And it will indeed be a wonderful empire and we'll paint the capitol city emerald and-------

It's a tough "luv"...

It really is great to know America is doing so much good in the world today. Spreading democracy where ever we go, it is the will of the Lord.

They hate us because we have the Washington Post and they don’t. And Condi is a heaven sent angel of mercy, can you imagine the world without her and people like Abrams, I shudder to think of it. I guess this is why we are such a stabilizing influence, what would the Middle East do without our kindly assistance?

Yes. I have even seen leftist bloggers appear to be under the same misconception as in the US media. (I mean, a seeming inability to distinguish between the beliefs that the Neoconservatives claim publicly, and the beliefs that they seem to actually hold. Or at least, to raise the possibility that the Neoconservatives are not what they initially seem to be.) These leftist bloggers will say things like, "Those idiot Neoconservatives went about creating Democracy in Iraq completely wrong!" You try to raise the possibility that the Neo-cons don't give a flying fig about Democracy in Iraq and never did, and you get no reply, or a dismissive one. Frustrating.

Another factor with the I/P thing that I've noticed is that it splits the liberal/left, even in the blogosphere, so that you have people saying that they avoid any thread where the issue comes up, and you have blogs like Crooked Timber where they actually close down threads where the argument starts to rage, even if nothing beyond the pale has been said. All on the grounds that it's too contentious and people split into two warring factions and sometimes really unsavory types (antisemites or anti-Arab racists or both) show up. Like this never happens on any other issue. Threads about issues like torture or Iraq tend to attract people who favor torture or slaughtering Arabs, for instance. My guess is that the real problem is that it splits liberals who agree on most other issues, and so people agree to avoid the subject, or even seem to take pride in avoiding it.

The Zionists are running out of time. The fact is their "country" always has been and always will be a complete and utter failure. Both for the Jewish as well as Arab populations.

Israel and the outer territories are a place where dissent is virtually criminal, senseless violence deemed heroic and everyone has resigned to living in fear. Basically it's Sub-Saharan Africa with lighter skinned people (which is partly why it gets so much play to begin with).

What a smashing success Israel has been...

My guess is that the real problem is that it splits liberals who agree on most other issues, and so people agree to avoid the subject, or even seem to take pride in avoiding it.

If that's the case, then, in my opinion, that's pretty ass-backwards. We need to talk about it because when the US government is giving $5 Billion a year to the Israelis, we need to know what we are getting for our money.

But you are right that it can split leftists in a major way.

Many prominent liberal bloggers are simply too young to remember the neocons in their first flush of power during the Reagan administration. They didn't see Elliott Abrams always on the talk shows denying massacres, defending dictators, and lying, lying, lying.

They grew up when good liberals united with neocons in favor of the Kosovo war. So they just have a harder time taking for granted that the neocons are utter lying sacks, as Central America activists do automatically.

I didn't read Jimmy Carter's recent book on I/P, and was surprised at how little attention it seemed to get. But from what I understand, if leftists wanted to start a real discussion about Israel, we should be trumpeting his book each and every day, because he was using his visibility as ex-President to try to reach the "mainstream," but he was saying things that were considered horribly outrageous by the punditocracy (applying the "a-word"* to Israel?! Scandalous!). We might love Noam Chomsky, but the MSM writes him off before he gets a word in. They can't dismiss Carter so easily -- the Camp David accords are accepted as perhaps his greatest accomplishment while in office. So why not put a link in the sidebar to his book?

note: the "a-word" being "apartheid"

Agreed, Whistler Blue, but they even trashed Carter. But that beats Chomsky, who they would barely bother to trash.

The NYT had a review of Carter's book by Ethan Bronner (a real jerk, but I don't have time to go into it or to do the research needed to back up my memories). It was basically a polite hatchet job. He even acknowledged that Carter was right about how bad the occupation was, but claimed this was yesterday's news. He actually said that.

You are not French are you? I'll be back.