Matthew Yglesias (April 04, 2008) - My First Review (Miscellaneous)

I'm not quite sure why he's playing dumb here,

He's not playing.

Posted by Antid Oto | April 4, 2008 5:28 PM

Part of the reason why the "Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11" meme has never had any traction on the right is plain ignorant bigotry. To the average wingnut, a raghead is a raghead, and there's no reason to distinguish between them. Conflating Hezbollah with Al Qaida is much the same as conflating Saddam with Bin Laden - stand back far enough and squint, and they're all scary brown guys with thick beards.

There's no reasoning with loud and proud ignorance.

Posted by jimBOB | April 4, 2008 5:37 PM

Matt - would you classify the Kirchick statement you quote as a non sequitur?

Posted by blah | April 4, 2008 5:41 PM

That Kirchick quote, simplified:

Matt says X quite reasonably makes people mad. But sometimes people are mad when X hasn't happened to them. Matt's reasoning fails to explain this, so Matt makes no sense.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | April 4, 2008 5:41 PM

He's playing dumb on a couple of other levels too, of course. Syrian anger is directed much more at Israel in particular than the west in general, and, of course, foreign soldiers not only have set foot on Syrian soil in the past few decades, but they continue to occupy a chunk of it. With regard to Iran, of course, he is literally correct, but nonetheless willfully deceptive, passing over quite a bit of history including the Shah and western support for Iraq's invasion of Iran, not to mention current threats from the Bush war criminals.

But really what's the use of even engaging a degenerate thug such as Kirchick. I would say that he has the morals of a child rapist, but that isn't fair to the child rapist. May he burn in the fires of hell for all eternity.

Posted by LarryM | April 4, 2008 5:47 PM

I think, strangely, Mike Barone explains the objection Kirchik raises the best. MattY's mindset of a focused response to Sept. 11th will result in nothing less than "denying honor to our warriors," because they would have fewer opportunities on the group to fight and thus, presumably, acquire honor. Only by using Sept. 11th as a lever to pursue fighting anywhere and everywhere can we maximize the honor given to our warriors, and advocating otherwise just "denies" them honor they would otherwise get. So MattY is a traitor who hates America and our troops. Like all academics. Or something.

Posted by Tyro | April 4, 2008 5:47 PM

Re LarryM

"and, of course, foreign soldiers not only have set foot on Syrian soil in the past few decades, but they continue to occupy a chunk of it"

Of course, Mr. LarryM neglects to mention that the reason why Israel occupies the Golan Hights is that Syria attacked Israel in 1967. Unfortunately for Syria, it lost the war and so must suffer the consequences. Don't think so, just ask Germany about the territory east of the Oder-Neisse line.

Posted by SLC | April 4, 2008 5:58 PM

Actually, Matt is being incredibly forbearing and far too charitable toward Kirchick by even honoring him with a scrap of argument. This "review" is about as scurrilous, rigor-free, and ad hominem an attack as could be imagined. Kirchick basically accuses Matt of being a Hamas-loving, radical-chic, jihad-honoring traitor. Really, that's no exaggeration--have a look yourselves.

This kind of insanity really has no place outside a Glenn Beck show or an Ann Coulter column. Not even in City Journal or the Manhattan Institute. Well, maybe the Hoover Institution, on VDH's crusade page....

Posted by elle loco | April 4, 2008 6:02 PM

Kirchick, following the prevailing conventional wisdom on the right, thinks we should eschew a narrow, focused, and efficacious assault on al-Qaeda in favor of a vaguely defined "war on terror" that includes sundry Muslims Behaving Badly including Saddam Hussein, the Assads, the Iranian, Hamas, Hezbollah, and whoever else you like.

You can't have a truly "efficacious assault on al-Qaeda" without dealing with the other "Muslims Behaving Badly". Matthew's attempt to make the two as somehow incompatible is one of the problems with today's leftie foreign policy.

Posted by Al | April 4, 2008 6:06 PM

Kirchick is right up there with Peretz as one the most justly loathed journalists on the scene today. It doesn't matter how consistently dishonest his pieces are--he's on the track to neocon success.

Posted by Scott Kern | April 4, 2008 6:08 PM

Um, now that you have a published book and are being reviewed and stuff, do we have to start calling you Mr. Yglesias? Because that would suck.

Posted by dry_fish | April 4, 2008 6:09 PM

stand back far enough and squint, and they're all scary brown guys with thick beards.

Saddam didn't even have a beard until he became a fugitive . . .

Posted by rea | April 4, 2008 6:11 PM

SLC,

Haha, you're hilarious. Syria attacked Israel in 1967 huh? SLC, I knew you were an unreconstructed apologist for the worst Likudnik elements of Israeli politics, but I thought you at least had a modicum of knowledge of the underlying facts.

It certainly could be argued, and has been argued, that the bellicose actions of Syria and Egypt in 1967 left Israel with no real choice but to attack Egypt and Syria. But even the most fervent supporter of Israel can't deny that it was Israel who was the attacker in 1967.

Posted by LarryM | April 4, 2008 6:11 PM

I'll echo Antid above. Kirchick is a facile and stupid child.

Posted by McKingford | April 4, 2008 6:13 PM

Unfortunately for Syria, it lost the war and so must suffer the consequences.

So, if in the future, Syria wins a war with Israel, you'd be okay with Syria annexing Israel's territory?

And since war is just diplomacy carried out by other means, you'd presumably also be okay with Syria mustering international opinion, and getting various states to lean on Israel to return the captured territories?

Or is "might makes right" something you agree with only when you're on the side of might?

Posted by rea | April 4, 2008 6:17 PM

Re LarryM

The argument as to who actually fired the first shot is totally irrelevant. I would argue that dictator Nasser kicking the UN observer force out of the Sinai and illegally closing the Straits of Tiran, an international waterway, to Israeli shipping constitutes an act of aggression. Since Syria not only went along with the Egyptian action but actually precipitated it by falsely claiming that Israel was about to attack Syria, and thus they were just as guilty as the Egyptians. The proof of who precipitated the war is obvious from the fact that it was made clear to King Hussein through the American Embassy in Amman that Israel would not attack Jordan if Jordan stayed out of the war. Unfortunately, King Hussein chose to join his fellow aggressors and paid the price.

Posted by SLC | April 4, 2008 6:23 PM

You know, I've said before that I have more sympathy for Israel than for the United States; the U.S. has committed war worse crimes than has Israel with far less provocation. But I gotta tell you, people like SLC are rapidly eroding that sympathy.

Posted by LarryM | April 4, 2008 6:26 PM

It isn't surprising that Kirchik would rush into print. The love hate he has for his more successful rival in the world of punditry (MY gets the Atlantic, Kirchik gets to sit on Marty Peretz's knee) is almost sweet. At least, it seems to be an emotion right out of Blue Velvet. Matt better hope that Kirchik does not have an oxygen mask.

However, it is important to emphasize that the right has absolutely no terrorist policy. There is no way, in the normal scheme of things, a country that spent 3 to 4 or more trillion on the military in the last 7 years could not have taken care of a band of, at most, 20,000 paramilitaries with a budget of maybe 3 to 4 million a year. Even considering the spectacular stupidity of the predators we are currently run by, they are not that stupid. When Osama bin Laden was given the strong hint at Tora Bora to move across the border, thus ending, after 3 weeks, the global war on terror, we moved back into the groove of pursuing our wars on more traditional lines - excess testosterone and excess greed.

Posted by roger | April 4, 2008 6:26 PM

You can't have a truly "efficacious assault on al-Qaeda" without dealing with the other "Muslims Behaving Badly".

Well, sure, if you mean the Taliban (check!), the Saudis (uh...) the Pakistani intelligence services (hmm...)

Even if your assertion were true in the abstract, it bears no relation to current American policy.

Posted by Ryan | April 4, 2008 6:31 PM

SLC,

You do realize that your argument about the rights and wrongs of the Golan Heights is completely irrelevant to the main point, which is that Kirchick is a liar or an idiot?

Posted by William Burns | April 4, 2008 6:34 PM

"...not-really-related other adversaries..."

You can't be serious. That's one of the best dodges I've seen in a while though. Kirchick's hammered you it seems, and you're reduced to arguing "states' interests." Now that is rich, and realist too. Ron Paul would be proud.

Posted by Americaneocon | April 4, 2008 6:39 PM

Yglesias tries to frame his argument around the concept of national self-interest

I agree with everything Matt says according to Kirchick except maybe this. I don't care about national self-interest. I care about the interests of individual citizens. It's at least plausible that world domination is best for the national self-interest. But it is not plausible that world domination by the US government is best for ordinary Americans. Empire is always bad for everyone except friends of the emperor.

Posted by Gary Sugar | April 4, 2008 6:45 PM

Ummm, both Iran and Syria (especially Iran) offered to help us and did in fact help us against Al-Qaeda, before we decided to demonize them in service of an ill-defined right wing agenda of conquering a whole bunch of random Middle Eastern countries. So it's hardly a 'dodge' to say that Iran and Syria are quite different from Al-Qaeda. In fact, it's elementary respect for the facts and for rational U.S. interests in the region, which our neocon posters seem to lack.

Posted by mq | April 4, 2008 6:50 PM

ahh it's driving me crazy! 527 times?

Posted by ! | April 4, 2008 6:52 PM

Funny that SLC would mention the occupation of the Golan Heights in the same breath as Stalin's politics of rape, murder and ethnic cleansing.

Posted by novakant | April 4, 2008 6:53 PM

You know, I've said before that I have more sympathy for Israel than for the United States; the U.S. has committed war worse crimes than has Israel with far less provocation. But I gotta tell you, people like SLC are rapidly eroding that sympathy.

Woe has befallen the poor people of Israel, who lie awake at night, anxious about LarryM's precise level of sympathy for them and their country!

Posted by Brad | April 4, 2008 6:53 PM

Wow, that Kirchik review is a savage, vicious piece of propaganda intended to totally delegitimize Yglesias as a thinker and commentator. The passage Matt quotes is one of the most logical parts of the whole review.

Fortunately, it's Kirchik, so it's also terribly written and poorly reasoned and unlikely to have much influence. But I'm wondering why Matt chose to engage with it in the way he did. If he did want to mention it, discussing the role of the right-wing ideological machine in our intellectual life would have been a more interesting tack to take. But starting a big fight might have drawn more attention to Kirchik's stuff.

Posted by mq | April 4, 2008 6:57 PM

I'm with mq on this. The review reads as though it were written by a Freeper on a day when Mommy forgot to buy Cheetos. Matt, you're being way too respectful to someone who's review can be summarized as "Matt Yglesias is against the Iraq War now, which means he loves terrorists."

Also, mq, Syria didn't just offer to help, we sent some people there to be tortured. So they did help.

On the off-topic digression, I am one of the people who believed that Israel had no choice but to go to war in 1967. But anyone notice that in his first post SLC says that Syria attacked, but then changes the goalposts to whose actions "constituted an act of aggression." I also like that he doesn't acknowledge that he was wrong, just says its pointless to debate what he alleged in the first post ("who fired the first shot"). You stay classy.

Posted by JoshA | April 4, 2008 7:11 PM

You are too kind to Kirchick. You help him, by pointing out that Hezbollah is an Islamist organization. He jumped from "Islamist anger" to "International Terror."

His argument would make equal sense (that is none at all) if he had referenced, say, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is not active, still supported by Syria (I think) secular in orientation and headed by a Christian (or at least a man of Christian religious heritage).

He wants not only to lump together Islamist anger and state sponsors of terrorism, but also Islamist anger and Arab nationalist anger, and, given his choice of words, Tamil nationalist anger and Marxist anger too.

Basically, as you point out, he wants to change the subject back to what he was fuming about on 9/10.

Posted by Robert Waldmann | April 4, 2008 7:16 PM

Sorry, my mistake, you are much much much too kind to Kirchick. In my many times a day stroll down my blogroll I read you first then Ezra Klein. He is (very slightly) less suspect of conflict of interest in reviewing a review of your book than you are, and he is quite blunt "The problem isn't that Jamie disagrees with the book. It's that he hasn't read it. Or possibly has read it and is lying about it. Or isn't smart enough to have understood it."

Yes indeed Mr Kirchick claims that you accused yourself (among others) of being motivated only by careerism.

I'd say you should just ignore Kirchick, because he is not worth your time, but I've never written a book so I've never read a review of a book of mine so I can't understand.

Posted by Robert Waldmann | April 4, 2008 7:26 PM

Matthew, that review accuses you of multiple flagrant acts of intellectual dishonesty. Your characterizing it as him being "unconvinced by my arguments" is merly a continuation of the same.

Kirchick addressed much more than matters of personal opinion.

Posted by am | April 4, 2008 7:29 PM

Re William Burns

My comment was directed toward a comment made by Mr. LarryM and had nothing to do with the subject review. Since I haven't read the review, I have no idea as to what Mr. Kirchicks' views on the Golan Hights is. As Mr. Burns is well aware, I allow not negative comments about the "State of Israel to go unanswered.

Re LarryM

Actually, I thought I was being rather mild in my criticism of Mr. LarryMs' comment, at least in comparison to my usual responses to such comments.

Re JoshA

I would consider an act of aggression such as the closing of the Straits of Tiran to be an attack. If Mr. JoshA is in disagreement, well, we will have to agree to disagree, hopefully not disagreeably.

Posted by SLC | April 4, 2008 7:31 PM

Syria not only went along with the Egyptian action but actually precipitated it by falsely claiming that Israel was about to attack Syria . . .

Let me get this straight--you're really claiming that Israel was justified in attacking Syria because Syria was falsely claiming that Israel was about to attack Syria?

Posted by rea | April 4, 2008 8:41 PM

Oh shit Matt, you just got yourself Kirchick'ed!

Posted by bend | April 4, 2008 9:09 PM

James Kirchick marks due south on my political compass. I guess I'm gonna buy 'Heads in the Sand.'

Posted by Adrian | April 4, 2008 9:13 PM

I just never realized MY was such an "unwitting apologist for terrorists and authoritarians."

I suppose I stand corrected.

Posted by Steve W. | April 4, 2008 9:17 PM

Kirchick's last article told a glowing tale about a zionist named Michael Lucas, a USSR born homosexual pornographer. Unfortuntely for the United States, he is now a citizen. This is the type of man that Kirchick finds wothy of adulation.

To describe Kirchick as right-wing is the same as describing Joe Lieberman as right-wing. People on this board forget that alot of dems supported the Iraq war, especially dems with a strong attachment to Israel. True conservatives like Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, and Andrew Bacevich were against this war from the start for they knew that it was not in our national interest.

With all the talk about the '67 war between Israel and the Arab states, no one should forget the attack on the USS Liberty and the 37 murdered Americans on the ship. The Liberty was attacked by Israel intentionally so that the USA could not intercept their signals intel before they a grabbed the Golan.

Of course this was all covered-up and Israel continues to collect billions of our tax dollars while ignoring our demands to cease settlement building. These settlements in the West Bank and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians was one of the reasons for the attack of 9/11. Arab anger at the USA is a direct result of our blind support of Israel, a small country of little strategic value to us.

Posted by max bootlicker | April 4, 2008 9:56 PM

I obviously haven't read Matthew's book, and have no opinion of Kirchik. However, unless Matthew adresses the central reality of the Persian Gulf, which is that as long as the population of that region does not practice self government, and thus gains control it's mineral resources, and the primary activity which governs the relationship between the U.S. population and the Persian Gulf population is the U.S. population funneling dollars into world energy markets, which benefits whatever tiny entities which do control the region's mineral resources, which gurantees violent conflict between the U.S. population and a substantial element of the Persian Gulf population, then Matthew's book is just dealing with peripheral issues, and his book's title become ironic.

Pretending that the U.S. population will not absolutely demand oil extraction from the Persian Gulf for at least a few more decades (please don't make it necessary to explain fungibility again) isn't helpful either. Senator Obama ridicules McCain's hundred years statement, but fails to inform his audiences that unless they stop driving their cars, or the Persian Gulf population achieves self government, there will be war between the U.S. population and the Persian Gulf population, for perhaps several decades, if not a hundred years. Lemme know when Senator Obama tells his admireres by what year they will giving up their cars. Heads in the sand, indeed.

Posted by Will Allen | April 4, 2008 10:21 PM

I did not know that Mr. M. Y. was an apologist for terrorists and authoritarians (never mind unwitting or not) as the the review informs me. I hope that my coming here to read him does not qualify me for membership in the same shameful group.

Posted by gregor | April 4, 2008 10:42 PM

Re: Pretending that the U.S. population will not absolutely demand oil extraction from the Persian Gulf for at least a few more decades (please don't make it necessary to explain fungibility again) isn't helpful either.

If Satan, Sauron or the Learned Elders of Zion ruled the Persian Gulf they too would have to sell the oil while it lasts to make money -- and the US and the rest of the world would happily buy it. Please send your Strawman back to Oz.

Posted by JonF | April 4, 2008 11:07 PM

"you're really claiming that Israel was justified in attacking Syria because Syria was falsely claiming that Israel was about to attack Syria?"

A classic.

Posted by gcochran | April 5, 2008 12:08 AM

I did not know that Mr. M. Y. was an apologist for terrorists and authoritarians (never mind unwitting or not) as the the review informs me. I hope that my coming here to read him does not qualify me for membership in the same shameful group. (Gregor)

W do know that Gregor is an apologist for a certain, shitty, little country in the Middle East. We do know that Gregor is upset that less and less people believe the usual Zionist propaganda anymore including a lot of the old-guard Israeli military and Mossad men. We do know that Gregor is upset that people all over the world are starting to put 2+2 together. And, it don't equal 272 as Dov Gold or Bibi would have anyone believe.

Posted by Trevor | April 5, 2008 12:37 AM

Kirchick philosophy is that of the neocons: "invade the world, invite the world, in debt to the world". Kirchick and his like should organize a foreign legion of volunteers to go abroad, destroy monsters, and bring democracy and happiness to all who don't have it. It could be funded and manned by the idealistic. I doubt if Kirchick's ideals would spur him in either direction. In any case, the U.S. serviceman volunteers his risk to defend the freedom of his countrymen, not everybody's countrymen.

Posted by A. Halsey | April 5, 2008 12:41 AM

Jamie's entire career can be summed up by one of his rounds guest-blogging at Andrew Sullivan's blog. He was being so intellectually dishonest and unfair that one of the other guest bloggers politely said he was a charlatan and a liar that was abusing his role as a political commentator and journalist, as well as wasting his career and everyone's time. Like Paul Berman and Peretz, if someone doesn't share exactly his basket of obsessions and stereotypes of Arabs, Persians and Muslims, then they are a terrorist-loving anti-Semite. I'm rather concerned with the fighting in Sri Lanka between Colombo and the LTTE in part because I'm South Asian, but I don't expect that to become a focus of American foreign policy. Jamie really seems to think that American foreign policy should be dedicated towards defending a Likudnik view of Israeli national interest.

Will Allen, we can purchase Saudi oil without occupying the Middle East for decades. One of the follies of European imperialism based on resource extraction was a lack of trust in capitalist economics and an over-reliance on mercantilism and expensively occupying resource-rich areas instead of buying them on the free market (ironically, one of bin Laden's biggest complaints about the House of Saud is that it sells Saudi oil too cheaply to the US while supply-and-demand dictates that the price of oil should be higher). The House of Saud is filled with greedy bastards that care more about buying a bigger fifth palace than their siblings and rivals than about sharia. Those are the type of people who will be happy to sell us oil without us having to occupy the Middle East.

Posted by Reality Man | April 5, 2008 12:51 AM

As usual, reading what was actually written somehow becomes an issue. I never stated that the American population would not be able to funnel dollars into world energy markets, and thus insure that oil would continue to flow from the Persian Gulf, while enriching whatever tiny sliver of the population there which controlled the oil. I stated that doing so would inevitably draw us into the violent conflicts that such a paradigm inevitably entails. Being the major consumer of a resource which has it's largest reserves located in the Persian Gulf inevitably draws the consumer into the conflicts of the Persian Gulf, and the consumer's payments adds gasoline to the fire.

The population of the U.S. will be neck-deep in the violent conflicts of the Persian Gulf, unless the Persian Gulf population governs itself peacefully, or the population of the U.S. no longer demands that the Persian Gulf's mineral resources be extracted on an uninterrupted basis. If Barack Obama is elected President, he will kiss the ass of the House of Saud as willingly as any other President, because no American President can risk even a very temporary interruption in oil extraction from Arabian oil fields. Any President is thus consigned to alliance with the House of Saud, and one cannot be an ally of the House of Saud without waging war with other elements in the region. Obama favors long term war in the Persian Gulf. He just lacks the honesty to state it forthrightly

Posted by Will Allen | April 5, 2008 2:32 AM

To add on, every member of Al Queda in Afghanistan could contract a virus and die by noon tomorrow, and the conflict would not end, because the dynamic which produced the conflict would be unchanged.

Posted by Will Allen | April 5, 2008 2:51 AM

I can't find the quote now, but I think it was Richard Hofstadter who wrote that you can tell the sane parties in an argument because they're using proper nouns. They may be wrong, but because they are pointing to specific people, places, and things, you can check them. The more that an argument relies on broad collective nouns, abstractions, and pronouns (like "you know, Them"), the less it can be constrained by healthy mental processes.

Opponents of the war and occupation of Iraq have a big advantage. Questions like "And how does this help us stop Osama bin Laden, who approved the plan to attack Americans on 9/11?" anchor all the mumbo-jumbo about Islamofascism and whatever, and often get entertaining results. (Or at least they would be funny if a million deaths, two million refugees, and a ruined nation weren't involved.)

Posted by Bruce Baugh | April 5, 2008 3:57 AM

I can't really judge the rest of Kirchick's review, as I haven't read MY's book yet, but he's certainly right on about this...

"Ultimately, however, Yglesias is a partisan political commentator, not a foreign-policy analyst"

Amen to that.

Posted by A New Fox News Fan | April 5, 2008 4:33 AM

Which chapter in the book explains why you were so wrong about the war? If you are on the wrong side of the greatest foreign policy disaster in the last fifty years you do have to work harder before being taken seriously as a foreign policy writer/analyst.

You may also want to discontinue wearing you Nats hat.

Posted by skeptic | April 5, 2008 4:59 AM

Well, I'd have to agree that Matt is a "partisan political commentator, not a foreign-policy analyst".

OTOH, Kirchick is clearly a moron.

So Matt wins.

But I still ain't wasting my money buying his book. Maybe if Usenet puts up a free ebook copy, I'll get it.

"no American President can risk even a very temporary interruption in oil extraction from Arabian oil fields"

Wrong. Or at least wrong if you buy Greg Palast's notion that the invasion of Iraq was an attempt to take Iraqi oil OFF the market - and it was quite successful at that, since much of the 2.5 million barrels produced today is stolen and smuggled, and the funds used to promote various Shia militias.

Also, it's clear that Bush and Cheney have no real problem in attacking Iran, and thus taking its oil off the market.

The reality is that oil isn't the number one issue here - military-industrial complex war profiteering is. Certainly the oil price spikes when oil is taken off the market temporarily certainly helps the oil company profit picture. But there's more than one bunch of crooks involved here.

"doing so would inevitably draw us into the violent conflicts that such a paradigm inevitably entails"

That's completely false. The US could buy oil from any of these clowns, and simply stop supplying them with armaments and supporting a bunch of Zionist freaks with designs on the whole Middle East. Anybody running these countries would sell the oil to the US - even bin Laden. What they won't do is agree with the US supporting Israel and supporting corrupt Arab monarchies.

Therefore there is no reason that simply buying oil would draw us into any ME conflicts - if the US wasn't so stupid as to allow itself to be drawn in.

And even if the mere act of buying oil was considered to be "supporting the Arab monarchies", then it would be quite feasible to 1) start buying from other sources like Russia or Venezuela, and 2) develop alternative energy sources with the THREE TRILLION DOLLARS this war is going to cost the US.

Of course, you have to assassinate the oil company and the military-industrial complex CEOs and their investment bankers - and the Congressmen who have invested $200 million in defense industries - to make that happen.

So your statement really needs to be modified:

"Being the major investor of a military-industrial complex and oil company complex which have their largest reserves located in the Persian Gulf inevitably draws the consumer into the conflicts of the Persian Gulf, and the investors payments adds gasoline to the fire."

Deal with the corruption at home, and the problems of terrorism and the Middle East will fade.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 5, 2008 5:03 AM

Re Trevor

Mr. Trevor, the alleged son of a federal judge is a shitty little man who obviously gets his information from counterpunch and stormfront.

Re rea

Mr. rea is obviously totally ignorant of the facts surrounding the 1967 war. The fact is that Syria and Egypt had a military alliance which stipulated that if one of them became engaged in a war with Israel, the other would also automatically be engaged. Thus the Egyptian aggression against Israel relative to the illegal closing of the Straits of Tiran was an act of war and Israel was entitled as a measure of self defense to attack Egypt and any allies of Egypt.

Re max bootlicker

Since I have previously posted a description of the events surrounding the attack on the Liberty, I see no need to repeat them. If Mr. bootlicker has not read them, he is ignorant. If he has, he is a fucking liar. The coverup relative to the Liberty was not over the Israeli attack but the breakdown in communication between the CIA and the Navy which led to the attack, much like the Pueblo incident off North Korea. The Liberty was not spying on Israel, it was spying on Egypt and passing the information on to the Mossad through the latters' contacts with the CIA. The fact that the Liberty was, in effect, acting as a spy ship for Israel is what has been covered up.

Posted by SLC | April 5, 2008 7:55 AM

Ohfercryinoutloud, SLC.

The whole point of bringing up the Golan is Kirchick's statement that Syria is a country "where foreign soldiers haven’t set foot for decades" is factually incorrect, as foreign soldiers are there right this moment.

How and why those foreign soldiers came to be there is completely tangential, and you're wasting everyone's time arguing those things.

Posted by Thlayli | April 5, 2008 9:25 AM

"thinks we should eschew a narrow, focused, and efficacious assault on al-Qaeda in favor of a vaguely defined "war on terror" that includes sundry Muslims Behaving Badly including Saddam Hussein, the Assads, the Iranian, Hamas, Hezbollah, and whoever else you like."

I'm not a neocon, zionist, whatever. However Saddam was much worse than the others and it's good he's gone. There hasn't been another major attack, even though invading Iraq was supposed to piss off the Muslims. That this is true doesn't make the rightwingers good people, it's just true.

Posted by Peter K. | April 5, 2008 9:29 AM

Re Thlayli

Apparently Mr. Thlayli hasn't been following this thread very closely. Mr. LarryM brought up the subject of Israels' occupation of the Golan Hights, not me.

Posted by SLC | April 5, 2008 9:37 AM

Mr. LarryM brought up the subject of Israels' occupation of the Golan Hights, not me.

Indeed he did, at 5:47PM:

"... of course, foreign soldiers not only have set foot on Syrian soil in the past few decades, but they continue to occupy a chunk of it."

A simple statment of fact -- a fact that Kirchick got wrong.

You then chimed in at 5:58PM:

"... the reason why Israel occupies the Golan Hights is that Syria attacked Israel in 1967."

You didn't dispute that LarryM is factually correct (he is), you didn't attempt to argue that Kirchick's original statement was correct (it isn't), you brought up an issue that nobody had been discussing previously. Therefore, you're wasting everyone's time on a tangent.

I think I'm following this thread closely enough, thankyouverymuch.

Posted by Thlayli | April 5, 2008 10:23 AM

There hasn't been another major attack, even though invading Iraq was supposed to piss off the Muslims.

So, you're saying that the 3,000 Americans killed on 9/11 is more than the 4,000 Americans killed by the pissed off Muslims in Iraq? Unbelievable.

Posted by Jim W | April 5, 2008 10:28 AM

Funny how al Qaeda continues to survive in spite of the many "experts" saying they don't get support from any state.....

Posted by Stubbs Uelman | April 5, 2008 11:17 AM

Mr. Hack apparently believes Iraqi oil fields = Arabian oil fields = Iranian oil fields, thus it is probably pointless to engage him, but I will point out that if Bin Laden somehow conquered the House of Saud without disrupting the extraction of oil from fields now controlled by the House of Saud, and the U.S. population began funneling dollars to him instead, the same conflict would soon arise again, with different names in different seats. This isn't about individual personalities. It is about the world's most important natural resource being highly concentrated in a region of the world with an utterly backward, immature, and dysfunctional political culture. The rest of the world demands that the resource be extracted, so it will be, but at the cost of the major consumers being heavily involved in the conflicts that inevitably arise in such a crappy political culture, with the consumer's wealth adding fuel to the fire.

None of this mattered much even fifty years ago, because being invested in the Persian Gulf status quo didn't carry much cost. That reality eroded over time as it became easier and easier for non-state actors to effect great destruction. It is possible that this erosion can be halted, and the ability of such actors to engage in great destruction be held in it's current state for several more decades, in which case the crappy political culture of the Persian Gulf can be mostly tolerated for several more decades, as a low level war is waged against various non-state actors. Betting on technological stasis over a multi decade period is usually a losing bet, however.

Finally, anyone who doesn't grasp the political cost incurred by the current President by the price of oil rising to it's current level, or that future Presidents will not note this when they craft their policy with regard to the Persian Gulf, when calculating the electoral risk of even short term disruption of extraction from fields on the Arabian pensinsula, dosn't understand the first thing about American politics.

Posted by Will Allen | April 5, 2008 11:40 AM

Re Thlayli

The way Mr. LarryM stated it implies that Syria was invaded and a part of its territory occupied as an act of aggression by an unnamed country. My comment clarified his statement by stating that the occupation occurred due to an act of aggression non the part of Syria. Now if Mr. Thlayli disputes this point, fine. In no way did I dissent from Mr. LarryMs' factual occupation comment. I only clarified it. Obviously, the Israel bashers on this blog will disagree since they don't think that the State of Israel is entitled to defend itself.

Posted by SLC | April 5, 2008 11:45 AM

I will also point out that Mr.Hack's reference to "buying oil from sources like Russia and Venezuela" demonstrates that even after all these years, the implications of fungibility are not grasped. Sigh. Look, the largest, most easily extracted (geologically speaking) oil reserves are located on the Arabian Peninsula. The world has spent more than 100 years developing an oil-based economy. No amount of magical thinking ("Our cars can run on corn cobs!") will avoid the reality that Arabian oil fields will be integral to the global economy, and thus the U.S. economy, for at least several more decades. If I were named energy policy King, with the ability to issue diktats which were immediately enacted, I'd abolish FICA taxes today, and replace them with a gigantic hydrocarbon tax. Even with such draconian measures, however, it would be a multidecade project to reduce the importance of Persian Gulf oil, Arabian oil in particular.

Posted by Will Allen | April 5, 2008 11:59 AM

Syria isn't Islamist, it's a secular dictatorship.

Posted by skyler | April 5, 2008 1:23 PM

The rest of the world demands that the resource be extracted, so it will be, but at the cost of the major consumers being heavily involved in the conflicts that inevitably arise in such a crappy political culture, with the consumer's wealth adding fuel to the fire.

Japan is a major consumer of oil and is not heavily involved in ME conflicts. China is a major consumer of oil and is not heavily involved in ME conflicts. India is a major consumer of oil and is not heavily involved in ME conflicts. Europe is a major oil consumer and is at most tangentially involved in ME conflicts.

The U.S. is heavily involved in ME conflicts not because we are a major oil consumer, but because we have a fucked-up quasi-imperialist agenda in the region. And contrary to your depiction of the inhabitants of the ME is inferior and uncivilized peoples who are naturally immature, dysfunctional, what-have-you, there are numerous obvious links between U.S. interference in the ME and the "crappy political culture" of the region. We bear significant responsibility for it.

The sighing, eye-rolling, "I'm a realist" defense of U.S. ME policy is absurd in the face of the decades of increasingly obvious failures of U.S. policy in that region. The more we do, the more unstable the region becomes and the crappier the political culture gets. One has to be blind to reality not to see that.

Posted by mq | April 5, 2008 1:40 PM

Yes, Japan and others can take a background role because the U.S. takes the primary role. If the U.S. Navy didn't exist, then Japan, India, China, and Europe would invent it. That's the way the world has always worked; when powerful peoples greatly demand natural resources that far weaker peoples sit atop of, the natural resource gets extracted. The current pardigm is a bit more gentle, however, in that in the past the extraction would be accompanied by outright slaughter or slavery. Now, the powerful people
acomplish the extraction by paying off whatever small native elite which can manage to keep the wider native population crushed under it's heel. The powerful people are thus inevitably thrust into that inherently bitter domestic conflict.

Also, it's very difficult to have an exhange with someone when they purely invent terms that were never used, such as "naturally", "inferior", or "uncivilzed". If you want to argue with someone who made those assertions, why don't you just post to yourself, and leave me out of it? I did say that the Persian Gulf political culture was backward, dysfunctional, and crappy, because, on an objective basis, it is, and contrary to your condescending, patronizing, attitude towards the people who live in the region, the United States is not significantly responsible for a political culture which extends back many centuries. I understand you think they are children, and that the White Father controls their political culture, but that is not the case. I have no idea regarding when that region's population will achieve self government, including self-government of their natural resources, but until it does, the population of the United States will be in conflict with significant elements of it. Obama and his supporters merely engage in their own brand of magical thinking.

Posted by Will Allen | April 5, 2008 2:13 PM

I did say that the Persian Gulf political culture was backward, dysfunctional, and crappy, because, on an objective basis, it is, and contrary to your condescending, patronizing, attitude towards the people who live in the region, the United States is not significantly responsible for a political culture which extends back many centuries. I understand you think they are children, and that the White Father controls their political culture, but that is not the case. I have no idea regarding when that region's population will achieve self government, including self-government of their natural resources, but until it does, the population of the United States will be in conflict with significant elements of it. Obama and his supporters merely engage in their own brand of magical thinking.

Well, it's relatively easy to screw up political culture. You can bribe people. You can sell massive amounts of weapons to really bad actors. You can sponsor overthrow of democratic, competent leaders because it would decrease oil industry profits (but not access to oil). It's much easier to break down than to build up. Therefore America can be at least partly responsible for the lack of function.

We in Europe could be sponsoring Putin (in another oil country) directly, or his opponents. We could bribe politicians. We could sell weapons to factions. We could cooperate with Russian security police. There are a lot of things Europe could do with Russia, that would screw things up, that America does, or did, in the Middle East.

Some Europeans, at least, have learned something from Colonianism. Don't meddle in all the ways described above. Non-meddling is also the Chinese policy.

The dysfunction in Africa is basically a giant example of past European meddling. But at least most of us stopped doing it and believing in it.

The major former colonial power I'm not sure of is Britain. There seems to be some reasonably big factions there who haven't accepted that the British Empire was a bad idea.

Posted by Bengt Larsson | April 5, 2008 3:58 PM

Will, you are too stupid for words. When are you going to address the fact that your own magical thinking has resulted in millions of displaced peoples and hundreds of thousands of dead? Are you really so fucking moronic that you think Iraq is better off under the chaos created by your tribe than it was under sanctions?

Let's face it, any sick fuck whose voted for war and incompetence in order to further the goal of stealing someone else's resources has demonstrated his unfitness to hold forth on any political topic.

What you and the thugs you voted for have given the Iraqis is the furthest thing from "self-determination." Self-determination isn't demonstrated by having a puppet government controlled by the iron fist of George W. Bush's massive military might.

You whine about how things were unstable before, but fail to notice that your tribe made things far, far worse. What an idiot. What's your plan for fixing the disaster you have helped create in Iraq?

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | April 5, 2008 4:16 PM

Well, given I've always been mostly pessimistic about possible outcomes in the region, I haven't engaged in any magical thinking. If you wish to believe that the population of Iraq has less input as to their governance today than they did five years ago, you just go right ahead. As to stealing resources, unless you are living in a tent, and walking everywhere you go, you are every bit as much the thief as anyone else, ya' ol' sanctimonious dunce, you.

Posted by Will Allen | April 5, 2008 4:34 PM

Uh, no, Bengt. Europe is much more circumspect in regards to Russia because Russia, for all it's problems, still has the ability to incinerate Western Europe. If the Persian Gulf states had Russia's nuclear weapons, U.S. policy would be far different. You perhaps have not been informed of Chinese non-meddling in Sudan, and that is while China is stil a relatively weak nation. I don't think you know of what you write. Europe didn't give up it's colonies out of wisdom. It gave them up after being destroyed, and never has become powerful enough again to operate colonies, unless the U.S. were to agree to it. Read up on the Suez crisis. Or how the French were driven from Algeria; it asn't as if the Gallic wisdom had anything to do with it.

Posted by Will Allen | April 5, 2008 4:54 PM

Will, your seem desperate. I never said that European colonial powers gave up their colonies willingly and I'm well aware of how for example the French fought to stay in Algeria or in Vietnam. But the point is what you learn from these lost colonial wars and attempts at remote hegemony. Do you learn anything, or do you try it again?

Dealing with an existing regime - like the Chinese dealing with the one in Sudan - is one thing. Having your own opinion of what faction ought to rule in another country, then to act on either your preference or self-interest - meddling - is a different thing.

Posted by Bengt Larsson | April 5, 2008 6:17 PM

Re skyler

Not only is Syria not an Islamist dictatorship, its not even a secular dictatorship run by Muslims like Saddams' was. The ruling faction, which represents only 10% of the population, are Alawites who are not considered Muslims by the Sunni or Shiite populations in Syria.

Posted by SLC | April 5, 2008 6:37 PM

If the U.S. Navy didn't exist, then Japan, India, China, and Europe would invent it. That's the way the world has always worked; when powerful peoples greatly demand natural resources that far weaker peoples sit atop of, the natural resource gets extracted.

The alternative being to simply buy the natural resources. It was a big gain when the world moved from imperialist mercantilism to a free market system. Neocons are driven by their own weird romantic fantasies to push for a return to the destructive systems of the worst of our past, and then justify this through supposed "realism".

It would be perfectly possible to set up an inclusive, international, UN-approved regime to keep sea lanes open. This would be greatly in the interest of the oil-producing countries themselves. Pushing the "U.S. Navy" as uniquely necessary to such a regime is a transparent fig-leaf for U.S. control.

The current pardigm is a bit more gentle, however, in that in the past the extraction would be accompanied by outright slaughter or slavery. Now, the powerful people acomplish the extraction by paying off whatever small native elite which can manage to keep the wider native population crushed under it's heel. The powerful people are thus inevitably thrust into that inherently bitter domestic conflict.

In other words: the crappy political culture of the middle east is the fault of the U.S. Thanks, Will, for admitting I am correct (although frankly I wouldn't have been quite as extreme as you are here...there is shared responsibility).

Also, it's very difficult to have an exhange with someone when they purely invent terms that were never used, such as "naturally", "inferior", or "uncivilzed". If you want to argue with someone who made those assertions

I was merely highlighting your barely concealed contempt for the peoples of the Middle East. Your use of "utterly backward and immature" to describe the ME, plus your use of these characteristics to justify continued U.S. colonialist interference in the region, made your views quite clear. If you want to argue with someone who won't call you out for your obvious attitudes, then post on a right-wing site.

contrary to your condescending, patronizing, attitude towards the people who live in the region the United States is not significantly responsible for a political culture which extends back many centuries.

I should simply refer you to the Will Allen quote above, which shows your agreement with my position. But I'm sure by now you have evolved an impressive resistance to your own logical inconsistencies. Since the sum total of your logic is that the wogs are inferior, hence they must be crushed under the boot of their superiors, you are bound to run into trouble when you call other people patronizing.

Let me guess, you've never lived in the region, don't speak any of the languages, and gained your extensive knowledge of Middle Eastern political culture by reading racist screeds from neocons. I'm impressed by your thoughtful parsing of the impact on ME political culture of Western colonial interference (none at all!) vs. the effect of native immaturity and backwardness (everything!).

I have no idea regarding when that region's population will achieve self government, including self-government of their natural resources,

Hey, neither do I, but I'm pretty sure it will come sooner if we get out of their way. And I'm also pretty sure that whoever is in control will be selling oil.

but until it does, the population of the United States will be in conflict with significant elements of it.

You mean: until the population of the United States stops getting a romantic kick out of the idea of a righteous imperial mission, we will be driven to gin up conflict instead of seeking accomodation and peace.

Posted by mq | April 5, 2008 7:15 PM

"both Syria and Iran have, at various times, indicated an interest in collaborating with the United States"

Well, Syria *has* tortured suspects for us, and so has in the past and continues to cooperate with against "Al Qaeda", if by that we include torturing Canadians and who knows who else. And that relationship goes back to the 90s, IIRC.

And Iran collaborated in the invasion of Afghanistan, they collaborated after it by stringing up AQ/Taliban that fled into Iran and offered them to us in exchange for Iranian diplomats we captured in Iraq - we call those acts of enforcement "haboring terrorists" - and as noted on this blog lately are in all actuality collaborating with us in Iraq, something we accurately call "supporting terrorism", just that they're supporting the same terrorists as us.

Being as Al Qaeda considers both of those regimes apostates, Syria and Irans' willingness to cooperate in turn probably isn't particularly interesting to anybody who doesn't have their heads stuck somewhere unpleasantly ignorant.

Posted by buermann | April 5, 2008 8:21 PM

Allen's nonsense is the essence of "magical thinking". Just because there's oil in the Middle East, and the West (and East) needs oil, then...somehow...we have to be concerned about various fights going on over there.

The reality is that Allen is basically claiming that we have to support Israel, but he doesn't have the nerve to say so.

We didn't give a shit about Kuwait. April Glaspie basically said so, despite her recent lying about the incident in an interview. In any event, we didn't really give a shit about Kuwait, and never needed to force Iraq out of Kuwait. Saddam was never going to invade Saudi Arabia, and if he had, it probably would have been good for the US in the long run.

It's utter bullshit to say that we need to get involved in every fight between two countries in the world, just because it "might" "somehow" destabilize things enough that we can't get our oil.

Let's try waiting until it looks like that might actually happen before we plow in and fuck things up.

Not to mention that it's bullshit that any of that is the actual reason the US gets involved in wars. The US gets involved in wars because SOME people in the US MAKE MONEY FROM THOSE WARS. It's that fucking simple.

And anybody who can't comprehend that is a total idiot.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 5, 2008 9:47 PM

Kirchick doesn’t seem to respect his readers’ intelligence much. Saying Iran and the usual suspects are bad is where the thinking begins and ends for him, it would seem. What he doesn’t recognize is that knowing that is necessary but not sufficient for formulating good policy. He seems to think that an authoritative rendering of this judgment precludes the need for further analysis and discredits anyone who insists on conducting it.

Posted by jason | April 5, 2008 10:31 PM

buerman, you might notice - if you doen't have their heads stuck somewhere unpleasantly ignorant - that the Bush junta made minimal efforts to battle Al Qaeda after December, 2001, paid tribute to the regime that, next to the Taliban, gave the most money and aid to al qaeda, Pakistan, and has acted in the friendliest way possible to Saudi Arabia, who from 2003 to 2007 was the paymaster for the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Bush has a knack for palling around with the leaders of places that kill Americans. Of course, he's sorry in his heart for some Americanss who've been killed. For instance, the Blackwater death squad casualties he cries a little tear for, every night. Otherwise, he's your usual conservative monster. You must have noticed that, since you don't have your head stuck somewhere unpleasant, do you?

Posted by roger | April 5, 2008 10:55 PM

Will Allen, no one here is arguing for isolationism, so you seem to be spending a lot of time repeating "we have to be engaged in the region" a bunch of times. We don't need massive military bases near major holy sites of Islam to maintain a navy presence in the Persian Gulf to ensure that pirates, etc. interrupt the flow of oil. We don't need to financially support the Israeli government, and thus make the settler program cheaper than it would otherwise be for the average Israeli, to keep our Navy in the area. We could open up diplomatic channels with Iran, which is far more internally liberal than Saudi Arabia, and buy their oil as well while at the same time using sticks and carrots to make sure they don't get nukes. After all, the main reason they want nukes is to deter an attack from the US or Israel. There is a difference between engaging in a region and meddling in a way in which one's hubris leads one to believe they can micromanage the internal politics of far-off lands to our liking with a great deal of success. This fallacy is partly why we're so hated in the region.

Posted by Reality Man | April 5, 2008 11:45 PM

It's amazing that someone so stupid as to lead the villagers with torches to the fireworks factory because "well, the place is unstable, so something needs to be done," thinks he has the right to condemn anyone else for "magical thinking."

The notion that the common Iraqi has more power over his government than he did under Saddam Hussein is just fucking stupid. Nearly 20% of them don't even have homes now you thuggish twit. How much control do you think (heh - I asked Will Allen "do you think," as if his idiotic posts didn't demonstrate that he clearly has never had a thought in his head) they exercise? What about the tens of thousands butchered by your tribe's malice?

And what would happen if Iraq's government simply said "leave now, eliminate all of your troops on our soil, and declared their support for Al Queda?" Do you think that illusory "self-governance" would stand for a moment?

I get to be a sanctimonious prick because I didn't vote for incompetence and brutality. You did.

You whine about how unstable things were previously, so you support further destabilization and murder so you can steal their resources. You are a thug, a thief, and an idiot.

Where's your plan for fixing Iraq?

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | April 6, 2008 12:26 AM

Go ask the Marsh Arabs or the Shia in general if they have more input as to their governance today, compared to when they were ruled by the Tikrit clan. What a dope.

Hack, you are illiterate or psychotic. Please show where I have wrtten the word "Israel" even once. You, and others here, are also apparently too dumb too grasp that when you are the major purchaser of natural resource x, you become the defacto ally of whatever political entities give you the most critical access to natural resource x, which in this case mostly means the the House of Saud, because it is your money which helps that entity stay in power, and you also thus become the enemy of whomever opposes that entity. Guess what? When you fill your gas pump, you are taking the side of the House of Saud, because your money is aiding them. Just how stupid are you people? Actually, don't answer that, given that there are people here who still can't grasp the implications of fungibility, causing them to jabber about Venezuela and other nonsense. Now, sell your cars, and move into your tents, if you don't want to be seen as taking sides in the political conflicts of the Persian Gulf, thus becoming a combatant in those conflicts.

Posted by Will Allen | April 6, 2008 5:13 PM

I do want to single out mq for spectacular examples of non sequiturs. To mention just one, saying that population x has been a major customer of the political elite in country y does not mean population x is solely responsible for the political culture in country y. Of course, mq is too dim to grasp that, yes, the United States does have a superior political culture to Saudi Arabia, so none of this is too surprising.

Posted by Will Allen | April 6, 2008 5:21 PM

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