bustardblog

Israel is the Issue

Looking at memeorandum today - one can't help but realize that the most important issue today, foreign or domestic, is Israel. Reading the blogs one can't help but see that we're doing a lousy job discussing it.

Some examples follow:
Krauthammer's piece in the WaPo argues for A Holocaust Declaration - that Bush announce that any attack on Israel will be treated as an attack on the U.S. He believes that this is the least that we can do for this valued ally. (An ally who spies on us, who has never fired a bullet to help the U.S., and whose vaunted intelligence help was clearly of no help in understanding Iraq.) His piece is dishonest in the extreme:

The problem is that Israel is a very small country with a small nuclear arsenal that is largely land-based. Land-based retaliatory forces can be destroyed in a first strike, which is precisely why, during the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union created vast submarine fleets -- undetectable and thus invulnerable to first strikes -- that ensured a retaliatory strike and, thus, deterrence.

Israel has rarely admitted to the existence of its nuclear weapons program, although they have had one for close to 50 years, and helped South Africa develop it's own nukes as well. It's not such a small arsenal - larger than either India's or Pakistan's according to the Federation of American Scientists Estimate. And of course they do have submarines capable of firing nukes - much evidence suggests that they were tested in May 2000.

Ezra Klein notes Obama's apparent capitulation to the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, since the candidate from Chicago has started a blog in Israel - in Hebrew! YNet writes that:

All candidates are well aware of the fact that Israel – and by extension the Jewish vote – are an integral part of the US presidential election.

The Corner at the National Review is the most offensive by far. It refers to a study done by a totally partisan polling organization and triumphs the Protestantization of American Catholics, as supposed their support for Israel is almost as great as the Evangelicals'. He fears that Hispanic Catholics may be harder to fix:

It's not that Latin immigrants are uniquely anti-Semitic (I suspect they're more anti-Semitic than today's Asians or yesterday's Irish and Italians, but less so than Eastern European immigrants); rather, our ability to Protestantize them (in the sense I'm using it) has declined dramatically compared to a century ago.

The issue is Israel - and there has to be a more honest, objective way for us to discuss it.

Victor Davis Dumb and Dishonest.

The estimable Thers has written a couple of posts today about the work of one Victor Davis Hanson. He quotes a post by Mr. Hanson writing that:

Liberals, as are all Americans, are rightly angry over Tibet, but since a dictatorial communist China holds over $1 billion dollars in U,S. government backed bonds..."

I was dumbfounded. I'm no economist, but, like other commenters at the site, I knew the figure of 1 billion was absurdly low. Could Mr. Hanson really not know what a billion dollars is? Does he have no clue what the cost of the war in Iraq is? Does he understand nothing of the budget?

Because Mr. Hanson is off, by a factor of close to five hundred. The U.S.Treasury says that China holds about 495 Billion of such debt.  Does Mr Hanson not understand the difference between owing one dollar or owing 500 dollars?

So Mr Hanson is financially challenged. Instead of apologizing for his ignorance, he decided to hide it in a thoroughly dishonest fashion. He has changed the post to which Thers linked, with no indication of a correction. Instead of reading "over $ 1 Billion" the post now reads that "China holds a substantial investment."

It's hard to argue that 493 billion is a substantial investment. It's harder still to believe anything with the Victor Davis Hanson byline.