“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.” --Thomas Pynchon

This is the unwritten and unspoken mantra of the Bush administration and their neocon brainstrust. It is most clearly evident in our blind support for the most radical and intransigent elements of Israeli politics.

It is all about narrowing the conversation to a series of false choices leading to a predetermined outcome – no negotiation, no attempt to understand, no way forward but our way (meaning no way forward). Therefore, we may not speak about alternatives or venture to suggest a sober assessment of reality for fear of being labeled soft, unserious, appeasers, or - "gasp" - promoters of moral equivalence. Watch any Bill Kristol interview for a primer.

Groupthink like this leads ultimately to defeat. We will have only ourselves to blame.

That Onion headline "Majority of Americans now Anti-American"

Can we now make the joke "Majority of Israelis Anti-Semetic"?

But none of this is actually surprising. During the peak of the troubles in Northern Ireland, the most extreme views were often found (in greater preponderence) among Irish Americans in the US rather than the Irish themselves in either the north or the south.

This phenomenon is what prompted Bono's famous mid-song rant during a performance of Sunday bloody Sunday:

I'm sick of Irish Americans, who haven't been home in twenty or thirty years, come up to me and tell me about the glory of the revolution. The glory of dying for the revolution. Fuck the revolution. Where's the glory in dragging a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and children? Where's the glory in that? Where's the glory in bombing old age pensioners as part of a remembrance day parade, their medals polished up for the day? Where's the glory in that?

It was funding from such people in North America that largely funded the IRA and probably the protestant terror groups too.

Growing up in the 1990s in a community that had a large number of Croatians (in Canada) I saw a lot of the same, with many kids of Croatian descent (most born in Canada no less) taking very extremely hateful stances towards "serbs" and so forth.

I think when you're a world away you can easily dehumanize the situation and turn it into a bad-guys versus good guys situation. Those living the day-to-day reality in Belfast or the Jerusalem tend to have a much better understanding of what is going on, what solutions will work and which won't.

It ties in nicely with how most of the worst arm-chair "we could have won in Vietnam if it weren't for the hippies" types are precisely those that weren't there, or weren't in the field if they were. Chickenhawks for every conflict.

How many wars would end if all the jeering spectators weren't egging on the participants?

"There are very few issues in mainstream American political discourse with a narrower range of mandated orthodoxies than those which relate to Israel."

The only issue that comes close and maybe surpasses this one is dealing with Cuba.

One thing that I have always failed to understand is how much we underestimate our ability to have a positive influence on the world merely by engaging with it. Imagine where we would be with Cuba if we simply allowed for normal trade and travel? Castro and his crowd would have been thrown out decades ago.

Actually, it concluded that Iran has suspended development. Big difference. What's "suspended" can easily be restarted.

This situation is not the same as that between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. No matter what you thought of the Soviets or of communism, you knew you were at least dealing with a rational actor. That's why the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction worked.

The difference here is the same as between the European and Pacific theaters in WWII. In Europe, the Germans were, if nothing else, rational actors, and after a certain point they saw the uselessness of continuing the fight and surrendered. (The die-hard Nazis fled or committed suicide.)

In the Pacific, the Japanese would fight almost to the last man. To them it was a religious duty to the emperor to fight and die; surrender was a dishonor. You could not just beat them at the fight; you had to crush them until nothing was left. That's why the Pacific theater was much bloodier than the European. (The Russian front is an entirely different story.)

To Hamas, it is a religious duty to destroy Israel. Same is true for Hezbollah and Iran. MAD would not work in this instance, since they considered it glorious martyrdom to die fighting for their religion. They may "negotiate" to buy time or space, but in the end it will still come down to a fight to the finish.

In short, it's naive to negotiate with the likes of Hamas. It wasn't naive to negotiate with the Soviets.

The Arabs will never defeat us by throwing stones. Our answer will be a nationalist Zionist solution. For every stone throwing - we'll establish ten settlements. If there will be - and there will be - a hundred settlements between Nablus and Jerusalem, no stones will be thrown. If that shall be the case, the Arabs could only run around like cockroaches in a bottle, like drugged cockroaches inside a bottle.

           Rafael Eitan, former IDF Chief of Staff, 13 April 1983

Here's yet another case where polls prove absolutely nothing except the stupidity and sheeple-ness of so many people.

-- Sol Invictus

Looking at history, is it usually the best idea to make huge government decisions, based solely on what the people think is the best way to do things?

-- kufir77

You have just confirmed the neocon belief that an oligarchy of Very Important and All-Knowing rulers is the way to go.

It is just mind-boggling that you think that people who have been living in close proximity with this situation would be so uninformed. If you look at more recent polls here in the US you will see that even the 'sheeple' have eyes and brains, however slowly they may choose to engage them.