The Daily Dearborn Independent Dish, Ctd.

JPod responds and explains why he compared the Dish to a purveyor of nineteenth century anti-Semitic filth:

Sullivan wrote a post yesterday arguing that neoconservatives gulled him into supporting a war against the Saddam Hussein regimer whose true, hidden, secret purpose was to create a permanent occupation of Iraq and a state of permanent war in the Middle East and Israel. And why? To benefit Israel and its most irredentist elements, a cause that is, by this analysis, more important to us neoconservatives than the fate of the United States. Since this plan was obviously not laid out step by step in an easy-to-use guidebook for Sullivan, the poor and innocent scribe so easily duped by us fiendishly clever fellows in the neocon clan, it must have been devised in secret by a — dare I say it — cabal. Of — dare I say it? — Jews.

But at no point did I say that neocons were preferring Israeli interests to American ones, which would be tantamount to accusing them of treason (a charge Podhoretz nonetheless directed at me in his post, accusing me of wanting the US to "lose" in Iraq out of personal pique). I made no mention of a cabal. I implied no secrecy. There is and was no secret cabal: all this was open and clear and arguable – and I publicly agreed with them. Neocons are also not uniformly Jewish and I made no mention of Jewishness at all in my post. My one name reference was Cheney, who is about as goy as you get.

And at no point, moreover, have I shifted the blame for my own misjudgment onto anyone else. I take total responsibility for my own views. I wasn’t gulled. I was a neocon too. I was merely proven wrong – and have tried to make sense of the issues in that context.

I think, however, that my recent bloggy shorthand use of the term "neocon" has gotten far too crude. It has failed to account for the many divides within neoconservatism and has unfairly painted with an overly broad brush. On that JPod has a point. Brief bloggy blasts can end up conflating things unfairly. I hope to respond to that serious and valid critique soon.