I love this comment of 'Zo's: "I feel like in America, we don't have a kid problem. You think about all these issues that these kids are dealing with, we have an adult problem. We have adults that do not place the priority on our kids."
Alonzo Mourning: The Edge of Sports Interview
By Dave Zirin
January, 2008 | Edge of Sports
URL: http://www.edgeofsports.com/2009-01-16-405/index.html
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Re: bailouts, self-reliance, greed, & government
If greed is good and necessary for capitalism to work, then we should celebrate -- or at least equally tolerate -- greed wherever we find it: in the executive boardroom, at the union-management negotiating table, at the supermarket, etc.
If greed, collapses and blowups are inherent in capitalism's creative destruction, then we Americans should have a much more blase, stoic attitude toward them, and not demonize one industry over another, or ask anybody to sacrifice. Sacrifice for what, for whom? There is nobody else but me, says greed. Sacrifice does not compute with greed.
In other words, all these years when outsiders told the unions that they should accept even deeper wage and benefits cuts in order to preserve the U.S. auto industry, those outsiders were asking unions to do something un-capitalistic: ignore their own self-interest for a greater good, based on a long-term what-if. Likewise, all the smart bankers who saw that they were sitting on a pile of dynamite (bad debt) could not stop themselves, nor did their bosses encourage them to, because their immediate profits and bonuses while the getting was good were just too huge to ignore. None of them wanted to be the last to leave the buffet table. Uncle T. thinks they were dumb. I think he's naive. People in the financial press and in business schools were writing about the housing bubble and the danger of derivatives for years; just like they were pointing out the unsustainable legacy costs of U.S. auto makers.
Finally, I want to point out to you again the untenable contradiction in the conservative worldview: that in our work lives we must be greedy, self-interested, competitive, risk-taking individualists (and society should encourage and reward such behavior); but in our private lives we must be caring, yielding, unselfish, family- and community-minded do-gooders (and there we should commend such behavior). No matter what messes our former life creates out of its greed and heedless risk, our latter life, in all its steadfast love, patience, and charity, is there to clean them up. And so there is no need -- nay, there is no room! -- between those two opposing lives, believe conservatives, for Big Government.
Look, I'm no psychologist, but I think that if a man tried to hew to this dichotomy, he would become schizophrenic. Don't you think, to maintain his sanity and some semblance of moral clarity, that a man would eventually have to choose one way of life over the other, unable to lead this double life? Don't you, personally, skew heavily toward the latter view of life? ... And yet you defend and rationalize "thinkers" who promote the virtues of the former worldview, which is opposed to how you actually choose to lead your life, based on your Christian values.
Moreover, don't you see that the harm caused by the former way of life would eventually surpass the ability of the latter way of life to ameliorate it? That is, due to the scope and power of our modern global economy, can't a man do more harm from 9-6 p.m. at work than he could ever make up for in his individual free time? In our work lives, we are well funded, globally connected, and empowered; our decisions and actions carry immediate, often dramatic effects. Yet in our private lives, we are alone with our family and friends, unconnected to the wider world, with hardly any tools at our disposal to help anybody whom we can't see or touch. We kick a buck to charity. We go to church. We recycle. We mow our lawns. We shop and buy and shop. Only with great, sustained effort can we make our private lives more impactful than our work lives, and only at the expense of our personal profit. In real life, it is always either-or.
I recall the painting in Grandpa's office of a balding, sharp-eyed businessman in a three-piece suit sitting behind his desk, holding an animated but friendly conversation with a berobed Jesus Christ. The point of that painting, I guess, was that Jesus had a place in the business world, too. But how silly, naive, and impracticable is that lesson! How poorly the world rewards somebody who actually tries to follow it! Capitalism rewards the dumb and the lucky, to be sure. It also rewards the sharks, the liars, the cutthroats, the shouters, the aggressors, the egomaniacs, the prima donas, the backstabbers, the copycats and the yes-men, the amoral and the conscience-free. And then, to make matters worse, on top of their $ millions, we laud the rich with achievement awards, honorary degrees, magazine covers and TV interviews, paid speaking engagements, and political offices. Evangelical churches even defend their excessive wealth as proof of God's favor. How brutally and unequally the world rewards those who skew toward the former way of life vs. the latter! Only the businessman who strove for mediocrity wouldn't throw Jesus out of his office for wasting his precious time!
To come full circle, this is why I'm a liberal. Not because I'm better than anybody else. But because I'm just as bad. I humbly admit my natural limitations and the limitations imposed on me by life. I recognize that my private self is no match for my public self. I can't provide for myself and my family, enjoy some rest & recreation, and also "make a difference," "revitalize my community," and "change the world" after 8 p.m. on weekdays and a few hours on the weekend. I need government to pick up the slack. My good conscience demands that government picks up the slack for me, for everybody -- but especially for those whose destructive work lives grossly outweigh anything I could do to counter them. I need help. And so do you, if only you'd admit it.
If greed, collapses and blowups are inherent in capitalism's creative destruction, then we Americans should have a much more blase, stoic attitude toward them, and not demonize one industry over another, or ask anybody to sacrifice. Sacrifice for what, for whom? There is nobody else but me, says greed. Sacrifice does not compute with greed.
In other words, all these years when outsiders told the unions that they should accept even deeper wage and benefits cuts in order to preserve the U.S. auto industry, those outsiders were asking unions to do something un-capitalistic: ignore their own self-interest for a greater good, based on a long-term what-if. Likewise, all the smart bankers who saw that they were sitting on a pile of dynamite (bad debt) could not stop themselves, nor did their bosses encourage them to, because their immediate profits and bonuses while the getting was good were just too huge to ignore. None of them wanted to be the last to leave the buffet table. Uncle T. thinks they were dumb. I think he's naive. People in the financial press and in business schools were writing about the housing bubble and the danger of derivatives for years; just like they were pointing out the unsustainable legacy costs of U.S. auto makers.
Finally, I want to point out to you again the untenable contradiction in the conservative worldview: that in our work lives we must be greedy, self-interested, competitive, risk-taking individualists (and society should encourage and reward such behavior); but in our private lives we must be caring, yielding, unselfish, family- and community-minded do-gooders (and there we should commend such behavior). No matter what messes our former life creates out of its greed and heedless risk, our latter life, in all its steadfast love, patience, and charity, is there to clean them up. And so there is no need -- nay, there is no room! -- between those two opposing lives, believe conservatives, for Big Government.
Look, I'm no psychologist, but I think that if a man tried to hew to this dichotomy, he would become schizophrenic. Don't you think, to maintain his sanity and some semblance of moral clarity, that a man would eventually have to choose one way of life over the other, unable to lead this double life? Don't you, personally, skew heavily toward the latter view of life? ... And yet you defend and rationalize "thinkers" who promote the virtues of the former worldview, which is opposed to how you actually choose to lead your life, based on your Christian values.
Moreover, don't you see that the harm caused by the former way of life would eventually surpass the ability of the latter way of life to ameliorate it? That is, due to the scope and power of our modern global economy, can't a man do more harm from 9-6 p.m. at work than he could ever make up for in his individual free time? In our work lives, we are well funded, globally connected, and empowered; our decisions and actions carry immediate, often dramatic effects. Yet in our private lives, we are alone with our family and friends, unconnected to the wider world, with hardly any tools at our disposal to help anybody whom we can't see or touch. We kick a buck to charity. We go to church. We recycle. We mow our lawns. We shop and buy and shop. Only with great, sustained effort can we make our private lives more impactful than our work lives, and only at the expense of our personal profit. In real life, it is always either-or.
I recall the painting in Grandpa's office of a balding, sharp-eyed businessman in a three-piece suit sitting behind his desk, holding an animated but friendly conversation with a berobed Jesus Christ. The point of that painting, I guess, was that Jesus had a place in the business world, too. But how silly, naive, and impracticable is that lesson! How poorly the world rewards somebody who actually tries to follow it! Capitalism rewards the dumb and the lucky, to be sure. It also rewards the sharks, the liars, the cutthroats, the shouters, the aggressors, the egomaniacs, the prima donas, the backstabbers, the copycats and the yes-men, the amoral and the conscience-free. And then, to make matters worse, on top of their $ millions, we laud the rich with achievement awards, honorary degrees, magazine covers and TV interviews, paid speaking engagements, and political offices. Evangelical churches even defend their excessive wealth as proof of God's favor. How brutally and unequally the world rewards those who skew toward the former way of life vs. the latter! Only the businessman who strove for mediocrity wouldn't throw Jesus out of his office for wasting his precious time!
To come full circle, this is why I'm a liberal. Not because I'm better than anybody else. But because I'm just as bad. I humbly admit my natural limitations and the limitations imposed on me by life. I recognize that my private self is no match for my public self. I can't provide for myself and my family, enjoy some rest & recreation, and also "make a difference," "revitalize my community," and "change the world" after 8 p.m. on weekdays and a few hours on the weekend. I need government to pick up the slack. My good conscience demands that government picks up the slack for me, for everybody -- but especially for those whose destructive work lives grossly outweigh anything I could do to counter them. I need help. And so do you, if only you'd admit it.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Re: Political perspectives on economy, bailouts
I'm not sure how coherent your argument below is. Let's suppose we could trust the other guy to do the "right thing." Would it then be morally OK for us to relax, knowing he'd pick up our slack? No, of course not. If you believe there is a "right thing" to do, then it's the right thing because you're supposed to do it no matter what, even if you're the only good person left on Earth.
If by "doing our individual best," you mean taking care of yourself when times get tough and forgetting about others, well.... No. I disagree. Charity and safety nets matter the most when times are really tough.
Indeed, government has a role to play now. You lament that you can't count on the "other guy" anymore. Well, that's precisely why government's needs to make the other guy ante up (especially the top 5% who have enjoyed so much increase in wealth over the past 30 years), so that we all can count on each other. I'm not convinced we should spend $1 trillion on stimulus, but government is going to have to spend a lot of money, no doubt.
There is going to be a lot of suffering over the next year or so, maybe longer. This is uncharted territory. And yet many seem to take some sick pleasure from the prospect of such suffering -- the same people, I suspect, who enjoy "teaching people a lesson," who relish pointing the finger and offering a holier-than-thou lecture whenever somebody falls down. But did you ever stop and wonder why it is always the poor and middle class clock-punchers who must learn (and re-learn) all these important, stoical, "real American" lessons about life, as if they were the billion-dollar gamblers, as if they were the irresponsible louts who gamed the banking system to show huge profits and hide a mountain of piling debt, or collected seven-figure bonuses by maximizing short-term gains at the expense of long-term value? What moral lessons have those rich, hotshot SOBs learned from all of this?
When bankers and traders engaged in legalized, unregulated gambling with derivatives and credit default swaps, practiced insider trading and cooked the books as their mortgage banks went under, devised "teaser" loans to fool ignorant borrowers, and gamed Wall Street's financial system to maximize their salary and bonuses, well... those were just the excesses of roaring capitalism. After all, their greed fuels the machine that feeds us all. But when a union worker asks for a wage increase to exceed inflation, plus health benefits and a pension, well... he is a lazy piece of shit who is ruining our economy. He is a goddamn socialist. He (and his father before him) should have known better. His "greed" is completely out of bounds.
Some people (ahem!) think that Wall Street was just plain dumb, they didn't know what they were doing when they were creating all those $ billions in mega-leveraged debt. They can't be blamed, despite their high IQs and Ivy League MBAs and PhDs, for pushing the global economy over the brink. Yet the blue-collar union worker should have known full well that he was destroying his own job, his company, and indeed America's manufacturing base by negotiating with his management for the highest wages and benefits he could get. The union worker, despite his high school education, and the sudden confluence of global economic forces beyond his control and often his understanding, was nevertheless knowledgeable and personally culpable and therefore deserves his sudden joblessness and our collective scorn.
Don't you see the gross double standard at work in this reasoning? Moreover, don't you see the gross imbalance in the effect on our economy of Wall Street's greed and recklessness vs. auto unions' "greed"? And yet you reserve a special disdain for the simple, middle-class union worker, who is probably a defender of the basic Christian "family values" that you treasure. Don't you see that you, this kid who wrote this op-ed, and most Republicans are suckers for a class of people who don't give two shits about you, and who are laughing all the way to the mega-merger of their bank (paid for by you)?
Don't you see the gross double standard at work in this reasoning? Moreover, don't you see the gross imbalance in the effect on our economy of Wall Street's greed and recklessness vs. auto unions' "greed"? And yet you reserve a special disdain for the simple, middle-class union worker, who is probably a defender of the basic Christian "family values" that you treasure. Don't you see that you, this kid who wrote this op-ed, and most Republicans are suckers for a class of people who don't give two shits about you, and who are laughing all the way to the mega-merger of their bank (paid for by you)?
I'm not defending the unions all the way, but let's acknowledge that there is only one kind of greed -- the greedy kind. If you think that a white-collar banker's greed is somehow more virtuous because he's dealing with more zeroes and taking risks with somebody else's money, then please excuse me while I vomit. Indeed, if "greed is good," if overoptimism and risk-taking are what make capitalism go, then it's nonsensical to excoriate the losers and praise the winners alike because they were greedy, optimistic, and heedless of risk!
The book I'm reading now, The Black Swan, by Nicholas Taleb, a successful trader and self-styled philosopher, was at the forefront of my mind as I wrote the above. Wrote Taleb: "Capitalism is, among other things, the revitalization of the world thanks to the opportunity to be lucky." And: "As individuals we should love free markets because operators in them can be as incompetent as they wish," meaning, as incompetent, risk-taking, and overoptimistic as they wish to be without being able to hurt everybody else too badly, thanks to bankruptcy. Unlike government incompetence, which affects us all and rarely results in the government's disintegration. Taleb is convinced that most successful businesses and businessmen were simply lucky. That's all. Just being in the right place at the right time.
On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 6:36 PM, < > wrote:
Choices would be more clear if we could TRUST our fellow man. It's a reminder to all of us to complete our committments and practice responsibility.It is more true today than ever, that saving the nation and world begins with each one of us doing our individual best. We can't count on the "other guy".
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Re: 'Real' facts on Gaza
Of course both sides lie. If you think the Israelis don't lie, too, then you are a biased observer. (If one side is not willing to lie, i.e. engage in propaganda, in order to win a war, then it doesn't want to win badly enough).
The "truth" is not that Hamas is good and Israel is bad, or vice-versa. We must look objectively at the conflict there, and not fall prey to sensationalism. Objectively, Israel is killing more people, and more civilians, than the Palestinians and Hamas. Objectively, Israel is the stronger party, with a modern, precise, army partly supplied by the USA. Objectively, Israel has set up blockades and roadblocks and controls the supply of food, water, fuel, electricity, and medicine into the territories, and uses this control to punish the Palestinian population; Israel's occasional cessation of blockades is not equal to "humanitarian aid." Objectively, the United States has the power to curb Israel's actions, but it does not, for reasons of its own. Objectively, Hamas are thugs who use terror tactics, (but they're terrible at governing, since that's not what they care about). Objectively, Hamas is seeking to radicalize the Palestinian population and win favor for itself by exacerbating and promoting Israel's tactics of collective punishment, per the standard playbook for insurgencies.
And logically, if Hamas resided only in military-style compounds with "Hamas is here!" spray-painted on them, then the conflict wouldn't last very long, because Israel would simply bomb them to smithereens. So of course Hamas hides among the civilian population. And of course, this will force Israel to kill civilians. How hard Israel actually tries not to kill civilians is a matter for pure speculation. War is unpredictable; and nobody can control each and every frightened and angry soldier's trigger finger. If you want to believe that Israel tries very hard, I would argue that you are at best naive, and at worst a biased observer. After all, you can't drive a tank into a china shop and then declare with any credibility that you tried not to break any plates. There's more than 1 Palestinian for every 2 square meters in Gaza, with a population the same as Manhattan's: 1.5 million. But unlike Manhattanites, Gazans don't live vertically but shoulder-to-shoulder, close to the ground. Close to the fighting.
The question is what do we do with this collection of objective facts and logical conclusions?
If we seek to lionize or demonize one side, then we are letting ourselves be suckers in somebody else's game.
No, the point is not "to defeat terror" -- not unless we objectively define terror as any form of violence committed for political reasons, targeted at innocent civilians, and meant as collective recrimination for the perceived actions of opposition political and military leaders.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Re: Should we 'hope' Hamas stops attacking Israel?
What if Hamas doesn't stop fighting Israel, why should we care? After 9/11 are we now obliged to step into every fight when one side calls itself Muslim?
No, we are not the cause, but we are definitely enablers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We have chosen Israel's side, and we must suffer the consequences of that choice, although... Hamas has never attacked America, nor has it threatened to (that I know of), so you have to ask yourself why we've chosen to take sides in their war. What's it getting us?
You also have to ask yourself how we will react if and when Hamas changes tactics and decides to go after Israel's supporter and ally, the United States. (After all, if Hamas employed the same logic that America did -- that you can't just look at who's attacking you, but also at who's funding, supporting, and training those attackers -- then Hamas would be completely "within its rights" to attack America.) Of course, if Hamas murdered innocent U.S. civilians, the media and politicians would call it "unprovoked" and a "cowardly terrorist act," and then U.S. support for Israel would re-double after a sustained media propaganda campaign, and then we'd be up to our necks in another war in the Mideast to achieve no apparent objective other than killing Muslim people who don't like us, while imploring them to like us more, pretty please.
(If you want to dig deeper, ask yourself why Hamas hasn't attacked us, when they clearly identify us as enablers of Israel and biased against them. Because they're not suicidal. Not yet anyway. They don't want to risk the all-out wrath of the U.S. military.)
As for talk-radio clone Austin Hill's unoriginal comments, which are aimed at quashing our natural human emotions like empathy and pity... they illustrate how the fix is in. The Palestinians are not a state, (because Israel won't let them be), therefore they cannot assemble an official army; and even if they could muster one, Israel would immediately destroy it. Therefore, the Palestinians have no "legitimate" means of armed self-defense or offense. Terrorism, or simply rolling over to die in their ghettos while Israel takes all their land, steals their water, destroys their olive trees, and ethnically cleanses them, are their only two options. The latter -- doing their best Ghandi impression on the way to their own funeral -- is their only "moral" option, in our eyes.
So, put yourself in their shoes for a minute and ask what you would do. In fact, most Palestinians choose the latter: struggling to survive, waiting to die, while begging the U.S., the EU, the UN, and anybody else who will listen to help ease their plight. A small minority choose armed resistance to Israeli occupation and annexation of their land, using the only means at their disposal: terrorism, quote-unquote. For it is terrorism when Hamas lobs unguided missiles into Israeli civilian territory and kills 10 Israelis; but it is "military operations" or "self-defense" when Israel attacks with all the precision of a high-tech, mechanized army, killing over 300 civilians. I'm being sarcastic.
Only for people sitting cosily in their suburban homes, embassies, or Washington think tanks are these two things morally different. As "kooks" like Noam Chomsky have said for years, Israeli tactics, (including blockades of food and medicine), are little more than state terror aimed at cowing and collectively punishing the innocent civilians in Palestinian territories. In fact, you could argue that as a democratic country with all benefit of an Enlightenment heritage and Jewish moral values, that Israel is even more culpable, more morally repugnant because of its choice to exercise violence and collective punishment. Hamas are minority thugs; but Israel has voted and collectively chosen to sink to their level, again and again.
(And for comparison's sake, let's keep in mind our own bloody war for independence, which was started by an extremist minority of British colonists over tea and stamps. George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Patrick Henry endured nothing close to the hardships and outrages of the Palestinians. And yet look at how they "overreacted!")
But let's say you don't care about any of that wishy-washy morality stuff. Let's say you don't care if faraway Muslims are murdered or oppressed. Let's say you're a hard-boiled realist. Then you still must justify why we choose to give $3 billion in military aid a year to Israel, and play the phony role of "honest broker" to mediate their conflict, thereby inviting the wrath of the world's radical Muslims who identify with the Palestinians' plight. What's it getting us? How's it making us safer? If you can't answer that, then all you've got is, "Because it's the right thing to do." But if that is your final answer, then based on the above, I seriously doubt your moral reasoning.
So, from both a cynical real politik perspective (i.e. doing what's best for America, no matter what) our support of Israel is wrong; and, conversely from a moral, universal perspective it is wrong. That doesn't happen very often in international affairs!
I challenge you, Austin, Limbaugh, or anybody else to tell me how it is right.
Actually, I would love for Dick Cheney or someone of his ilk who pulls the strings of U.S. foreign policy to explain to me how our support of Israel is in America's interest. The illuminati-literati at SAIS, Georgetown, Fletcher, Brookings, Carnegie, and Heritage aren't Mormon missionaries, after all. They've got to believe there's something in it for us.
J
Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 7:12 PM:
Do you "hope" that Hamas will stop killing if the USA stops supporting Israel? Do you believe we are the cause of the Middle East Wars? - M
Obama On Hamas: "Hope" That Murderous Behavior Will "Change?"
By Austin Hill
January 11, 2008 | Townhall.com
No, we are not the cause, but we are definitely enablers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We have chosen Israel's side, and we must suffer the consequences of that choice, although... Hamas has never attacked America, nor has it threatened to (that I know of), so you have to ask yourself why we've chosen to take sides in their war. What's it getting us?
You also have to ask yourself how we will react if and when Hamas changes tactics and decides to go after Israel's supporter and ally, the United States. (After all, if Hamas employed the same logic that America did -- that you can't just look at who's attacking you, but also at who's funding, supporting, and training those attackers -- then Hamas would be completely "within its rights" to attack America.) Of course, if Hamas murdered innocent U.S. civilians, the media and politicians would call it "unprovoked" and a "cowardly terrorist act," and then U.S. support for Israel would re-double after a sustained media propaganda campaign, and then we'd be up to our necks in another war in the Mideast to achieve no apparent objective other than killing Muslim people who don't like us, while imploring them to like us more, pretty please.
(If you want to dig deeper, ask yourself why Hamas hasn't attacked us, when they clearly identify us as enablers of Israel and biased against them. Because they're not suicidal. Not yet anyway. They don't want to risk the all-out wrath of the U.S. military.)
As for talk-radio clone Austin Hill's unoriginal comments, which are aimed at quashing our natural human emotions like empathy and pity... they illustrate how the fix is in. The Palestinians are not a state, (because Israel won't let them be), therefore they cannot assemble an official army; and even if they could muster one, Israel would immediately destroy it. Therefore, the Palestinians have no "legitimate" means of armed self-defense or offense. Terrorism, or simply rolling over to die in their ghettos while Israel takes all their land, steals their water, destroys their olive trees, and ethnically cleanses them, are their only two options. The latter -- doing their best Ghandi impression on the way to their own funeral -- is their only "moral" option, in our eyes.
So, put yourself in their shoes for a minute and ask what you would do. In fact, most Palestinians choose the latter: struggling to survive, waiting to die, while begging the U.S., the EU, the UN, and anybody else who will listen to help ease their plight. A small minority choose armed resistance to Israeli occupation and annexation of their land, using the only means at their disposal: terrorism, quote-unquote. For it is terrorism when Hamas lobs unguided missiles into Israeli civilian territory and kills 10 Israelis; but it is "military operations" or "self-defense" when Israel attacks with all the precision of a high-tech, mechanized army, killing over 300 civilians. I'm being sarcastic.
Only for people sitting cosily in their suburban homes, embassies, or Washington think tanks are these two things morally different. As "kooks" like Noam Chomsky have said for years, Israeli tactics, (including blockades of food and medicine), are little more than state terror aimed at cowing and collectively punishing the innocent civilians in Palestinian territories. In fact, you could argue that as a democratic country with all benefit of an Enlightenment heritage and Jewish moral values, that Israel is even more culpable, more morally repugnant because of its choice to exercise violence and collective punishment. Hamas are minority thugs; but Israel has voted and collectively chosen to sink to their level, again and again.
(And for comparison's sake, let's keep in mind our own bloody war for independence, which was started by an extremist minority of British colonists over tea and stamps. George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Patrick Henry endured nothing close to the hardships and outrages of the Palestinians. And yet look at how they "overreacted!")
But let's say you don't care about any of that wishy-washy morality stuff. Let's say you don't care if faraway Muslims are murdered or oppressed. Let's say you're a hard-boiled realist. Then you still must justify why we choose to give $3 billion in military aid a year to Israel, and play the phony role of "honest broker" to mediate their conflict, thereby inviting the wrath of the world's radical Muslims who identify with the Palestinians' plight. What's it getting us? How's it making us safer? If you can't answer that, then all you've got is, "Because it's the right thing to do." But if that is your final answer, then based on the above, I seriously doubt your moral reasoning.
So, from both a cynical real politik perspective (i.e. doing what's best for America, no matter what) our support of Israel is wrong; and, conversely from a moral, universal perspective it is wrong. That doesn't happen very often in international affairs!
I challenge you, Austin, Limbaugh, or anybody else to tell me how it is right.
Actually, I would love for Dick Cheney or someone of his ilk who pulls the strings of U.S. foreign policy to explain to me how our support of Israel is in America's interest. The illuminati-literati at SAIS, Georgetown, Fletcher, Brookings, Carnegie, and Heritage aren't Mormon missionaries, after all. They've got to believe there's something in it for us.
J
Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 7:12 PM:
Do you "hope" that Hamas will stop killing if the USA stops supporting Israel? Do you believe we are the cause of the Middle East Wars? - M
Obama On Hamas: "Hope" That Murderous Behavior Will "Change?"
By Austin Hill
January 11, 2008 | Townhall.com
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