Posted on 07/21/2006 5:53:01 AM PDT by SJackson
Since the outbreak of the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict, Pat Buchanan and other paleoconservatives have made themselves true exponents of populism: the Jew-baiting, conspiracy-driven demagoguery of 1890s agrarians.
In two columns, posted at WorldNetDaily this week, Buchanan accused President Bush of being a puppet of nefarious Jewish warmongers. Outlets of the Hate America Right – especially Paul Craig Roberts and LewRockwell.com – have joined him, and then some.
Nothing sets Buchanan’s imagination racing like a Bush-backed Israeli war. On Tuesday, Pat asked, “Who is whispering in his ear?” His answer: bloodthirsty Hebrews.
That Tel Aviv is maneuvering us to fight its wars is understandable. That Americans are ignorant of, or complicit in this, is deplorable.
This occurred after “Israel instructed the United States to terminate all aid to the Palestinian Authority,” and “Our Crawford cowboy meekly complied.” In an overtly ethnic reference, he added, “Bush sounded less like the leader of the Free World than some bellicose city councilman from Brooklyn Heights.”
In Thursday’s column, entitled “No, This is Not ‘Our War,’” Buchanan writes America is “impotent” because “we have allowed Israel to dictate to whom we may and may not talk.”
Worse, blood-drenched Jews are using America equipment to commit war crimes. “Israeli airstrikes [are] an outlawed form of collective punishment, that has left [Hezbollah supporters] with no sanitation, rotting food, impure water and days without light or electricity in the horrible heat of July.” (Days without light in July?)
He sagely concludes: “And we wonder why they hate us.”
So effusive was his most recent offering that Pat felt a need to add halfway down the article, “None of this is written in defense of Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran.”
No, but it’s all designed to smear the Jews and paint the terrorists as the victims rather than the aggressors and sole instigators of this war. He accomplishes this by highlighting only Muslim suffering – which Israel has taken extraordinary lengths to avoid – while ignoring the daily panic that fills the heart of an average Israeli boarding a bus, attending a wedding, or lunching at a corner deli.
He does this by overlooking the fact that Hezbollah and other Muslim terrorist groups hide in residential neighborhoods to maximize the number of innocent civilians killed by IDF retaliation in the hopes the world media will highlight Israeli “brutality” – as Pat has so willingly obliged.
Buchanan keeps mum that Hezbollah terrorist are blocking Lebanese civilians from evacuating southern Lebanon, making members of this largely Christian nation human shields. Islamist terrorists targeted fellow Arabs and Muslims in Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia – why would this surprise Pat?
Pat makes genocidal lunatics the moral superiors of Binyamin Netanyahu by claiming, for instance, that “there is no solid proof Iran is in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it has signed, but Israel refuses to sign.”
All of this is perpetrated with the single aim of making Israel an international pariah, his pastime for decades – one other paleocons share, few more than LewRockwell.com.
That paleocon paradise has become a hub of the Hate Israel, Hate America Right. On Wednesday, Butler Schaffer, a – what else? – professor at the Southwestern University School of Law, wrote, “Wars are intentionally put together by two or more states to enhance their power interests.” “the United States was a clear wrongdoer” in Vietnam and bewailed “the terrorism practiced upon the same people by the United States to reduce the Iraqi people to obedience.”
LR.com columnist Jim Lobe gave this deadly conspiracy a Jewish face, writing, “[T]he neo-cons have succeeded in aligning U.S. policy with the right-wing government in Israel, a key goal going back to the first Likud government of the late Menahim Begin.”
When Israel – finally – responded to years of terrorist provocations, LR columnist and professor Christopher Westley discovered the problem is the existence of Israel itself. “[T]he existence of a state overrides whatever mutually beneficial arrangements that might otherwise promote civilization” between Jews and Islamist murderers. He quickly notes, “To argue this has nothing to do with love or hate for Israel,” because “you can love Israel without equating it with the Israeli state.” Still, Israel “must know that governments cannot kill and dismember the innocent without creating blowback later. It also applies to the U.S., which funds Israel’s military.”
Chris Floyd, a columnist for the Moscow Times, posted a mock “Imperial Edict” allowing “our most steadfast and faithful satrap, Ehud Agrippa” to “continue his destruction of the Arab rabble.”
William S. Lind seems positively disposed to Hezbollah’s “brilliantly conducted raid” because, as a terrorist gang, its popularity is “pushing the Arab and larger Islamic worlds further away from the state.” And “One can only imagine how [shelling Israel] resonated world-wide with people who are often bombed but can never bomb back.”
Eric Margolis assessed the conflict as Israeli “revenge,” because Hezbollah was “the only Arab military force to ever defeat Israel.” More importantly, terrorist kidnappings were merely “a gesture to help the embattled Palestinians.”
All this appeared at the website that prominently featured of Lyndons Larouche associate Karen Kwiatkowski, published the columns of Cindy Sheehan, and rallied with leftists. (Pat Buchanan’s rag, The American Conservative, also published Kwiatkowski; not Sheehan, though.)
LewRockwell.com is also the home of former assistant secretary of the treasury and right-wing nutcase Paul Craig Roberts. In March, LR posted a piece by PCR insinuating a “’black opts’ [sic.] group will orchestrate [an] attack” on America “in order to gain a pretext for attacking Iran.” As recently as last month, he reaffirmed America had a secret plan to nuke Iran.
In response to Israeli defense, Roberts noted some neocons, “mostly Jew,” had been accused of “dual loyalties.” In fact, the kidnapping of the IDF soldiers was all a Jewish conspiracy. Shrewd Jews knew removing Saddam from power “would open the door for Israel to provoke attacks from Hizbollah.” Besides, “what is decried as ‘Arab terrorism against Israel’ is, in fact, the only tactic Muslims have for calling the world’s attention to the plight of the Palestinians.”
David Duke liked that article, just as he defended Cindy Sheehan. Holocaust deniers also linked to articles by Roberts (and Buchanan).
What more eloquent testimony can one hope for than seeing anti-Semites recognize their own?
Since the onset of the war, Roberts and LewRockwell.com have lashed out at “the crazed David Horowitz.” Thomas DiLorenzo reveals the original sin of the “(supposedly) former Commie”: he likes Abraham Lincoln.
The real sin David Horowitz commits is that he recognizes a moral distinction between terrorists who cross international borders to kidnap soldiers – in order to secure the release of convicted Muslim terrorists, including a child murderer – and a long-overdue response by a freedom-loving state aimed at ending the endless cycle of victimization negotiating with terrorists inevitably inspires.
Some of Lew Rockwell’s cohorts didn’t comprehend this during the Cold War, some did, including Buchanan and Roberts. None of them comprehend it when the principle is applied to the Jewish State, implying something else is clouding their reasoning.
That would be fascism. It's already been there.
As you'll note from the links above, Pat absolves Iran of any expansionist aims, agrees with Putin that America is a colonial, expansionist power, Comrade Wolf, supports foreign aid to Hamas, a designated terrorist group, and clearly views Hizbollah, another designated terrorist group with plenty of American blood on their hands, as a victim. There's no question Pat is an American, as is Cindy Sheehan, Barbara Lee, Howard Dean and many others who oppose this administration. I'm not sure that's anti-American, just misguided. It's worth noting though that the original America First Committee, Pat's model, dissolved within a week of Pearl Harbor. Of course that was a war, this is a war, but war for Israel, waged by a government under the control of an unnamed power.
Anti-American? You could make that case, I'd simply say tinfoil land.
Pat has been anti-Israel for decades. We fought a war in 1991 with no American interests at stake for Israel and her Christian dupes, the Amen corner. Christian kids kids dying for Israel. And over 80% approval of the war. Lots of duped Christians. I don't think there's anything new here, Pat is playing to his audience.
BTW, in some circles, circles which would buy into Pat's consipracy, Goldwater's "change" was the result of a Jewish wive, his second, and the influence of his brother, a converted Jew.
Why? They agree.
Joe Sobran, RIP.
I don't think even anti-war.com would publish her tripe...but I could be mistaken.
I don't think "credibility" is an issue with those who agree with your position.
I would say a self-hating American except that would not be accurate. All of those you name love themselves but have a deep disdain for the USA.
No one likes everything but in the wise words of Eric Cartman, "The Founding Fathers want you all to know that we can disagree all we want, as long as we agree that America kicks a**." But they don't agree with that.
You say there is no question that they are Americans, but can you really be a part of a group if you hate everything about it? From their POV nothing we do is right. If you dislike our government, our culture, our beliefs and our goals then you dislike us.
You may well be right, I just don't think it's usually productive. And it's Pat's arguement, we're all un-American, cept him and his supporters.
And I voted for Dukakis in '88. No harm, no foul.
Good one. I could just picture that dirtball goose-stepping around with his hand up in the fascist salute. Wouldn't be surprised Pat has a special secret room in his house with pictures of Hitler and other infamous Nazis on the wall along with SS and Brownshirt memorabilia.
Its called the "grown beyond staunch conservatism" syndrome. The press always lionizes these kinds of people. Remember Jumpin Jim Jeoffords? He was the darling of the Press for quite awhile. When a big-time Leftie goes pro-U.S. and pro-WOT, the press ignores them. Its all about bias in the media, plain and simple.
It's sad.
Who was the host you e-mailed the article to, Weiner Nation?
Great article; thanks for the ping. :-)
bttt
No kidding.
I'm thinking Lieberman will flip when he wins re-election.
And he will.
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