Author: Andrew Sullivan

Greg Sargent's jaw drops.

Niraj Chokshi looks at the consequences of banning offshore drilling:

As the rigs move away, the nation's reliance on importing oil increases. That means increased activity among transport vessels, which have been responsible for most of the oil spilled since the mid-1900's, according to numbers compiled by professors at the Tulane Energy Institute.

They found that 61 percent of all oil spilled came from vessels, while only 16 percent came from rigs…Between 4.9 million and 5.9 million tons of oil has spilled since the mid-1900's, according to the Tulane data, and 3.2 million to 3.3 million of it came from vessels. "We have a much worse safety record with tankers than we do with drilling rigs," Professor Smith said. Although, in North America, 49 percent of oil spilled has come from rigs, with 43 percent from vessels and the remainder from other sources.

Plus the safety record in places like Nigeria is much, much worse.

A reader writes:

It is interesting that no one is really looking at the parallels between the diplomatic shift away from realism in America with the rise of the neo-cons, as well as in Israel’s current leadership, and the transition in Germany from Bismark’s diplomacy to Kaiser Wilhelm II, which left Germany well armed, prosperous, feared, hated and diplomatically isolated—at least until 1914.

We got Obama as a brake. But can he resist the tide of irrationalism? In a period of recession, polarization, a weakened media, Palin waits in the wings …

A reader writes:

I just read your latest post about the tribalism and emotional connections to Israel that animate and drive so much of the current debate within our Jewish American community. Your post was the most nuanced and intelligent I have seen you write on this subject. It is absolutely spot on and resonated deeply with me.

Good news: things are changing, at least here at home. I was born in the early 1960's into a family in which we all, absolutely identified with Israel in the ways you describe. I have been through AIPAC's leadership development program. My mother and her parents survived (barely) the holocaust in Hungary. But here's the thing, the Israel I grew up loving does not appear to exist anymore.

It is a place that, increasingly, is eroding democratic and even Jewish, values which I hold inviolate as a proud and patriotic American at a dizzying and terrifying pace. Arafat is, thankfully, gone. I know that Israel, Jews and America still have terrible, hate-filled enemies in this world. But I also now know that the Palestinian technology entrepreneurs in Ramallah whom I recently have had the pleasure to meet personally are human too, and want what I want: peace, prosperity and to raise their children in a world which presents opportunity and respect.

Increasingly, the old Jewish Establishment that Beinart wrote so eloquently about simply pisses me off. The only thing he got wrong in his piece was this: I love Israel, care deeply about her present and future and will not walk away. I also will not play by the old rules. I do and will continue to criticize not only the current government in Israel, but also the electorate they represent, when I believe their stupidity, arrogance or anything else threatens my values and my country's best interests. My country is the United States of America. I love Israel. I just love America more.

In a word – ugly:

Andrew Exum tacks together a few thoughts on Israel:

I still think the U.S. military has a lot to learn from the IDF in

terms of tactics, techniques and procedures. But since I left the active duty army in 2004, I have interacted quite a bit with Israeli military officers both through formal interviews and informal discussions over beer or coffee. I still learn a lot whenever I talk to them, but I am increasingly struck by the very real differences that have emerged between them and their U.S. military peers who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. One difference concerns the attitude toward the population within which they operate.

Last fall, I was in Israel for a two-week visit and conducted a few formal interviews with various Israeli officers, journalists and scholars. I met for coffee one morning with a retired Israeli general officer to discuss the fighting in southern Lebanon during the 1990s, and before too long, the two of us were engrossed in conversation about guerrilla warfare, Lebanon, the learning process that militaries go through in combat, and a host of related subjects. One hour became two, and two hours became three. The two of us must have downed three cups of coffee apiece, and my hand cramped from all the notes I was taking. At the end of the conversation, though, this retired officer took my hand, squeezed it hard, and said, "Andrew, just remember one thing: the Muslims are like shit. They stink, and there are plenty of them for all of us."

Now in 3+ years of living in the Arabic-speaking world, I have to admit I have heard some pretty horrifically anti-Semitic things said in both polite and not-so-polite conversation. But pardon me if I was a little struck by hearing this language from a retired, educated military officer rather than from, say, a taxi driver in Beirut or some 16-year old Palestinian kid who grew up in Bourj al-Barajneh. Anyway, I shook the man's hand, thanked him for his time, and went on my way shaking my head. Could I imagine a senior U.S. military officer, post-Iraq, saying something like that to a guy with a notebook at the end of a formal interview? I could not.

Ackerman feels that Netanyahu is snubbing most of the American electorate and banking on the support of white evangelical Protestants:

Not even George W Bush was as aggressive a unilateralist as Benjamin Netanyahu, whose foreign policy has shown disinterest in maintaining warm relations with traditional Israeli allies – even including the United States – if it means reducing Israel’s freedom of action against the Palestinians.

For decades, Israel lamented its international isolation and sought to reverse it, even if most Israelis retained a tragic scepticism about whether the world would ever embrace them. But Netanyahu’s government practically wears the world’s contempt as a badge of Israeli virtue.

Spencer is even more blunt over at his blog:

What Netanyahu doesn’t get is that the U.S. is a global hegemon. In a realist sense, we can afford to make the mistakes the Bush Doctrine guaranteed we’d make and still emerge with much of our geopolitical influence and power intact. That doesn’t work for a country that isn’t a superpower. Israel’s military is almost entirely dependent on the United States. Israel might try to diversify its geopolitical sponsorship situation, as Netanyahu appears to be exploring by hugging Medvedev, but Israel simply doesn’t have the ability to influence Russian or Chinese or Whoever’s decisionmaking to the degree that it can influence America’s. And the broader fact is that Israel cannot contemplate a geostrategic situation without a big international benefactor anyway. That makes the impact of the consequences of an adapted Bush Doctrine far more acute.

But the broader point is that the political vectors compelling Israel down a path of inadequate and dangerous national strategy are intensifying. Those are the wages of a democracy, and particularly a democracy with a weird parliamentary system that rewards factionalism. It also means — however banal this may sound — that ultimately a change in strategy must come from a resurgent realist/liberal political coalition within Israel. And that coalition is presently in eclipse.

A reader notes:

Funny how you mentioned the Irish but forgot the most obvious parallel – Cuba. Our policies towards Cuba are completely controlled by the Cuban community who make up about 0.5% of the total U.S. while the Jewish population is about 2.2%. In both cases a passionate minority with understandable reasons for being so are pretty capable of shutting down rational policy discourse in both parties.

Point taken. It's a real problem when foreign policy is not determined by rational judgment of the national interest but by the sub-rational passions of a small group. Another writes:

Very insightful post.  You mentioned that you had the kind of conversation that "you cannot have on US television".  As a 30-something Jewish man, I can tell you you also had the kind of conversation that we cannot have with our parents and grandparents.

Oh and Barney Frank has indeed criticized the recent outrage. So there's one blast of sanity from a Jewish congressman. I'm sorry I missed that.

Beinart presses anti-blockade activists to demand the release of Gilad Shalit, the young Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas since 2006:

Were activists in Ireland and Malaysia and Turkey to take up Shalit’s cause, it would embarrass Hamas to no end. Hamas would likely reply that it cannot release Shalit unless Israel releases the Palestinians prisoners it holds, and perhaps Israel should release some of them. But the activists could answer that there is no justification for deliberately harming the innocent. That, after all, is what they say about Israel’s blockade. If you are for ending the collective punishment of Gaza (which is not the same as trying to prevent Hamas from acquiring weapons) regardless of whether Shalit is released, as I am, you should also be for releasing Shalit, regardless of whether the blockade ends or Palestinian prisoners are freed.

A reader in the country writes:

Today is National Martyr's Day, a national holiday that honors 40+ Ugandan Christians who were brutally murdered by a Ugandan king 100 years ago or so. While in a shop, I heard a news broadcast about a government official's speech (I think it was the president, but I'm not sure) which took an unfortunate interpretation of the holiday, calling on Ugandans to recognize the martyrs and to refrain from sin and homosexuality. He then claimed that there had been homosexuality in the King's court, suggesting that it was the instigating cause.

GayUganda elaborates:

[O]ne of the kings of Buganda was so incensed at some of his pages refusing him sex that he went ahead and killed them. Some former lovers by his own hand. Funny thing is that, that inconvenient fact had been forgotten when history was being dressed up. It would have been too easy to show that homosexuality in Uganda predated the Christian religion….! Thanks to the raging anti-gay fires, this has been forced to the fore.

Meanwhile, the Family Research Council is found to have lobbied members of Congress to vote against a resolution denouncing the "kill the gays" bill. The resolution passed the Senate, but not yet the House.