There could be a missing piece of the puzzle here. The younger Mr. Kristol could be saying, "America needs to fight very hard, and also needs to keep me as a powerful person who helps lead it" because he believes that, of all the potential range of human societies, it is the aristocratic society tht fights hardest.

He may believe that America is in such danger that it needs to adopt an aristocratic power structure in order to survive.

Many people, thorughout centuries of human history, have expressed the belief that aristocracies punch above their weight. I do not believe this myself, but it is a strongly held belief that persistently comes up over and over again when people discuss political and military affairs.

I believe Kristol has a son in the Marines. Whether he's in Iraq or not, i don't know. But at least B.K.'s got someone potentially in the game.

Yes, i know, that doesn't make Kristol less a loathesome warmongering maniac...

Carry on.

I believe Kristol has a son in the Marines.

No, he does not.

We should weigh the relative contributions of the priest and the lamb.

Kristol is a blowhard. He's got nothing noteworthy to say, so he spends his words on pointless polemical statements.

Note the disdain in this statement:

Now, there’s truth to Obama’s emphasis on the Seder as a teaching moment for those involved. But he’s not satisfied with that. The whole country has to listen up.

followed by

So if Clinton’s Passover message is liberal, and Obama’s is multicultural, one might call McCain’s Zionist. There’s a clear choice of worldviews here — and not just for Jews, but for all Americans.

So, one might ask, does the whole country need to listen up or not? It really depends on whether Kristol wants you to win the Presidential campaign in November. Why do media organizations like NYT (Salon is not entirely innocent on this one, either) pay columnists whose only purpose seems to be promoting one candidate over another. Assuming we don't already get enough of this at the water cooler, wouldn't we expect the candidates to pay the paper for these advertisements?

Kristol would probably argue that he's not out of ideas at all. He had another idea about Passover and the Revolutionary war. He decided not to write a whole column about it, but he threw it in for free at the end of today's column:

I might add that both Democratic campaigns missed an opportunity last week. They seem not to have noticed that the date of the first Seder, April 19, was also the 233rd anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord. So, a few days before Pennsylvanians vote, the candidates could have commemorated not just the Exodus from Egypt but also “the shot heard round the world,” thus identifying themselves all at once with political liberation, religious freedom and — yes! — the right to bear arms.

In case anyone didn't feel that Zionism could be equated with our own national struggle, and in case anyone didn't know that Mr Kristol believes these two could be equated, and in case (of course) anyone thought Mr Kristol was bereft of new ideas, here's a freebie. Not just for rabid neo-con blatherers, for all Americans.

Not John McCain. He understands Passover as a time for reflection about sacrifice: "As families gather together for Seders, members of the Jewish faith reflect upon the painful sacrifices made by their ancestors, the joys of freedom, and the triumph of inherent goodness over evil.

... Passover's the Jewish Halloween, right? Or the Jewish Mardi Gras? Um, Washington's Birthday?"

Snark aside, It's amazing how much McCain's conception of Passover, and by extension Kristol's, sounds like the Iraq War. I can't wait for Kristol to tell me how McCain understands that Yom Kippur is a day of atonement - for not nuking Iran.

I spent some time in the early sixties on a kibbutz. I confess I had no idea of what I was stepping into.

O Yeshiva.

I do enjoy teachers who are true, and not false, and those who investigate, and analyze, and explore with a honest intent. A rare religious scholar will not needlessly confuse, distract, and rather, will certainly dignify all humanity!

It doesn't matter if one is universal-catholic. A neuroscientist. Or whatever label... A believer in anything is not 'absolute truth'...

Mr. Kristol leads people off of cliffs.

Can a person be a orthodox believer in a killing Easter bunny? Will Yom Kipper, a day of Atonement, be watered down, and diluted of all meaning by a Bill Krystol? He seems to muddy the Jewish theologians 'notions'.... What is a angel of death?

He's a false teacher to me. A blood Passover?

Would a respected Rabbi respect B. Krystol?

Rosh Hashanah. I hush. I'll only listen.

Can this be A Day of Atonement?

Chapter 10

"You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else's life. They're plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. That's their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously. They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead.

Hmmmm.

But what do the dead say?"

"Nobody but the dead know whether all the things people talk about are worth dying for or not. And the dead can't talk. So the words about noble deaths and sacred blood and honor and such are all put into dead lips by grave robbers and fakes who have no right to speak for the dead. If a man says death before dishonor he is either a fool or a liar because he doesn't know what death is."

William Kristol is a dangerous liar and a fake. He has risked nothing and benefited much from the pain, suffering, and deaths of thousands upon thousands of people, mostly innocents. William Kristol, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and their ilk are in no way heroes, but indeed are bloodthirsty monsters and need to be called out as such.