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WinSmith

Published Letters: 660

Saturday, January 31, 2009 07:15 AM

@ Glenn Greenwald Contd.

Glenn continues in cherrypicking style:

In fact, Matt just yesterday wrote:

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/01/do_critics_of_israeli_policy_whine_too_much.php

When people criticize Israeli policy, or U.S. policy toward Israel, there’s an organized network of voices in the media< and elsewhere who try to smear them as motivated by anti-semitism. The point of these tactics is not just to try to win an argument, but to actually frighten people who might otherwise be inclined to make such criticisms out of offering them. This smear gang used to be extremely effective across the board, but in recent years there’s been a lot of decline in its efficacy as regards the punditsphere, though it still succeeds in generating near-uniformity in the states views of elected officials and politicians.

Precisely.

Of course there is. Clowns like Abe Foxman and the frauds at the New Republic.

Where we differ is that I understand the basic concept that because a right wing fraud argues something for the wrong reason, that doesn't make the underlying facts wrong.

For instance, you've exposed yourself as an unhinged Israel hater, but you're still right on FISA, Gitmo and numerous other Constitutional issues. Should I dismiss your stance on these issues because of your pathology towards Israel? Does Matt Yglesias dismiss the right for Israel to respond to Hamas because wingnuts argue the same thing?

You can insult me all you want Glenn, cowardly as it is to address your proxies rather than me directly. But you have exposed pure agenda, couched in euphemisms, for your desire to end all American support for Israel. You use the logic of a Friedman, you simply invert it ("if the Muslim world think X, we should do Y"). And you conflate our broader Mid-east "entanglements" and then whine like a little bitch when I assume you mean our two largest broader Middle Eastern entangelements because you "didn't say that."

Okay, word-parser. Step the fuck up.

What other "entanglements" wouldn't exist if we stopped supporting Israel? So far you're offered two. Iran and, well, Israel. I'll grant you that if we stopped supporting Israel we'd no longer be supporting Israel.

What else?

Al Qaeda? Osama Bin Laden? Iran? Saudi Arabia? Pakistan?

You're a fraud.

Saturday, January 31, 2009 07:23 AM

@ Publicola

I have no clue what you keep asking me, but I'll try one more time:

Your convoluted and misleading rhetoric above that was directed at Glenn, where you've suggested that the two reasons you provided are the only two "legitimate" reasons to not support Israel. If that's not what you intended, then again what was the point of that rhetoric?

The point of that "rhetoric" is there are plenty of reasons to argue we should not support Israel based on what Israel does.

Glenn is arguing we should stop supporting Israel because it's part of some vaguely defined "larger entanglement in the Middle East," which he never defines.

Moreover, with that rhetoric you are also misleadingly suggesting that Glenn "wants to make the argument that America should not support Israel." What, exactly, are you basing that assumption on?

Oh please. Is this a serious question?

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