XDA

The more I read Glen Greenwald, and it is ever more painful, the more I think that he and I must inhabit different planets. He and I both noticed the Rasmussen polling which shows the Republicans strongly supporting Israeli self defense and the Democrats strongly condemn it. But then our world views, Weltanshaung, well, they kind of differ. Here is some criticism of his worst excesses in his latest work. He writes:

Not only does Rasmussen find that Americans generally "are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip" (44 percent to 41 percent, with 15 percent undecided), but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive -- by a 24-point margin. By stark contrast, Republicans, as one would expect (in light of their history of supporting virtually any proposed attack on Arabs and Muslims), overwhelmingly support the Israeli bombing campaign (62 percent to 27 percent). (Emphasis added).

Yeah, we Republicans are primarily rabid anti-Arab war mongers. The events of 9/11/01 have nothing to do with it; it is our personality flaws, that is, our being pro war. What an asshat Greenwald is. We do tend to support self defense and are faithful to our loyal allies. We think military solutions are possible and sometimes necessary. But to Greenwald it's our inherent blood thirsty hatred of Muslims. Nice. There's more:

It's not at all surprising that Republican leaders -- from Dick Cheney and John Bolton to virtually all appendages of the right-wing noise machine-- are unquestioning supporters of the Israeli attack. After all, they're expressing the core ideology of the overwhelming majority of their voters and audience. (Emphasis added).

Right wing noise machine? What's that? I guess to Mr. Greenwald and his ilk, we Republicans can't even engage in speech and, gibbering idiot like, we merely make noise rather than rational discourse. And along with our blood thirsty hatred of Arabs is our unquestioning support of Israel. Of course it's unquestioning, we're all clearly too stupid to ask meaningful questions. That Israel is a great nation--civilized, moral, tolerant and just--and the Arabs, who chose Hamas to be their leaders in Gaza, are war criminal, barbarians who cause untold suffering of the Arabs in Gaza and seek to export death and destruction to Israel via rocketry, they couldn't possibly provide the well reasoned source of our support of Israeli self defense. No, it's just knee jerk stuff. Then there's this goldmine of a paragraph:

There are certainly meaningful differences between the U.S. attack on Iraq and the Israeli attack on Gaza (most notably the fact that Hamas does shoot rockets into Israel and has killed Israeli civilians and Israel is blockading and occupying Palestinian land, whereas Iraq did not attack and could not attack the U.S. as the U.S. was sanctioning them and controlling their airspace). But the underlying logic of both wars is far more similar than different: military attacks, invasions and occupations will end rather than exacerbate terrorism; the Muslim world only understands brute force; the root causes of the disputes are irrelevant; diplomacy and the U.N. are largely worthless. (Emphasis added).

Where to begin? Good that he has the wit to notice that Hamas was bombarding Israel. It would be difficult to ignore several thousand rocket and mortar attacks. But then he goes off the rails. Occupying Palestinian land? Gaza belongs to Egypt, from whom it was captured by Israel in 1967. And are there occupying Israeli forces in Gaza recently? NO. They left in 2005. The forcefully evicted all Jewish settlers, because as further proof of Israeli tolerance and righteousness, Arabs can live in peace as full citizens of Israel but no Jew can live in the surrounding Arab land and prosper, or even survive. Does Glen not know that Gaza was turned over to Palestinian control, Judenrein, more than three years ago? Because it is a pretty important historical fact right now.

How about the blockade? Did Israel turn over a blockaded Gaza? No, they invited peaceful exchange of goods and services. The blockade only came after Hamas began to export only its rocket technology. The blockade is not absolute; even as the IDF wipes out Hamas fighters and rocket caches, Israel sends the Palestinians medicine and other humanitarian aid. That's what good guys the Israelis are. Does Greenwald know about it? He certainly seems ignorant of that telling fact.

Now for the Iraq/Gaza comparison. Iraq not attacking? Perhaps Mr. Greenwald is also ignorant of Gulf War I and the survival of that righteous causus belli through the failure of Iraq to keep even one of the many cease fire promises it made. But perhaps that's too arcane or legalistic. Does Mr. Greenwald not know that our airplanes enforcing humanitarian no-fly zones were fired on almost each and every sortie? Can he be that ignorant? The no-fly zones were primarily to prevent slaughter of Kurds and Shia Arabs by helicopter, et al., and were instead of a full blown invasion to oust Saddam from power for his war crimes, including the invasion of Kuwait.

He stumbles on the truth in the last part of the paragraph. Although I suspect he is being sarcastic, its true that only military force will eradicate terrorism from Islamic extremists. Does he share the lefty delusion that they can be bought off or dissuaded by talk? Any evidence that such a course of action would be persuasive? In the end I have to shake my head and say to myself... not even on the same planet.

Labels: Arab Israeli Conflict, Gaza front