Ah yes, the Brigadiers....
The souls of arid, nonjudgemental thought about American foreign policy, especially if some Jews are involved....
Pat's just got his Irish up, that's all.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
Posted on 03/11/2003 1:14:12 PM PST by quidnunc
The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: “Can you assure American viewers … that we’re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?”
Suddenly, the Israeli connection is on the table, and the War Party is not amused. Finding themselves in an unanticipated firefight, our neoconservative friends are doing what comes naturally, seeking student deferments from political combat by claiming the status of a persecuted minority group. People who claim to be writing the foreign policy of the world superpower, one would think, would be a little more manly in the schoolyard of politics. Not so.
Former Wall Street Journal editor Max Boot kicked off the campaign. When these “Buchananites toss around ‘neoconservative’—and cite names like Wolfowitz and Cohen—it sometimes sounds as if what they really mean is ‘Jewish conservative.’” Yet Boot readily concedes that a passionate attachment to Israel is a “key tenet of neoconservatism.” He also claims that the National Security Strategy of President Bush “sounds as if it could have come straight out from the pages of Commentary magazine, the neocon bible.” (For the uninitiated, Commentary, the bible in which Boot seeks divine guidance, is the monthly of the American Jewish Committee.)
David Brooks of the Weekly Standard wails that attacks based on the Israel tie have put him through personal hell: “Now I get a steady stream of anti-Semitic screeds in my e-mail, my voicemail and in my mailbox. … Anti-Semitism is alive and thriving. It’s just that its epicenter is no longer on the Buchananite Right, but on the peace-movement left.”
Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan endures his own purgatory abroad: “In London … one finds Britain’s finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the ‘neoconservative’ (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy.”
Lawrence Kaplan of the New Republic charges that our little magazine “has been transformed into a forum for those who contend that President Bush has become a client of … Ariel Sharon and the ‘neoconservative war party.’”
Referencing Charles Lindbergh, he accuses Paul Schroeder, Chris Matthews, Robert Novak, Georgie Anne Geyer, Jason Vest of the Nation, and Gary Hart of implying that “members of the Bush team have been doing Israel’s bidding and, by extension, exhibiting ‘dual loyalties.’” Kaplan thunders:
The real problem with such claims is not just that they are untrue. The problem is that they are toxic. Invoking the specter of dual loyalty to mute criticism and debate amounts to more than the everyday pollution of public discourse. It is the nullification of public discourse, for how can one refute accusations grounded in ethnicity? The charges are, ipso facto, impossible to disprove. And so they are meant to be.
What is going on here? Slate’s Mickey Kaus nails it in the headline of his retort: “Lawrence Kaplan Plays the Anti-Semitic Card.”
What Kaplan, Brooks, Boot, and Kagan are doing is what the Rev. Jesse Jackson does when caught with some mammoth contribution from a Fortune 500 company he has lately accused of discriminating. He plays the race card. So, too, the neoconservatives are trying to fend off critics by assassinating their character and impugning their motives.
Indeed, it is the charge of “anti-Semitism” itself that is toxic. For this venerable slander is designed to nullify public discourse by smearing and intimidating foes and censoring and blacklisting them and any who would publish them. Neocons say we attack them because they are Jewish. We do not. We attack them because their warmongering threatens our country, even as it finds a reliable echo in Ariel Sharon.
And this time the boys have cried “wolf” once too often. It is not working. As Kaus notes, Kaplan’s own New Republic carries Harvard professor Stanley Hoffman. In writing of the four power centers in this capital that are clamoring for war, Hoffman himself describes the fourth thus:
And, finally, there is a loose collection of friends of Israel, who believe in the identity of interests between the Jewish state and the United States. … These analysts look on foreign policy through the lens of one dominant concern: Is it good or bad for Israel? Since that nation’s founding in 1948, these thinkers have never been in very good odor at the State Department, but now they are well ensconced in the Pentagon, around such strategists as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.
In a Feb. 9 front-page article in the Washington Post, Robert Kaiser quotes a senior U.S. official as saying, “The Likudniks are really in charge now.” Kaiser names Perle, Wolfowitz, and Feith as members of a pro-Israel network inside the administration and adds David Wurmser of the Defense Department and Elliott Abrams of the National Security Council. (Abrams is the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz, editor emeritus of Commentary, whose magazine has for decades branded critics of Israel as anti-Semites.)
Noting that Sharon repeatedly claims a “special closeness” to the Bushites, Kaiser writes, “For the first time a U.S. administration and a Likud government are pursuing nearly identical policies.” And a valid question is: how did this come to be, and while it is surely in Sharon’s interest, is it in America’s interest?
This is a time for truth. For America is about to make a momentous decision: whether to launch a series of wars in the Middle East that could ignite the Clash of Civilizations against which Harvard professor Samuel Huntington has warned, a war we believe would be a tragedy and a disaster for this Republic. To avert this war, to answer the neocon smears, we ask that our readers review their agenda as stated in their words. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. As Al Smith used to say, “Nothing un-American can live in the sunlight.”
We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people’s right to a homeland of their own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity.
Not in our lifetimes has America been so isolated from old friends. Far worse, President Bush is being lured into a trap baited for him by these neocons that could cost him his office and cause America to forfeit years of peace won for us by the sacrifices of two generations in the Cold War.
They charge us with anti-Semitism—i.e., a hatred of Jews for their faith, heritage, or ancestry. False. The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a “passionate attachment” to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what’s good for Israel is good for America. …
<P(The entire article is available at bookstores.)
The loon would have an absolute coronary if they did. .....Which is one of the reasons I hope they do.
Well, how then do you explain Noam Chomsky?
His traditional Cathlic upbringing (Pre-Vatican II) taught him that Jews were a nemesis of Catholics for the last 2000 years. That is the lens with which he views things, and nothing can be done to change that.
I know lots of Catholics who had a similar upbringing but they don't talk about Jews and Israel the way Buchanan does.
I think he has a good heart…
Again, what evidence can you cite in support of this?
…but if you take a stand, you have to expect some heat.
Especially if what you're standing for would have had the approval of Joseph Goebbels.
Often said; never proven.
If that's the case, how do you square that Buchanan's high education and intellegence.
Morality (I firmly believe that bigotry is immoral--hating an entire group of people because of your personal hangups is both selfish AND a violation of Christ's commandment to love your neighbor as yourself) and education/intelligence are two separate things.
But have the neo-cons (and Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld) taken over Bush when Bush says Islam is a peaceful religion. Bush's efforts for a Palestine state, not the war, will be the moment of truth.
Ah yes, the Brigadiers....
The souls of arid, nonjudgemental thought about American foreign policy, especially if some Jews are involved....
Pat's just got his Irish up, that's all.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
I tend to disagree, because the response to this guy's bilge is pretty much united against him.
Buchanan has always been a nationalist. In recent years, he's also become a socialist.
So, yes, he's a nationalist socialist.
But they aren't and they don't. Instead the throw mud by saying the Jews have hijacked American policy and, as evidence, cite influential Jews who are neoconservatives and the confluence of American and Jewish interests - as if any such confluence is, ipso facto, proof of guilt.
Mud is too good for them. They should be thrown in a vat of s**t.
They can get elected to 1600 Pennsyvania Avenue West; he can't.
Pat is saying Christians such as GWBush and Dick Cheney are dumb and have their strings pulled by Jewish puppeteer advisors. The ones mentioned in his above article.
Fact is this war helps America's interests. Helps secure our MidEast oil interests and keeps China and Russia out of the region. Puts a marker down for the terrorists. Will drive Jihadists further underground. This shows the Jihadists how potent we are, keep the dollar strong and the premiere reserve currency. Our war will stiffen the spine of Arab nations to crack down on Jihadists. Coincidentally it helps Israel too. That's what drives the anti Israel folks in the USA nutso. Israel getting peace is impossible now. The chance of it getting peace grows after the Iraq war. After Arab Muslims are taken down a few pegs this peace chance grows. A peace that doesn't make Israel commit suicide. However I still don't see any lasting Israeli/Palestinian/Arab peace due the age old Muslim habit of violating treaties, their desire for Jihad and their demographic warfare.
Why is it that the people who claim to be the purest defenders of America's sovereignty also happen to be the ones who demand that America abrogate its right to engage in international intercourse with the nation of Israel, solely to appease the mythical "Arab street?"
SUCK IT PAT!!!!
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