Right Wing Nut House

Isn’t this just like a terrorist? It’s not enough that they bomb and strafe orphanages and nurseries while mistaking a Happy-Go-Lucky Hamas fireworks show at a UN built school for a mortar pit. (Couldn’t they see those tubes were for firing off celebratory fireworks and not deadly mortars aimed at Israeli soldiers?)

The outrage of taking out this fireworks display was compounded when explosives meant only for display stored in the school were accidentally set off by the well meaning, but ill-trained Hamas fireworks technicians. Not only were several dozen innocent civilians killed but the annual “Salute to UN Anti-Semitism” festival had to be cancelled.

A pity, that.

Now those sneaky Jews have invented a new terrorist technique; the “Humanitarian Relief Attack” where trucks loaded with food and medicine are actually allowed into Gaza.

Is there no end to their perfidy? Have they no shame? I sense a trap:

Israel briefly paused its military operations in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and said it planned to do so for three hours each day to allow for deliveries of humanitarian aid, as the Israeli cabinet met to consider how to respond to an Egyptian proposal for a more lasting ceasefire.

Military officials said operations would stop for three hours, between 1 pm and 4 pm local time each day, to give besieged Gaza residents an opportunity to emerge from their homes to seek food, fuel and other emergency supplies. Israel has allowed some aid deliveries since it began airstrikes Dec. 27 but relief workers said they have been unable to reach much of the population because of heavy fighting.

The opening of “humanitarian corridors” each day is meant to relieve a situation that international aid agencies say has reached crisis proportions.

We all know that if the shoe was on the other foot, those humanity loving jihadists from Hamas would bow to world opinion and allow relief supplies to their enemies. Allah be praised, the freedom fighters would no doubt show their softer side under such circumstances - such as when they kindly sharpen the blades of their knives before lopping off the heads of infidels.

In fact, Hamas has been dying to show the world their feminine side. Here’s Hamas spokesman Mahmoud Az-Zahar gushing about “victory” and how to show some good lovin’ to the Israelis:

The Hamas leader called to murder Israelis and Jews worldwide, including children. “The Israelis have sentenced their children to death… They have legitimized the killing of their people all over the world,” he said. Hamas’ platform calls for all Jews to convert to Islam or be killed, based on an Islamic saying (Hadith), and the group has not refrained from targeting children in the past.

Hamas will destroy synagogues and Jewish schools as well, Zahar said, just as Israel destroyed mosques in Gaza. Israel bombed several mosques used to store rockets and ammunition.

Zahar suggested Hamas was prepared to seek a ceasefire, saying Hamas would discuss “whatever is good for our people.” He issued a list of demands, saying any ceasefire must include a complete end to IDF counterterrorism activities, Hamas control of the Gaza coast and the opening of Israeli crossings.

There, you see? All Hamas wants is for the Israelis to stop picking on them. No need for “counterterrorism activities” when there’s no terrorism to counter. What’s a few suicide bombers among friends?

And the gentle care Hamas wants to take with Israeli children is touching, isn’t it? Almost makes me want to go hug Glenn Greenwald and tell him how sorry I am for ever having doubted his brilliance.

I think we should start showing a little more understanding and empathy toward these Hamas folks. There’s obviously been a great big misunderstanding. They are actually a very creative people with a hidden talent for putting on dramatic shows:

One more thing, speaking of pornography — we’ve all seen endless pictures of dead Palestinian children now. It’s a terrible, ghastly, horrible thing, the deaths of children, and for the parents it doesn’t matter if they were killed by accident or by mistake. But ask yourselves this: Why are these pictures so omnipresent? I’ll tell you why, again from firsthand, and repeated, experience: Hamas (and the Aksa Brigades, and Islamic Jihad, the whole bunch) prevents the burial, or even preparation of the bodies for burial, until the bodies are used as props in the Palestinian Passion Play. Once, in Khan Younis, I actually saw gunmen unwrap a shrouded body, carry it a hundred yards and position it atop a pile of rubble — and then wait a half-hour until photographers showed. It was one of the more horrible things I’ve seen in my life. And it’s typical of Hamas. If reporters would probe deeper, they’d learn the awful truth of Hamas. But Palestinian moral failings are not of great interest to many people.

Perhaps we should urge NBC to hire these guys in their show development department. With that kind of eye for the dramatic, they could bring the network several top ten series I’m sure.

Meanwhile, the terrorist Jews continue their unprovoked, unreasonable, and rather boring attacks on the tunnels that Hamas plays hide and go seek in, the buildings where Hamas leaders hold coffee klatches and knitting bees, and the military installations where the militants play cowboys and indians.

At least that’s the impression we get from the media. And the media wouldn’t supress information or make a lot of sh*t up just to make the evil Jews look bad now, would they?

By reaching outside the intelligence community and picking Leon Panetta for CIA chief, Barack Obama is sending a signal that he is not going to put up with the kind of nonsense that went on at the agency when George Bush was president.

The war carried out by partisans at the CIA where leaking classified information to undermine policy as well as attempting to defeat the president at the polls in 2004 will not be repeated under the leadership of Panetta, of that you can be certain.

This is a good, smart choice by Obama.The stated reasons - Panetta was not involved in the rendition or torture programs - are good, sound reasons but beyond that, Panetta was known both at OMB where he was director and at the White House where he was chief of staff as a ferocious in-fighter. Obama needs a bulldog at Langely if he is going to be free of the poisonous antagonism that made the relationship between the intelligence agencies and Bush so dysfunctional. Plus, Panetta will clearly be seen as “The President’s Man” - a perception that will come in handy for both men.

This makes him an excellent candidate to deal with the bitter inter-agency battles that destroyed Porter Goss (operations vs. analysis) and hampered Director Hayden whose fights with the Defense department over resources devoted to battlefield or tactical intel at the expense of strategic analysis roiled both shops during the last few years.

Apparently, the choice is not sitting too well with some on the Hill who no doubt had their own candidates in mind or perhaps wished General Hayden to stay on. As for the latter, Obama could not keep Hayden after all but promising his liberal base that he would end the “special rendition” programs begun under Bill Clinton and expanded by the Bush Administration as well as put a halt to torture.

And the shameful case of John Brennan being taken out of consideration for no good reason meant that he could hardly choose someone from inside the agency:

“They were fans of Mike Hayden and [were] hoping he’d be asked to stick around,” the former official said.

This former official said Obama’s transition team was forced away from selecting a career intelligence officer after having been “boxed in” by the withdrawal of leading contender John Brennan.

Brennan, a former senior intelligence official, withdrew his name from consideration last month over concerns about his role in the development of the interrogation and secret detention programs while he was at the CIA.

The official said the withdrawal forced the Obama team to look outside the intelligence community because “by ruling him out, they ruled out anyone who had been in the agency the last eight years or so. When you do that and look around for other people who have the capabilities and qualifications you are looking for, you quickly run out of choices.”

Just what was Brennan’s crime? Well, no one really knows. Those “concerns” about Brennan’s “role” in the development of rendition and torture were, according to M.P. MacConnell, the result of a lot of noise from the usual suspects on the left:

Contrary to false claims, American laws were not broken. No one is going to prison. Nothing even slightly unseemly has been uncovered — indeed, Brennan has a proven history of complete candor in discussing his views on those subjects with the media. There is nothing whatever to suggest that Brennan would disobey the now existing legislative prohibition on the use of waterboarding. He is as entitled to his views as anyone else, and has been both consistent and articulate in expressing them. As a direct result of Brennan’s counsel, some of President-elect Obama’s original national security positions have been reversed.

As Greenwald’s ally, Andrew Sullivan, makes clear, that is their real concern. They seem to be laboring under the impression that their iconic future president doesn’t possess sufficient willpower to resist the poisonous mumblings of a man like Brennan, leading him from the True Path upon which only they are fit to guide him. Their tireless efforts to find something — anything — damaging on Brennan that would discredit him failed abysmally, but the sheer noise that their protestations generated, along with the wild, unconditional, uncritical approbation of their followers, was sufficient to cause Brennan to step down.

My own research has led me to believe that Brennan is neither a zealot for enhanced interrogation techniques, nor an anti-torture advocate. From my view, there was no confusion. Brennan’s statements on the subject were quite consistent — in his opinion, rendition and interrogation were unpleasant and rarely carried out actions that nevertheless brought real, tangible results. In Brennan’s own words, “…lives have been saved.”

Unlike the Greenwalds of this world, he wasn’t a legal theorist, being paid to loaf in an office chair all day, rhapsodising on the ethical dilemmas posed by this program or that operation. He was an officer in a federal agency charged with the wartime security and wellbeing of American citizens. He clearly did bear the ethics in mind, but was also operating within the framework of the real world, dealing in harsh realities against a ruthless enemy, where innocent people died if you didn’t get the job done.

It is an unpleasant fact to contemplate but Brennan’s position on those two sensitive subjects would have been reflected by almost any current intelligence manager. To assuage the likes of Greenwald and Sullivan, then, Obama was virtually forced to seek someone outside the community.

He could not done much better by choosing Panetta. But as I mentioned, there are some detractors on the Hill as incoming Senate intel chair Diane Fienstien is grumbling about not being consulted. And there are a few in the agency who are not happy:

In an interview with ABC News, Scheurer, who headed the CIA unit that hunted Osama bin Laden, labeled Panetta “a Democratic Party apparatchik” who “may be a talented bureaucrat,” but who has little in his resume to suggest he “has any talent for this particular job.”

Scheurer predicts that Panetta’s leadership could have a chilling effect on the agency and that “morale won’t be good” as he “bends” to Congress and “harasses agency officials who ran the rendition and secret prison program.”

A senior intelligence official said that during his tenure Hayden has boosted morale at the agency and “done a lot of good over there at CIA.”

“If in fact such a decision has been made, Mike will leave the place in far better shape than he found it. That’s for sure,” the senior official said.

Scheurer’s comments seem gratuitous. Panetta is certainly not the most partisan Democrat Obama could have chosen and, as one analyst mentioned in the ABC story, the former White House chief of staff knows what the president needs in his daily brief - the PDB, which is probably the most important job the CIA performs in keeping the president on top of what’s going on in the world.

I don’t think Obama is much for radically reforming the CIA at this point which is too bad. In many ways, the agency is stuck in the past and jealously guards its prerogatives and perks while failing to improve its product. But Panetta is not going to CIA to change things. He is going to ride herd on all the competing interests in the intelligence community that have made our fight against Islamic extremism that much harder.

What’s a little knife thrust between the shoulder blades among friends, huh? After all, it’s not like Israel’s enemies on the left want to plunge the blade up to the hilt, penetrating the heart and killing off the Jewish state. They would prefer someone else deliver the coup de grace. Instead, this is more like a “love thrust” - a little wound just to get Israel’s attention and maybe allow them to bleed a bit before calling 911.

After all, it’s not like the left wants Israel to disappear - “wiped off the map” as that little elf in Tehran so colorfully puts it. They just want Israel to behave as if the left’s silly, stupid pretensions regarding the rules of diplomacy and conflict resolution (such as they are) actually mean something. It would prove that might doesn’t make right, that it is better to receive attacks without response than defend oneself, and that a few dead Jews are a small price to pay for giving it the old college try at the negotiating table with an enemy that wants to barter their very existence.

Israel an ally? For some on the left, they have taken the word as an open invitation to try and undercut the Jewish state’s ability to defend itself as it sees fit. They disagree with Israel’s defense policy so they feel perfectly comfortable in seeking to change it by getting the US government to do their dirty work for them.

(Note that there have been few, if any, calls by Israel’s liberal enemies for the United Nations to stop the fighting. They know full well the utter futility of calling on that body to do anything except fatten their expense accounts with US taxpayer dollars. At that, they are the world’s experts.)

Instead, they harangue their government to cease our support for the Jewish state - or at least “pressure” Israel to lie down and take the barrages of rockets and mortars like a man. The arms we’ve sold to Israel are being misused - in their opinion. In fact, they shouldn’t be used at all but rather dusted off and spit shined so that they can be displayed during parades and such. Deterrence, don’t you know.

The fact that Israel is fighting a war against an implacable enemy who hides behind women and children, hoping and praying for their deaths so that the world can build up enough fake outrage to pressure Israel to pull back is inconsequential to these jamokes. But when the Palestinians have friends like Matthew Yglesias, what do they need the world for?

All throughout the “peace process” years — through the good ones and through the bad ones — Israel continued expanding both the geographical footprint of its settlements and the population living upon them. For most of this time, Israel has often appeared unwilling to enforce domestic Israeli law on the settler population, to say nothing of abiding by international law or agreements made. And while Israel has stated a desire to leave the Gaza Palestinians alone in their tiny, overcrowded, economically unviable enclave, the “disengagement” from Gaza has never entailed letting Palestinians control their borders or exercise meaningful sovereignty over the area. The proposal has basically been that if Palestinians cease violence against Israel, then the Gaza Strip will be treated like an Indian reservation. Israel’s policy objectives in the West Bank appear to be first seizing the choice bits of it, and then withdrawing behind a wall with the residual West Bank treating like post-”disengagement” Gaza.

Is there an award for “Sophistry above and beyond the call of Reason?” Yglesias would certainly be in the running although Ezra Klein would give him a run for his money. Rarely do you find such extraordinary self delusion, exaggeration, and basic misunderstanding of Israel’s  domestic political situation.

Israel’s policy on the settlements is extraordinarily complex and a political minefield that could blow up and not only oust the current government but make any kind of stable government in Israel impossible. Witness what happened in Hebron last month when Israel tried to enforce provisions in an agreement that divided the city into a Palestinian and Jewish sections.

The facts are a little more complicated than Yglesias infers which either proves his ignorance or a perfidious desire to misinform his readers. And judging by his belief that Gazans live in an economically “unviable” area, one can only conclude that Yglesias wishes to expand the two state solution’s recognized borders - a novel approach to peacemaking if you’re interested in the destruction of the Jewish state.

I guess that’s one way to make peace.

As for Gaza being an “indian reservation” that is up to Hamas. Perhaps the idea of living in peace with their neighbor who then would have no need for roadblocks, walls, nor interfere in Hamas’s desire for “meaningful sovereignty” which might eventually lead to a viable economic state.

But Hamas has said - and proved it time and again with their actions - that they don’t want a viable economic state or meaningful sovereignty, or even the prospect of living on an Indian reservation. They want the Jews gone and Israel occupied by them. Such an attitude makes any Israeli violations of agreements regarding the settlements a non sequitor. Using the settlements as a club, Hamas and their friends in the United States wish to negotiate the question of whether Israel has a right to exist. Why any state should be forced to do that is beyond me - an incredible condition to force upon a sovereign country.

The illegal outposts set down by radical Israelis who believe the Bible gives them the right to the land (and which George Bush has demanded the Israeli government remove) are not fueling the violence in Gaza. They are an excuse and not the proximate cause of the rocket barrages. It is pure sophistry to infer that anything except a virulent, nauseating strain of anti-Semitism is what keeps the Palestnians at war with Israel. They hate the Jews because they are Jews and any other greivance they have is pure gravy - sauce for the goose. And their single, animating, national ambition is to kill as many as they can while hoping that someone can come along and kick the Jews out of Israel for them.

This appears not to be complicated enough for Israel’s enemies on the left as there just isn’t enough nuance for their tastes. No good international conflict is possible unless there are “root causes” and “underlying dichotomies” to sink one’s teeth into. The idea that they have nothing to do with the matter at hand is of no consequence. When things are too simple, it is best to try to complicate them by raising straw man arguements or, better yet, just make sh*t up as Yglesias does with his “Indian reservation” analogy.

Yes, it really is quite simple. And so is the idea of an ally standing behind another when they are attacked. I realize that this too, is beyond their ken and they would rather subvert that ally by having us betray them in their hour of need by undermining what the Israelis believe is necessary to protect themselves. Hell, the left has done it before so why not polish up that knife and ready it for when Israel’s back is turned.

At this distance, they can’t miss.

With Israel poised to begin ground operations in Gaza - an action that will no doubt set off new howls of outrage from the usual suspects on the left - we might do well to examine the intellectual underpinnings of the moral equivalency that afflicts many liberals as they struggle to frame the conflict between Hama sand Israel in terms that assigns equal blame to both sides for the violence (or sometimes disproportionate blame directed toward Israel).

Further, the Israeli response - even if grudgingly granted that a response was necessary - has to be folded into the larger question of how bombing the Palestinians will hurt the “peace process” and besides, it won’t win the Israelis any friends on the other side and will only radicalize the Palestinian people.

I appreciate the difficulty of their task. In order to achieve such a dishonest result, basic truths regarding the Hamas desire to destroy Israel and its people must be ignored while the terrorist’s provocations must be minimized or dismissed as inconsequential pinpricks. Not only that, a “peace process” must be invented and presented as a viable entity for achieving impossible goals like getting Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Finally, to pull off this nauseating conceit, America must be blamed for supporting an ally during its struggle for survival and not being “even handed” toward both the victim and the aggressor. This support is marginalized by playing up the ubiquitous “Jewish Lobby” and the evil neocons who do the bidding of Likud rather than seeing the US acting in its own interests by supporting the Jewish state in its war against those who would destroy them.

The intellectual gymnastics that are necessary to arrive at these conclusions by the left are simply astonishing. Here’s Matthew Yglesias doing a forward double flip with a twist in an attempt to elevate moral equivalency to heights heretofore only imagined in this conflict:

One way to reply to this is à la Ezra Klein who observes that at some point you need to judge based on what’s actually happening. And what’s been happening is that whatever Hamas’ ambitions may or may not have been, they were scattering short-range inaccurate rocket fire on Israel that was causing little damage. Israel struck back with actions that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and pushed over a million more closer to the brink of starvation. And in general this is an important aspect of the conflict — irrespective of intentions, over the years you have many more dead Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians.

There is no doubt to anyone with the ability to read that Hamas “ambitions” (a queer word to describe genocide) are clear, unambiguous, unchanging (despite Yglesisas’s sly inference otherwise), and central to the matter at hand regardless of the accuracy of their rockets or bean counting civilian deaths.

Yglesias wants to ignore “intentions” because it is the only possible way to place the moral onus for the conflict on Israel. How very convenient. Simply forget that this is the continuation of a conflict with Hamas who, without constant vigilance on the part of the Israeli security services, would make any action taken by the IDF look like a walk in the park casualty wise.

Yglesias’s contention is that because Hamas has been unsuccessful in deliberately murdering Israelis in suicide attacks or rocket barrages, we should ignore their fanatical desire to do so and concentrate on their thankfully puny efforts to inflict pain and terror on the Israeli populace.

Perhaps we should ask the Israeli police to allow a few Hamas martyrs into the country just so that their attacks could even things out a bit and make Matthew feel a little better about “what is actually happening” on the ground in Israel.

That Israel’s response has nothing to do with changing hearts and minds or furthering the “peace process” but rather the simple, straightforward, morally unambiguous goal of making their citizens safe in their homes must be lost in the translation somewhere.

Charles Krauthammer:

Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.

Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis — 6,464 launched from Gaza in the past three years — deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people.

This has two purposes. First, counting on the moral scrupulousness of Israel, Hamas figures civilian proximity might help protect at least part of its arsenal. Second, knowing that Israelis have new precision weapons that may allow them to attack nonetheless, Hamas hopes that inevitable collateral damage — or, if it is really fortunate, an errant Israeli bomb — will kill large numbers of its own people for which, of course, the world will blame Israel.

If Krauthammer believes such remedial lessons in moral clarity would educate those on the left who need it most, it is obvious he has never read Firedoglake:

So I guess this is good news to the IRA, Basque Separatists, and various others who have blown shit up over the years (killing many) — they now get a pass because they telegraphed their punches via warnings ahead of time. And I guess, by ol’ Charlies’ logic it is morally right to bomb Iran, because he wrote a cloying article about “Peace through Confligration” a couple years ago. So they’ve been adequately warned. So as long as you give a courtesy call it is okay to nuke somebody, because proportionate response just is not a moral question Krauthammer can believe in.

Huh? A bomb being set off by terrorists at a department store in London with warning given has any equivalence whatsoever with the Israelis warning civilians that they are going to destroy Hamas military installations? How novel!

First of all, our IRA heroes were nowhere near the blast site and were targeting a civilian establishments. Only the deliberately self-deluded actually believe that Israel is trying to kill civilians. And it is useless to try and argue the right and wrong of unintentional civilian casualties in war where the enemy, as Krauthammer points out, places its military installations where even pinpoint bombing can cause civilian deaths.

The faux choice between killing civilians or not killing any at all is an artificial standard created for Israel and the US who are supposed to fight wars as they did in the 18th century - gentlemanly conflicts where aristocratic officers weren’t targeted because the conflict might get out of control otherwise, it being fought by commoners and other rabble.

The sterile argument that Israel (or America) killing non combatants violates the Geneva Convention, when one side ignores the GC’s strictures against hiding behind civilian populations, fails to address the unpalatable option of not going to war at all in order to avoid civilian casualties and consequently enduring attacks on your country without response. It is the real world versus the ideal world imagined by those on the left who care less about the Geneva Convention and more about using the treaty as a way to defang both Israel and the US - emasculating them in order to achieve some wildly unrealistic status quo belli  but where the enemies of both nations can violate the GC with impunity and be safely ignored while an absolutist notion regarding civilian casualties is advanced.

Nice trick if you can get away with it.

Secondly, I daresay when the ground assault by Israel begins - as it apparently will, shortly - and if the IDF warns civilians thus losing the element of surprise for their soldiers, the resulting casualties sustained by the IDF will prove the efficacy of Krauthammer’s argument; that Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to protect the enemy population even at a cost to the the lives of their own military.

The weird, idiotic hearkening back to a column written by Krauthammer on the possibility of an attack on Iran being presented as further “argument” that Israel should receive no points for good behavior as a result of their warnings is daffy. A two year old column by a journalist is similar in construct to Israel warning Palestinian civilians?

The preceding by FDL was not an exercise in mental gymnastics but rather a baking class where students are taught how to make a pretzel. Only in this case, the confections were twisted so painfully and into such ludicrous shapes, that it cried out in protest at being abused so ignorantly.

All of this twisting and running in circles stands in stark contrast to the way the left justified fighting fascism on the side of the “republicans” during the Spanish Civil War. On the surface, going to war against Franco and the nationalists could be seen as noble, even heroic. The clerical-fascists backing the Spanish dictator were certainly an unattractive lot, wanting to keep the Spanish people in virtual bondage and peonage while being kept in line using the heavy hand of the Catholic Church.

Franco was supported by Italian and German fascists. And hearing the siren song of war being sung by Stalin and his communist party minions throughout the west, thousands of Americans joined what history has come to know as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade - a kind of super glorified Boy Scout troop that was short on military knowledge and discipline but long on enthusiasm and true belief in the cause.

What was that cause? The Spanish “republicans” were an equally inglorious bunch having made it their first order of business upon assuming power the slaughter of Catholic clergy and laity (more than 7,000 murdered) as well as tens of thousands of others who didn’t demonstrate correct political thinking. This “Red Terror” was followed by the much more brutal and efficient “White Terror” of Franco.

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was made up of the cream of the American left - many of whom, as was the fashion of the time, were communists. (Being a Communist in the 1930’s was cool - sort of like being a Republican in the ’80’s or a Democrat today.) There were also socialists, Wobblies (IWW members), liberal democrats, the mainstream middle class, and the usual smattering of soldiers of fortune, adventurers, and devil-may-care journalists.

All the ALB cared about was that they were fighting fascism. No doubt the nationalists were deserving of disapprobation given their bombing of cities and wanton slaughter of civilians. But the atrocities committed by the “republicans” were equally vile as they too killed their fair share of non combatants, executing as many nationalist sympathizers as they could find.

Committing evil to fight evil? Who’da thunk it. Very few voices on the left were raised in opposition to these tactics on the republican side and indeed, those that were pointed to “disproportionality” between atrocities committed by Franco’s government and the Republicans.

Fighting Franco was almost certainly the right thing to do. Standing on the sidelines and positing a “pox on both their houses” would have ignored the moral framework of the conflict in favor of a safe intellectual harbor where kibbitzing from the sidelines as the nationalists murdered their way to victory would have been cowardly. No one knows what kind of government would have emerged if the republicans had been victorious but given the history of communist movements worldwide, its a safe bet to say that Spain may very well have eventully been gobbled up by Moscow.

But we have the advantage of 20/20 hindisight and at the time, fighting on the side of those who supported liberal democracy was the correct moral choice.

The point is, the left had no trouble taking sides when the moral choices were much less clear given the ravages committed by both sides. But correctly identifying the side in the right in the current Hamas-Israeli War seems to be beyond their capacity despite the fact that the issues here, as Krauthammer points out, possess “a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.”

I used to make great sport of Salon’s Glenn Greenwald and his idiotic rantings against Bush, conservatives, Republicans, and individual bloggers he would attack irrationally. There is no one on the internet who exaggerates more, takes what someone writes or says completely and dishonestly out of context more often, or sets up larger strawmen - knocking them down with the kind of feverish frenzy one might see in a 14 year old drama queen.

His over the top, hysterical warnings about the imminent demise of American democracy, his one dimensional take on everything from the war to same sex marriage, and his insufferable, loutish, smugly self righteous attitude figured to be just too tempting a target for many of us who see in him the epitome of netroots hypocrisy and stupidity.

But it got boring after a while to pillory Greenwald because he was so predictable. This is why he largely goes unchallenged these days; people are just too busy with other, more important matters, than going through one of his 3,000 word rants and calling him out for the lies, the exaggerations, the deliberate twisting of intent, and other grevious sins that is this sock puppet’s stock in trade.

Occasionally, however, the urge comes upon me to try to set the record straight. It may seem vainglorious for me to think that anything I write on my little blog matters a whit in the larger scheme of things - even in so insignificant a matter as Glenn Greenwald and his latest smears against those with which he disagrees. But winding up and throwing a haymaker toward Greenwald’s jaw - in a literary sense - is nevertheless a quite satisfying exercise emotionally and I will therefore indulge myself as I desperately need some spiritual uplift following the decline and fall of My Beloved Bears last week.

Greenwald has written perhaps the most dishonest, ignorant, deliberately deceptive piece on the War against Hamas that has yet been penned. And given the tripe that’s been vomiting forth from sites like The Nation and Firedoglake, that is a truly remarkable achievement.

Greenwald is a liar. Either that or he is so oblivious to facts, reason, and logic that he must experience life on the level of a two year old. How else would you describe his opening to this anti-Israeli screed that drips with venomous hatred against his political enemies:

This Rasmussen Reports poll — the first to survey American public opinion specifically regarding the Israeli attack on Gaza — strongly bolsters the severe disconnect I documented the other day between (a) American public opinion on U.S. policy towards Israel and (b) the consensus views expressed by America’s political leadership.  Not only does Rasmussen find that Americans generally “are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip” (44-41%, with 15% undecided), but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive — by a 24-point margin (31-55%).  By stark constrast, Republicans, as one would expect (in light of their history of supporting virtually any proposed attack on Arabs and Muslims), overwhelmingly support the Israeli bombing campaign (62-27%).

The smear written here - so casually made - that “as one would expect” (as if everyone were as intellectually dishonest as Greenwald), Republicans have a “history” of supporting “any proposed attacks on Arabs or Muslims.” What history might that be? A favorite Greenwaldian subterfuge is to throw as many charges against his enemies just to see if any stick. This one’s a biggie, of course.He is saying that all Republicans are bigots and hate Muslims and Arabs - without one single example or any evidence to support his wild, unsupported lie.

No, very few people “expect” Republicans to act in such a bigoted manner - especially 62% of them - except Greenwald and his ilk whose exaggerated sense of disproportion allows them to posit all kinds of evil without offering a scintilla of proof. Supporting wars against Saddam Hussein and the Taliban for reasons of national security is not the same as hating Muslims so much that Republicans relish the thought of killing them. The fact that I have to point this out would seem silly to most rational people except Greenwald apparently believes it - or is a liar.

It would also be relevant point out that while Democrats and liberals were willing to allow Muslims to be slaughtered in Bosnia and Kosovo, it was Republican support that allowed a Democratic president to go to war against orthodox Christian Serbia and save them. Does that mean that liberals hate Muslims because they didn’t mind seeing them murdered and raped? In Greenwald’s world, yes.

If possible, this statement is even more dishonest:

It’s not at all surprising, then, that Republican leaders — from Dick Cheney and John Bolton to virtually all appendages of the right-wing noise machine, from talk radio and Fox News to right-wing blogs and neoconservative journals — are unquestioning supporters of the Israeli attack. After all, they’re expressing the core ideology of the overwhelming majority of their voters and audience.

What “core ideology” is that Mr. Greenwald? The subtext is, we assume, the same as above; that the GOP hates Arabs and Muslims. And where in God’s name did this worthless dreck of a human being come up with the idea that the “overwhelming majority” of Republican voters and audience hates Muslims?

It might be interesting to have Mr. Greenwald link to the poll that shows that the “overwhelming majority” of Republicans buy the “core ideology” of bigotry and hate against Muslims and Arabs. It is this kind of deliberate smear that Greenwald gets away with for the simple reason no one takes the time (or wastes it) in responding.

This calumny is not your run of the mill political mud wrestling where eye gouging and leg twisting is done with relish and opponents end up covering themselves in manure when all is said and done. This is the world according to Glenn Greenwald - a very special place where simply having him say that up is down, black is white, and the “overwhelming majority” of Republicans are bigots makes it so.

Note I have not called Greenwald an “anti-Semite” for opposing Israel’s war of survival against an enemy whose public policy toward their neighbor is total destruction. You can be an idiot without being a hater. But his selective outrage against Israel (and tepid, pro-forma objections to Hamas’s cruel barrage of rockets targeting civilians in Israel) is indicative of someone without moral awareness. Is he deceiving us or himself? A good question that too many on the left - lacking the desire for introspection as they do - fail to ask themselves.

But what really has Greenwald’s panties in a twist is the fact that American political leaders of both parties have, for the most part, taken Israel’s side in the War:

Ultimately, what is most notable about the “debate” in the U.S. over Israel-Gaza is that virtually all of it occurs from the perspective of Israeli interests but almost none of it is conducted from the perspective of American interests. There is endless debate over whether Israel’s security is enhanced or undermined by the attack on Gaza and whether the 40-year-old Israeli occupation, expanding West Bank settlements and recent devastating blockade or Hamas militancy and attacks on Israeli civilians bear more of the blame. American opinion-making elites march forward to opine on the historical rights and wrongs of the endless Israeli-Palestinian territorial conflict with such fervor and fixation that it’s often easy to forget that the U.S. is not actually a direct party to this dispute.

As Israel’s biggest and best ally and virtual guarantor of their existence, of course we have an abiding interest in the conflict. The wonder is that Greenwald evidently feels sticking a knife in the back of your ally while she is fighting for her life by condemning this bomb going off in the wrong place or that bullet not hitting its intended target is just fine. Better yet, take the morally reprehensible position of a “pox on both your houses” and condemn everybody. That way, you can do away with the only democracy in the Middle East as an ally and simply treat them as we might look upon Sierra Leone or Gabon.

When one’s moral compass goes in a circle and taking the “out” that the survival of an ally is none of your business might be satisfying from an ideological standpoint but is hardly practical or even desirable. Taking sides in a war is a necessary evil when it comes right down to it. The US is not Sweden or Switzerland, although Greenwald might prefer that kind of “neutrality” to the sort of practical realization that the survival of Israel is important to the US national interest.

Whew! Remind me not to ask Greenwald to be an ally.

The rank deceitfulness of Greenwald is really getting tiresome. The idea that this ignorant hypocrite - as ignorant and hypocritical as any right winger he wants to name - has been given such a big megaphone at Salon would be incomprehensible except when you realize that his followers among the netroots are equally obtuse and perfidious when it comes to attacking their political and ideological enemies.

With that kind of devoted following, he’ll probably grab a Pulitzer someday.

 
Wrigley Field readies itself for the NHL Winter Classic

I have always thought it a shame that professional hockey never caught on in much of America. Even in cities that feature a hockey franchise, fan support is limited to a relatively small, but enthusiastic minority.

In the northeast it is much better with civic pride in the Bruins, Sabers, and perhaps the Flyers allowing hockey to rise to a step above being considered as a “minor sport.” And, of course, the game in Canada is still followed as a religion.

But here in Chicago, the Blackhawks had fallen precipitously - not only in fan support, but media coverage as well. One of the “Original Six” NHL franchises, the fortunes of the Hawks have turned sour as a result of the monumentally poor business decisions of now deceased owner William Wirtz. ESPN.com’s Gene Wojciechowski explains:

The Hawks, one of the Original Six, haven’t won a Cup since 1961, haven’t reached the playoffs since 2002 and haven’t been worth watching until, well, now. Not that you could have watched them until now anyway. This is the first season in the 82-year history of the team that all of its games are on local TV.

With all due respect to Knicks knucklehead James Dolan and the Lions’ clueless William Clay Ford, no franchise has a richer history of ownership blunders than the Hawks. The late Bill Wirtz and his 41-year reign of ownership terror make Dolan and Ford look like amateurs.

The Wirtz Way: Don’t spend money. Don’t broadcast home games. Don’t help the media. And when in doubt, distance yourself from your legendary players. With Wirtz, the organizational motto was “The Customer Is Always Wrong.”

Wirtz tried very hard to drive the franchise into the ground, but only partially succeeded. The reason is that until 1994, the Chicago Blackhawks played in the best hockey venue in history; the old “Madhouse on Madison,” officially known as Chicago Stadium.

Now Boston Gardens and the current incarnation of Madison Square Garden were both fine, old arenas, each dripping with history and memories. (I had season tickets to St. Louis Blues games that were played in another great theater of sport, the Arena.) But you will pardon me if I express some civic chauvinism and declare that you haven’t seen or experienced a professional hockey game unless you witnessed the event in the old Chicago Stadium.

Not only was the drafty old hall the loudest indoor arena of its kind, it was a singular place to compete if you were a hockey player. The ice was 20 feet shorter than regulation, the difference made up by shortening the neutral zone. But the thing that set Chicago Stadium apart from any other was the world’s largest theater pipe organ that blasted music using a 100 HP Spencer Blower that in the old days, blew out windows and lights in the building when cranked full.

Taking up an entire section in the third tier, the organ was visible to the entire crowd. The playing of the National Anthem (sung by legendary Chicagoan Wayne Messemer) could barely be heard above the cheering fanatics who began screaming at the first notes of the Anthem and didn’t stop until the puck was dropped to start the game.

Alas, those days are gone and the Hawks now play in the rather sterile United Center. In recent years, the “House that Jordan Built” has seen a falloff in fan attendance for the Hawks as the team fell into mediocrity. Until…

Weird, but it wasn’t until after Wirtz’s death on Sept. 26, 2007, that his franchise came to life. In the next 188 days the team had a new chairman (Wirtz’s son, Rocky), a new president (former Chicago Cubs president McDonough), new team ambassadors (the once exiled Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita returned), and a new television deal.

Later, there was a new radio deal, a new play-by-play man (former Hawks announcer Pat Foley returned), a new spending policy ($56.8 million for defenseman Brian Campbell, $22.4 for goaltender Cristobal Huet), a new senior adviser (Scotty Bowman), a new staff directory (41 changes in the front office), a new Cubs-like Blackhawks Convention, and, just four games into the 2008 season, a new coach (Joel Quenneville for Denis Savard). About the only thing that stayed the same was the Hawks’ sweet logo.

The fans have responded to this Phoenix-like rise by returning in droves. And to put a cherry on top of this welcome resurgence, the Blackhawks will host the Detroit Red Wings today. And they will do it at the only other place more historic than old Chicago Stadium; Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs and perhaps the most historic stadium in America.

The NHL’s Winter Classic will mark the league’s second year for a New Year’s day outdoor game. It is the most innovative professional sports idea since the inception of the Super Bowl. Last year’s premier event was held in Buffalo at Ralph Wilson Stadium where more than 71,000 fans were treated to some great hockey between the Buffalo Sabers and the Pittsburg Penguins.

The outdoor venue for hockey harkens back to a time when most of the league was made up of Candadian farm boys who learned their hockey on the ponds and lakes of rural Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan. The fact that this game will feature two of the Original Six teams in the league also brings back memories. For me, it is of Saturday nights in the 1960’s watching legendary Hawks players like Bobby Hull, Stan Makita, Kenny Wharam, Phil Esposito (before he was traded to Boston), and Pierre Pilote. They competed against the hated Montreal Canadians who featured equally legendary players like Guy LaFluer and Scott Lamaire as well as the Detroit Red Wings, New York Rangers, Boston Bruins, and Toronto Maple Leafs.

The game was much different back then. The players were much smaller, faster, better with the puck, and probably dirtier. The game itself was more wide open with speed being the key to victory.

But today, for a few hours, it will be throwback time as Wrigley Field will see its first major winter sports event since the Bears left for Soldier Field in 1970. And the resurgent Blackhawks, putting fannies in the seats once again and playing exciting hockey, may find that hosting this game with a large, national audience just the catalyst they need to elevate the status of their sport to the heights it previously occupied in this city when the old Chicago Stadium rocked and roared during the golden years of Blackhawk hockey.