbollah-style tactics for using its rocket lauchers in Gaza to attack Israel indiscriminately.

Off in cloud cuckoo-land is Tony Blair, complimenting the Palestinian Authority for starting to get its shit together.

I guess he believes desperately in Fatah’s Abbas. Hamas, however, has a different message:

Hamas rejects Abbas proposal to broker cease-fire with Israel

And that’s because, at Iran’s urging, Hamas is now declaring all out war on Israel:

Israel can expect a wave of suicide bombings inside its 1967 borders, not just the West Bank, Hamas’ representative in Iran said Wednesday. The announcement came as Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip launched a barrage of Qassam rockets into Israel. …

[Israeli] Defense officials told Haaretz they view the announcement as a significant change because it comes from the organization’s representative to Tehran - which has in recent weeks been pressuring Hamas to escalate hostilities against Israel.

None of this is good.

Nobody can say that Hamas isn’t determined. But this doesn’t look like an organization seeking justice for displaced people, does it?

The Brits are apparently in a bugging frenzy:

SCOTLAND YARD’S antiterrorist squad secretly bugged a high-profile Labour Muslim MP during private meetings with one of his constituents.

Sadiq Khan, now a government whip, was recorded by an electronic listening device hidden in a table during visits to the constituent in prison.

The bugging of MPs is a breach of a government edict that has barred law agencies from eavesdropping on politicians since the bugging scandal of Harold Wilson’s government.

What’s a little law when you’re trying to crack down on “anti-Islamic activity”?

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.

If you read closely, you’ll find buried in today’s New York Times the suggestion that things are indeed better in Iraq:

When sectarian violence soared in 2006, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fled to Syria and Jordan, or moved to safer areas in Iraq. But now that the American troop reinforcement plan and a new counterinsurgency strategy have helped reverse a rising tide of car bombings and sectarian killings, there are signs that Iraqis are starting to return.

Perhaps you missed the significance of this sentence because the word “surge” was missing?

Well, never mind, because “the surge is working,” says Congressman Jack “Let’s Cut and Run” Murtha. And, The Politico reports with glee, this could cause problems for the Dems.

Are you surprised that the absence of bad news coming out of Iraq is being read as good news by the public? You shouldn’t be, if you read my post just the other day. And you definitely wouldn’t be surprised about the better news coming out if Iraq if you’d been reading Engram’s blog for the past couple of months.

The public, as usual, is way ahead of our distinguished elected representatives.

So now the Dems are scrambling to position themselves as they realize that once again they’ve been caught by surprise.

The apparent shift in voter intensity about Iraq, also captured in some polls, shows how dramatically the political context of the war debate has changed from last summer.

Democrats believed then that mounting public pressure would soon force Republicans to take flight from President Bush, allowing Congress to impose a more rapid end to the war on an unwilling administration. It has not happened yet, and if anything it shows Democrats are facing a stiffer challenge at year’s end than they had at the beginning to frame the public debate on their terms. 

One Republican put it a little bit differently:

“Democrats made a strategic calculation last January that has proven to be dead wrong,” said Kevin Smith, a spokesman for Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). “Their message of failure and retreat makes little sense in light of our troops’ remarkable progress, and the American people are responding to their successes.”

Well, yeah. Sorta.

What’s actually happening is that the changes for the better on the ground in Iraq are making way for a narrative of success. Which is of course something different from success.

But in the war against Islamist fanaticism, where the most important battles are fought in the media, a narrative of success for America matters. A lot.

Agence France-Press reports that there’s big, big trouble in France:

Monday night’s violence left several buildings damaged by fire in Villiers, just north of Paris, including a tax office, a supermarket, a library and a nursery school, as well as 63 vehicles. Six people were arrested during the troubles, which lasted about six hours, police said.

A report from Le Monde newspaper described boys as young as 13 taking orders from their elders to torch buildings and forming battle ranks against the police, vowing to “do in” a “pig” — a police officer.

Authorities said guns were used against police, whose unions described the violence as worse than the rioting that hit hundreds of French cities in November 2005 — also sparked by the deaths of two youths.

According to police figures, 82 officers were injured Monday night, four of them seriously after being hit by buckshot from hunting weapons.

The Synergie police union said the youths were using “urban guerrilla” tactics.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Iraq war was negotiated into some kind of closure and the Sunni Arabs of the Middle East stood up to the mean mullahocracy of Iran … and then Europe became prey to urban guerrilla warfare?

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.

[updated to add a link, and to fix garbled syntax]

By now it’s hard to deny that the situation in Iraq seems improved, which is why the New York Times fronts a story about the Democratic candidates’ change of “tone.”

Change of tone? They’re all going to be spinning like tops soon enough.

But that doesn’t mean that the usual suspects aren’t trying to downplay the importance of the decline in violence, the reports of inter-ethnic and inter-confessional cooperation, the stories about Iraqis moving back home, Osama bin Laden’s declaration of defeat for al Qaeda in Iraq (and/or Mesopotamia), the Mahdi Army’s cooperation with the U.S., the Anbar Awakening, and all the other successes and lucky breaks for the counterinsurgency being conducted under the leadership of General David Petraeus (aka the New Jesus).

None of this matters, of course. It’s only political benchmarks that should concern us—that’s all that has ever mattered, according to Ilan Goldenberg at DemocracyArsenal:

I have to agree with Kevin Drum. There really hasn’t been a major shift in tones. The Democrats and critics of the war have always made political progress the number one issue. The argument all summer over the benchmarks ultimately revolved around political progress. There has been no shift in tone. …

[D]espite the drop in violence, all the polls show that opposition to the war is at an all time high at almost 70%.

A commenter responds:

Both the Bush administration and the war’s critics have a paper trail to support the idea that they have always thought the core issue was political progress in Iraq. Both the Bush administration and the war’s critics also know that for the American public the core issue is the level of American casualties, as well as the overall level of violence, in Iraq. If American casualties are down and stay down, and the overall level of violence is down and stays down, the intensity of public feeling about the war should be expected to decline, even if large majorities continue to feel the war was a bad idea. [e.a.]

This sounds right to me. The public responds to what it sees or hears on the news. Public feeling about the war will start to decline also in response to the drop in “news” coverage of the war.

Out of sight, out of mind.

And Iraq is out of sight on the MSM because there aren’t any dramatic pictures to show—simple as that. No carnage and blood and gore and fire and ash and wailing Iraqis to put into heavy rotation 24/7. Fairly or not—even if Iraq is a huge mess for a long time, people will start to get the idea that things must be better—because it isn’t on their TV screens.

So the mewlings of the partisan Democrats who are now heavily invested in bad news emanating from Iraq—and, as the charming Nancy Pelosi might say, branded as “defeatocrats” to boot. And no one’s in the—will not find much of a market for their wares, I’m afraid.

For what it’s worth, I think Hillary is obviously the best positioned to take advantage of a turn of fortune for America’s adventure in Iraq.

————-

*** Nancy Pelosi to Matt Bai, quoted in the New York Times Magazine:

”We branded them with privatization, and they can’t sell that brand anywhere,” Pelosi bragged when I spoke with her in May.

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.

This, from Arianna Huffington, is only slightly less embarrassing than Obama’s cringe-inducing announcement that he’s going to get tough sometime soon:

The president took a preemptive shot across the bow on Monday, playing the funding-equals-troop-support card, and placing the ball squarely in Congress’ court. Democrats can’t afford to sit back on their heels and wait until next year to take on the president (or worse yet, have a replay of the 2007 supplemental funding fight and cave to the president’s phony “before the holidays” demands).

They need to begin reframing the funding fight now — hammering home the message that it’s the president’s obstinacy that is jeopardizing the well-being of our troops and the safety of our country.

This is not the time for caution and playing it safe. This is the time to force the president’s hand.

It’s rare to find Arianna behind the curve, but that’s where she is. Hasn’t she heard? Iraq is pacified, no longer the featured story (or even in the headlines), and for all intents and purposes, according to Reason’s Brian Doherty, the war is over:

Just as public perception of whether the war was worth it didn’t shift toward “no” until May 2004—the first month U.S. troop deaths broke 100 in a month—a continuing decline in Iraq violence seems likely to calm down American dudgeon over a war that, after all, in a draftless world, most of us are affected by only as tragic TV entertainment. It could well be the standard accepted opinion a year from now that Iraq, while perhaps not always managed best every step of the way, has turned out well enough in the end, or so far.

Yes—time marches on.

Iraq is yesterday’s war. Today and tomorrow are about Iran, and “World War III,” as Caroline Glick writes (alarmingly):

It goes without saying that if and when a decision is made in Jerusalem or Washington to carry out an attack against Iran’s nuclear installations the public will only learn of the decision in retrospect. All the same, over the last few weeks, it has been impossible to miss the fact that the Iranian nuclear program has become the subject of intense and ever increasing international scrutiny. This naturally gives rise to the impression that something is afoot.

Indeed.

Something’s gonna have to be done about Tina Fey, who was profiled in the NYT about her surprising hit show 30 Rock. She admitted that America’s Mayor is her weakness:

In writing for Liz, Ms. Fey said, she drew somewhat on her own experiences in television. In one episode Liz is called a vulgar name by a subordinate, an incident that Ms. Fey said was based on something that happened to her.

In another episode, in which Liz reflects on things about herself that others wouldn’t know, she says, “There is an 80 percent chance” that she will “tell all my friends I’m voting for Barack Obama, but I will secretly vote for John McCain.”

Ms. Fey, who wrote that line, said it was semi-autobiographical, a way of “admitting I have a lot of liberal feelings, but I also live in New York, and I want to feel safe, and I secretly kind of want Giuliani.”

As I was saying just recently …

The Democrats in general, and MoveOn specifically, seem not to realize that in order to deliver politically correct votes, you need to do a lot more than kneecap people into spouting politically correct attitudes in the public square. You can lead a horse to water, etc.

My point about Rudy Giuliani was that he knows a lot about the kind of public political correctness that elects a “fascist” to a second term in a huge victory in decidedly not-”fascist” New York City.

Anybody paying attention?
Nah, I didn’t think so.

Der Spiegel features recently discovered photos of Auschwitz employees enjoying their off-hours:

Twelve SS auxiliaries sit happily on a fence railing eating blueberries given to them by an SS officer. The photo was taken in 1944 in Solahütte, a recreation home located near Auschwitz for the SS team in charge of running the concentration camp. …

The photos were taken between May and December 1944, and they show the officers and guards relaxing and enjoying themselves — as countless people were being murdered and cremated at the nearby death camp.

Spiegel reports that Germans were “shocked” to see these photographs. Why? Did they not understand that their forebears’ continued to live their lives through the war years—falling in love, getting married, having children, having affairs, working, doing whatever it is that people do— while their nation (and in many cases these same forebears) created unimaginable suffering for The Other?

Oops!

Joe Klein:

This is uninformed [but politically correct; see here  --ed.] speculation, BUT…I wouldn’t be surprised if the Israeli strike on Syria two weeks ago had nothing at all to do with nuclear material. [e.a.]

The Times (London):

Israelis seized nuclear material in Syrian raid

Israeli commandos seized nuclear material of North Korean origin during a daring raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israel bombed it this month, according to informed sources in Washington and Jerusalem.

The attack was launched with American approval on September 6 after Washington was shown evidence the material was nuclear related, the well-placed sources say.

The plot thickens.

Niall Ferguson, in a fascinating review of Ian Kershaw’s Ten Decisions That Changed the World in 1940-1941, faults Kershaw somewhat for “hindsight bias” and for offering readers only “an apparently inexorable and often teleological narrative.”

It’s an interesting argument, a quibble between historians about whose method of scholarship works best. If you’re a history nerd, you’ll want to read the whole thing.

What struck me, though, was this passage, because it speaks so much to our own times [e.a.]:

Churchill did ultimately prevail over more pusillanimous Tories in the crisis of May 1940, when Halifax and Chamberlain were urging that no diplomatic stone be left unturned to end the war. But that he should have emerged strengthened from the debacle at Dunkirk did not appear likely at the time. What Kershaw fails to do is to spell out what people in Britain thought peace with Germany would have meant at that juncture. The reason Britain fought on was not just because Churchill decided to. It was because he was articulating a collective popular aversion to the alternative of French-style subjugation to the Third Reich. That is a reminder of something that the erstwhile practitioner of societal history appears to have forgotten. It was not just the decisions of dictators, emperors, presidents and prime ministers that determined the character of the Second World War. It was the decisions of hundreds of millions of people: decisions to acquiesce in conscription rather than defy the authorities; decisions to kill not just enemy soldiers but civilians, whether in death camps or from the air; decisions to keep fighting rather than to surrender or flee (and vice versa).

An interesting image: Hitler’s willing executioners versus Churchill’s willing conscripts, to whom he had effectively articulated a collective popular aversion to subjugation by the Third Reich.

A wartime leader has to persuade, cajole, beg, plead, and explain again and again and again. He or she must lead. In this as in so many things, Bush is a complete and utter failure. A disaster.

I first posted about BBC correspondent Alan Johnston in mid-March, when he was kidnapped in the streets of Gaza. I had expected his abduction to catch the attention of the MSM, since he was one of their own. Instead, except for many, prolonged protests held by Palestinian and British journalists, there has been a troubling silence. (You can follow all my posts about Johnston here. You can read a few posts about kidnapping as the terrorist tactic du jour here, here, and here.)
Until today. The group holding Johnston released a propaganda video:

He is wearing a red sweatshirt and reading out what appears to be Palestinian propaganda denouncing Israel and the Middle East policies of Britain and America. He appears calm and without any visible injuries.

His voice, familiar to many BBC listeners and viewers from his 16-year career with the corporation, is measured. He says he is “in Gaza”. …

During a three-minute speech, Mr Johnston accuses Britain and the US of causing suffering in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, and for “occupying Muslim lands against the will of the people in those places”.

He starts to give a message to his family but is cut off. Subtitles then appear on the video, saying: “The BBC refused to take this message to his family”.

Naturally, the family is relieved to have this sign of life from Johnston, although no one can say when the video was shot. But this isn’t anything like relief for the family—it’s extended agony:

Norman Kember, 76, a British peace campaigner held hostage for more than four months in Baghdad in 2005, said the video was designed to cause “maximum stress” to Mr Johnston’s family and the Government.

He drew comparisons between the orange suit he was given to wear during videos and Mr Johnston’s red sweatshirt. He said: “I think the idea was to show the parallel to Guantanamo Bay and put the maximum stress on the Government and relatives.”

The British government is well aware of that:

The video was condemned by the Foreign Office for the distress it caused the family and Tony Blair used a press conference at the end of his African tour to call for the kidnappers to release Mr Johnston, who passed his 45th birthday in captivity.

Also calling for the release of Johnston is Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian “prime minister” of Chaos and In-fighting.

“We are renewing our demands of the men, the abductors of the British journalist, to protect him and not to harm his life and to immediately release the journalist,” Haniyeh said after Friday prayers in Gaza City.

“This is an action that does not serve Islam, does not serve the Palestinian cause, and does not serve those who have abducted him.”

Johnston’s kidnappers would surely disagree. It serves them just fine as a recruitment tool for the wretched, dispirited youth of Gaza, who have been failed by two successive generations of their “leaders” (and failed, too, by two successive generations of Israelis, who have been unable to collectively rise above the massive hatred and violence engendered by their reclaiming the Jews’ ancestral homeland). These young men were once ripe for the picking by Hamas. Now that Hamas has also failed them, they’re ripe for the picking of by Qaeda.

You can read all about it here in the NYT. Read it and weep.

This recent wave of abductions of Westerners in the region began with the June 2006 kidnapping by Palestinians of the Israel soldier Gilad Shalit. (At the time, I held Hamas responsible for an act of war; now we know it was this shady Army of Islam group that was responsible, and that they’re not under Hamas’s, or Fatah’s, control—which is part of the problem in Gaza) It was followed a month later by the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah—they’re not Palestinians, they’re Lebanese, and this happened in a different region: in the north of Israel. Second Lebanon War followed in August.

And now I feel like I belong on the Daily Show. Still with me? Good.

Anyway: The same Palestinian group (the al Qaeda-inspired Army of Islam) that snatched the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit last June snatched the BBC correspondent Alan Johnston this March.

In between, there was the abduction and release (after a forced conversion to Islam) of two Fox journalists in August 2006.

I think you get the picture: there’s chaos in Gaza—so much chaos that Hamas begins to look moderate compared to the al Qaeda-inspired nihilist thugs doing these freelance operations, from kidnapping to setting fire to Internet cafes. And the prospect of anyone on the Palestinian side following a “road map” to peace with the Israelis is brought into relief as the deeply cynical and totally ludicrous political theater it is. What negotiated agreements could hold up under chaos, and when no one group among the Palestinians has the monopoly on the use of force?

Also: remember that there have been no Western journalists in Gaza since Johnston was abducted. The Palestinian journalists operating there must be under tremendous pressure and risk in this deeply uncertain political climate. Freedom of the press is the last thing that al Qaeda-type thinking tolerates. These journalists are very brave people, but we cannot know the extent of what is happening.

Keep your eye on this situation. It’s very dangerous indeed.

And spare a thought not just for Alan Johnston but also for