Whose War? (Israel’s “amen corner” has plans for America to fight many wars in the Middle East.)

The American Conservative ^ | March 24, 2003 | Patrick J. Buchanan

[Poohbah]

Do you really believe PB hates ALL Jews?

No, I said he hates an entire group of people. He probably knows and is friends with a few Jews--lots of bigots hate a group in general, but like specific members of that group in particular. It's weird, but it's human nature.

Aren't you in fact generalizing when you infer that because somebody butts heads with the Likudniks in Israel and America they must be bigots?

Pat Buchanan not only goes hammer-and-tongs at Israel, he complains about Wall Street--and he somehow manages to mention only those trading firms with Jewish-sounding names.

Pat Buchanan, if he isn't an actual anti-Semite, is making one hell of an effort to sound like one.

PB has spoken highly of Barak's peace efforts.

As have others, including those who just wish the Jews would shut up and get in the showers.

Why would he say anything complimentary of Isreal Labor if he's such a monster?

Apparently, he was quite happy with Israel as long as they were willing to commit national suicide.

Did you know Abe Foxman owes his job to PB? Pat recommended him for the job long ago.

SFW?

[WOSG]

Many of us in the conservative camp are not Jewish, dont
particularly want an Israeli-centric foreign policy, but WE DO WANT SADDAM DONE WITH - *NOW* - and we are sick and tired of these lies and slurs about US intentions.

We can smell Pat B's anti-Israeli rants for what they are, it reeks of anti-semitism. I defer the William F Buckley and his judgment on that matter, who catalogued the record of Pat B 12 years ago, when Pat B was *then* falsely claiming that Iraq/Kuwait was all about Israel, and doing his darnedest to split the US from anything that might help the Jewish state of Israel.
Being wrong then doesnt make him right today.

To use Chirac's line, Pat "missed an opportunity to shut up".

[SJackson]

The issue to Pat seems to be

1-It helps Israel (IMO, problematical, since a multitude of other actions GWB didn't take would have helped Israel more) and

2-There are Jew's in the administration, thus guilt is established.

It's curious that in noting Hoffman's four groups of influence, he notes only the fourth. IMO, Pat would qualify for number 3, admitadly less important than 1 and 2. But 4 runs the show. No matter what Pat says, American Fundamentalists, I kind of like that! The world would be a better place with more of them.

A third and less important group sees in everything a contest between America's traditional political and religious values and all who attack them, be they secular and dissolute liberals or Islamic terrorists. This group I call the American fundamentalists.

[WOSG]

. The leftists will side with anything that is ANTI-BUSH. ANYTHING!

---

This is true!!!

Sign of the times: Donahue had Buchanan on, and Buchanan was saying the US should listen more to Russia and not provoke war ... and Donahue had a comment "what was I telling you all those year ago!" Buchanan backpedalled "well that was the soviet union ..." and looked mighty unhappy.

Donahue only had Pat B on as a prop for anti-Bush and anti-war sloganeering. They will use ANYTHING.

[WOSG]

careful, in 1973, the Arabs had soviet equipment, had advantage of a surpise attack on Israel and would have possibly destroyed Israel had it not been for US help airlifting military equipment. .... funny, wasnt Pat B. working for Nixon back then?

Does he regret that decision of Nixon's?

[WOSG]

We Conservatives should make a point of marking the starting point of the Terrorism War as *1979*, the year Iranian students took American hostages.

It will remind people of all that Jimmy Carter did to make terrorism possible. Without Jimmy, the Shah would never have fallen. Which means hezbollah would never have been funded, which mean lebanon would never have become a mess, which means Israel would have been able to deal with Arafat properly, which means the palestinian problem would never have degenerated into a civil terroristic war. With the Shah and US support, Iraq would never have attacked Iran, which means they never would have attacked Kuwait either.


Conclusion: Without Jimmy Carter's multiple clusterf***k foreign policy, terrorism would never have gotten as bad as it did, on 9/11.

Terrorism War - Started under Jimmy Carter, ended under George W Bush (God willing).

[Poohbah]

Without Jimmy, the Shah would never have fallen.

Actually, if we'd thrown everything into keeping the Shah in power, the net result would have been that the Shah had fallenp--and that the USSR would have occupied Iran under the terms of the 1921 Treaty of Friendship between the USSR and Iran.

[WOSG]

There is no better anti-Communist than neo-cons like Richard Perle.

Many of the anti-war marchers *are* Communists, the whole international Left organized to stop America from engaging in a robust pro-freedom liberation of Iraq.

Why is Pat B siding with Communists on this?

Pat B is anti-Israel and anti-Jewish to the point of warping his view of our national interest. Coddling terrorists and tyrants Arafat and Saddam is dangerous and stupid in the extreme, but Pat Bs biases blind him to that. Anti-semitic? If the shoe fits... His 'indictment' is more full of holes than swiss cheese.

[WOSG]

"This article would have sounded better in the original German. "

okay, trivia Q (i forget the answer) who came up with that line ? It was said before, I think about 12 year ago, in reference to Pat B's commentary.

Mark Shields??!?

[Poohbah]

It was Molly Ivins.

[WOSG]

I am Catholic and certainly resent the implication that Catholics in general share this view of Jews. If I recall Bill Bennett is Catholic and was the point-man
in 1992 attacking Pat Buchanan, FYI, in particular raising Pat's views on Jews and minorities as suspect.

This, for example, is a pile of cr*p: "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." That is *not* Catholic teaching.

[Alouette]

[quidnunc]

There is a philosophical principle known as Ockham’s (Occam's) Razor which postulates that when multiple competing hypotheses are put forward as possible solutions to a question, the simplest answer is most likely to be the correct one. (Before you can proceed to the improbable, you must first rule out the obvious.) The simplest answer to the question “Are Pat Buchanan and his paleo-con cohorts anti-Semitic?” is that based on all the evidence, yes they are.

When they speak of neo-conservatives you can almost hear them spitting out the word "Juden!"

[WOSG]

not so. 1921 was ancient history and irrelevent. in 1979, the shah was ill, but there was no reason for him to step down except that the Mullahs had engaged in violent street protests. Carter told the military to do nothing, so they did nothing. eventually all top 150 generals were killed in the revolution that followed.

The Shah was a modernizing Shah who gave the women the vote, which pissed off the local Bin laden-types. A good US President would have stood behind the Shah and it would have been enough to maintain the peace in that constitutional monarchy, but Carter stabbed him in the back and a virulently anti-US theocracy took over.... Same story in Nicaruagua - it's NOT an accident! Taking advice from Carter is poison, unless you're a communist.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/829119/posts



A post on this:

"maybe you're too young to remember, but the Ayatollah's plane actually turned back one day while Carter coerced the Shah,(or whatever interim set-up with a guy named Bani-Sadr existed as the government), to let him land. Then a vicious attack on the army began. They were surrounded in their barracks and literally butchered. Many TV pictures of the time of eviscerated corpses of Iranian Army officers, who could have defended themselves, except for the fact that Carter had decided to sacrifice our friends. Fitting it was then that Carter's ultimate political fate was determined largely by what he had brought on himself."

[Poohbah]

Yup. Like I said, if he isn't an anti-Semite, he's working REAL hard to convince one and all that he is.

[dennisw]

Why is it that the people who claim to be the purest defenders of America's sovereignty

You refer to Pat Buchanan and the people who think like him. Paleo-libertarians. They also think of themselves as conservative. 

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?"

Appeasing hundreds of millions of Muslims is their priority so we can get MidEast oil with minimum hassle. They want no problems with the Muslim world and will do anything to avoid stirring them up. Israel gets in the way and should be left to the Jihadist wolves. Many of them plain don't like Israel (and Jews) so this works out fine. Their ideas are consistent with a libertarianism that is non-interventionist, that just wants to engage in uncomplicated trade. With politics that stop at our borders.
Why do anything in the MidEast? Even Saddam has to sell his oil somewhere. So why waste our resources and military on this mass murderer?

The flaw in their logic is that if we abandon the MidEast tomorrow the Chinese and Russians will move into the vacuum. I could see China coming up with a plan to charge America an extra $20 per barrel of oil to break us.

 

[Poohbah]

not so. 1921 was ancient history and irrelevent.

The treaty was still in force. Sorry, it was very relevant. It caused us no small amount of anxiety during Operation Eagle Claw in 1980.

in 1979, the shah was ill, but there was no reason for him to step down except that the Mullahs had engaged in violent street protests.

The violent street protests would not have gotten traction without the support of LOTS of the population.

Carter told the military to do nothing, so they did nothing.

Whose military? The Iranian military?

eventually all top 150 generals were killed in the revolution that followed.

That's what tends to happen to close political cronies of the head of state when there's a revolution.

The Shah was a modernizing Shah who gave the women the vote, which pissed off the local Bin laden-types.

Yeah. He also pissed off a lot of other people, and he looked to be too much of a foreign lackey for many people's taste. You have to know a bit of Iranian history--the dynasty was incredibly recent (1920, IIRC), the last popularly elected government had been bumped off by the CIA and MI6, and the Shah was dragging the whole damn country into the 20th century faster than Iranian culture wanted to get there.

A good US President would have stood behind the Shah and it would have been enough to maintain the peace in that constitutional monarchy, but Carter stabbed him in the back and a virulently anti-US theocracy took over...

With much popular support.

What would you have done differently?

[dennisw]

2-There are Jew's in the administration, thus guilt is established..........

There were many more Jews in Clinton's administration. They were too liberal to keep conservatives happy. Now Pat's unhappy with Jews in another administration who are far from liberal. It's like the Russians who blamed communism on Jews and now they blame Russian capitalism on them.

[Jhoffa_]

You were right about Mr. Buchannan's masochistic tendencies.

I see what you mean perfectly now.

[caltrop]

What's it take to be an anti-Semite? Active hostility to Jews and/or Israel would, I presume, clearly qualify. More interesting, at least to me, would be whether simply not caring about Israel any more than one cares about Taiwan or Sri Lanka makes one an anti-Semite. Lately I get the sense that, at least here on FR, plenty of people would argue both positions qualify as anti-Semitic.