Total number of comments: 77 (since 2009-08-01 15:58:20)
Scott McConnell
Scott McConnell is a founding editor of the American Conservative. The former editorial page editor of The New York Post, he has written for Fortune, The New Criterion, National Review, Commentary and many other publications.
"Well, you might say they have disappeared from the page of time."
Nice phrasing.
Yes, out-competed, I know. But a complicated collective psychology story in the how and why. There's an entire preppie culture based on mocking those who strive too hard, as if the pilgrims/pioneers were not the most driven people on the planet.
Terrific piece. I spent many years at Columbia as an undergrad and grad student, and am pretty shocked that a man like Schizer could rise so high in its administration. It doesn't seem like Columbia, which at those levels is liberal establishment in tone. Someone who was neoconnish--and of course there would be several--would tend to be restrained and a bit wry about, as befits a someone knowing they represented a minority view.
The more I think about it, I think opp research for a Gillenbrand campaign against Senor is the most fun job ever.
Could be quite a race, a real test of the New York electorate. It would tempt Kirsten to really play the anti-neocon, anti-Iraq war card --which would help her in the city, plus she's from upstate. So she should win. I have no idea how good or not good a candidate she is.
I saw Nader speak at lunch yesterday-- (at a conference designed to get left and right antiwar people together). Something I never knew. . . he is FUNNY, sometimes sarcastic, doing little imitations of wild eyed people at CPAC, making fun of liberals fear of criticizing Obama, changing accents, etc. Who knew?
I sat at his lunch table too, and he talked about Gaza a bit, though not in his speech.
I'm going to be a pedant here and disagree. Yes, there was demonization during World War I, but post peace conference there was wide spread feeling that the Germans had gotten a bad deal. And there was little worry about German immigrants once the war was over-- more about East Europeans, and southern Europeans. I'd even say there was a significant amount of teutonophilia in american culture in the twenties and thirties, which may have led to some underestimation of the Hitler problem.
PG, The Germans weren't demonized as monsters until, well you know when. . .
But certainly not in 1881, or 1931 for that matter.
A terrific piece of writing. The Kafka quote is profound, and it's true that (as some British aristo philo-semite Joseph Epstein recently quoted said) Jews push the horizons forward. We could all deal with these pushes with some blend of welcome and discomfort but not with being pushed into endless wars for the sake of a racist value system (and it was in great part Jews who educated us against the racist values Israel now embodies).
One difference is that racist Israelis have their state's power behind them, while one spur for white anger in Ark and Alabama was that the federal government had taken the blacks' side and the whites knew it.
One reason this is important is that Huck has a non-trivial chance of being the next president. He's smarter than Sarah Palin, who may implode by then. He outperformed everyone's expectations as a campaigner last time round. And Obama may well be much less popular than today (yet strong enough to beat Hillary in the primaries.) Romney I suspect is far more sane, but also the lesser politician.
I just want to draw attention to this very interesting comment. I doubt the school system couldn't have paid for such a trip without a grant from some outside agency. It's pretty amazing, because America and American Jews weren't nearly as in to Israel then as now.
Kelley is also a beautiful young mom, just thought I'd add.
Maybe, Mooser. But I could make "realist" arguments in favor of a slow withdrawal from Iraq, ditto Afghan, and I really do have a high opinion of Bob Gates. He could reasonably decide that he didn't want to pick a fight with the military--the Iraq war wasn't their idea, after all. I actually thought the Cairo speech was the real Obama--not the second coming, but the beginning of a Carter or Bush I type effort to come up with a reasonable two state solution.
Still, the contrast in tone seems so pronounced since the campaign--it almost seems as if someone "got to him." But how, with what information? Can it be just campaign funds and the threat to withdraw them? Or something darker.
David,
I think many people less brilliant than Goldstone were willing to overlook Israel's conduct until fairly recently: both the Cold War (where Israel was seen as an American ally) and then a seemingly ongoing and viable peace process inhibited people from being too critical. The collapse of the peace process and the Iraq war were dual reasons to encourage a lot of people to examine Israeli and Palestinian history much more actively, and carefully. I doubt this explains Goldstone, but it does many others.
A powerful post. I don't think a gentile jurist or activist could withstand this, or at best only a small percentage of those able to be in such a position of analysis and judgement.
Okay Jeffrey and Paleo1540,
We're agreed that this a somewhat significant subject. If I come across anything, I'll let you know. The reasoning behind my original post is restated by Jeffrey -- that oil (or peace, to some extent) is essential to the capitalist economy, while Israel is not -- so loosening restrictions on corporate giving may have some unanticipated beneficial consequences. Of course I realize there are major schools of thought which do believe that capitalism=peace, and the record is certainly mixed. Perhaps in the midst of so much bad news I'm looking for silver linings. But I'm waiting/hoping for the inevitable (Carl Gershman?) article quoting Lenin about selling the rope to hang themselves with.
You may be right. My thought was that since AIPAC type contributors are already hyper organized, and perhaps near their maximum, while other money (and sentiment) is diffuse and not organized, changing the rules might bring the money game more line with American opinion (both elite and popular) which is more divided than the current money situation would indicate.
Can you provide any links and sources to when the lobby made an issue about oil contributions. I don't recall that. . .
correction: Osama did favor for Netanyahu...
"Is it really so outrageous to make such an argument".
In terms of logic, I don't think so. In terms of political effectiveness, I'm not certain. Clearly the lobby did work very hard at the outset to submerge any connection between 9/11 and our policies, and claims to be outraged--witness Giuliani's outburst at Ron Paul in the spring debate of 2008, the most interesting moment in the campaign-- at any hint of it. Perhaps that's based on their fear that this bit of truth would begin to unravel the entire war-or-terror/Israel-is-our -best- friend -ever rationale. That if Americans perceived that Israeli settlements were the reason for hassles at airports and big budget deficits and the possibility of further terror, they would say no to the settlements.
But I think they in fact overestimate the realpolitik impulses of the American people, and that in fact any seeming appeasement of Al Qaeda would be so difficult, both morally and politically, that no politician could do it. It's close, but on balance I'd say Obama did a favor for Netanyahu with that last broadcast.
"Upon finally making it back to Jerusalem, I took a taxi to the bus station. I was still fuming from my checkpoint ordeal, and the Israeli driver told me, “The checkpoints are there to make the Palestinians leave Palestine…""
I think this is the correct interpretation--for the checkpoints and for the entire web of permits to marry, to work, to live in Jerusalem, etc. If Israel can persuade the most educated 20 percent of Palestinians to leave, the rest will be easier to control. I would think it's the kind of policy for which there would be a record in the Israeli ministries, minutes of meetings, that kind of thing. So it awaits historians, or more to the point, Israelis of conscience who are willing to leak.
Well, for one he reads widely and not just beltway loop stuff, and clearly works at his columns rather than trying to wing it on stylistic cleverness. (i.e he's not Maureen Dowd). And if you are, like I am, somewhat socially conservative, he can be spot on--when writing about something like sexual and dating habits and their consequences. If I didn't sometimes really like Brooks's work, I wouldn't have bothered with it.
Nice explication of your internet handle, PG. It did dit quelque chose when I first read it, but I didn't recall the reference.
Richard,
Max Blumenthal does not, so far as I know, aspire to be reporter for CBS News. Of course his pieces are edited, designed, I would think, to capture the quotations that reveal the essence of the phenomenon he reports on. There is a growing number of people who think he does this exceedingly well.
If you think that a crowd that goes out and demonstrates in favor of the Israeli assault on Gaza contains a lot of folks who really wish that the Palestinian leadership was a bit more mature so Israel could let them have a viable state, you can believe that --but it's delusional. They are more likely, deeply racist or, if you prefer, ethnocentric sorts who wish the Palestinians would just go away, all of them--and if not, that the world would just look the other way while Israel takes its high tech weapons and wipes a lot of them out. Blumenthal somehow gets at that--as does his video of American kids in Jerusalem spouting racist epithets at Obama (when Obama's two state advocacy was deemed to be serious).
Seems like the europalestine site has been hacked now.
"Why don’t you send her that video clip on Youtube where the 13 yr old Jewel lays our her contemporary Ann Frank-as -a -Palestinian credentials?"
What?
Yes, I agree with Potsherd's first comment--it has the redolence of the 60's, (and Bernadine Dohrn even!) but a wonderful piece of writing.
link to walt.foreignpolicy.com
Sorry to interrupt, but Steve Walt has nice post on the Gaza march, point being that it's a non-event for the US papers of record. The Times did run a long piece to day on a schwarma shop in Jordan, so it's not that they're afraid of Mideast news.
I asked for some source on this a few days ago, but none was forthcoming. I think possible reasons are: Egypt receives a lot of aid from the US, which might be endangered if it appeared to be helping Hamas, even in a public opinion sense; as a dictatorship, Egypt is threatened by even the appearance of social action in the streets, which would show its own regime in a bad light; Egypt feel threatened ideologically by Hamas, which has roots in the (Egyptian) Muslim Brotherhood, still an opposition group in Egypt. I don't know the answer, but it is probably one of these or a combination thereof.
"Many of them wear t-shirts that call for boycott and show a missile aimed at a baby-carriage."
Let's see a photo, please. This sounds like a radical chic commercial opportunity (not that there's anything wrong with that).
What about this "Mossad false flag bombing"? The Lavon affair notwithstanding, it sounds incredibly unlikely.
I've yet to read anywhere an analysis about why Egypt is taking the side of the Israelis on this question. Mubarak's fear of the sentiments of the Egyptian people? American financial aid? The decision doesn't compute--it's not like anyone is asking Egypt to go to war with Israel or something. As it is, Egypt is taking a position which puts them at odds with humanitarian opinion all over the world, and for what?
I showed this post to my wife, and she asked "Where is this being reported?" Apart from the Guardian. The Times yesterday has space for an 1800 word report on women's prayer shawls, which surely has some religious significance, but is pretty narrow subject, considering the readership.
If I were French or Chinese, I probably wouldn't care as much about Israel-Palestine. But for an American, it's not just the amount of foreign aid we give Israel--it's the constant necessity to praise Israel in our public discourse, the 430-2 votes in the House, etc. And the influence of the Israel lobby on key elements of policy--Iraq, and possibly Iran. (I would agree with W&M that the Israel Lobby was a necessary but not by itself sufficient force to ignite the Iraq war. ) It's as if there's some false god of the super-virtuous Jewish state that Americans have to pay homage to, and it's a bit much after a while. The fact that there are negative consequences for saying anything negative about Israel--for an American politician, is outrageous. No politician would face major consequences for saying something negative about any other country.
When I was an editor at the NY Post, I allowed one of my staff to publish a piece mocking the idea that the "two-percent religion" should have equal public space with the 90 percent religion. The writer was EV Kanterovich (sp?) a Jewish Russian emigre, at the time a precocious and fairly brilliant 23 year old, now a law prof somewhere I think. Seth Lipsky recommended him to me to hire. There was a huge brouhaha about the piece, and EV felt a little surprised and chagrined, though not to the point of regretting writing it. I don't regret publishing it. Obviously his tone was much more thoughtful than the CS Monitor writer, and wasn't anti-Semitic or motivated by anti-Semitism. But the argument was essentially the same.
A striking post. One of the things that struck me is that the Zionist, "everyone who disputes Israel is an anti-Semite" ideology may be less deeply entrenched than one supposes. When one encounters those people, they often seem so polemically aggressive, sure of themselves, speak with such "moral clarity" --at least in their own eyes. Which is dispiriting, because a lot of them are smart, and powerful. But if a young person can be "deprogrammed" by merely reading the The Israel Lobby (but-- a digression Joseph--how did you happen to allow yourself to read that book, after all Obama said that he would never read it, though he knew its arguments were wrong) then the struggle to change minds may be less difficult than it seems.
I don't know how to get around the politics of it, because democratic governments --the kind accountable to their citizenry--probably can't take really firm carbon reducing measures without being tossed from office--the short term economic disruptions would be too stark. And the big growth dictatorships--China especially-- are even more reluctant. One might favor something like George Kennan's elitist council of elders or whatever he called it, (which could never be brought into being in practice) but the bottom line may be that democratic governments can't deal with a problem of this nature. Too bad.
It's an interesting question, gays on I/P and gay Jews on I/P--how much do their views differ from straights in their group? I'm betting more progressive and fair-minded in general, though important counterexamples come readily to mind.
Re Donna Edwards, it remains to be seen if voters of whatever color who admire her courage and outspokenness on I/P will defend her.
Yeah, those quotes don't surprise me. It is an alliance born in "recognition of the considerable power each of them yields." Then there's this: link to archive.newsmax.com
about his son James' apparently quite different views.
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It has never been obvious, however, what Murdoch’s ideological and political ambitions were. A brilliant businessman, he was generally right-wing—though his newspapers and networks hardly humored socially conservative sensibilities. His papers tended to endorse conservative candidates who had a good chance of winning. More than anything else, he seemed to relish his triumph over the British press unions. He was not an immigration restrictionist but didn’t share the neocon antipathy to them. In 1993, it took considerable effort by New York Post editorial-page editor Eric Breindel to persuade Murdoch that Rudy Giuliani was vastly superior to the incumbent David Dinkins as a candidate for mayor of New York. In one conversation I had with him (during my own brief tenure as Post editorial-page editor) about the paper’s foreign-policy positions, he told me, when the discussion had veered to Israel and the Middle East, “Well, it might not have been a good idea to create it [Israel], but now that it’s there, it has to be supported.” A splendidly ambiguous statement—perfectly consistent with a strong pro-Israel position, but not the sort of thing an American neoconservative would ever say. >>
link to amconmag.com
Great link to HaCohen. The kind of very important story that never appears in the regular American press.
The Israel exception was also a major factor in the neoconservative-paleoconservative split. Generally the neoconservatives were strong separation of church and state advocates and pluralist/muliticulturalists for the US (favoring high rates of immigration for instance, unconcerned about potential negative consequences). They pressed these points vigorously, often tarring erstwhile Cold War allies with accusations of bigotry, nativism, attitudes redolent of pro-Nazi bigotry, etc. Eventually the paleocons noticed that these folks were espousing exactly the opposite set of values where Israel was concerned.
Well, I'm not a good person to ask. My rough sense is that it controls the cost of capital, thus determining whether companies (and governments) can live and expand. Kind of like the food supply for organisms that use money. But one person doesn't control it. (Though the famous 1980's figure Mike Milken probably controlled a significant portion for a year or so.)
At about a comparable point in his administration, someone in the Clinton White House (Carville?) said something like "in my next life, I want to come back as the bond market--that's who really runs things."
link to haaretz.com
This I guess.
Is it just me, or are others not able to see the two student questioners (1 Zionist, 1 militant Palestinian) and Abunimah's answer, referenced in Phil's post about the conference?
I think Slater's analysis is correct, but opposition at this level could have and should have been anticipated. Could not Rahm Emanuel, expert vote-counter (assuming that he agreed with O's position on settlements and two states) have foreseen this? And Obama is probably in a much worse position for having tried and failed--giving a nice speech in Cairo, appointing Mitchell--and demonstrating to the world that Bibi is his boss.
Obama by the way completely ignores the growing group in Congress which is actively committed to a two-state agenda.
"It’s about having one place in the world where Jews can be guaranteed they won’t be persecuted."
Carnas, if the United States began persecuting Jews, do you really think Israel would be secure? It's one of the dafter thoughts of right-wing Zionism.
You can amalgamate the talking points. Like "Remember know when Pedro said 'Maybe I should just call Yankees 'My Daddy.' Well that's what my President should say about Bibi."
Oh, maybe this doesn't get at the Citifields issue. Never mind.
Just to clarify, I was a journalist during the 80's with generally neocon ties and sympathies. I didn't pay much attention to South Africa or the Middle East--my general topic was Europe. But my political milieu mostly thought that apartheid was bad, communism was bad, intractable problem, etc. I recall that Commentary published a defense of the South African government sometime in the mid 80's (by Paul Johnson, I think) and disagreeing but not strongly enough to complain to anyone. Given the new current prominence of the South Africa analogy, I thought it necessary to do some historical reading--so I'm better informed than I was a month ago. Also, South Africa is hosting the World Cup next year --and whatever the problems, and there are many--the situation is much better than anyone in my milieu imagined it would be. A genuinely pan-racial South African patriotism seems to have actually come into being, which would have amazed most observers during the 1980's.
Packer is a puzzlement. The section in his book on the neocons, their Israel feelings and their Iraq war role may be better than anyone's--good as journalism because he was close enough to them to describe them accurately. Maybe it's that he started writing that book before the war went south, so he thought he was giving them credit.
Yes, Tanton "has been" involved in CIS. . . in the 1980's. I find the whole nativist phenomenon less alarming than the SPLC does, but I do know these groups and the key people involved. Some representative names: Eugene McCarthy, Richard Lamb. . . .
Tanton said some silly racist things, which he has obviously been criticized for. But at the cultural core of these groups are moderately conservative, conservation oriented WASPS-- of the sort who tend to somewhat skeptical of neoconservatism. If SPLC thinks of them as wearing white sheets, literally or figuratively, it is way off base.
Center for Immigration Studies is a pretty mainstream group--I was on the board for several years. You can play Jamie Kirchik style gotcha games, but Tanton is not involved with CIS. We can disagree about the right level of immigration, and I think any sane person would find it has both costs and benefits. I'm not crazy about CIS's Steinlight outreach-- but immigration reformers do try to reach out beyond their core.
Not as many Hispanic names as I'd like among the courageous 36 No's on HR 867. But Foxman is right to be worried--neocon ideas have made very few inroads into the new immigrant groups--including those doing better educationally and economically.
link to worldaffairsjournal.org
Better link:
link to endtheoccupationblog.blogspot.com
Nice account here of floor debate on 867. link to endtheoccupationblog.blogspot.com
They think the relative paucity of yes votes, the well-informed 36 no's, etc signals a Pyrrhic victory for AIPAC and a potential turning point
Pretty cool. Ann Wright, retired army colonel, right on.
Brian Baird needs a donate button on his website.
Actually, I became a neocon after being a liberal, what used to be a typical pattern.
I may be a little unclear on this, but I'm not aware that J Street says it's for Jews only. They don't explicitly solicit gentile participation or financial support, but certainly don't discourage it. Joining J Street is a reasonable option for anyone who thinks it's an effective organization and roughly supports their goals. It may be that five years from now, half of J Street would be Christian or Muslim or whatever.
Witty, do you think (as I do) that J Street has changed its tone dramatically in the last month? Maybe I misread the organization, maybe I wanted too much to believe that something that mainstream and that Jewish could work, that J street really did represent a critical mass or even a silent majority within American Jewry. But they seem to be folding pretty quick under neocon pressure. The Protocols smear is simply an outrage, really a way of saying that non-Jews shouldn't be allowed to comment on America's Mid East policy and what inspires it. I've been a J street supporter to the extent of my financial ability, and will go to the conference and the dinner. But I no longer feel good about it.
JB: An inaccurate quotation. Our staff is not intermarried. Not that that's a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with being intermarried.
JG: This is getting Seinfeldian here.
Kind of funny. Of course the distancing from W&M is really pathetic. Not sure which is worse, --that Ben Ami believes it, or that he thinks for J Street to survive he has to say it.
Richard,
Most of use here (and probably most of those demonstrating) know that Olmert is a complex man who understands the train wreck Israel is heading towards if it continues to deny Palestinian statehood. And yet, he helped build the wall (not on morally or legally defensible boundaries) and ordered the gratuitously violent Gaza war--probably just to enhance his electoral prospects. So yes, evil coming from complexity is more interesting than evil coming from simple evil. Perhaps someone should write a play about him. He still should face justice for his actions.
Steve Sailer parses the question of George Steinbrenner (and others).
link to isteve.blogspot.com
The linked article is pretty informative, though the product of the very neo-connish IRD. Ms. Reuther is right on:
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"Sharing ecumenical relations" is a very broad concept, but often involves an extreme sensitivity to criticism by Jews, business ties among elite parishioners, etc. Basically it means a lot of reasons to look the other way.
This powerful letter could get a zillion signatures.
I doubt that this kind of shouting down kind of protest is effective, though I'm not completely sure. I have a kid at U of C, involved with one of the Palestinian solidarity groups (though she's not Arab or Muslim) who felt really conflicted about it. She said to me that she actually would prefer to hear Ahmadinejad (for instance) speak, instead of him being shut out. Open freedom of speech can only help the Palestinian cause in US. So maybe better to deploy it, rather than this kind of uncivil disobedience. The demo outside the hall is useful though.
Look what happened to Pat Buchanan when he mentioned the lobby directly, in 1991. Yes Matthews is liberal, Pat right wing--but being right wing has never hurt someone's TV marketability. As Crossfire host, Buchanan was the most popular conservative in America after Reagan in the 1980's. For Chris Matthews, lesson learned.
Agree that Glenn did great-- very succinct and crisp and forceful. Since he's a great guest, there ought to be a way to lure him away from Brazil, so in the future he can be in the studio and not doing a blogginheads thing from his living room. It might make the difference of tens of thousands of lives.
Religions and subsets of them take on many other social meanings that go beyond (and are now more important than) pure belief. I'm betting that one reason Terry's face may have fallen is that there isn't much of an Episcopalean community in these larger senses. The actual church is now riven by a bitter internal schism over gay priests and bishops, intensified because--perhaps because of its rich and colorful liturgy--it seems to be the denomination that gay men find most appealing. So when I heard the term "Episcopal community" it caught me--because nowadays there almost is none, beyond of course the formal creed.
Pray tell, what is the "Episcopalean community?" The meaning it might have, clubbishness, snobbishness, some wealth, seldom intersects with people who go on solidarity trips to Gaza.
Why do "concerned," supposedly well-intentioned, people not study the problem more?
It's not lack of knowledge, but more a general desire not to get too far out in front (of their congregants, primarily). The Presbyterians tried to a couple of years ago and got burned. The process by which various pro-Israel types were able to get an initiative watered down and reversed within a major Protestant denomination is worth some serious study. So now they hope Obama will do the heavy lifting.
Sounds like he's hanging J Street out to dry as well.
Curious though that he joined the Asia student club in high school.
No, the right answer to the question of "Where did you go to school?" is "near Boston." To which the best answer is "Yeah, I went there too."
If Branson were to continue to engage this issue, it would be very interesting about whether threat of a "boycott" would, in fact, be intimidating. In an issue like this, the purity of the cause counts for much--and this is certainly not a case of defending the right to publish nonsense (i.e that Swedish paper and organ theft, or Henry Ford's Dearborn Indpendent) but a position that Branson, his peers, and his children would be proud to see defended. A boycott against Virgin would thus likely be self-defeating, and attract attention to the issue in a way that ultimately redounds to the Palestinians' benefit.