Unfortunately, Glenn himself has now implicitly egged on one of the most-abrasive thread-derailers at UT, who's a gloating instigator of the "trashing" and stereotyping of the good faith commenter ondelette - whose substantive commenting contributions here have earned my respect, and deserve better.

We must interact with different kinds of people, because in my experience, coming forth to announce every day that you are the most knowledgeable and learned one in the room -- and that those who disagree with you are wallowing in ignorance because they don't read as many books as you do -- is not a very reliable way of inducing substantive discourse. Nor is there anything good faith about it. It's just rank credentialism -- and not even the persuasive kind, since he has no idea how many books about Afghanistan anyone here has read.

There are all sorts of people who disagree vehemently with ondelette about Afghanistan who have far more credentials on the subject than he - people who live there (Malalai Joya), who have worked in and on the war (Matthew Hoh), who have spent huge amounts of time there (Alan Grayson). That's not an argument about why ondelette is wrong, but if I were using his standards, it would be.

Whether he has a persuasive case to make is determined exclusively by the persuasiveness of the arguments he has to make, not the number of books he claims to have read. If he wants to be treated with respect and adjudged to be in good faith, he should confine himself to making arguments, not announcing on a daily basis how lazy and ignorant everyone else is.

She was chastised on CNN America for referring to the benevolent US presence in her country as an occupation.

I think Matthew Hoh needs to be given the same book assignments, since he also foolishly thought that what he working on in Afghanistan for the U.S. Government was -- as he called it -- "an occupation." He's only been in Afghanistan for the last 12 months as a senior civilian official in Southern Afghanistan, so what would he know? He needs to crack open those books to find out what's really going on there.

Someone else who doesn't know what's going on in Afghanistan is NBC's Foreign Correspondent Jim Miklaszewski, who -- on October 9 -- from Afghanistan, said this:

You know, Brian, this is one of the most startling issues about all this. The Taliban may actually exert some control over more territory in Afghanistan than they did before the war. Reliable estimates show that Taliban has a permanent presence in 80 percent of the country. That means they're able to set up shadow governments and invoke their own brutal brand of justice. And in fact, the most compelling number is they're able to conduct terror attacks at will over 80 percent of the country.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33562673/ns/meet_the_press/page/4/

There's another ignorant student who needs to join ondelette's reading class about Afghanistan.

So do you see the demand as a failure?

I don't know what you mean by "failure." I'm not convinced they were really ever serious about the demand - as opposed to doing it for show. Whatever else is true, Obama failed to follow through on his demand, and that just makes him look weak -- and makes him weaker -- when it comes to playing the role he claims he wants to play: mediating a two-state solution.

Glenn, you shot me down a few months back when I had the temerity to suggest you might be a little pollyannish vis-a-vis Obama's Israel rhetoric. I realize this article is about the range of debate in our political discourse versus that in Israel, but I wouldn't mind seeing you specifically address your early optimism on Obama-Israel and your thinking now. Or is it as simple as saying Obama is all style no substance?

I don't remember the exchange, but I try to confine my observations to what is actually taking place -- to concrete evidence -- rather than speculation about the future. I constantly noted that Obama's steps were preliminary and just far from complete, and obviously was open to the possibility that there'd be no real follow-through. I just want to see the evidence one way or the other before reaching a conclusion.

What they're doing isn't totally unjustifiable -- it's somewhat similar to what progressives were arguing should be done with Iran: instead of demanding preconditions to negotiations, one should sit down and negotiate and try to work out a resolution to all issues, including settlements. That's not unreasonable to me, but once Obama demanded no settlement growth as a precondition to negotiations, he should have followed through on that.

But J Street's rhetoric and activities seemed destined to bring us right back to where we were--a pocket state, run de facto by Israel wearing the disguise of sovereignty while continuing the colonial project.

I think this remains to be seen. I found that interview Ben-Ami did with Jeffrey Goldberg to be highly disturbing, but that was in the midst of a massive and largely successful neocon attack on J Street's credibility -- prompting all sorts of Democratic members of Congress to withdraw from their conference and the like.

They are walking a tight rope. The only way they can be effective is if they retain a large sector of Jewish-American support, which they can do -- they reason -- only if they move things along slowly and incrementally. I'm willing to give them some flexibility there, but I'm far from convinced yet that they're committed to being anything other than the Democratic Party's version of a "pro-Israeli" group rather than changing the debate in meaningful ways. I'm willing to wait and see and support what they say they are about, though I do admit that their most recent actions have raised more doubts in me than before about them.