I'm not going to spend any time arguing with someone who invents imaginary arguments and then attributes them to me as his primary method of argumentation.

And yet here you are arguing with me by proxy. What next? Do you threaten to take your ball and go home?

Yes, I draw inferences from your vagaries. It's not "inventing imaginary arguments," it's trying vainly to reduce your abstract codes into a coherency that you yourself, either willfully deceitfully, or do to poor writing skills, refuse to do.

What is meant by "broad entanglements in the middle east"?

Excuse me for trying to figure out what you mean. Last time I checked, our wars in Iraq and Afghanstan are our two biggest entanglements in the middle east. If you want to "entangle" everything with Israel, then either explain what you mean or STFU and stop whining when others attempt to figure it out.

It's like trying to debate a crazy, babbling person on a street corner who rails against demons that nobody else sees.

You are a dishonest fraud, Glenn. The more you scream "I didn't say (exactly) that!" over and over, the more it makes you look completely incapable of any coherent debate.

No, you didn't explicitly say Iraq and Afghanistan. I also didn't explicitly say I think you're a moron, but if you inferred it from my argument, you'd be correct.

To deny the ability to draw conclusions about an opponent's argument is the height of cowardice. Make your arguments

The argument I supposedly advocate through secret coded implication (that we went to war in Iraq solely or primarily because of Israel) is one that I don't believe and have explicitly rejected on countless occasions. So someone who keeps insisting that I believe this is either stupid, dishonest, or insane. What's the point of engaging that?

"solely" "primarily"? Weasel words do not become a lawyer turned blogger, Glenn. This isn't Judge Wapner. You can state your thesis here without code-words and caveat.

The point I'm making is actually quite simple. The U.S. needs to stop being involved in Middle East conflicts.

Wow. Can I quote you on this brilliant observation?

There are numerous ways it stays involved in such conflicts, some of which have nothing to do with Israel (Afghanistan, support for various dictatorships) and some of which are driven in significant part by its one-sided support for Israel (arming and funding Israel's attacks on Lebanon and Gaza and our belligerence towards Iran).

Hey, at least we're finally getting to some specifics. So our involvement with Israel needs to be stopped because it's part of a broader intanglement with... wait for it... our involvement with Israel.

Tautological beauty at it's finest, Glenn.

What other middle east entanglements are due to our "one-sided" support for Israel, Glenn? You still haven't said, and obviously I'm just a crazy, babbling person, inventing your arguments for you, but humor me.

Does our engagement with Iran have anything to do with a thirty year post-Shah regime of incredible cruelty, repression and threat? Or if we stopped supporting Israel, suddenly Iran would love us again?

What a joke your reductions are.

If you want to argue we shouldn't support Israel, there's plenty of reasons on the specifics of Israel. This post, an attempt to draw a broad, vague and confusing conflation of dozens of areas, is simply disgraceful logic fraud.

And anyone who denies that our one-sided support for Israel is a significant reason for anti-American hostility in the Muslim world isn't dealing with reality.

Is our support for Israel the reason for Al Qaeda's hatred for America, Glenn? You're a liar if you say yes.

Every scholar on Al Qaeda knows this is not true. But you like to keep things vague. It's "entanglements" and "hostility in the Muslim world."

How easy it is to stay vague.

I've cited links to Osama Bin Laden's complete disinterest in the Palestinians. Bin Laden's rage over our complicity with the House of Saud and military stationing on Saudi soil. His recruitment not of Palestinian terrorists, but of Saudi terrorists, for 9/11.

That said, I find it funny that one of his tactics is to hold up Matt Yglesias as the sober, responsible critic of Israel, even as Matt -- who was one of the most vigorous defenders of Walt/Mearsheimer -- actually makes the very argument that WinSmith says is so fringe and offensive.

I held up a specific Matt Yglesias post, Glenn, as an example of how to criticize Israel without sounding like the raving loon you often do. You not only failed to address that specific post, you cited a different post as proof of something that still made you look like a raving loon.