Iraq Fading From Network News Coverage

The New York Times reports that the major television networks have drastically scaled back news operations in Iraq. The piece reports that media action is now focused on Afghanistan, where observers expect the incoming Barack Obama administration to shift focus in foreign and military policy:

Quietly, as the United States presidential election and its aftermath have dominated the news, America’s three broadcast network news divisions have stopped sending full-time correspondents to Iraq.

“The war has gone on longer than a lot of news organizations’ ability or appetite to cover it,” said Jane Arraf, a former Baghdad bureau chief for CNN who has remained in Iraq as a contract reporter for The Christian Science Monitor.

Joseph Angotti, a former vice president of NBC News, said he could not recall any other time when all three major broadcast networks lacked correspondents in an active war zone that involved United States forces.

Except, of course, in Afghanistan, where about 30,000 Americans are stationed, and where until recently no American television network, broadcast or cable, maintained a full-time bureau.

At the same time that news organizations are trimming in Iraq, the television networks are trying to add newspeople in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with expectations that the Obama administration will focus on the conflict there.

Of course, the Iraq war has evolved and violence in the country has subsided. At the same time, President-elect Barack Obama and senior military strategists generally agree that tensions have risen in Afghanistan, leading to more violence and unrest.

In short, the story, certainly on television, is shifting to Afghanistan.

CNN now has a reporter assigned to the country at all times.

Michael Yon, an independent reporter who relies on contributions from Internet users to report from both areas of conflict, has already perceived a shift in both media and reader attention from Iraq to Afghanistan. “Afghanistan was the forgotten war; that’s what they were calling it, actually,” he said. “Now it’s swapping places with Iraq.”

For Mr. Yon and others who continue to cover Iraq, the cutbacks are a disheartening reminder of the war’s diminishing profile at a time when about 130,000 United States service members remain on duty there. More than 4,200 Americans and an undetermined number of Iraqis have died in fighting there since 2003.

The Times might have delved deeper on the topic by offering an explanation for the declining media coverage. While the war is ongoing, operations might now be described as "post major-counterinsurgency." We will continue to have violence, and significant insurgency operations such as suicide bombings are likely. But the difference in Iraq from two years ago is phenomenal. Security has improved, civic and cultural institutions are being rejuvenated, and political accommodation is occuring. In short, the war has been won, and most in the media, while loathe to admit it, are shifting to where strategic uncertainty makes for more dramatic television news.

Michael Yon, who is interviewd at the Times' piece, has written on the shift in focus from Iraq to Afghanstan, for example:

The war in Iraq has ended. Violent elements remain, but they no longer threaten the very fabric of Iraq. The Iraqi Army, police and government continue to outpace the elements that would prefer to see Iraq in chaos. Iraq is no longer an enemy. There is no reason for us to ever shoot at each other again. But Afghanistan is a different story. I write these words from Kandahar, in the south. This war here is just getting started. Likely we will see severe fighting kicking off by about April of 2009. Iraq is on the mend, but victory in Afghanistan is very much in question.

Press Statement of Shimon Peres, President of Israel

Via Huffington Post, here's the press statement from Shimon Peres, Israel's President, on the Gaza airstrikes:

It is the first time in the history of Israel that we, the Israelis, cannot understand the motives or the purposes of the ones who are shooting at us. It is the most unreasonable war, done by the most unreasonable warriors.

The story is simple. Israel has left Gaza completely, out of our own free will, at a high cost. In Gaza there is no single Israeli civilian or soldier. They were evacuated from Gaza, our settlements, which called for a very expensive cost. We had to mobilize 45,000 policemen to take out our settlers from there. We spent $2.5 billion. The passages were open. Money was sent to Gaza. We suggested aid in many ways - economically, medically, and otherwise. We were very careful not to make the lives of the civilian people in Gaza difficult. Still I have not heard until now a single person who could explain to us reasonably: why are they firing rockets against Israel? What are the reasons? What is the purpose?

And I must say also that the phenomenon about Israel is the restraint of the army and the unity of the people. The army waited and waited; the Palestinians asked for a ceasefire, and we agreed. They themselves have violated the ceasefire. Again, we didn't know why, until it came to a point where we were left without a choice but to bring an end to it. The operation was planned carefully and the army was true to its principles: namely, to be precise in its targets and careful not to hit civilian life. There is a problem because many of the bombs were stored in private houses. We have contacted the owners of the houses, the people that dwell there, and told them leave it. You can't live with bombs. We have to bring an end to the source of the bombs.

Israel doesn't have any ambition in Gaza. We left out of our free choice. We have never gone back to the idea of returning to Gaza. It's over. But we cannot permit that Gaza will become a permanent base of threatening and even killing children and innocent people in Israel for God knows why. I feel that in our hearts, we don't have any hatred for the Gazan people. Their suffering doesn't carry any joy in our hearts. On the contrary, we feel that the better they will have it, better neighbors we shall have. Now that Hamas is turning to the Arab world for help, the truth is that the Arab world has to turn to Hamas for the help of Hamas. If Hamas will stop it, there is no need for any help. Everything can come again to normalcy. Passages: open; economic life: free; no Israeli intervention; no Israeli participation in any of the turnarounds in Gaza.

As a nation, we feel united. As a nation, there is wholehearted support for the army, the way they handled it, their restraint, their discrimination, and their responsibility. The great winner can be reason, and reason will lead to peace. We are very serious, in a serious mood. Many of our children are still in the shelters, and we would like them, like the children of Gaza, to breathe fresh air again. This is the story, and whoever asks us to stop shooting - they have to change the address. Let them turn to Hamas and ask them to stop shooting, and there won't be shooting. Thank you very much.

God Bless the State of Israel

I've written a couple of times now on the left's response to the outbreak of war in the Middle East. Still, Ezra Klein deserves an honorable mention in this rogue's gallery of self-styled 1930s-appeasement look-alikes. Klein, for example, has this to say in response to a New York Times' report that attacks from Gaza were "deeply disturbing" even though there were "no recent deaths and few injuries":

The rocket attacks were undoubtedly "deeply disturbing" to Israelis. But so too are the checkpoints, the road closures, the restricted movement, the terrible joblessness, the unflinching oppression, the daily humiliations, the illegal settlement - I'm sorry, "outpost" - construction, "deeply disturbing" to the Palestinians, and far more injurious. And the 300 dead Palestinians should be disturbing to us all.

There is nothing proportionate in this response. No way to fit it into a larger strategy that leads towards eventual peace. No way to fool ourselves into believing that it will reduce bloodshed and stop terrorist attacks. It is simple vengeance. There's a saying in the Jewish community: "Israel, right or wrong." But sometimes Israel is simply wrong.

I have nothing but contempt for ignorant peaceniks like Klein. [Note that Klein, the "journalist," actually quotes this article, not the one linked to at the post.] But instead of tearing him a new one, let me share Caroline Glick's righteous response to the events in Israel:

This morning I knew the strike against Gaza was beginning when the thunderous roar of jet fighters en route to their mission shook my home. I was immediately overwhelmed by a profound sense of hope and relief.

Finally, after months of passivity, incompetence and empty threats that simply eroded Israel's credibility in the eyes of our enemies and friends alike still further, the IDF has been ordered to defend the country. Finally after the anger and defiance of residents of Ashkelon, Sderot and the kibbutzim and moshavim around Gaza had long been transformed into pleas of desperation, the government seems finally to be fulfilling its most important duty - protecting the citizens of the State of Israel.

I have my doubts about the goals of this mission and about the competence of this government to secure the country. And I will address these issues in due course. But today, all I can do is pray - for the safety of all Israelis in the line of fire and for the success and safety of our brave pilots and soldiers. I pray that God will grant wisdom to our commanders and our leaders so that we will defeat our enemies and remove the threat of rockets, mortars and missiles from our southern cities.

God bless the State of Israel. God bless the people of Israel. God bless the IDF.

Ezra Klein is an American Jew who abandoned his religion for a life of leftist agnosticism and punditry. Caroline Glick is an American Jew who made an aliyah to Israel in 1991 and joined the Israeli Defense Forces. She's served in the Israeli government and today is a neoconservative foreign affairs columnist at the Jerusalem Post.

It'd be hard to find a more pronounced difference in outlooks between two Americans of similar national and religious origins. I'll let readers judge which of these two commentators is on the side of right, goodness, and justice in the world.

More Responses to Israel's Attack on Hamas

Regular readers know where I stand on the current Mideast war.

As noted in my post yesterday ("Responses to Israel's Attack on Hamas"), the "lull" in hostilities between Israel and Hamas was violated hundreds of times in 2008, as the terrorists in Gaza lobbed rockets on Israeli outposts since at least June. Depite this, one of the left's memes we've seen this week is that Israel's actions have been condemned by the "entire international community," with the exception of the United States. So it's no suprise that the rhetorical Katyushas continue to rain down on Israel this morning. Let me start another roundup of the left's anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism with the editorial position of the Jerusalem Post, "A Time to Fight":

ON A quiet post-Christmas weekend, the events in Gaza have captured world attention. From an unsympathetic foreign media, we are already hearing complaints that Israel's retaliation is "disproportionate" and a form of "collective punishment." That over 200 Palestinians have been killed compared to only one Israeli leads some journalists to conclude that Israel is inherently in the wrong. One British news anchor wondered why her government had not already demanded that Israel halt its operation. There was a grudging understanding that Hamas uses Palestinian non-combatants as human shields, along with an unreasonable demand that Israel magically find a way not to harm any of them.

The formula for purchasing the affection of those who suffer from moral relativism is sickeningly clear: if one Jew is killed, we get very little piety. If, heaven forbid, an Israeli kindergarten was to take a direct hit - Israel might, temporarily, gain the sympathy of news anchors from Paris to London to Madrid.

At that price we would rather forgo their sympathy.

Nevertheless, we expect our diplomats to work 24/7 to make Israel's case to the international community. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has begun that process. In an English-language address she said, "Enough is enough" - Israel would not continue to absorb rockets, mortars and bullets without retaliating.

At this newspaper, we wonder how an international community that can't bring itself to explicitly support Israel's operation against the most intransigent of Muslim fanatics expects to play a positive role in facilitating peace in this region.

Hamas must be stopped. And the civilized world must help stop it.

Well, the "civilized world" doesn't want to stop Hamas. If we take a look around the leftist blogosphere, we see pretty much the postmodern consensus on the crisis in the Middle East: That the U.S. and Israel bear the brunt of responsibility for the crisis, and there will be no peace until Israel relents in authorizing its self-destruction.

So, let's begin with Glenn Greenwald, who attacks Marty Peretz for his no-apologies endorsement of the Israeli response:

Opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute are so entrenched that any single outbreak of violence is automatically evaluated through a pre-existing lens, shaped by one's typically immovable beliefs about which side bears most of the blame for the conflict generally or "who started it." Still, any minimally decent human being - even those who view the world through the most blindingly pro-Israeli lens possible, the ones who justify anything and everything Israel does, and who discuss these events with a bottomless emphasis on the primitive (though dangerous) rockets lobbed by Hamas into Southern Israel but without even mentioning the ongoing four-decades brutal occupation or the recent, grotesquely inhumane blockade of Gaza - would find the slaughter of scores of innocent Palestinians to be a horrible and deeply lamentable event.

The rest of Greenwald's post is a long, ad hominem screed demonizing Peretz, an essay which in itself is Greenwald's proxy attack on the United States and its relationship with Israel. Notice how anyone who endorses Israel's right to self-defense is not a "minimally decent human being."

That's me, I guess, an "evil neocon."

In any case, let's go now to the formidable foreign policy "expert" Steve Clemons and his essay, "Hijacking Obama's Middle East Strategy:"

Barack Obama cannot afford to allow his presidency and its foreign policy course to be hijacked by either side in this increasingly blurry dispute. Israel's actions today just created thousands of aggrieved and vengeful relatives committed to delivering some blowback against Israel ....

The U.S. - and the incoming Obama administration - must move an agenda forward in Israel-Palestine negotiations that works at levels higher than the perpetrators of this violence. It's time to get this conflict out of the weeds, and time to stop allowing any actors in this drama to hijack the foreign policy machinery of governments trying to push forward a Palestinian state.

America has to get out of the role of "managing" this conflict - and must solve it. Israel and the Palestinians have shown themselves unable to maturely end their conflict - and short of a results-oriented strategy that puts the "Middle East Peace Business" out of business, America will be constantly tugged into this conflict and blamed for it.

This is a really strange piece. It implicitly blames the United States for deigning to support the Israeli state, and it minimizes the fighting on the ground - and thus the deaths of innocents in Israel from the Islamists' nihilist terror - as akin to a patch of "weeds." Especially odious is the assumption that the incoming Obama admistration is being dragged into a "chronic foreign affairs ulcer" through no fault of its own, and hence Obama must wash his hands of the mess and leave Israel to its fate. That's the "solution" underlying this drivel: Let the Jewish state perish and American will be out of this business of taking moral stands for right in world politics.

Now, moving on, Spencer Ackerman quotes the liberal J-Street advocacy group who offers more nonsense about negotiations:

Even in the heat of battle, as friends and supporters of Israel, we need to remember that only diplomacy and negotiations can end the rockets and terror and bring Israel long-term security and peace.

Ackerman then, after citing some indignant commentary from the Israeli opinion pages, adds this conclusion:

The Jewish writers who consider Palestinian life to be worth a fraction of an Israeli life will start braying about antisemitism, because when Palestinian bodies are charred in the streets, the real victim is a sensitive Jew's sense of collective guilt. (That doesn't mean there isn't actual antisemitism in this world. Do not test me in the comment section.) Fellow lit'ry tribesman: do you believe for a moment that leveling Gaza will stop the rockets? Well, then you've lost your right to call the peaceniks naive. You want the cycle broken? Then you can start by breaking your own.

Actually, it's not naïvity that's the problem here, it's leftist ideology. For Ackerman, Israel's resort to self-defense is the problem. By fighting to protect the national survival, Israel has perpetuated the "cycle of violence." Of course, as recently as 2000, Israel had agreed to a two-state solution to the Middle East crisis, which the Palestinians rejected. Once the Clinton administration left office, the second intifada showed the world that the Palestinian agenda is jihad not negotiation.

Finally, notice how Stirling Newberry at Firedoglake ties the death of Samuel Huntington to the current flare-up of violence in the Middle East:

Samuel Huntington died at a convenient moment: one of his wars is starting. Huntington was an advisor to Carter and Hubert Humphrey, from a generation of post-Victorian romantic nationalists. His work is broader and more nuanced than its readers. However, Clash of Civilizations and Who Are We are not books meant to attract nuanced readers. Nuance in both is a rationalization, not a rationale.

While Huntington warned against America imposing its order on the rest of the world, his paradigm left few other options. His late influence obscures his contributions to political realism, such as Political Order in Changing Societies, which featured perhaps the most concise discussion to its day of modernization which, despite its rationalism does not necessarily mean the rationalization of power, authority, structure, or political participation, because of the difference between modernization as a direction, and modernization as a process.

The current war between Hamas and Israel is a Huntingtonian War, in that it is based on the belief that cultural unity is essential for national hegemony, and that unlimited force is acceptable in pursuit of this goal. It is an idea that was born of the rise of the Nation-State, and which traces a vast arc for good and evil, to land in the sands of Al-Anbar, the ravines of Helmand, and the mazes of Gaza. Israeli politics is predicated on certain totems of cultural unity which must be pursued at all cost as essential to their national identity, even if these conflict with peace. They are arrayed against a people - the Palestinians - who beginning 80 years ago traded their identity as Palestinians, for their identity as the edge of militarized pan-Arabism, a movement to which they historically had not belonged.

The outgoing administration backs Israel completely, however virtually the rest of the international community has called for a halt to the attacks, which have claimed more than 230 lives, of which Hamas reports 160 are security personnel. 700 are reported wounded. For comparison 31 Israelis are listed as killed by terrorism this year through October, 12 of them soldiers or security personnel. Steve Clemons perceptively notes that this is part of Bush's reverse hundred days to restrict Obama to Bush's policies.

I doubt there's ever a "convenient moment" for someone to die, unless the convenience is found in Huntington as a ready foil for the left's attacks on Western culture, tradition, and the primacy of the nation state (and Newberry is extremely disrespectful of Samuel Huntington).

In any case, I'll have more on this later. If you haven't yet, go back and read the Jerusalum Post's excellent editorial in full. The opinions there are neither naïve nor bombastic, in contrast to what we'll be hearing from the antiwar left in the days ahead.

Photo Credit: "Lynching in Ramallah."

Samuel Huntington, 1927-2008

Samuel Huntington, one of the nation's greatest political scientists, has died. Huntington, who taught at Harvard University for 58 years, passed away Tuesday, December 24, at his home in Martha's Vineyard. He was 81.

The Harvard Gazette has a lengthy obituary, and the Caucus has a brief note on Huntington's more recent scholarly controversies.

I've never met Huntington, but I've read two of his books - my favorite is Political Order in Changing Societies - and many of his academic articles. His recent book on immigration and national culture, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, is the essential primer on the conservative cultural foundations of the American democracy.

Huntington generated tremendous attention with his 1993 article in Foreign Affairs, "The Clash of Civilizations?" Powerfully argued yet contentious, Huntington's thesis that cultural conflict would mark post-Cold War American foreign policy and international relations gained prophetic acclaim after the September 11 attacks. Robert Kaplan, writing at the Atlantic in December of 2001, placed Huntington's work in context:

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon highlight the tragic relevance not just of Huntington's ideas about a clash of civilizations but of his entire life's work. Since the 1950s he has argued that American society requires military and intelligence services that think in the most tragic, pessimistic terms. He has worried for decades about how American security has mostly been the result of sheer luck—the luck of geography—and may one day have to be truly earned. He has written that liberalism thrives only when security can be taken for granted—and that in the future we may not have that luxury. And he has warned that the West may one day have to fight for its most cherished values and, indeed, physical survival against extremists from other cultures who despise our country and who will embroil us in a civilizational war that is real, even if political leaders and polite punditry must call it by another name. While others who hold such views have found both happiness and favor working among like-minded thinkers in the worlds of the corporation, the military, and the intelligence services, Huntington has deliberately remained in the liberal bastion of Ivy League academia, to fight for his ideas on that lonely but vital front.

The Harvard obituary features numerous comments from friends and colleagues indicating how much Huntington loved subjecting his ideas to critical examination.

He will be missed. My thoughts and prayers go out to the Huntington family.

Obama Visits Marines on Christmas Day

President-Elect Barack Obama visited the Marine Corps base in Hawaii Kaneche Bay on Christmas day. As ABC News reports, the response from the service personnel was respectful but unenthusiastic.

The Marines' muted response is hardly surprising. A number of folks have written on this (Obama's sending a good message, to one degree or another), but Sister Toldjah says it best:

It’s gonna take a lot more than “symbolic gestures” like visiting troops in Hawaii over the Christmas holidays, and playing basketball with them in Afghanistan on a trip designed to highlight your “foreign policy creds.” Barack Obama repeatedly and routinely denigrated the mission in Iraq, not just as a US Senator, but as a candidate for Commander in Chief of the armed forces. Whether or not he meant to demean the sacrifices of our troops, that’s exactly what he - and anyone else - did who either said or implied that they were making the ultimate sacrifice for a “lie” … that their deaths were “wasted” deaths. That’s what he did when he noted over the summer that, even knowing the successes that the surge would have brought to the table - including the sharp downturn in violence - that he still would have voted against the surge. It was something he said no doubt to please the anti-war left, whose votes he needed to help him win the election, but it was also something he said that turned the stomachs of the military and those who supported them alike, who realized that not only would the violence and death have escalated as a result of not putting the surge in place, but that the deaths of our servicemen and women over there would have been in vain, because he wanted troops out by March of this year.

There's more at the link.

Recall that thoughout 2007, Barack Obama was the most strident antiwar member of the U.S. Senate (see, "Obama Sees a ‘Complete Failure’ in Iraq"). Last July, during Obama's visit to Germany, where he made a speech the Siegessäule Victory Column, a Nazi-era landmark, the Democratic nominee skipped a pre-arranged visit to Lanstuhl military hospital to visit wounded U.S. veterans. Obama also declined an invitation to visit Fort Hood in August, where a town hall meeting on veterans issues was organized by military families. Recall, too, that Barack Obama and the Democrats repeatedly denigrated John McCain's military service throughout the campaign. We could certainly find more examples of Obama's indifference to military issues and veterans' affairs.

Indeed, there's little in the President-Elect's record to indicate a predisposition toward supporting the military. But as commander-in-chief he'll be responsible for the safety and well-being of our service personnel. We'll soon know, of course, how strong is the Obama administration's commitment to the troops. Big questions on defense spending and military deployments await the Democrats' accession to power in January. As a first step toward more credibility, Obama should commit to expanding active-duty soldiers by 30,000 troops, as the Army requested this week. After that, Obama should defer to the assessments of top U.S. commanders on the ground in Afghanistan in Iraq, even if that includes a slowdown on the pace of troop redeployments out of Iraq.

Responses to Israel's Attack on Hamas

Israel has launched a massive attack on Hamas in retaliation for the week-long barrage of hundreds of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel's western Negev.

Captain Ed puts the source of Israel's relaliation where it belongs: On Hamas' ultimate designs for the extermination of Israel:

Hamas made it clear last week that they wanted war ...

The world should step aside and quit interfering in the war Hamas so desperately wants and will desperately lose if left to their own devices. As long as Hamas controls Gaza, a state of war exists, and cease-fires do nothing to advance peace, as this year has proven yet again. Tiresome calls for “restraint” don’t work when one side is determined to have war. The best way to resolve this conflict is to allow Hamas to have its war and get utterly crushed by Israel or overthrown by Gazans to avoid that unavoidable conclusion.

Pamela Geller adds this flourish:

Clean out that rats' nest. Kill the barbarians. Do not look left. Do not look right. Do not falter. Save the Jews.

Show the same mercy as was shown Rabbi Holtzberg and his pregnant wife. Might! This is the only thing the enemy understands. Compassion and respect are held in the greatest contempt.

Kill their leaders. Think the last scene in the Godfather. Kill 'em all, all at once.

Now take a look at the response to Israel's move on the "humanitarian" left.

The Booman Tribune says Israel had it coming and its days are numbered:

I doubt that Israel can stop the rocket attacks without further worsening their reputation in the world, which is now about as low as it has ever been ....

You'd think a country that was defending itself from rocket attacks would get some leeway. You'd be wrong.

The European Union called for an end to the attacks on Gaza.

When the European Union issues a call to end your campaign on its very first day, you know world opinion no longer supports your right to self-defense. And when you get to that point, you are in real danger. Israel must realize, soon, that their position is weak.

Israel's reputation worsening? Right. No mention of Hamas' non-negotiable jihad against the Jewish state.

Note that if any nation loses its "right to self-defense," it's lost its right to exist, and that's what the response on the left is all about.

Hamas violated the "lull" in hostilities all year, as Robert Spencer indicates (with hundreds or rocket attacks throughout the period of "cease fire"). But Ian at Firedoglake calls the Hamas barrage a justified response to Israel's security blockade of Gaza:

What [Israel] doesn't note is that there was a long cease-fire, during which Israel kept blockading Gaza, so that they don't have enough food or water. He's been starving them because he doesn't like their democratically elected government. Not launching missiles hasn't worked for citizens of Gaza. From their point of view there's little reason not to fire missiles at Israel. Being shot by Israeli soldiers probably doesn't seem like a much worse way to go than starving... or watching their children starve.

Actually, Gazans are not being "starved":

Israel has recently closed Gaza checkpoints in response to the attacks, although they have allowed some shipments of food, fuel, and cooking oil through.

But the facts at hand don't matter to the left's Israel-bashers. Here's this "explanation" of the conflict at Echidne's:

I am posting a anxious warning based on what I am hearing. Israelis should dump the neo-cons who are bringing them to disaster. Those idiots, from their comfortable perches in the American establishment are going to get a lot more Israelis and others killed. Let's face another reality, a lot of them, Gentiles and Jews alike, are pretty unsavory characters who market themselves as "supporters of Israel". Some seem to have made a very nice living for themselves based on this. Would peace be as profitable for them?

Their alliance with fundamentalist "christians" should be all the evidence you need of their stupidity if not duplicity. End timers have only two uses for Jews, especially Israelis. Jews are either to be converted to "christianity", perhaps by force eventually, or they are extras waiting to die in their pre-enactment battle fantasies based on the Book of Revelations. As the events around Lebanon this month show, the fundamentalist ghouls can hardly wait for the real slaughter to begin. Their script calls for Israelis to die in the millions.

Failing the fundamentalists' favorite wish, Americans of future times will grow weary of supporting Israel if it is engaged in endless wars, endless conflicts and, especially, if idiocy on the level of this war in Lebanon continues. A constantly attacked Israel will become increasingly militarized and isolated and paranoid. With that will come the destruction of democracy. A nationalistic, perhaps theocratic and despotic Israel is certainly nothing that the vast, vast majority of Israelis or Americans want to see. If someone can convince me that isn't where it is headed I'd really really like to believe otherwise.

I have every confidence that these ideas have been thought about in Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East. I can't believe anything I'm writing here hasn't been more fully considered there where investigating every contingency is a matter of life and death. It is in the United States that they are unmentionable.

The Echidne post echoes the infamous and still-available anti-Semitic diatribe at Daily Kos, "Eulogy before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel."

Basically, as we see from the various commenters on the nihilist left: Israel had it coming, it's lost international support, its policy of self-defense in unjustified and will bring about self-destruction.

In other words, screw 'em ... Israel should die. Got it.