All Israel, All the Time?
No institution or movement is so wise and effective that it doesn't need scrutiny and self-criticism, and, returning from a month in Tel Aviv, I feel an irrepressible need to offer TPMCafe bit of both. Of our last 200 posts here, which take us back to early April, 43 posts (three of them mine) are about Israel. But just one of the 200 posts, by Jon Taplin on June 7, is about a little war in Afghanistan that's draining our country's strength and morale at least as much as AIPAC and Benjamin Netanyahu are endangering it.
My own last post on Afghanistan was in November and was basically just a link to a prescient Dissent magazine piece about neo-cons' doe-eyed raptures over Washington's promises to do more for civil society in Kandahar and Kabul than it has ever done in New Orleans or Detroit. The American venture in Afghanistan has become a blood-sucking folly that's running deeper than even the hypocrisy of Max Boot and David Brooks, who've discovered a noble success in our nation-building strategies there that they've never found in any such strategies here.
To its great credit, TPMCafe's contributors have overwhelmed the neo-cons' ignorance and dishonesty about America's own economic and social crises. Just click back to the cafe's main page, scroll down, and look. But note also that, in foreign policy, it's almost all Israel, all the time. I don't say that our 43 posts on Israel shouldn't have been written. I ask why there haven't been 43 on Afghanistan and other countries, too. The situation in Israel is dangerous, indeed, fateful, for the United States and most of the world. But there are other, equal dangers, not least in the Muslim world, where a solution to the Israel-Palestine would actually solve far, far less than we tend to think.
Let the self-correction begin with the following words by Bob Herbert from yesterday's New York Times. I don't agree with him that we should just leave Afghanistan, but I do share his anger at our neglect of what this war has been doing to our fellow citizens and our civil society, not to mention to our foreign-policy options in the Middle East. Why isn't all this pulling more of us at TPM into debate about the war in Afghanistan as powerfully as something else is conscripting some of us into Israel's conflict with Palestine and America's with Israel?
The heart has its reasons, and some of them are compelling, even urgent ones that I certainly don't need to reprise for readers here. Moreover, everyone is entitled to his or her own interests and areas of expertise. Many contributors have earned it, the hard way, and they have valuable insights to share. Still, the stark disparity at TPMCafe may be worth noting and its consequences worth weighing. Here is Herbert:
There is no good news coming out of the depressing and endless war in Afghanistan. There once was merit to our incursion there, but that was long ago. Now we're just going through the tragic motions, flailing at this and that, with no real strategy or decent end in sight.
The U.S. doesn't win wars anymore. We just funnel the stressed and underpaid troops in and out of the combat zones, while all the while showering taxpayer billions on the contractors and giant corporations that view the horrors of war as a heaven-sent bonanza. BP, as we've been told repeatedly recently, is one of the largest suppliers of fuel to the wartime U.S. military.
Seven American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on Monday but hardly anyone noticed. Far more concern is being expressed for the wildlife threatened by the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico than for the G.I.'s being blown up in the wilds of Afghanistan.
Early this year, we were told that at long last the tide had turned in Afghanistan, that the biggest offensive of the war by American, British and Afghan troops was under way in Marja, a town in Helmand Province in the southern part of the country. The goal, as outlined by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, our senior military commander in Afghanistan, was to rout the Taliban and install a splendid new government that would be responsive to the people and beloved by them.
That triumph would soon be followed by another military initiative in the much larger expanse of neighboring Kandahar Province. The Times's Rod Nordland explained what was supposed to happen in a front-page article this week:
"The goal that American planners originally outlined -- often in briefings in which reporters agreed not to quote officials by name -- emphasized the importance of a military offensive devised to bring all of the populous and Taliban-dominated south under effective control by the end of this summer. That would leave another year to consolidate gains before President Obama's July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing combat troops."
Forget about it. Commanders can't even point to a clear-cut success in Marja. As for Kandahar, no one will even use the word "offensive" to describe the military operations there. The talk now is of moving ahead with civilian reconstruction projects, a "civilian surge," as Mr. Nordland noted.
What's happening in Afghanistan is not only tragic, it's embarrassing. The American troops will fight, but the Afghan troops who are supposed to be their allies are a lost cause. The government of President Hamid Karzai is breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent -- and widely unpopular to boot. And now, as The Times's Dexter Filkins is reporting, the erratic Mr. Karzai seems to be giving up hope that the U.S. can prevail in the war and is making nice with the Taliban.
There is no overall game plan, no real strategy or coherent goals, to guide the fighting of U.S. forces. It's just a mind-numbing, soul-chilling, body-destroying slog, month after month, year after pointless year. The 18-year-olds fighting (and, increasingly, dying) in Afghanistan now were just 9 or 10 when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked in 2001.
Americans have zoned out on this war. They don't even want to think about it. They don't want their taxes raised to pay for it, even as they say in poll after poll that they are worried about budget deficits. The vast majority do not want their sons or daughters anywhere near Afghanistan.
Why in the world should the small percentage of the population that has volunteered for military service shoulder the entire burden of this hapless, endless effort? The truth is that top American officials do not believe the war can be won but do not know how to end it. So we get gibberish about empowering the unempowerable Afghan forces and rebuilding a hopelessly corrupt and incompetent civil society.
Our government leaders keep mouthing platitudes about objectives that are not achievable, which is a form of deception that should be unacceptable in a free society.
In announcing, during a speech at West Point in December, that 30,000 additional troops would be sent to Afghanistan, President Obama said: "As your commander in chief, I owe you a mission that is clearly defined and worthy of your service."
That clearly defined mission never materialized.
Ultimately, the public is at fault for this catastrophe in Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 G.I.'s have now lost their lives. If we don't have the courage as a people to fight and share in the sacrifices when our nation is at war, if we're unwilling to seriously think about the war and hold our leaders accountable for the way it is conducted, if we're not even willing to pay for it, then we should at least have the courage to pull our valiant forces out of it.
Whilst not wishing to appear too glib, the answer to the posed question seems to me, obvious.
Afghanistan has never been proved to be a threat to America and there has never been a clearly defined US mission or military strategy.
Israel, OTOH, under a Likud government, has always been a threat to world peace and by extension to the security of America.
Afghanistan is not a secret nuclear power, merely a poppy power.
Afghanistan has no powerful lobby in Washington that influences US foreign policy.
Afghanistan does not threaten to destabilize the entire ME region nor its essential oil supplies.
The list could continue ...
June 13, 2010 6:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
The war in Afghanistan has several very powerful lobbies in Washington, some of them more powerful than the Israel lobby will ever be. Not to know what they are is to misunderstand both that war and at least part of the problem in the Middle East.
I don't say that the Israel-Palestine conflict isn't tremendously important and dangerous but it only becomes more so when certain obsessions about it -- coming, by the way, from all across the spectrum -- distract much-needed attention from equally fateful and, for hundreds of thousands of Americans in and around the military, destructive -- situation in Afghanistan.
June 13, 2010 6:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Pakistan is arguably a far greater threat than Afghanistan and has been so for a decade or more.
Both Israel and Pakistan have undeclared nuclear arsenals of warheads, outside of the IAEA - and which are certainly an 'obsession' for many of us. Nobody knows whose finger is on the trigger in either of these nuclear states; exactly where these arsenals are located; of what exact size they are and to which other states they have colluded in nuclear proliferation for political or monetary gain, etc etc
As for the powerful Afghanistan lobbies. Do they influence US foreign policy and the legislators who determine it in the same way as does the Israel lobby? I doubt that.
June 13, 2010 7:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
"The war in Afghanistan has several very powerful lobbies in Washington, some of them more powerful than the Israel lobby will ever be."
Who do you mean?
Anyway, good post. I think the I/P conflict deserves all the attention it gets around here. But you're right that Afghanistan also deserves more attention. So, for that matter, does Iraq. There seems to be a belief in the mainstream that the surge saved Iraq and even somehow vindicated the decision to go in there (setting aside the triviality of hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis and tens of thousands of dead or wounded Americans), when from what I've read, the surge was at best a secondary cause for the decrease in violence there. I think it's dangerous for Americans to believe this.
I typed an earlier shorter version of this post and after refreshing the page several times, it still hasn't appeared. It'll probably show up about five times later on, judging by what has happened to others. Alternatively, neither of my posts will show up.
June 13, 2010 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
People who are pro-Israel usually downplay the importance of I-P conflict when Israel looks bad. Like right now.
Thanks for confirming the trend.
June 14, 2010 10:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good post, Jim. Far more attention should be being paid to what's going on in Afghanistan. The conflict itself is important--and so, honestly, is Obama's management (or mismanagement?) of it. As much as I supported Obama during the campaign--and as much as I want to continue to support him--his efforts in many areas, including the Afghan war, have left me with some serious and nagging doubts about his leadership abilities. I never quite understood why Obama wanted to withdraw from Iraq while engaging more deeply in Afghanistan. Increasingly, I wonder if this was more a domestic political strategy--designed to show to the American people that Obama, despite withdrawing from Iraq, was still not an anti-war "peacenik" and "weakling"--than a seriously considered foreign policy strategy. This suspicion makes me very uncomfortable indeed.
As for Israel--the obsession with it has tired me out. I find I'm mentally healthier when I don't read TPMCafe (or at least avoid reading the endless Israel discussions, which as you point out, constitute the largest portion of the content on this site). Yet, I have to admit that the attention Israel gets is probably deserved--not so much because of Israel's significance to American security or economic interests--but just because the Israeli-Palestinian problem and the broader context around it of Zionism, anti-Semitism, racism, colonialism, and the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in the West are truly unique and profoundly interesting topics in a way that the war in Afghanistan just isn't. There are thousands of years of history already behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and maybe thousands more to come . . . Afghanistan is a mere blip compared with this.
June 13, 2010 7:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
There are not "thousands of years of history" around this conflict. To frame it in that way is to ensure that it cannot be solved.
June 14, 2010 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Myth, the "thousand years of history" to which I was referring is the thousand years of tension between Jews and non-Jews in the West. It has nothing to do with the actual conflict between Israelis and Palestinians (at least nothing directly), but it has much to do with the intensity of the interest among Westerners (Jewish and non-Jewish) in that conflict. I know that many people (wrongly) claim that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is ancient and therefore intractable. That is historically inaccurate, since Jews (and Christians) were generally (though not always) treated reasonably well (at least by the standards of the time) by their Muslim rulers and there is little if any evidence of any serious conflict between Palestine's Arab and (small) Jewish population prior to modern Zionism. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is recent--dating to roughly the beginning of the 19th century. The tension between Jews and non-Jews, which underlies much of the interest in the conflict among Westerners, is much older.
June 14, 2010 9:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good response. The Fundies claim erroneously that the conflict originates from Jacob and Esau, when, in fact, it dates primarily from 19th and 20th Century immigration into Palestine.
We need to stop blaming God for a completely man-made dispute.
June 15, 2010 6:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Herbert's article is powerful, I clipped it already for my files, and fully support its wide duplication generally and full replication here. I nonetheless take serious issue with the gratuitous cop-out of the introductory remark about
"a little war in Afghanistan that is draining our country's strength and morale at least as much as AIPAC and Benjamin Netanyahu are endangering it"
The two problems are an apples versus oranges comparison, as Colin notes, but such comparisons are an unavoidable fact of life, and the reality that BOTH problems are serious festering drains on American energy and potential influence for world peace can hardly be denied.
What is objectionable, rather, is that while Afghanistan is an intractable mess with NO good solutions remotely imaginable (only varying degrees of disaster), Likud-Settler intransigence and US Congress obesience to it is an incredibly different situation. It is extremely misleading to in any way suggest similarity when it comes to the matter of what to do. Here there are no apples and oranges. This is more like dried apple peelings versus piles of gold bullion.
The Netanyahu problem has a very simple solution:
ATTACK AIPAC and its appendages, satellites, stooges, dupes, and blackmailees!
Do it NOW, do it vigorously, and do not let up!
This is an AMAZINGLY simple-to-understand task.
No offense whatever intended, but you and your like-minded pro-Israeli (but anti-Likud) American Jews need to get down to the business of practical action where it counts.
Here are a few excerpts from the recipe:
1. You organize ten thousand American Jews, that is 1/6th of one percent of them, to demonstrate for one hour every two weeks in front of AIPAC's headquarters in Washington DC. and the US Capitol, for the next 6 weeks or 6 years or however long it takes.
2. Tell the international press in advance.
3. Placards could include the following:
"American Jews for America"
"Support Israel, End the Occupation"
"Support our US president, not the head of Likud"
"We are Jews and AIPAC does not represent us"
"Stop expanding West Bank settlements"
"Two-states and peace, NOW"
"Congress: Represent Americans, not Israeli settlers"
4. Strictly forbidden: any flag other than the stars and stripes, and any placard having to do with ANY other issue than AIPAC and ISRAEL (from indigenous Somaons, to the Ecuadorian rainforest, to pipelines in Azerbaijan, to Leonard Peltier).
5. ABSOLUTELY STRICTLY FORBIDDEN on pain of immediate torching: Palestinian flags
DO this now! Obama's first term is already more than one third over. You won't get a better chance than now for a long time, and frankly THIS kind of mobilization is LONG OVERDUE.
Two final points: I am sure we all know these, especially you, but in anticipation of the usual Big Lie denials that tend pop up robotically in the comments section here:
1) Congress has not been continuously doing AIPAC's bidding for the past decade into order to please the Cuban vote, the East Timorian vote, the Nicaraguan vote, the Shinto vote or the vegetarian vote.
2) Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran have ZERO influence on the US Congress. No other group of foreign fanatics has any greater right than they do (i.e. any right at all) to meddle in America's domestic political system.
June 13, 2010 7:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
My rant above violates one of my own principles, namely that of being relevant to the main topic of the page. Realizing this now, I will not try to rationalize it, but would like to point out that this long comment above DOES connect to Mr. Sleeper's posed question of WHY the ratio of commentaries is 43 to 1 in favor of Israel (vs Afghanistan). PART of the answer, I submit, is that practically none of those 43 really got to the core issue, but instead ignored it or danced around it (and once the music starts, like Audrey Hepburn, it is easy to feel that you could dance all night). The core issue is the combination of (i) Israel being able to do as it pleases, no matter who runs its government, because it has a blank check from the national legislature of the world's superpower, and (ii) when it comes to Israel, that national legislature being in thrall to an Israel-is-always-right lobby (NOT an "Israel lobby," mind you, and NOT! a "Jewish lobby") that has an effective blank check from a large majority of Jewish Americans. Not because any such majority really supports that lobby, but because its components (like, I daresay, some of those responsible for the disproportionate (43) single-issue posts here) are too timid or willingly uninformed to do anything substantial against it.
June 13, 2010 8:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm intrigued by your comments and especially like your ideas for placards. Yet isn't it a mistake to paint Jewish Americans as playing the only role in cultivating peace in the Middle East?
Here's my thinking. I'm a Christian American, born and raised in the bible belt, which means my social, religious, and political conditioning comes from much of the same mythos that has conditioned many of my Jewish American friends. Even if we mobilize Jews, we still need to deal with my kin who have all kinds of deep attachments to Israel.
I am not countering your point, or dissuading anyone from making those placards. I'm just saying we need to reach out to a broader audience that has been shaped by the same words and stories. We need a cross-cultural coalition, part of which includes a Judeo-Christian alliance that is at least as potent as the one spearheaded by Pastor Hagee and Senator Lieberman.
June 13, 2010 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jews have to lead on this. Liberal Democrats in Congress are not doing AIPAC's bidding in order to win Bible belt "Christian" fundamentalist votes.
June 13, 2010 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lead, by all means, and I'll follow.
Not sure how to gauge the "liberal" Democrats on most issues these days. Yet it does seem much of Washington's current political calculus bends toward the right, regardless of party. And I suspect Americans need not hail from the Bible belt, or be fundamentalist "Christians" or "Jews," to be magnetized by the mythos I'm talking about.
June 13, 2010 5:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very well put PT.
American Jews should organize their own flotilla as some German Jews are doing.
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/israel-s-greatest-loss-its-moral-imagination-1.295600
June 15, 2010 5:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oops, sorry.
the actual link
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/german-jews-indundated-with-requests-to-join-new-gaza-aid-flotilla-1.296146
June 15, 2010 5:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you PTroub. Excellent reasoning. Actually Sleeper's post also has excellent validity, but like you say, apples and oranges. I too find myself obsessed with the Israel-Palestinian issue. Being a gentile I can come at this issue without a lot of baggage. But there is precious little people like me can do about it. I am waiting for the sea change that only humanitarian and enlightened Jewish Americans can render on this issue. The rest of us have essentially no clout.
I find it shocking that so many progressive Ameirican Jews can be so committed to important social issues in this country and yet so frozen in a self-defeating ideology when it comes to Israel. Maybe the new younger generation will change this but there isn't much time.
June 13, 2010 10:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you PTroub. Excellent reasoning. Actually Sleeper's post also has excellent validity, but like you say, apples and oranges. I too find myself obsessed with the Israel-Palestinian issue. Being a gentile I can come at this issue without a lot of baggage. But there is precious little people like me can do about it. I am waiting for the sea change that only humanitarian and enlightened Jewish Americans can render on this issue. The rest of us have essentially no clout.
I find it shocking that so many progressive Ameirican Jews can be so committed to important social issues in this country and yet so frozen in a self-defeating ideology when it comes to Israel. Maybe the new younger generation will change this but there isn't much time.
June 13, 2010 10:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you PTroub. Excellent reasoning. Actually Sleeper's post also has excellent validity, but like you say, apples and oranges. I too find myself obsessed with the Israel-Palestinian issue. Being a gentile I can come at this issue without a lot of baggage. But there is precious little people like me can do about it. I am waiting for the sea change that only humanitarian and enlightened Jewish Americans can render on this issue. The rest of us have essentially no clout.
I find it shocking that so many progressive Ameirican Jews can be so committed to important social issues in this country and yet so frozen in a self-defeating ideology when it comes to Israel. Maybe the new younger generation will change this but there isn't much time.
June 13, 2010 10:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
America has to lead in the Mideast peace process, as "honest broker" applying carrots and sticks in multiple directions, then Europe, etc. will follow, otherwise nada. But America can't lead because AIPAC has for years successfully hijacked the US Congress on precisely this issue. So American Jews have to lead in the liberation of the US Congress. Non-Jewish Americans can then follow them. But Anti-Semites need not apply, and better not, or else. (I didn't say this was easy, only easy to understand, and thus no excuse for not getting started now).
June 13, 2010 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry for the repetition. Technical ignorance on my part.
June 13, 2010 10:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
As the main miscreant, I will defend the emphasis on Israel/Palestine.
Actually I will just repeat what some of the other said.
Afghanistan is a fight that has cost a thousand American lives which, by definition, makes the war more relevant, tragic, and heartbreaking.
However, it is not Afghanistan that that unites the entire Muslim and Arab world against us. It is not Afghanistan that poses the real threat of blowing back and taking American lives here at home. Moreover, Afghanistan is a morally complex issue (is the right thing just to leave? What do we do about the Taliban? Etc).
The Israeli-Palestinian issue is simple. Thanks to the lobby (the most powerful foreign policy lobby in Washington), the United States is afraid to actively promote a solution we support: ending the occupation. Completely and once and for all.
In other words, the I-P situation is only left to fester and threaten us all because a lobby stands in the way. Afghanistan? Not so simple.
Also, the same lobby is promoting US involvement in another catastrophe: confrontation with Iran.
Afghanistan threatens our soldiers which is terrible. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and our one sided support for the Israeli right, threatens all of us including, most important of all, our kids.
I'll keep writing about it. I hope Jim will too.
June 13, 2010 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
MJ, as I said in response to the first comment above, I agree about the importance of I-P. Moreover, as my own posts on the subject have made clear, I don't underestimate the urgency of breaking the grip of "the lobby's" and the Israeli government's crippling illogic.
But I don't agree with you that the I-P disaster is more important than the Afghanistan war in inflaming much of the Muslim world against the United States or that the military-industrial lobbies for that war aren't far more powerful than the Israel lobby. (Of course, they often work in synch.)
It's sort-of a counterfactual, but if you can imagine the I-P problem resolved, do you think that the presence of American boots on the ground in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan would have any less effect on Osama Bin Ladin et al? I don't.
I have praised your work in the TPM post I've linked above and I encourage you to keep it up. I'd just like to see more discussion on this site of both the situation in Iraq and the Afghanistan war, which is maiming the civic culture of a large swath of America that doesn't focus on I-P.
June 13, 2010 11:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good post. The following sentences from Herbert's Op-Ed describe the outgrowth of the "living economic organism" that Dan K identifies in his comment below.
"We just funnel the stressed and underpaid troops in and out of the combat zones, while all the while showering taxpayer billions on the contractors and giant corporations that view the horrors of war as a heaven-sent bonanza. BP, as we've been told repeatedly recently, is one of the largest suppliers of fuel to the wartime U.S. military."
We agree on the need to focus more attention on the military-industrial lobby's control of Washington. As you point out, that lobby often works in synch with Israel, which seems to be a healthy Cafe obsession. Perhaps if we could explore this synchronicity in greater detail, it would help focus Cafe discussions in a way that is equally applicable to Afghanistan.
June 13, 2010 3:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
When MJ was backing Obama over Hillary in the primaries, I was suspicious of him. I felt he was just part of the bandwagon ushering in Obama as the next President. The bandwagon spanned across political and media entities. Obama seemed to me then as way too "packaged" to be trusted. I was right, MJ was wrong. But I have become very respectful of MJ precisely because 1) he is jewish with jewish sensibilities and 2) He is an unswerving media force in favor of a just I/P settlement. Gentiles say we need Jews to lead the movement towards dislodging AIPAC's grip on our foreign policy in the ME. Well MJ has proven that such a movement can grow and expandn. He walks the walk.
Sleeper I always enjoy reading even when I don't agree with him. He truly casts another net than I do, but I have come to appreciate his take on things. And he has many takes on many things.
I think the cafe can live with both approaches.
On Israeli policy I do not think they disagree all that much.
I've said this before, and I heard Kissinger say a similar thing ( on the new START initiative of all things): even if you are a hard-core realist; nay precisely BECAUSE you are a hard core realist you will have to recognize that globalization with its attending explosion of information technology has ushered in an era in which the whole world is watching and international affairs cannot be conducted amongst the ruling elite hermetically sealed from the "opinions of mankind". Here in America, it seems that we are behind the rest of the world on this insight. Most Americans do blindly support Israel (helped along with a compliant media) no matter what. But globalization with its implication of growing interconnectedness does not allow for ethnic cleansing (as we did to the Indians), apartheid, second class citizenship etc to prevail when it is perpetrated by A HIGHLY CIVILIZED TECHNOLOGIALLY ADVANCED ALLY SUCH AS ISRAEL.
It is a complete anomaly. On the one hand we tout the virtue of Democracy by pointing out that democracies do not fight and commit war crimes etc, but they trade with each other and live in peace. So how can we justify what Israel is doing given that she belongs to the family of enlightened democratic allies?
Sleeper is fundamentally right though when he points out that we--who should be the exemplars of democracy--go around causing far more mayhem in the world that Israel would ever dream of causing.
The old realism was a simple "might makes right", the new realism is far more complex and we better get used to it and adjust
June 13, 2010 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are comparing apples and oranges. Just because all of America's problems in the Muslim world won't disappear when the State of Palestine comes into being, does not mean that our primary problem won't be solved.
June 14, 2010 10:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think MJ's point is well taken. In my opinion Afghanistan is just another misbegotten colonial war, whereas Israel and its lobby present a complex challenge to American security and even to its basic values. You could pose it as a conflict between the Bible and the Bill of Rights.
June 14, 2010 4:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hope that you've seen my reply to MJ. No one is underestimating the urgency and danger of the I-P problem, but two of the reasons that explain some of the obsessive focus on it are 1) that a lot of people in the West, and even more in the Arab world, who don't care a whit about the Palestinians, never did, and never will, get really hot about this issue because it allows them to displace a lot of things they would rather not face in their own societies and in themselves. There really, honestly isn't a single Arab regime or power who cares a whit about the Palestinians. 2) And a lot of Western ex-Christians who wax extremely moralistic about them don't do so not because it's the plight of the Palestinians that is getting under their skin. If "plight" were the issue, we'd all count bodies and perfidy and direct our attention somewhere else.
This is not to excuse Israel for its bone-headed brutality and arrogance or to deny the urgency and danger of the situation. But anyone who thinks that Al Quaeda, Osama Bin Laden, and the enraged Arab Street would calm down if the I-P problem were miraculously solves but there were still US boots on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan is dreaming. And I wonder why.
June 15, 2010 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oops, an unintended double negative in 2) above. I didn't meant to say that they "don't do so not because" but that they "do so not because".
June 15, 2010 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
And a lot of Western ex-Christians who wax extremely moralistic about them don't do so not because it's the plight of the Palestinians that is getting under their skin.
So what exactly is getting under their skin, Jim? Do you think it's just dislike of Jews? Or do you have a more interesting observation to share?
June 15, 2010 9:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's shocking, really, that this simplistic, self-serving and frankly dangerous nonsense passes for wisdom from a "marquee" contributor to TPM Cafe. Simplistic because it completely misapprehends the history and nature of the conflict. Among other things, this view fails to take into account the history of warring between the parties before the occupation and before settlements, the offers by three Israeli governments to roll back settlements and end the occupation, the Palestinian demand of a right of return, the Palestinian diaspora, the rise of Hamas in Gaza, etc. I could go on, but the horse has been flogged too many times already. Self-serving because it posits as the only problem - the "Lobby" - the author's only real area of expertise. Dangerous because by focusing attention exclusively on one (small, IMHO) aspect of the problem, it indulges the fantasies of the other side and thus brings neither side any closer to accepting the painful consequences that will be necessary for any real resolution.
June 14, 2010 9:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey AG:
J Street is sponsoring an event on Wednesday night with Jeremy Ben-Ami and Jeffrey Goldberg. It's at the Ethical Culture building at 64th and Central Park West. I'm going with the wife and older varmints. Let me know if you're interested; I'm really looking forward to it.
Bruce
June 14, 2010 10:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Herbert nails Afghanistan. I would like to point out the Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal has been on the Afghanistan case since the beginning of the Administration, and writes critically about the war at least two or three times a week.
The war business is a very lucrative industry. Once wars go on for any length of time, they come to comprise a peculiar and powerful economic interest, a kind of living economic organism whose main internal rationale is to preserve itself. The military brass loves to fight them. Careers are built around them. Jobs depend on them. The many corporations who supply the military's very expensive needs are in love the cash the war provides them. The military pros and contractors who oversee defense acquisitions and development love the opportunity they provide for constant live-action testing of new gadgets and death machines. If a few soldiers die every week, well those are just a few rotten eggs that have to be broken to keep the golden geese laying their more golden eggs.
Obama is a young and inexperienced president who has relied on advice from his military leaders, who seem to frighten him, and the latter seem to be in love with the war in Afghanistan. But Stanley McChrystal, who is supposed to be some sort of counterinsurgency genius with his finger on the pulse of the Afghan people, has turned out to be clueless in his assessments of political and social conditions in Afghanistan, which are vital to counterinsurgency doctrine.
Others are lured by a truly absurd faith in our ability to socially engineer by force a remote foreign culture spread out over a broad and inhospitable terrain:
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2010/05/afghanistan_wom/
And a sizable portion of the American people seem to enjoy permanent war. Even though they don't pay much attention to the day-to-day details of the war, they are deeply opposed to ending it. The War on Islamofascist Terror, which provides the ongoing ideological justification for the war, has evolved into something close to a religion. The abiding doctrinal sway of this religion is the most enduring legacy of the Bush administration. Whenever there is any inkling that people on Washington are thinking of pulling the plug on the GWoT, a cry goes up from the right that is similar to the emotional reaction you get when some liberal tries to remove the ten commandments from a courthouse.
Nine years. In Afghanistan ... Afghanistan!!! And yet there hasn't been a significant terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11/01. What in the world are Americans doing so far from home, in such an impoverished and minimally threatening country, that could possibly take nine years to accomplish?
On the Israel vs. Afghanistan thing, the reason for the imbalance in posts is clearly Josh Marshall's decision. As Jim says, every writer is entitled to their own interests and areas of expertise. So the breakdown in editorial content is going to depend on what kinds of writers the managing editor recruits. But about 90% of the front-page posts here are from Jewish-American writers. Those writers include Robert Reich, who never writes about Israel, and whose posts are simply cross-posted from his own blog. He's not really even "here", because he never comments on the comments on his posts. But the TPM Cafe roster includes a number of writers for whom Israel is either their chief passion, or one of their top two or three passions. I once joked that Marshall's goal for TPM Cafe seemed to be to turn it into "Dementary Magazine" - an alt journal of Jewish-American opinion for Democrats. So it's not really surprising that you get such a high proportion of posts on Israel here.
June 13, 2010 10:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
On one hand, I've learned far more about Israel and Palestine from the well written commentaries here than I have in years of watching the news. The posts here have also helped my thinking on the issue to become more complex and nuanced. So thanks for that.
As for over-emphasis I think I have said a few times here that sometimes it seems you're all part of some rareified policy club and are talking past your audience about people who are important to you all but not necessarily important to anyone else.
So much Israel policy is done in our name though and with our tax dollars and sometimes with our military. I think we've also seen with the flotilla incident and the recent arrest of one of the Dubai assassins on Poland that Israel's conflict has spread beyond its borders.
You talk about the soldiers who died in Afghanistan and I agree, we should be more aware than we are. The public has, as Herbert points out, been sold a kind of phantom war without consequences. There should be more awareness and probably anger about Afghanistan. Certainly there should be more civic involvement.
Israel is a U.S. ally and has many times been its ward. The U.S. has sacrificed for it and protected it. Their soldiers killed one of our citizens in the flotilla incident and I don't see any anger over that, either. Indeed, all I saw was one extremist congressman claim that any Americans who tried to run the blockade should be prosecuted. What? It seems to me that we should be demanding the right to conduct our own investigation and to prosecute if one of our citizens was murdered.
June 13, 2010 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Congresspeople coming to the defense of Israel before even having the decency to raise necessary questions about casualties to American citizens at the hands of Israel really does disturb me. It's not so much that they didn't condemn Israel for killing and injuring Americans (three American citizens were casualties), it's that they didn't even bother to make an effort to find out what happened before defending Israel while, essentially, throwing Americans (whom they supposedly represent) under the bus. Americans should be furious about this and the Congresspeople should be held to account.
June 13, 2010 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Congress is very representative of the views of its donors. I say we amend the Constitution to read:
"We The People (bearing checkbooks)...")
June 14, 2010 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Herbert's Op-Ed in the NYT was pointed and poignant. Thanks for posting it here, Jim.
The Nation's article by Robert Dreyfuss a couple of days ago was even more pointed. Here's an excerpt:
"Don’t look now, but President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy is collapsing on his head.
"The troops that Obama added to the war in 2009 were supposed to head south into Helmand and Kandahar. Instead, the whole war is going south. Fast.
"Last year, in two reviews of Afghan policy, the president twice escalated the war, more than doubling the US troop commitment. At the time, he gave the Pentagon til the end of 2010 to prove that General McChrystal’s vaunted counterinsurgency-cum-nation-building policy would work. The headlong rush to add troops resulted, first, in an all-out military campaign to seize and control Marja, a dusty, worthless village of 60,000 in Helmand province; and, second, a planned assault on Kandahar, the city of one million that is the birthplace of the Taliban.
"Oops. Marja was a complete failure, and the Kandahar 'offensive' ain’t happening.
"This is, or should be, devastating for Obama. The Marja offensive, last February, was touted as a demonstration of the 'clear, hold and build' COIN that McChrystal was hired to implement. That in itself was silly, because Marja is a tiny town of little or no real strategic importance. By March, when the Marja operation was deemed completed, it was widely cited by the administration as a great victory. But over the last two months, reporters who’ve actually been there report back that it’s still a mess, plagued by violence, that the Taliban has come back in force. The Taliban is carrying out a reign of terror there, killing civilians and government officials alike and battling US and Afghan forces to a standstill.
"The Marja operation was also described as a prelude to going into Kandahar, an operation that was described as 'decisive' in the nine-year-long war. But yesterday, after a week of media reports suggesting that the Kandahar offensive was being delayed, McChrystal said himself in a news conference that there would be no US or Afghan effort to move into Kandahar anytime soon. In the spring, the military was leaking madly that the move into Kandahar would start in June, but if it happens at all now it won’t be until the fall. In his news conference, McChrystal was asked if the Kandahar operation would be decisive. Here’s the Q&A:
"Q: General, will we know by the end of the year if the Kandahar operation is decisive, if it's worked?
"GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: I think we'll know whether it's progressing. I think it will be very clear by the end of the calendar year that the Kandahar operation is progressing. I don't know whether we'll know whether it is decisive. I think historians will tell us that. But I think, by the end of the year, we'll have enough progress around Kandahar to be clear to the Afghan people that a substantive change and improvement has been made, and we'll continue on that point.
"Don’t hold your breath."
Looks like we're in for another FU or 2 or three or 10 before we find a way to wiggle out of Afghanistan, doesn't it?
June 13, 2010 10:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Herbert's Op-Ed in the NYT was pointed and poignant. Thanks for posting it here, Jim.
The Nation's article by Robert Dreyfuss a couple of days ago was even more pointed. Here's an excerpt:
"Don’t look now, but President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy is collapsing on his head.
"The troops that Obama added to the war in 2009 were supposed to head south into Helmand and Kandahar. Instead, the whole war is going south. Fast.
"Last year, in two reviews of Afghan policy, the president twice escalated the war, more than doubling the US troop commitment. At the time, he gave the Pentagon til the end of 2010 to prove that General McChrystal’s vaunted counterinsurgency-cum-nation-building policy would work. The headlong rush to add troops resulted, first, in an all-out military campaign to seize and control Marja, a dusty, worthless village of 60,000 in Helmand province; and, second, a planned assault on Kandahar, the city of one million that is the birthplace of the Taliban.
"Oops. Marja was a complete failure, and the Kandahar 'offensive' ain’t happening.
"This is, or should be, devastating for Obama. The Marja offensive, last February, was touted as a demonstration of the 'clear, hold and build' COIN that McChrystal was hired to implement. That in itself was silly, because Marja is a tiny town of little or no real strategic importance. By March, when the Marja operation was deemed completed, it was widely cited by the administration as a great victory. But over the last two months, reporters who’ve actually been there report back that it’s still a mess, plagued by violence, that the Taliban has come back in force. The Taliban is carrying out a reign of terror there, killing civilians and government officials alike and battling US and Afghan forces to a standstill.
"The Marja operation was also described as a prelude to going into Kandahar, an operation that was described as 'decisive' in the nine-year-long war. But yesterday, after a week of media reports suggesting that the Kandahar offensive was being delayed, McChrystal said himself in a news conference that there would be no US or Afghan effort to move into Kandahar anytime soon. In the spring, the military was leaking madly that the move into Kandahar would start in June, but if it happens at all now it won’t be until the fall. In his news conference, McChrystal was asked if the Kandahar operation would be decisive. Here’s the Q&A:
"Q: General, will we know by the end of the year if the Kandahar operation is decisive, if it's worked?
"GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: I think we'll know whether it's progressing. I think it will be very clear by the end of the calendar year that the Kandahar operation is progressing. I don't know whether we'll know whether it is decisive. I think historians will tell us that. But I think, by the end of the year, we'll have enough progress around Kandahar to be clear to the Afghan people that a substantive change and improvement has been made, and we'll continue on that point.
"Don’t hold your breath."
Looks like we're in for another FU or 2 or three or 10 before we find a way to wiggle out of Afghanistan, doesn't it?
June 13, 2010 10:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don't know what's up with the double posting. I previewed the comment above, then clicked "Publish" and got an error message. Tried again, same error message. So I gave up and - Lo - there it was twice.
June 13, 2010 10:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Same thing happened to me. 3 times.
June 13, 2010 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just post once, and ignore the error message.
June 13, 2010 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is another bias working here, you just haven't found it.
June 13, 2010 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here in the Spanish-speaking community of the Sonoran Desert, we have been advocating for an "Academic-Military Draft" and which would heighten the 'debate' on both War and Peace.
Regardless, this 'idea' will gain traction when the Native American/Chicano/Hispanic/Latino become the majority in the USA. [consider this some Sunday Snark.]
Jaango
June 13, 2010 5:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
The lack of attention to Afghanistan is frustrating. I am in a minority of Americans that believes the US is much to eager to go to war to solve international problems and that is the case with or without Israel. Unfortunately, if we threw the Israel albatross out today our propensity to go to war would remain. Right now Afghanistan and Pakistan are the most conspicuous examples of too much desire for war. I wish that could be put on the political agenda. But unfortunately it cannot. Evern Jim and it seems MJ above feel that the US has some responsibility to not just 'abandon' Afghanistan. That I believe is wrong. As long as that problem is defined as central to our interests and that we cannot leave until we solve it, war is the tool that we have at our disposal. Logically, there is nothing else that we have to offer those people.
But coming back to Jim's initial question: why "All Israel, all the time". Let me offer a conjecture though recognizing this is a question that is not going to have a simple answer.
Even if the primary problem was our excessive use of the military to deal diplomatic problems this happens to be a debate that has been going on in the US for the last century at least. The sides are fairly well defined. The sides are not changing. The issue of US position with respect to Israel, however, is now in major flux. In the US people are changing their positions. That is, that is where the debate is today. It is just natural that the 43 to 1 ratio has happened. Hopefully we will get back to the more general debate of war and peace in the future.
June 13, 2010 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for your post and highlighting Mr. Herbert's thoughtful article.
I do think as a result of the Flotilla incident that people who had entirely tuned out the I/P issue had no choice but to pay attention again.
There are so many new developments that may happen as a result of the recent discovery of at least a trillion dollars worth of minerals in Afghanistan found by the US.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?ref=asia
Still scratching head as to why we were searching for minerals in the first place, consolation prize for not finding Osama in one of the caves?
June 13, 2010 11:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now that Afghanistan turns out to have Unobtanium too, conspiracy theorists and myth-makers have a new mission: Develop enough convolutions and sleight-of-hand bamboozlement to somehow make it seem subconsciously plausible that on September 12, 2001, Cheney and Halliburton looked into a crystal ball to discover that on June 13, 2010, it would be disclosed that huge motherloads of minerals have been prospected in a country most Americans would have trouble finding on a world map. Probably there is some way to fold Saddam-bin-Laden into this fantasy-weaving as well. A lucrative variant will be to say that the unstated but assumed crystal-ball-gazing occurred even earlier, say around September 2000, and that this then explains the corporate-pipelinist-imperialist conspiracy behind the 9-11 attacks, and possibly Florida's hanging chads as well.
Meanwhile, just yesterday there was a NY Times story on another form of mission creep: "U.S. Military Intelligence Puts Focus on Afghan Graft."
After 9 years of improvisation from Washington DC, the avatars in poppy land are no more on the side of GI Joe than they were for comrade Ivan, a generation ago, folks. Ten years after the Russians invaded in 1979, the Soviet bloc began to implode. Time is running out now again as this albatross settles around the neck of the Obama admin. The Herbertian bail option is looking more credible by the day.
June 14, 2010 4:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
PT: Thanks so much for the CT scenario...I wonder if a year from now we'll see the exact plot in a bestselling thriller novel. I'd definitely see the movie.
June 14, 2010 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
New Reasons for being in Afghanistan
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html
June 13, 2010 11:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nop, actually they are the only real and main reasons for occupying Afghanistan. The former USSR had discovered that long time.
June 15, 2010 5:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jim, here's my take on why Israel All The Time...
In no particular order...
• After 9/11, a large number of people, particularly on "the left," bought the notion that we were attacked because of our relationship with Israel. Naturally, this was pretty disturbing. But it also meant that a HUGE number of new people, who had barely paid attention to this conflict before, became obsessed with it.
• Though I was reading Uri Avnery back in the early 1970s, the Internet has brought the conflict to the desktops of many people who otherwise wouldn't spend the time or effort to dip in. This is true of the world's other conflicts as well, but still...
• There has always been a form of "orientalism" shrouding the Jewish people. But, as usual, the Jews do it in their own, unique way. Instead of being completely foreign, they are at once very familiar and yet somehow foreign. You'll find them throughout our government and in all walks of life. They don't announce themselves with alien dress (mostly) and yet somehow, they are a bit alien, at least not quite "one of us." So while a Muslim could NEVER take over the government, Jews seem "normal" and before you know it, they've taken over like ivy. Then, suddenly, they become "deranged." (See Israel Derangement Syndrome).
• Israel is small and resource-less and the Jewish people are small. So it always SEEMS possible to reform them and resolve any problem in which they play a central role. Just make them. Or just change them. No one on the left even DREAMS of reforming Saudi Arabia. How? Where would one start? And wouldn't that be imperialistic? But Israel...she's so small and vulnerable. Better to start there. Plus, Jews are ALMOST like us and are few in number, so it only makes sense. I guess the presumption is that Israel REALLY DOES share a lot of American values...irony of ironies.
• We give Israel a lot of money, so we feel implicated in what they do AND we feel that this money should give us leverage. They being small (see above), it should be possible to push them around and get them to toe the line. We believe that pulling the plug on the money would get Israel to change since they are small and dependent. This is actually a hopeful sign for Israel, IMO, because a lot of people want her to do better, even if they don't care about Israel, really, one way or another.
• A lot of old, discredited anti-Semitic tropes have gained a new lease on life because of many of these factors. Back when you had to get on a mailing list, or read certain publications or pick up poorly printed one-color brochures, it was hard to get the "information" you needed. And you felt vaguely creepy being seen with this stuff. Now all you have to do is type in Jew Watch and you're good to go, and links lead to more links. IOW, once upon a time, you had to seek out this garbage, now it comes to you!
• A lot of people THINK IP is important, so it is. For example, if every Muslim country says "IP is a stumbling block to good relations between the Muslim world and the rest"...it is, automtically, even if there is no other reason for it to be such a big problem. If terrorists are going to attack us and say they're doing it in the name of Palestine...that's what they're doing. There's a bit of a double standard here: it's accepted as natural that the "umma" is concerned with their fellow Muslims and the holy sites in Palestine and puts pressure on Arab governments to do whatever, but it is traitorous for Jews to do the same--mostly because they are minority.
• People get the image of 1.3 billion Muslims arrayed against us because of 6 million Jews. So naturally, they're concerned.
• The IP conflict is serious. Israel is doing awful things to the Palestinians and, in the process, doing awful things to itself and its soul. So that needs to change and every Jew should be working to that end. Then again, we are a small people...
June 14, 2010 9:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just to embroider a bit...
• When Saudi Arabia chops off the hands of a thief or stones a woman for adultery, the rest of the umma doesn't rise up in indignation and drive planes into the WTT in protest...
• When Iran bludgeons non-violent protesters who are only seeking fair, democratic elections, the umma doesn't get upset at the perfidy...
• And when either of these things happen, the "left" doesn't get upset hardly at all. You can almost hear them say, "They're RAAAG heads, what are you gonna do?"
I just hope Jews make use of all of this attention to improve themselves and truly become a light unto the nations. I'm tribal enough to want Jews to REALLY become the best people in the world. And I mean that!
(All that said, I'd rather share a beer with Purple State than with many of my relatives.)
June 14, 2010 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nicely done. I'd also have a beer with Purple State, although my eyes might glaze over if he started talking about ethnocracy.
June 14, 2010 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
...and my eyes would start to glaze over when you started talking....
BTW, Tintin. If it makes you feel better, there was much greater global outrage over Apartheid than about Idi Amin's murder of 250,000 Ugandans. So I guess we shouldn't have protested apartheid until we had fixed every other problem in Africa, right? You critique evidences narcissism.
You see, for those of us whose relatives live under the Israeli boot, what happens in Saudi is an abstraction. What happens in the Palestine is reality.
June 14, 2010 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
BTW, Tintin. If it makes you feel better, there was much greater global outrage over Apartheid than about Idi Amin's murder of 250,000 Ugandans.
So I guess we shouldn't have protested apartheid until we had fixed every other problem in Africa, right? You critique evidences narcissism.
TT: On what scale "outrage"? Seems to me Idi was always a pariah, no? And when we got done with SA DID we move on to Idi and friends? I honestly don't remember. Is our next stop after Palestine, Saudi Arabia? Will we BDS them at the pump? Or would that be imperialism toward "indigenous peoples"?
You see, for those of us whose relatives live under the Israeli boot, what happens in Saudi is an abstraction. What happens in the Palestine is reality.
TT: Why is your concern for your relatives by marriage any less narcissistic than my concern for my "people" who, we're told now, simply invented themselves and their history?
I also don't recall SAs being accused of being traitors and firsters and threats to world peace and self-invented and all the gobbledygook that's regularly thrown into the mix in these "conversations." Were reams written about how the Afrikaaners needed to move back to Holland (I honestly don't know). SAs aren't imbedded in the world's imagination as both savior and nefarious presence...
Jim asked, "Why Israel all the time?" I tried to come up with an answer.
June 14, 2010 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Simple. Nobody goes around asking Americans to recognize the right of Arab regimes to exist or jabbers about our non-existent moral obligation that those countries.
Since America actually fought the Nazis, we have zero moral obligation to Israel. Zero. It's as simple as that.
When Israel's demand on America for support and diplommatic protection ceases, maybe it will no longer be "all Israel all the time."
June 15, 2010 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
And, I'd definitely rather have a beer with you, Tintin, than with a good many of my relatives. If you're ever passing through Toronto (my new home), let me know and maybe we can actually get together for one. AG's invited too . . . and we can talk about something normal . . . you know, like "how 'bout those Red Sox . . ." (Next I'll learn that AG's a Yankees fan, though for some reason I'm guessing Mets.)
We've had this discussion before and I'm too tired right now to write at length, but I think there are two basic reasons why Israel gets the attention it does:
June 14, 2010 9:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, I think it's time for the "players" to do something new. If only Israel could sprout a truly GREAT leader to lead it to the promised land. Even if he didn't get there himself.
You're close--I'm the Mets fan, but I guess I should be a Nats fan now that we have Strasbourg. I'm from the NY area, but somehow never jumped on the NY bandwagon.
The only times I was really a fan was when Lombardi was coaching Green Bay back in the day and when Gibbs was coaching the Redskins. That's about it.
June 15, 2010 3:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd like to extend this just a bit, Mr. Sleeper. I've been thinking about doing a post on this when I have time to scour the archives, just to make sure that my memory isn't playing tricks on me. When I first started paying attention to TPM's Cafe (I'm near the beginning--a donor to get the site up and off the ground), the team of regular columnists was broader in interest and expertise than the team is now--much broader. We had Maha on Health Care, Warren on the Middle Class, Newberry on economics from a broader perspective than we get now. We had Reed Hundt contributing regularly on the new technologies of the internet age, we still get Nathan Newman on Unions--but far less often than we used to get him.
There are other causes about which we're passionate--homelessness, education, science and the environment and race, to name just a few. I can't believe that there are no qualified people in those areas who would be willing to join the conversation. I can believe that finding these people and recruiting them may take more time that the TPM management wants to spend. We worry a lot about software issues, but not so much about brainfood issues, MHO.
June 14, 2010 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree, amike--the site was more diverse and intersting in the old days. Israel was just one of many topics discussed (and hardly the most prominent).
June 14, 2010 10:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
It was more interesting, wasn't it? Hope management reads this and goes hunting for the next Maggie Maher or Elizabeth Warren.
June 15, 2010 9:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
@tintin
"• The IP conflict is serious. Israel is doing awful things to the Palestinians and, in the process, doing awful things to itself and its soul. So that needs to change and every Jew should be working to that end"
But how many are there of us who are working to that end? Here in London there is a Jewish newspaper that regularly publishes propaganda, on nearly every page, apparently on a direct line from the Israeli embassy's hasbara department.
Consequently, a majority of the British, Jewish community here, absorb and digest all this claptrap without ever checking any facts or the veracity of any published statement.
It's extraordinarily disheartening to talk to otherwise 'bright' and successful people and to listen to the fabricated fictions, disseminated at every social and business function, as truth.
Everyday, I receive email from my Jewish colleagues that purport to show Israel as a helpless victim of Muslim aggression. Last week I received from the Foreign Affairs Section the infamous clip parodying the passengers of the Turkish ferry that was attacked in international waters and in which nine unarmed passengers were shot and killed and point blank range by Israeli troops.
That horrific operation is, need I say, approved by most pro-Israel supporters.
However, all this is not to ignore the recent determination of thinking people in countries around the world to now put an end to this subjugation and dehumanization of an entire people.
June 14, 2010 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
My SENSE is the tide is turning, if slowly.
I know my own consciousness has been raised 100% by the discussions on this board and elsewhere.
Prior to that, my attitudes were stuck in the early 1970s, I'd say, though it always struck me as obvious that it would have to Israel who went the extra mile to make peace (being the stronger party).
I'd always opposed AIPAC--even during the time MJ was working there!--because it was always clear to me they took a hard right wing line.
But there were few ways to express my opposition, at least as far as I could see, that weren't what I felt was hardcore "Zionism = Racism."
June 14, 2010 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I found one of the comments from DanK, to be quite revealing, in that he is suggesting that Josh Marshall is using the TPMCafe as an 'alternative' for Democratic commentary on Israel.
Perhaps, DanK is correct? If so, I welcome the opportunity and challenge. And since I don't post very much by way of political blogs, other than TPM and another, I have found many like me and whom have expressed themselves in this ongoing discussion, the ability to project nuance and subtlety within their Argumentation, is quite impressive, especially for a non-Jew like myself.
And yet, the 'quality' of the debate is not premised on the 'quantity' of the Front Pagers, and that is fine with me. Now, I will readily admit that I come here to 'listen' to the debate being held by the American Jewish participants, as well as to those and whom are 'connected' via family and friends to Israel. And my focus tends to be on the American government's behavior, and not necessarily on Israeli or Palestinian behaviors.
And without the TPMCafe offering this political dynamic, and because I live in the Sonoran Desert, I would be scrambling to find a political house where some intelligent discussion is taking place. The alternative of course, would be for my looking to Latin America and the Jewish experiences that are ongoing in that part of the world, that would enhance my view of the wide swath that is the Middle East.
Now, if I were giving 'advice' to Josh Marshall, I would be suggesting that he entice a couple of Jewish folks from Latin America, and consequently, we would receive "two opinions" for our public policies, toward the Middle East and Latin America, and perhaps, combined and for our overall betterment and ease of understanding
Just a passing thought or two.
Jaango
June 15, 2010 7:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
In a follow up to my post of above, several months ago, I enjoyed myself in "debating" one one the inveterate posters from some months back, and that was Spider, and whom does not appear to be posting of late.
And during this debate or discussion in our non-personal disagreements relative to our respective and worldly views, he caused me to think of my history for having lived, worked, and my experience enjoyment that I received for spending a considerable amount of time in Latin America.
To wit, I was offered on two occasions, the opportunity to teach a seminar at an Argentinian university on what I would call "Democracy in Action". And given the press of time and the biz, I had to refuse. So, had I taught these seminars, I have to ask myself, what would I have 'contributed' to this younger generation of students what they could have found for themselves, given the now wealth of technology readily available?
In contrast, my having spent time in the Republic of Mexico, and during an 'argument' with some oil and gas union leadership members, I almost had my butt kicked because I disagreed with the perceived 'conventional wisdom'. Regardless, my argument was that the Jefe-Honchos of this oil and gas industry, were blatantly corrupt, and I was proven correct over time, and yet, my Argumentation, held no sway or gravitas for my opponents.
And which brings me to Professor Sleeper's admonition or contenion as to Afghanistan, many people want to avoid any detailed discussion on Afghanistan and due to their 'ideas' not being considered for any potential implementation, and all because, none of us have the ability and political connects that would permit us to 'whisper' into President Obama's probable and worn out ear.
Jaango
June 15, 2010 8:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nice to see some productive consensus-building here, even if the main common denominator may turn out be Holy Land breweries and teachable-moment imbibing for peace.
I also sense that there is a more subconscious mind-meeting going on as well that is potentially more serious and deserving of explicit reinforcement.
Evildoer has not yet weighed in here re the why so much "IP" question, but I think even his dialectical pessimism has room for recognition of the "seize the moment" opportunities, and the point I want to make here is that we ARE in such an opportunity currently. Things are more in flux now than at almost any time in the past decade.
What I thus propose is a focus-on-the-half-full beer mug attitude, instead of the more typical "progressive" anguish over the underprivileged empty half of the bar glass.
All this recent hair-tearing about how Obama has sold out to Darth Vadarian Capitalism, for instance, is not just naive (as Evildoer would probably opine), it is also yet another form of dubious wallowing in the empty half of the Bierstein.
Drink heartily and then do something!
Obama turns out to be (surprise surprise) a spineless Democrat, well: instead of joining the tea party lower life forms denouncing him with ignorance, pitch in for a spinal transplant. Organize a new pro-Obama, anti-Netanyahu movement perhaps. Come on, who would you rather shoot baskets with?
Money rules Congress, Mythbuster? Well, get some new chips to put down on the roulette table. It's been a while since one of the world's richest Jews (Soros) said this, but I doubt he threw all his money way on Madoff in the meantime:
"It is not too late for Israel to encourage and deal with an Abbas-led Palestinian unity government as the first step toward a better-balanced approach."
There is more of those ideas, and money to push them, where that came from.
Even the "Oh shit" news about lithium in them thar Afghan slag heaps has potential "silver linings". This could, after all, be a lure to throw down new planks across the quagmire. Think creatively: maybe there are some moderate Talibani who'd like to make a buck outside of the opium industry. And maybe some non-aligned (Chinese, Brazilian, Namibian, whatever investors/engineers,technicians) ready to take some risks for profit. Reshuffle the deck there enough and maybe Uncle Sam can walk away from the poker-cheaters and backstabbers, and out of the saloon, with more than his shirt on his back after all.
June 15, 2010 10:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
I give contributions. But it makes no difference. When the Democrats hemorrhage seats this fall, I hope President Obama learns the right lesson: He is NOT losing popularity because people wanted him to continue the policies of Geroge Bush. He is losing popularlity because of bad luck (crappy economy, BP spill, etc) and his failure to change our foreign policy.
How condescending is it for Americans to think that a speech in Cairo carries the same weight as votes at the UN?
June 15, 2010 6:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for contributing, MB, but new and different efforts are needed to make more effective use of funds donated. For example: AIPAC and the Congresspeople who betray America at its behest have to be directly and relentlessly called to account. A decade of pussyfooting around on this has done zilch. You moreover will be disappointed if you think Dem electoral setbacks will do much beyond encouraging Obama and his fellow invertebrate Democrats to do more than cave a bit faster to the neo-con hypocrites and teaparty morons.
June 15, 2010 10:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting to read your thoughts, PT. Always refreshing and pragmatic. Thanks.
June 15, 2010 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink