World Rallies to Palestinian Cause

The headline at CNN reads "World Rallies Around Palestinians Amid Gaza Offensive," but for all practical purposes it should read, "World Endorses Destruction of the Jewish State."

As I noted this morning, it would not matter how many Israelis were killed before Tel Aviv launched its retaliation. None of it matters to a world community in which the Jewish state will always be branded the aggressor, and where terrorists and murderers are aquitted as "victims." Israel will always be found at fault, simply because it is Israel. It is the only successful democracy in the region. It's free, democratic, and humane. It's women enjoy rights that no neighboring regime grants to their women, including Iraqi Kurdistan. It's moral values are unparalleled, which helps explain why the Jewish state is in danger today. It's introspection is so prounounced as to be debilitating. But Israel is the outpost of Western values in the Middle East. It's existence challenges the reign of barbarism, from Gaza to Southern Lebanon to Tehran. Those who back the Palestinians don't care about proportion. They want destruction of Israel and the decimation of moral right. This is what it's about, readers should have no illusions.

Look at that picture above, via Fox News. Ehud Olmert is no terrorist (and don't even get me started on the demonization of George W. Bush). To a degree unseen in past Israeli prime ministers, Olmert empathizes with - no, grieves for - the Palestinians. Early this month Olmert defended his administration's vision for Middle East peace, indicating that he was like none those that came before:

Israel is the strongest country in the Middle East. We could contend with any of our enemies or against all of our enemies combined and win. The question that I ask myself is, what happens when we win? First of all, we'd have to pay a painful price.

And after we paid the price, what would we say to them? "Let's talk." And what would the Syrians say to us? "Let's talk about the Golan Heights."

So, I ask: Why enter a war with the Syrians, full of losses and destruction, in order to achieve what might be achieved without paying such a heavy price?

...In the absence of peace, the probability of war is always much greater. A prime minister must ask himself where to best direct his efforts. Are his efforts directed toward making peace or are they directed constantly toward making the country stronger and stronger and stronger in order to win a war?

...What I'm saying here has never been said by a leader of Israel. But the time has come to say these things. The time has come to put them on the table.

And for this he's vilified as a terrorist?

Readers should spend a few minutes with David Keyes' essay at Commentary, "Sderot Under Siege." I'll leave this passage as a reminder of Israel's tradition of restraint, which has sadly left a bitter wasteland of fear among those within range of Gaza's rockets:

It must be said if General MacArthur or General Patton were in charge, there would be no Qassam problem. The residents of Sderot would sleep like babies—in their own beds. Both Generals would begin with the recognition of Gaza as enemy territory and Hamas as pure evil—unrepentant terrorists who seek the destruction of Western Civilization. Both Generals would occupy Gaza immediately with ground troops and without hesitation. They would pursue total victory and vanquish any semblance of resistance. Both would succeed beyond our wildest expectations. Gaza is an infinitesimally small piece of territory and a rather large joke compared to the mighty Nazi state and once ruthless Japanese army, both of which were defeated and pacified at the hands of MacArthur and Patton. Not a single cent would be spent by either General on absurd plans to shoot down rockets from Gaza . That’s defeatist and passive, they would say, and that’s not how winners act.


The reason why Israelis have not found a solution to the Qassams is simple: they’re Israelis. Jews care about what others think and they’re moral to a fault—a very big fault. But there is nothing moral about the depraved state in which the launching of almost 6,000 rockets can pass without an overwhelming retaliation. There is nothing sane about restraint in the face of a vicious war waged upon you. A bumper sticker on a beat-up maroon-colored car in Sderot reads “A Time to Love.” But this is not a time to love. It is a time to hate; it is a time to war; it is a time to win. In other words, it is a time to be American. If 6,000 rockets were launched at San Diego from Tijuana , rest assured that the residents of Tijuana would have little trouble finding parking because their city would be flattened. There would be no talk of ceasefires. America would wage war, it would win, and the rocket fire would cease.

But defeatism is one of the most prevalent characteristics in Israel today. Ask an average Israeli if it is possible to defeat Hamas and the answer is invariably “No.” No where is this resignation more apparent than the government. In 2005, Ehud Olmert said: “We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies. We want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies." Contrast that with Winston Churchill in 1940: "We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France and on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender…”

Why have Israelis become so timid? It is in no small part because they have been bombarded for so long by so many enemies. Nearly 10,000 rockets have struck the homeland in the past few years. Put simply, a rocket attack on Israel is no longer the big deal—the supreme violation of decency and act of unspeakable terror—that it once was. Israeli President Shimon Peres exemplified the problem when he blurted out “Qassamim Shmamamim,” the Hebrew equivalent of “Qassams Shmamams.” This is no different than the phenomenon of brushing aside the daily murderous statements of Hamas leaders like Ahmad Bahr, former Speaker of the Parliament, who openly called for the slaughter of Jews “down to the very last one.”

Read the whole thing at the link.

Pamela Geller has more on the global left's reaction to Israel's exercise in self-defense (and self-restraint).

International Reaction to Israeli Self-Defense

This photograph, so deeply offensive and saddening, has gotten me thinking once again:

The image is available at Ralph Peters' essay, and the caption reads: "Propaganda: Activists around the world, like this woman in Spain, protested Israel's airstrikes."

As Peters indicates at the article:

DEAD Jews aren't news, but killing terrorists outrages global activists. On Saturday, Israel struck back powerfully against its tormentors. Now Israel's the villain. Again ....

Yes, Israel's always identified as the villian, but folks shouldn't comfort themselves by suggesting that it's only the global left-fringe that's demonizing Israel's airstrikes. It's not just global activists denouncing Tel Aviv's "disproportionate" response. This morning's Wall Street Journal indicates that the United Nations has decried Israel's "excessive" force, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy has done so as well. It's clear by now that without the United States Israel would be standing alone against the forces of global postmodernism and appeasement to terror. The response at the U.N.'s General Assembly is the diplomatic equivalent to the swastikas on Spanish antiwar protest banners. People need to take a look around. Israel stands at the center of a global culture war. From international institutions, to the halls of heads of government, to the streets of the nihilist left's demonstrations, the plague of moral equivalence keeps creeping up - gaining strength just a month after Mumbai's demonstration of nihilist destruction - like a modern-day Black Death.

Here's Melanie Phillips, thankfully, on the left's smear of "disproportion":

All too predictable – and going to plan, with assistance from the Club of Terror U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who condemned ‘excessive use of force leading to the killing and injuring of civilians’, and Navi Pillay, the ludicrous U.N. High Commissioner for ‘Human Rights’, who ‘strongly condemned Israel’s disproportionate use of force.’ Of course, the Club of Terror U.N. has been silent about the actual violations of international law by the Palestinians, as pointed out here by Justus Reid Weiner and Avi Bell ....

But for exercising its legal duty in accordance with international law, Israel is condemned and told to stop by politicians such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband. The moral inversion is staggering. Miliband has called for an immediate ceasefire by Israel. The implication is that Israel should suffer the Palestinian rockets attacks indefinitely.

If anything has been ‘disproportionate’, it’s been Israel’s refusal to take such action during the years when its southern citizens have been terrorised by rockets and other missiles raining down on them from Gaza. No other country in the world would have sat on its hands for so long in such circumstances. But whenever Israel defends itself militarily, its response is said to be ‘disproportionate’. The malice, ignorance and sheer idiocy of this claim is refuted here comprehensively by Dore Gold, who points out that Israel’s actions in Gaza are wholly in accordance with international law. This permits Israel to launch such an operation to prevent itself from being further attacked ....

Those who scream ‘disproportionate’ think – grotesquely - that not enough Israelis have been killed. But that’s in part because Israel cares enough about human life to construct air raid shelters where its beleaguered civilians take cover; Hamas deliberately stores its rockets and other apparatus of mass murder below apartment blocks and in centres of population in order to get as many of its own people killed as possible as a propaganda weapon. Hamas is thus guilty of war crimes not just against Israelis but against the Palestinian people. Yet on this there is – fantastically, surreally – almost total silence in the west, which blames Israel instead. Historical resonances, anyone?

As I've noted in my previous essays, what's most disturbing about the outbreak of war is the reaction on the left to Israel's actions. Again, readers should have no doubt, the left's denunciations against Israel are rhetorical displays of those Spanish protest banners. For the postmodernists, for all intents and purposes, the Israel state is the new Nazi regime. Melanie Phillips gets it. Caroline Glick gets it. And my friend Stogie at Saberpoint gets it, and I'll give him the last word:

We can expect the mainstream media to once again portray the Muslims as victims and the Israelis as aggressors. The overwhelming number of news photos coming out of the conflict depict Palestinians wailing over fallen comrades, or wounded ones with blood on their faces, being helped to the hospital. There are the usual photos of fat Muslim ladies with their mouths wide open in faux horror as they pose for the news cameras, and dusty wreckage of some Palestinian shithole recently renovated by Israeli ordnance. There are never any pictures of dead Israelis, or Palestinian rockets, or mutilated bodies of kidnapped and murdered Israelis. Even Fox News contributes to this gross imbalance in news coverage.

As for you, Palestinians, who rejoiced when your fellow barbarians murdered 3,000 Americans in 2001, I rejoice in the righteous destruction and long overdue payback for your evil, your barbarian savagery, your murderous and false religion. You have earned every bomb and every bullet, and since we don't practice Islamic finance, there will be a great deal of interest due with every payment. Enjoy.

The New Culture War, Belatedly

In California, in the days following the November 4th election, we saw the beginning of the latest stage of the left's cultural war on American traditionalism. The passage of California's Proposition 8 sent left-wing activists to the streets in force, and the initial demonstrations were organized by the ANSWER coalition, the left's leading neo-Stalinist antiwar outfit. Black passersby were atttacked with racial epithets, and show trials sent into hiding those who had made small contributions to the Yes on 8 campaign. As I noted at the time, we saw "the frontlines of the new culture war take to the streets this past week." The continuing controversy in subsequent weeks, seemingly peaking of late with the left's outrage at Barack Obama's selection of Rick Warren for the inaugural invocation, only confirms the point.

There's of course been tremendous commentary on this across the blogosphere, so I'm not quite sure why Rick Lowry - who's the editor at National Review - is just now announcing "The New Culture War" with reference to the Warren backlash:

Barack Obama's election was supposed to signal the end, or at least the diminishment, of the cultural issues that the GOP had feasted on electorally for 30 years. The "wedge issues" of old had been a Republican contrivance anyway, and once freed of them, American politics would be more praiseworthy (and, not coincidentally, more liberal).

This storyline lasted all of a few weeks, as Obama's inaugural ceremony has become embroiled in a nasty cultural spat. In a nice (and shrewd) gesture, Obama invited the evangelical Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation Jan. 20. The ensuing firestorm sheds light on two questions: Is there a real culture war in this country, deeper and more abiding than any one political party's electoral strategy? And who is the aggressor in it? The answers, respectively, are "yes" and "the cultural left."

I guess it's good that Lowry's announcing a new culture war? Maybe those who really engage the leftist blogosphere have a better handle of the scale of the left's ideological program. But there's no mistaking the stakes involved in the latest partisan battles. The reaction to the passage of Proposition 8, and now the Warren flap, reveals most of all the undemocratic nature of the left's hardline base constituency. These folks are even turning off folks of more classic civil rights sensibilities. Check out this for example, from the comments at Frank Rich's Saturday New York Times column:

I've been an advocate of gay marriage for 20 years but the behavior and uproar of the gay community has turned me against them and their causes the way no right-winger or religious nutjob could ever do.

How dare they make this inauguration all about them! Warren has said equally horrible things about the pro-choice community but you don't see us demanding he be scalped. That's because we're focused on the policy.

Gays have only themselves to blame for the passage of Prop 8. They did ZERO outreach to the black and latino communities. They were so arrogant that they did not mount a proper opposition to Prop 8. When it passed they started looking for people to blame - stalking donors to Prop 8 and castigating blacks.

The more the gay community rants and attacks their allies, the more they will harm their cause. Calling Obama a bigot, homophobe and traitor (as many have) doesn't make me want to storm the barricades against Prop 8. It might also make Obama drag his feet in getting around to those issues.

Someone like this is perhaps a 1960s-era Democrat, someone who sees a genuine goodness in progress on civil rights and would like to extend those protections to gays, however ill-considered on the question of gay marriage (which in not, in fact, a civil right). The writer naturally recoils at the totalitarianism coming from the activists willing to demonize anyone who stands in the way of this agenda. I'm sure the brutality of the left's ideological program is shocking to those who don't battle it on a daily basis.

Whatever the case, Rich Lowry and his brethen at the traditional conservative media outlets should be jumping on these issues a lot faster. The radical oppositionalism of the left was seen literally within hours of Obama's victory last month. The left basically claimed vindication for their hardline agenda, and the backlash against Obama we've seen in the Warren case is a preview of the intraparty battles we can expect for the next four years. Obama has resisted endorsing the hard-liners' position, but folks on the right shouldn't become complacent or assured of moderation as the Obama administration ramps up. On abortion we'll be seeing the most substantial rollback on the pro-life agenda since Roe v. Wade. On gay rights it's only a matter of time before Obama introduces legislation to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, and then the Obama Justice Department will promote litigation at the state level to overturn bans on same-sex marriage across the federal system.

People should not forget Obama is a poststructural law professor by training, and he earned his political bona fides by doing community organizating in Chicago, a leftist city like no other in the United States. The new stage of cultural war is upon us, no doubt. Barack Obama's tactics toward the left's ultimate goals will be surreptitious, but no less implacable.

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.

George W. Bush: Moral Clarity Against Evil

A new CNN poll finds 75 percent of Americans are glad the Bush administration's time in office is coming to an end. Meanwhile, expectations are high for the incoming Barack Obama administration. A new Gallup poll shows that President-Elect Obama is the most admired man in the world, and Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman.

The Gallup survey offers a bit of an explanation for the findings on Obama, with an apt comparison to President Bush at an early period of presidential popularity (the stage of the president's term matters significantly in these comparisons):

The 32% of Americans naming Obama as the man they most admire is extraordinarily high, nearly matching the 39% of Americans who named George W. Bush in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks. At that time, Bush's presidential job approval rating was a soaring 86%. It is also higher than former presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush received in any of their appearances on Gallup's Most Admired Man list.

In a recent post I noted that for all of his failures, President Bush's willingness to stand up to our enemies, to stand up for what's right, is his greatest strength. Americans saw that in him at the time of our nation's greatest contemporary crisis, and I'm confident that history's record will look back favorably on this administration, with its accomplishments in foreign affairs, as providing a model of leadership that future administrations will emulate. To say this is controversial, of course. Yet, public opinion shows Bush fatigue most of all, we should note, and uncertainty about current economic times as well. Still, it's heresy to evince such favorable opinion, considering the deep well of Bush-hatred that been built up on the left, not to mention the role the liberal press has had in delegitimizing the administration's politics and policies.

In November, the New York Times published a brief roundup of exit opinions on the administration among a handful of commentators. I liked those of former press secretary Ari Fleischer best:

I’ll miss President Bush’s moral clarity. The president’s critics hated his willingness to label things right or wrong, and the press used to bang me around for it, but history will show how right he was.

Shortly after 9/11, the president gave a speech in which he talked about the fight between good and evil, and that good would win. Afterward, I told him I thought he was being simplistic: “There are a lot of shades of gray in this war. I think it’s more nuanced.”

He looked at me and said, “If this isn’t good versus evil, what is?”

Then he reminded me that when Ronald Reagan went to Berlin, he called on Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” — not to put a gate in it or to remove some bricks. Mr. Reagan said to tear it all down.

Mr. Bush saw the presidency as the place to call the American people to big challenges — in morally clear terms. As his spokesman, I knew that many people would be uncomfortable with how easily he made such moral judgments. I also knew that many Americans welcomed his tough, direct and unambiguous moral clarity.

I’ll miss that direct talk. In the age of terrorism, the one thing we have to fear more than anything is moral relativism.

When Israel was attacked during the Bush years, the president always stated that Israel had a right to defend itself. After 9/11, he never referred to Israel’s counterattacks as a “cycle of violence.” He understood that when a democracy strikes back against terrorists, it’s not a “cycle.” It’s self-defense.

We haven’t been attacked since 9/11, Libya no longer has nuclear weapons, Syria was stopped from acquiring them, Saddam Hussein is gone, and Iraq is on its way to being a nation that fights terrorism — all on President Bush’s watch. His job approval may now be low, but he should leave office with his head held high. I hope his successors recognize the strength that moral clarity can provide.

We'll be seeing a large number of essays on the Bush legacy in the coming weeks. Few of them will be favorable, except those from die-hard right-wingers who recognize now this administration stood firm against America's enemies and refused to cave to pacifist public opinion when the chips were down. That's an American legacy people will remember long after talks of subprime crashes and multi-billion-dollar bailouts have long been forgotten.

Tom Cruise and Valkyrie

I attended "Valkyrie" with my oldest son yesterday afternoon.

I've read three reviews so far, and we find a consensus in this limited sample that Valkyrie's strength is its grand scale and director Bryan Singer's skill in keeping things moving when little fast action fills the screen.

Manohla Dargis at the New York Times hits on the main theme I've heard from the man-on-the-street scuttlebutt: Tom Cruise's performance, with his American accent, falls short in its portrayal of German aristocrat and officer Claus von Stauffenberg. Dargis discounts the movie's historical benefits, but her mildly offhanded take on Stauffenberg makes an interesting comment on the film's fabulous cinematography:

He’s a complex character, too complex for this film, which like many stories of this type, transforms World War II into a boy’s adventure with dashing heroes, miles of black leather and crane shots of German troops in lockstep formation that would make Leni Riefenstahl flutter.

The reference, of course, is to Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," but actually we don't see Nuremberg-scale rallies in Valkyrie, rather instead are crisp troop line-ups, and especially an attention to detail in German military uniforms, and the combination together provides a panorama of historical significance that I'd like to see more at the movies.

At the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan make a grudging case for the movie's excellence, suggesting the offering's "a perfectly acceptable motion picture." Perhaps the Wall Street Journal's roundup up of late-year Oscar contenders puts it best, stressing the film's historical value:

Two dramatic arcs intersect in "Valkyrie," a big, old-fashioned action adventure starring Tom Cruise as Claus von Stauffenberg, the aristocratic German army colonel who, in 1944, led the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. In addition to the plot itself, there's the arc of Mr. Cruise's career, from "Risky Business" to the riskier business of embodying an authentic German hero in a lavish English-language production with limited suspense; the audience - at least some of it - knows that the plot failed. So how does the film work? Well enough, in the end. Mr. Cruise's performance turns out to be brisk and reasonably plausible, though unexceptional, while the production as a whole succeeds as an elaborate procedural, impressively staged in historical locations ....

Once the plotters plunge into action, though, "Valkyrie" becomes both an exciting thriller and a useful history lesson. Younger members of the audience may not have known that the Nazi army's officer corps contained nests of determined resistance to Hitler's madness.

Video Hat Tip: Great Satan's Girlfriend.

Christmas 2008

Here's to wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!

The painting is Sebastiano Ricci's, The Adoration of the Magi, 1726. The background on the work is here.

Ricci was one of the great Venetian artists of the late Baroque school. His Wikipedia entry indicates he had a rough personal life, although his influence on the development of Baroque painting and Rococo design was apparently substantial.

Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays?

My wife and I got back a couple of hours ago from last-minute Christmas shopping. We picked up a couple of more nick-knacks from Target, and we purchased some food for our Christmas Eve and Christmas dinners from Costco. On the way out the young doorman checked our receipt and thanked us, and wished us a Merry Christmas. I thought that was very nice, and I appreciate it.

My wife's in retail management and many stores wish their customers "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas." For some, the generic well-wishing is seen as a battlefront in the secular war on Christmas.

In any case, the "daily number" at Pew Research indicates that "a 45%-plurality have no preference for how they are greeted during the holiday season." But the Pew entry is oddly structured, even loaded in fact toward the "no preference" findings. The data are drawn from a poll in early December, which shows question wording and order playing an important role in determining greeting preferences:

When asked to choose between "Merry Christmas" and non-religious terms, most Americans (60%) say they prefer that stores and businesses greet customers by saying "Merry Christmas." Only one-in-four (23%) prefers the use of terms such as "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings," while 17% volunteer that they do not care which greeting is used.

But given the specific option of saying the choice of greeting really does not matter, a plurality does so. Asked a slightly different version of the question that, along with the two choices of preferred greeting, offers the alternative "or doesn't it matter to you?," 45% choose this last alternative. Only 42% say they prefer "Merry Christmas," while 12% prefer less religious terminology.

Most striking is the age difference in preferences for holiday greetings. Only among those ages 65 and over, does a majority (64%) opt for "Merry Christmas."

That preference declines across younger age groups with only 28% of those under age 30 opting for the Christmas greeting while roughly six-in-ten say the choice of greeting doesn't matter to them.

Several other groups stand out for their strong preference for the Christmas greeting. Even when explicitly offered the opportunity to say this issue doesn't matter, majorities of white evangelical Protestants (73%) and Catholics (53%) say they prefer "Merry Christmas." By contrast, a majority (64%) of seculars and nearly half (47%) of white mainline Protestants say this issue does not matter to them. Similarly, while more than six-in-ten Republicans prefer to be greeted with "Merry Christmas," nearly half (49%) of Democrats and a small majority (52%) of independents are unconcerned by stores' choice of holiday greetings.

Actually, being greeted cordially and thanked sincerely when shopping seems like a rarity in itself nowadays; and I'm not too worked up over the Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays trade-off. I do think the larger secularization of society is a disaster, however, and the findings on the narrow demographic cohorts who express a strong preference for the traditional Christmas greeting will certainly be welcomed by the atheists and Christmas-bashers working feverishing to completely banish religious expression from the public sphere.

In any case, here's wishing all of my readers, and any others who happen along here by chance, a wonderful Christmas Eve.

I'm having an earlier-than-usual family dinner and then I'll be heading out for Christmas Eve services at our church.

Enhanced Interrogation's in the Charts Again

I'm getting tired of the "debate" on torture. So many people, especially on the left, see this issue in black and white terms, and the leftists are particularly bothersome as they don't really care about the nuance of enhanced interrogation in the war on terror, because, frankly, they think we had it coming on 9/11.

Thankfully, Rick Moran - always a perceptive commentator - recently offered a clear interpretation of some of the issues surrounding torture, where he basically questioned the propriety of maintaining an absolute prohibition on torture:

There is no other issue in my lifetime except Vietnam that has elicited such passion in both defenders and detractors. At least with Vietnam there was, if not a middle ground, a gradation of opinion about our involvement and its legality. No such wiggle room exists on the torture issue. You either excuse it or condemn it. You either see the administration as blameless, trying to elicit information that would save us from another terrorist attack, or you believe war crimes have been committed in our name. Perhaps you see the application of torture as a matter of indifference or even justified during war time. Maybe you view the “enhanced interrogation techniques” as falling short of torture. Or maybe you believe that only a full investigation into detainee treatment followed by war crimes trials is the way to redeem the American soul.

Added to the opinion war now is a report issued (PDF required) by the Senate Armed Services Committee regarding the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. Even for those familiar with most of the details regarding Bush administration decisions about “enhanced interrogation” techniques, there is some new information as well as confirmation of the involvement of certain administration officials that directly implicates them in violations of U.S. law.

Read the whole thing, here. Moran's key insight at the passage is to suggest that perhaps there's some middle ground on the issue. As you may have noticed, he cites the Levin report, the "Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody," available on PDF (here).

The Wall Street Journal argued last week that the issuance of the report was just a "formality," as the Bush administration's guilt has long ago been decided in left's Star Chamber of public opinion. But this passage on "the torture narrative" is worth citing at length:

Nearly every element of this narrative is dishonest. As officials testified during Mr. Levin's hearings and according to documents in his possession, senior officials were responding to requests from the CIA and other commanders in the field. The flow was bottom up, not top down. Those commanders were seeking guidance on what kind of interrogation was permissible as they tried to elicit information from enemies who want to murder civilians. At the time, no less than Barack Obama's Attorney General nominee, Eric Holder, was saying that terrorists didn't qualify for Geneva protections.

This was the context in which the Justice Department wrote the so-called "torture memos" of 2002 and 2003. You'd never know from the Levin jeremiad that these are legal -- not policy -- documents. They are attempts not to dictate interrogation guidelines but to explore the legal limits of what the CIA might be able to do.

It would have been irresponsible for those charged with antiterror policy to do anything less. In a 2007 interview former CIA director George Tenet described the urgency of that post-9/11 period: "I've got reports of nuclear weapons in New York City, apartment buildings that are going to be blown up, planes that are going to fly into airports all over again . . . Plot lines that I don't know -- I don't know what's going on inside the United States." Actionable intelligence is the most effective weapon in the war on terror, which can potentially save thousands of lives.

We know that the most aggressive tactic ever authorized was waterboarding, which was used in only three cases against hardened, high-ranking al Qaeda operatives, including Abu Zubaydah after he was picked up in Pakistan in 2002. U.S. officials say the information he gave up foiled multiple terror plots and led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11. As Dick Cheney told ABC this week, "There was a time there, three or four years ago, when about half of everything we knew about al Qaeda came from one source" -- KSM.

Starting in 2002, key Congressional leaders, including Democrats, were fully briefed by the CIA about its activities, amounting to some 30 sessions before "torture" became a public issue. None of them saw fit to object. In fact, Congress has always defined torture so vaguely as to ban only the most extreme acts and preserve legal loopholes. At least twice it has had opportunity to specifically ban waterboarding and be accountable after some future attack. Members declined.

As for "stress positions" allowed for a time by the Pentagon, such as hooding, sleep deprivation or exposure to heat and cold, they are psychological techniques designed to break a detainee, but light years away from actual torture. Perhaps the reason Mr. Levin released only an executive summary with its unsubstantiated charges of criminal behavior -- instead of the hundreds of pages of a full declassified version -- is that the evidence doesn't fit the story. If it did, Mr. Levin or his staff would surely have leaked the details.

Not one of the 12 nonpartisan investigations in recent years concluded that the Administration condoned or tolerated detainee abuse, while multiple courts martial have punished real offenders. None of the dozen or so Abu Ghraib trials and investigations have implicated higher ups; the most senior officer charged, a lieutenant colonel, was acquitted in 2006. Former Defense Secretary Jim Schlesinger's panel concluded that the abuses were sadistic behavior by the "night shift."

Now that Mr. Obama is on his way to the White House, even some Democrats are acknowledging the complicated security realities. Dianne Feinstein, a Bush critic who will chair the Senate Intelligence Committee in January, recently told the New York Times that extreme cases might call for flexibility. "I think that you have to use the noncoercive standard to the greatest extent possible," she said (our emphasis). Ms. Feinstein later put out a statement that all interrogations should be conducted within the more specific limits of the U.S. Army Field Manual but said she will "consider" other views. But that is already the law for most of the government. What the Bush Administration has insisted on is an exception for the CIA to use other techniques (not waterboarding) in extreme cases.

As for Mr. Levin, his real purpose is to lay the groundwork for war-crimes prosecutions of Bush officials like John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Jim Haynes who acted in good faith to keep the country safe within the confines of the law. Messrs. Obama and Holder would be foolish to spend their political capital on revenge, but Mr. Levin is demanding an "independent" commission to further politicize the issue and smear decent public servants.

As Mr. Levin put it in laying on his innuendo this week, a commission "may or may not lead to indictments or civil action." It will also encourage some grandstanding foreign prosecutor to arrest Mr. Rumsfeld and other Bush officials like Pinochet if they ever dare to leave the U.S. Why John McCain endorsed this Levin gambit is the kind of mystery that has defined, and damaged, his career. We hope other Republicans push back.

Mr. Levin claims that Bush interrogation programs "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives." The truth is closer to the opposite. The second-guessing of Democrats is likely to lead to a risk-averse mindset at the CIA and elsewhere that compromises the ability of terror fighters to break the next KSM. The political winds always shift, but terrorists are as dangerous as ever.

Keep all of this in mind as you see the left ratchet-up its push for war crimes prosecutions in the weeks ahead. Vice-President Cheney's interview, not surprisingly, has been interpreted as fresh evidence against the "evil BushCo regime" among American antiwar communists. Democracy Now! has a new post up highlighting Representative Jerrold Nadler's call for for an independent counsel to investigate the administration, with quotations from Cheney's interview. But don't delay ... folks should go straight to Jonathan Karl's interview with Cheney at ABC News and read the facts for themselves. Not only has the U.S. violated no laws in domestic civil liberties, the international rights activists are using the outcry against American "human rights violations" as a nihilist cudgel to build the internationalization of law and the delegitimation of American great power sovereignty.

But note too: Even if we were to agree that rogue actions by aggressive U.S. service personnel were to fit the left's definition of torture, we must consider whether it's in America's national interest to condone and enforce an absolute prohibition against such practices. People must realize that there are circumstances in internationl life - times when a great many lives are placed at risk - when the question of enhanced interrogation efforts take on existential proportions. Why would any nation sacrifice its national survival, not to mention the protection of human life from the potentialities of enormous terrorist evil, when institutional structures are in place, and the bureaucratic regimes are capable, of establishing decision rules and procedures to regulate and legitimize the very procedures that are now being used to protect the homeland from the kind of destruction this country witnessed in 2001? To accept an absolute prohibition on such measures - which at this point have not been defined categorically as "torture" - would be to empower the antiwar forces who are de facto allies of America's most implacable enemies around the world.

This is the question that Barack Obama must consider upon taking office. People should get this straight in their minds right now: There will not be war crimes prosecutions against top-ranking members of the Bush administration. Even enthusiastic advocates of legal recourse against the administration realize that prosecutions are legally and political impossible (see Scott Horton, "Justice after Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration").

What we should see for the next phase of the U.S. terror war is how the new Democratic administration can implement an effective domestic regime of enhanced interrogation short of an exclusive resort to rendition of terror suspects to allied nations overseas. How this can be done is legalistically complicated. But whether it shoud be done is now only a matter of debate among the hard-left antiwar contingents. If Barack Obama's defense and foreign policy appointments are so far any clue, we may very well see the consolidation of the vigorous tactics of intelligence gathering under the Democratic policy establishment in 2009.