Month: September 2011

After Netanyahu’s Triumph

This embed is invalid

Judging from his actions, the Israeli prime minister has two over-arching goals: the permanent annexation of the occupied territories and the electoral defeat of Barack Obama in the US. He will deny both – but he is a practised liar, and his actions speak so much louder than his words. He is gaining on both fronts, as inaction means more and more settlers on the West Bank, and as Obama reels from a poor economy and as an "ungrateful ally", in Bob Gates's words, focuses primarily on his electoral destruction.

Netanyahu is not stupid. Obama represented a real threat to the neocon rubric: an American president very close to Israel but uniquely capable of advancing America's long term interests by forging a better relationship with the Arab and Muslim world. But the House GOP and a few Greater Israel-obsessed Democrats, in a close alliance with Netanyahu, have destroyed that potential. Between advancing America's long term interests and challenging the Israeli government, the Christianists and neocons have no hesitation in choosing Israel's short-term and self-destructive intransigence over their own country's long-term global influence.

So watching the US president be humiliated at the UN must have made every neocon and Christianist very happy, even as it made me wince. To contrast this speech with last year's reveals just how impotent any American president is in dealing with this matter. To go further back, from Cairo to New York represents an arc from real potential change to total, bitter stasis, with the added humiliation of Obama now vetoing the very Palestinian state that has been America's policy for decades. In this case, the arc of history is short and it points to mounting injustice.

But in some ways, the crude demonstration of the impotence of a US president in this area is clarifying. It's clear to the entire world that America – for domestic reasons – simply cannot be an honest broker between the Israelis and the Palestinians. America cannot even advance its own interests in a world transformed by the Arab Spring – because of the force of the evangelical right in determining Republican policies and the passion of the Greater Israel lobby in swaying the Democrats. If Obama was helpless in the face of this pincer movement, what hope any successor? The only way forward therefore is by reducing America's control of the peace process, and handing the issue to a wider international forum.

A first step is surely Sarko's option: backing observer member status at the UN as one desperate measure to force the Israelis to stop aggressively colonizing land captured in war. I don't see why the US should vote against that, even though the US will, because the US is domestically forced to do so. But the rest of the world may well vote in overwhelming numbers for this proposition, because they see it as the only real leverage against the deepening colonization of the West Bank.

This is Netanyahu's achievement: the alienation of Turkey and Jordan, the suspicion of the Arab Spring, the potential loss of Egypt's support and the dramatic reduction in US power and influence in the region. There was a window these past couple of years. Israel, the Greater Israel lobby and the Christianist GOP closed it. The best the US can do now is bow out of the responsibility for an ally it has no sway over, and work through more indirect fashion for a two-state solution that, at this point in time, seems further away than ever.

Levi’s Latest, Ctd

A reader scratches her head:

Levi Johnston's comment about Willow finding a pregnancy test stick in the bedroom doesn't make any sense (surprise).  Even if the kids found out before the seven-month point, why would Palin keep the pregnancy test stick for a month, two months, or at all, much less in the bedroom?  And how does it remain secret until the seventh month, if Willow is telling everyone sooner than that?

Good points. I wish we could resolve this question empirically and move on. But the Palins and the media refuse to allow us to do so. I have no problem with never knowing the truth if Palin never runs again. But if she does, the possibility of her being crazy enough to have concocted this hoax is surely salient to her ability to be president of the United States – and it should be put to rest.

The Government’s Compassion

Doug Mataconis goes after Eugene Robinson and Krugman's critiques of GOP values:

Perhaps there are situations where only government action can address a situation. In this country, we’ve more or less got a social compact that accepts the existence of a basic safety net for the indigent that enjoys wide popular support. However, Robinson wants to go further than that, his basic argument that the only charity that matters is government “charity” and that opposing government action to “help” the poor is equivalent to hoping that they die. This is, with all due respect to Robinson, an utterly ridiculous example of the kind of close-minded thinking one sees far too often from political pundits. Agreeing that the poor should be helped is where the compassion comes in. Disagreeing about how that should be done does not make one uncompassionate, and it’s both insulting and stupid for Robinson to argue otherwise.

Jim Henley counters:

What the actual historical record seems to show between the early 19th to the mid-20th Century, is the actual provisioners of private charity pushing for more public, tax-funded responses to the problems the provisioners worked on. The little platoons themselves apparently felt they were not up to the task. On “conservative” Hayekian/Burkean principles, the observed pattern of private charitable providers becoming public-policy reformers should count as evidence from the slow evolution of tradition.

MoveOn ad via Harold Pollack.

1.6 Million Views, Ctd

A reader writes:

I agree the video was touching and powerful, but I could not shake the feeling that I should not be seeing it. It was so intimate, so personal – as to be invasive.

I have not read or seen anything that indicates whether the young man's father consented. The father acted admirably, but I'm left thinking the son acted selfishly in taping and sharing it.   I didn't see or hear the young man say, "Dad, I've got you on speaker and I plan to post this on YouTube. I hope you don't mind this deeply personal conversation we are having being shared with strangers." 

It's a great story. I just don't think we should have seen it.

Dan Savage, with similar sentiments, points to a report:

As for [Randy] Phillips' father, he told ABC News that he was not exactly thrilled that his son put the clip on YouTube—but reiterated once again that he loves his son, and always will.

Another reader:

What struck my husband (who is ex-military) was the way he addresses his father: "Sir" then "Daddy". Back and forth, just like you note his head was going back and forth. And while it is very common in the south for grown men to still call their parents Mommy and Daddy (I have 60 year old uncles who say it and it's perfectly natural) there is something especially heartbreaking about it here. My husband noted the soldier addressing what is clearly his number one and most respected authority figure "sir" and then the scared little boy in him reaching out to "Daddy". My husband wanted to pat him on the back and bolster him. I wanted to hug him tight.

Another notes:

The great American patriot on YouTube, AreYouSuprised, is in the Air Force. In an earlier video, he wears the Air Combat Uniform. He is not a Soldier [=Army]. He is an Airman [=Air Force]. "Servicemember" is an inclusive term you might want to use. Anyway, thanks for some great blogging regaring the End of DADT.

Perry’s Backs Greater Israel – With Cowboy Boots On, Ctd

Bill Clinton says what needs to be said: the GOP's theologically-based foreign policy is awful for the US and dangerous for Israel:

“There’s an enormous reservoir of support for Israel in the Christian evangelical community, and a lot of them believe — as some of the more militant subgroups do — that God meant for all Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] to be in the hands of Israel. … I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands of people that have never missed church on Sunday in Texas who believe it.”

Clinton also said Perry and Republicans in Congress are willing to capitulate to Israel on too many issues. The former president summed up his views on the GOP perspective as, “‘You guys [Israel] do whatever you want — keep the West Bank. We’re coming back, we’ll have the White House and Congress, and we’ll let you do whatever you want.’”

That's about right – and it's deeply damaging to the US's wider interests in the world, especially in defusing Jihadism. Larison weighs in on Perry's Israel comments:

What is obnoxious is that Perry takes it as a tenet of his faith that he ought to endorse a particularly close relationship with another state. The “clear directive” doesn’t leave room for considerations of national interest or changed circumstances. That suggests that he would support that relationship in its current form no matter how costly it might become to the U.S., and it would mean that there is virtually nothing that an Israeli government could do that would make him change his position. Then again, there is something a bit more honest in straightforwardly admitting to uncritical and reflexive loyalty instead of pretending that support depends on supposed strategic value or shared political values.

It is an extraordinary statement of theological foreign policy. Perry, it becomes clearer and clearer, is Bush without the sophistication or conscience. You'll notice that at no point does the factor of the Arab Spring come into view. Indeed, Perry seems to view all Arab and Muslim states as a threat which must not be "appeased". What are the odds, do you think, that he has weighed what Fayyad has done these past few years and made a calculation of how to support forces of democracy and reform in Palestine rather than empower Hamas some more? About as high as the odds of him actually doing due diligence on a death warrant.

In that sense, Perry is the best thing for Jihadism in a very long time. In the end, the fundamentalists of all stripes feed each other's paranoia and worldview. Until the religious war they truly seek can play out.

Did Georgia Just Execute An Innocent Man?

125883651

There's good reason to believe so. Troy Davis's final words: "I am innocent." In response to the execution, Wilkinson attacks the moral foundation of capital punishment:

We punish to deter. We punish to acknowledge the harm brought to the victim, to their loved ones, to their community. We punish to shame and to publicly dishonor the criminal. But the way we do it should embody ideals of humanity, magnanimity, and improvement. Punishment thus should be as light as is consistent with the requirements of security and harmonious society. We must learn, against the grain of our vengeful retributive instincts, to find satisfaction in justice that leaves the thief with his hands, the murderer with his life.

Lee Siegel wishes the Davis case had attracted more attention:

Davis’s scheduled execution received more and more attention as its hour approached, but nothing like some previous causes célèbres over the past few months. If Davis’s impending execution had, in the same time period, received half the attention lavished on Anthony Weiner, the earthquake that barely was, the hurricane that wasn’t, and a dozen other subsidiary collective obsessions—e.g., Charlie Sheen’s world-historical roast—the question of capital punishment itself might be at the center of debate, and not only the question of Troy Davis’s innocence.

A chart on death penalty public opinion via Tim Murphy:

Gallup_death_penalty

Murphy notes some newer numbers by the Public Religion Research Institute:

There is … an important intensity gap. Three times as many Americans say they strongly favor the death penalty as say they strongly oppose it (33% vs. 11% respectively).

And where, one wonders, are the Catholic bishops? Still trying to stamp out the real evil of gay couples settling down and committing to one another.

(Photo: Demonstrators wait as they call for Georgia state officials to halt the scheduled execution of convicted cop killer Troy Davis at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, Georgia, on Wednesday, September 21, 2011. The execution of Davis was delayed while the US Supreme Court considered a last-minute appeal from the convicted murderer's lawyers. By Erik S. Lesser/AFP/Getty Images)