Above Kerfuffle (Robert Farley & Dan Drezner)
 

Re: Above Kerfuffle (Robert Farley & Dan Drezner)
 

Thank you.

I now forgive you for letting Jim Pinkerton continue making David Corn look like a genius in comparison.

Re: Above Kerfuffle (Robert Farley & Dan Drezner)
 

It's pronounced "Erdoan," with no 'g' sound. In Turkish Erdogan's name is written with a hatchek over the 'g' which signals that it is not pronounced.

Re: Above Kerfuffle (Robert Farley & Dan Drezner)
 

whaaaaaaaaat??????? Farley and Drezner "tactically" fault the IDF for NOT using sufficient "suppressive" force???? Israel attacked a defenseless flotilla in international waters with Turkish flags! There were no arms on board & civilians were attacked. This was an act of war! "Public relations" my ass! The issue is whether or not Israel will be willing to exist by abiding by international law. A wonderful follow-up, Bhtv, to Pinkerton!

Re: Above Kerfuffle (Robert Farley & Dan Drezner)
 

Kentucky ? Lawyers, Guns and Money ? Farley's hat is totally "JUSTIFIED."

Diversions from real bad actors
 

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/285...3:49&out=14:49


And like puppets on a string, your double standards and confusions about the real negative influences dance to the tune of Ahmadinejad.


I wonder, do you enjoy getting plucked and played and distracted? I suppose not. Better to pile on against Israel, to the delight of those who have killed and murdered far more people, and intend to do more.


I sometimes wonder why the left is so eager to jump down the throat of the rough around the edges relative while ignoring the slaughtering of a stranger.

Do they actually believe in human rights? Or is it that they simply think they will get more traction from more "reasonable" players? And what of the relative silence towards those who are less reasonable? Is that a good strategy?

Even if you are not willing to charge into a place guns blazing, can't you at least align your focus and rhetoric against worse actors with more effort than you put into Israeli transgressions?

No? This is why I am not left.

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

But Liberals do have problems with Iranian behavior, so your complaint comes down to a matter of complaining about the amount of time and energy that we devote to criticizing different human rights abuses. I think that it would be useful if we had a clearer idea of what formula you're using to determine the proper amount of condemnation. Perhaps you could give us some sort of guidelines, or maybe an excel sheet for computing how many blog posts per day we should spend discussing Gaza, Iran, North Korea, etc. etc. etc.

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

:)

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

Of course they have a problem, but look at the focus. The disproportionate outrage. Does not that seem bizarre to you?

Ah the left
 

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

No, not really. I think Americans tend to be more sensitive to the Israel-Palestine conflict than other festering issues for reasons of culture, history, religion, etc., which is reasonable. Beyond that, I just don't see how it's that disproportionate unless one believes that the injustice of the occupation is a minor thing, or maybe not even an injustice at all.

Plus, I think you're wrong on the descriptive point about condemnation of Israel on the left. The mainstream Democratic party has an awful lot of sympathy for hawkish Israel policy, and the more radical, activist left puts the plight of Palestinians up there with all sorts of other issues on its agenda. When condemnation of Israel is sharing space with drug legalization, Free Tibet, Organic Food and, yes, the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia, I don't quite see where this "unseemly" disproportionality is supposed to exist.

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

Also, who is dancing to Ahmadinejad's tune, again? Is it people critical of the blockade, or perhaps the morons that thought it would be a good idea to shoot up a boat full of Turkish activists when Turkey, Israel's only Muslim-majority friend, was working on an agreement with Iran about its nuclear program?

Re: Ah the left
 

How is making fun of the South Korean far left any more relevant than talking about the KKK or the militia movement in the US? It's just picking off extremely low-hanging fruit when there are far more intelligent and persuasive people out there to resist your worldview. The proper response to people that think Israel sank the Cheonan is either laughter or "who cares?" not "See? this is what's wrong with Liberals."

Re: Ah the left
 

You're to be saluted for your patience, Zeke, but really, the odds of getting JonI to stop saying "teh Left" are fat and slim, and slim is outta town.

Re: Ah the left
 

It was low fruit, but every once in awhile it is nice to poke fun at left crazies, I try not to spend my most of my time talking about them though. I even graduated a bit by adding liberal or left into the rotation. Different characteristics, if I use left, it is code for what I see as a position as much more deranged and backwards.

Re: Ah the left
 

I guess that's progress, but when I hear "the left" I understand it to mean a broad group of people that includes myself, as well as crazier and more radical people all the way out to Communism - a group that it isn't very easy to make fair generalizations about.

Re: Above Kerfuffle (Robert Farley & Dan Drezner)
 

As soon as I press the play button I hear Dan describe the flotilla of ships as being armed(not equipped, but armed) with humanitarian supplies. Then I pressed the stop button.

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

No. Our billions go to Bibi, not Mahmoud. Get it?

USA public opinion on Zionism.
 

The shift Robert predicts regarding US public opinion is tricky. He claims Republicans (a la Sarah Palin and Fox News) will remain staunchly pro-Zionist, while Dems. will be more skeptical and critical.

However, Jewish voters are a major Dem. constituency. If Israel begins to lose them (and it may), it will be hard for Republicans to argue that they know what's good for the Jewish state more than we Jews do.

Also, the Repubs may have to increasingly accommodate Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan types who have always been skeptical of Israel entangling the US in imprudent foreign adventures.

Republican love of Zionism is fueled by religious zealotry and Islamophobia. Mainstream Repubs may, in the future, reject both.

Re: Above Kerfuffle (Robert Farley & Dan Drezner)
 

Yeah, that was an unfortunate slip of the tongue, and I wondered about it myself. Still, I think it's worth giving the rest of the diavlog a shot. Some interesting ideas. (Which is not to say I agreed with all of them.)

Re: USA public opinion on Zionism.
 

Young American Jews might grow increasingly distant from Israel. But, by and large, Americans see nothing wrong with the mistreatment of dark-skinned people with foreign, Muslim names. On the contrary. The consensus among our FP elites is that someone's got to keep the lesser races in line, and Israel is doing a decent job at that, so why would Americans object? The Dems are just as bad as the Repubs on that score. If it's OK for us to vaporize wedding parties from the air in Af-Pak, then why can't Israel exterminate their own Muslims? We've got a moral consistency issue here. So I don't expect any dramatic changes until global economic forces kick in.

Dan is Wrong on Korean Unification
 

I think that Dan is very wrong when he says that Japan and the US prefer the status quo to a unified Korea (under South-Korean auspices of course).

If that's what you think, you don't understand what a dangerous cancer North Korea is. Tokyo is in range of Kim's ballistic missiles. Tokyo would much rather have a benign unified Korea than a dangerous North nearby.

And to suggest that the US wants to keep troops in South Korea is backwards and crazy talk. We have troops in Korea not because we want to be a hegemon but because North Korea is very dangerous. I'm an American and I don't want US troops overseas anywhere. I realize that sometimes it is an unfortunate necessity, but I would much prefer if it were not.

This is like saying that doctors don't want a cure for cancer because then they would be out of business. Of course they want a cure for cancer! Everyone does.

Specious Analogies
 

I know it's what Poli Sci types do, but comparing the Gaza flotilla operation to the sinking of ROKS Cheonan and the subsequent investigation is far too tenuous. For starters, the IDF operation is amply documented, and there seems no end to the level of media interest in it. The US can't be skeptical about what happened in the Med, but Beijing can be coy about the Cheonan sinking.

How about Marty Peretz v. Glenn Loury next? Really, could both sides be right? It's a heinous act by the IDF against an equally odious foe. Do we just have to decide, like Jack Donoghy, which woman to marry, and stop deluding ourselves that there's a "right" choice?

I also want to point out that the Hatoyama administration ostensibly fell through the defection of the JSDP. It might even be a godsend, both because Naoto Kan looks like a more competent leader, and maybe, please, Ichiro Ozawa has died his last political death. Anyway, good riddance, Yukio!

Re: USA public opinion on Zionism.
 

You must be joking :-D This is standard operating procedure for republicans. Criticizing Israel is the same as hating it ( if you are a Jew or not ).
Yglesias= Lindberg

Until the time when a peace deal is near completion then we will hear how the Israelis are anti-Israeli.

Re: Dan is Wrong on Korean Unification
 

Everything you say is appropriate for the average layperson in the region, whatever the country, but no one agrees. But, I would argue that leaders throughout the region, including the US want the status quo.

Re: Dan is Wrong on Korean Unification
 

Well, people said the same thing about German unification at the time.

Isn't the present unified Germany vastly preferable to the old East Germany? And North Korea is worse than the old East Germany.

I believe it's not unification that is feared, but the possibility of war.

From Japanese and American perspectives, even if you look at if from Realpolitik (a rather cynical perspective), a unified Korea could be a more powerful counterweight to China.

Re: Dan is Wrong on Korean Unification
 

Dear God, not the Germany example again!

No, unification is a bad idea. But, it will not happen without war. And, once there is unification, it's only a matter of time before there's another war to control the peninsula.

No, don't be fooled by the rhetoric - no one WANTS unification.

Re: Dan is Wrong on Korean Unification
 

That seems to leave only two plausible situations for the future - the (intolerable) status quo, and ceding the North to China. I don't see any chance that the North could ever be both independent and self-sustaining. What am I missing?

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

It would be morally problematic to say that anything good could come from the IDF flotilla killings. However, it has been hard not to take some satisfaction in the shift in pro-Israel (zionist) rhetoric in recent days. No longer are zionists appealing to the old Euro-colonial mythology of the "Western" and "liberal" Israel, beacon of human rights, surrounded by barbarians. Instead, the new zionist PR strategy is to insist that Israel be judged by the same standard as we use to judge North Korea and Burma.

This in itself is a huge victory for Palestinian solidarity activists around the world (and in Palestine) who have worked for years to establish exactly that equivalency.

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

I am pretty sure no one thinks any good came from the flotilla incident from Israels perspective.


As to the liberal Israel, beacon of human rights, compared to its region, it still is. My approach with the whole same standard mantra is to try and crack the armor of liberals/lefties who place such special emphasis on Israels transgressions at the expense of far worse ones around the world.


To me it is an example of a basic moral/ethical confusion illustrated in the following examples taken from real world events.

two incidents

incident A

A Man tries to commit suicide by parking an suv on train tracks and waiting for it to strike. He chickens out at the last minute and jumps out of the suv, unfortunately, the train is moving rear first, and when it strikes the suv it is much more unstable, it derails, and ends up killing around 10 people.


incident B

A man sees a film by a director that he feels is disrespectful of Islam. He seeks out this director and finds him in public streets. In broad daylight, he takes a knife and stabs the director repeatedly. The director pleads with the assailant, begging him to talk this over, he pays no heed, the director dies in the streets.


Now for the easy question. Who committed the worse crime?

Incident A led to 10 times the loss of life, but that man, troubled though he was, did not murder those people. He was reckless, and incredibly foolish, and deserves punishment, but his crime was less than murder (or should have been).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Manuel_%C3%81lvarez




Incident B led to only 1 life being taken, far less than the first, but the attacker here did commit murder, his intent was malevolent to its core. This was not an accident, not unintentional, not collateral damage, it was focused, its goal was destruction of life where the innocent was perverted in twisted theological logic into something that must be destroyed.


The second incident contained the worse crime. Even though the disproportionate loss of life occurred in the first incident, the man responsible did not commit the worse act.

Basic. I know this is astonishingly basic, and yet, take this logic up to issues between Israel and Palestinians and it gets turned upside down.


The highest crime, is not the intent of harm, it is the raw number of people harmed. Disproportionate harm gets bandied about all the time, NO mention of what crime was worse, only the numbers, blind to all concerns of proper ethical calculations. Where the understanding of right and wrong, better or worse goes one layer deep.

Eye twitchingly annoying to suffer through. And so it goes to modern events. The world does not care who attacked first, or the why the soldiers fired on that sixth and only ship. All they care about is the raw numbers. 10 non Israelis dead, no Israelis dead. Israel = evil actor.

(Screams at stupid jackal/animalistic/barbarian understandings of right and wrong)

Re: Dan is Wrong on Korean Unification
 

The only aspect of the current situation - which is the best for most Koreans, northern, southern, or expatriate, in centuries - that is intolerable is the dreadful human rights and political conditions in the DPRK. A DPRK without gulags, having a thriving economy that runs on creativity not weapons and counterfeiting, and with at least as democratic a political system as its southern neighbor would make it a competitor for the south. The North has always had more resources and historically a more advanced society. It has produced Korea's most enlightened intellectuals, whereas the South has always been a backwater for retired and corrupt aristocrats. One has to recall how many torture victims and exiles it took to make the ROK smell sweet. If the US and Japan can make that cesspool into today's ROK, they owe it to the North to do the same.

Regionally, the current division is the most stable in the region's history. Unification will only invite a contest between the neighbors to control the peninsula, at which point it will be divided again into zones of influence as it has always been. Korea is a pivot - it cannot control its affairs easily, as Japan or China can. Afghanistan and the Balkans are other examples of pivots. But, division splits foreign pressure in two directions, and saves the whole. Koreans are very competitive, and as two states they can save each other.

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

You got that right. You're ethically and factually confused.

Israel is holding over a million civilians in a giant prison and further north runs an Apartheid society. We, Americans, are subsidizing this moral outrage.

So spare us your grade-school lectures about "proper ethical calculations."

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

These "civilians" belong to enemy nation against which Israel is fighting a war of survival. That's why they are under occupation. Being under occupation is not and it's not supposed to be a pleasant thing. You liberals think you can just disregard concepts such as "foreigners vs. countrymen", "nations at war", "existential enemies" and such, and treat every conflict as human rights issue. That won't take you a long way in understanding how the world works.
BTW, whether the US should support Israel is a separate issue entirely. It's up to American people to decide. I am personally against it, but for different reasons. Not because Israel did anything wrong because she didn’t.

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

ohreally's got your number, too:

The facts of the case aren't nearly as clear cut as in your cartoon version of the conflict. Regardless of any state of war - treating an entire civilian population as prisoners is not acceptable behavior, ever. You disregard civilized norms and pretend that the only moral dimension in a conflict is self-defense. "Me and mine" is a morality for ethical pygmies.

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

You are frigging crazy if you think Israel has been particularly unscrupulous in their treatment of Palestinians. There are ways to go for both how cruel Israelis are willing to be towards Palestinians and ways to go in what Palestinians are willing to endure to achieve their nationalistic goals.

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

To be an "enemy nation" you need to be a nation. Get your facts straight.

Are the daily humiliations of old ladies and children at the 600 checkpoints in the WB part of the war of survival?

Is the building of settlements on every hilltop in the WB part of the war of survival?

You guys need help....

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

I think David Ben-Gurion was a giant compared to Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, who have defiled his work. Their legacy, I fear, will be the end of Israel, with very few to mourn its passing.

Award for Joe K
 

In a forum known for outlandish remarks (on both sides, I will concede) this one takes the cake for ignorance, denial and fauxtrage. Rarely have I seen such an utter reality-defying post.

You win my Flat Earth Award for 2010. Mazal Tov.

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

Watch out, JoeK, you're going to lose your hasbara membership with such loose talk. You can't suggest that Israel might be "particularly unscrupulous" because that's admitting Israel is unscrupulous (just not yet "particularly" so). Second, you can't say Israelis might be willing to be more cruel to Palestinians, because that too implies Israelis are already willing to be cruel.

Remember Aunt Golda's wise words: "We, Israelis, can't forgive the Arabs for forcing us to kill their children." Any deviation from this line and you're off the Hasbara Purim invite list. Fair warning.

Re: Diversions from real bad actors
 

What is the election of Hamas? Was that a show of support for coexistence?

I love how you ignore groups that are quite explicit in their disregard for coexistence, groups that gained a majority of Palestinian votes, and pretend that the only blockage for progress is from Israel. You confused muddled soul.


Instead of choosing the path of a ghandi or a king, they chose the path of the black panthers, and wonder why Israelis are less willing to deal and trust them.