At the FPA Blogs (Semi-Self Indulgence Alert)

There are a great deal of changes under way at the Foreign Policy Association Blogs. We are consolidating the largest network of global affairs-related blogs into a series of categores. My Africa Blog will now be in the category of "Africa and the Middle East" and will include Africa, Egypt (not up yet), Iraq, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, and Middle East. I will be serving as both Senior Blogger and the Senior Editor for this category. I hope you'll continue to check out my Africa blog, the blogs in my category, and the network as a whole.

The newest addition to these blogs is Reza Akhlaghi, the first addition under my watch. He is our new blogger on Iran and his first post is must-read stuff. Here is my introduction of Reza at the Iran Blog.

Bad Arguments

In today's Foundation for the Defense of Democracies News & Notes Cliff May wrote something that did not sit well with me:

BAD NEWS IS NO NEWS? FDD's Andy McCarthy notes that The New York Times reported on the plot at JFK airport on page 37 on Sunday. He notes:

Page One, meanwhile, features such cutting-edge news as: "In a New India, An Old Industry Buoys Peasants" (about brick making), "After Sanctions, Doctors Get Drug Company Pay," and, of course, "Fingers That Keep the Most Treasured Violins Fit." Good to see the Upper West Side still has its finger on America's pulse.

First off, the Sunday New York Times, especially the front section, is oftentimes planned well in advance of the Sunday it is to appear. Criticizing almost any major national newspaper for its Sunday edition not having a lot of hard news on the front page is kind of, well, ignorant. Or willfully dishonest. You choose. And never mind the conceit of deciding to pick on other news stories, as if India's economy isn't something of a big deal, as if medical ethics are something not to be worried about and as if every newspaper in the country has not, at some point or other (read: almost every day) included soft news on its front page. No, I'm instead going to emphasize a story that the Times did cover the next day: "Paperws Portray Plot as More Talk Than Action." Uh oh -- maybe not so good for self-righteous knee-jerk blatherers. And these lines are not going to help:

But the criminal complaint filed by the federal authorities against the four defendants in the case — one of them, Abdel Nur, remained at large yesterday — suggests a less than mature terror plan, a proposed effort longer on evil intent than on operational capability.

(Ms. Mauskopf noted in her news release that the “public was never at risk” and told reporters that law enforcement “had stopped this plot long before it ever had a chance to be carried out.”)

At its heart was a 63-year-old retired airport cargo worker, Russell M. Defreitas, who the complaint says talked of his dreams of inflicting massive harm, but who appeared to possess little money, uncertain training and no known background in planning a terror attack.

“Capability low, intent very high,” a law enforcement official said of the suspects.

So what we have is a group of people and one in particular with self-important ideas about what they might accomplish were money, logitics, time and expertise not barriers. Scary, but maybe not gnashing our teeth, j'accuse against the "mainstream media" scary.

This leads us back to Andrew McCarthy's blistering but largely nonsensical screed at National Review Online. In fact, let's look at McCarthy's column a bit more closely. I'll block quote his words and then will respond.

War is about breaking the enemy’s will. Having laid bare the sorry state of our brains and our guts, jihadists are now zeroing in on the will’s final piece: our hearts.

I'd love to say that I hope that the rest of the article is not this execrably written. But of course I absolutely hope the rest of the piece is this execrably written. What fun would it be otherwise?

That is the central lesson to be gleaned from Saturday’s news that four Muslim men have been charged with plotting to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport, and with it much of Queens.

Really? That's not the lesson I draw, and presumably I'm on McCarthy's side, at least broadly speaking. (This is the time for full disclosure -- McCarthy is the director of the Center of Law & Terrorism at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. I was a faculty fellow with FDD in 2003 and have continued to maintain informal ties with the organization since.

We now learn that for radical Islamists, lovers of death, the heart is the jihad’s most coveted prize. Tear it out, and you get to kill not once but twice. So says 63-year-old ringleader, Russell Defreitas, whose nom de guerre is, of course, Mohammed.

I'm a little bit worried that he is taking this heart metaphor too literally. He then quotes Defreitas:

Any time you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to do to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow!... They love John F. Kennedy like he’s the man…. If you hit that, this whole country will be in mourning. It’s like you can kill the man twice.

Jihadists are bad. There is no doubting that, which is why few sane people doubt it.

Defreitas, er, Mohammed is a naturalized United States citizen. He is another splash in that gorgeous mosaic of American Islam — the one over whose purportedly seamless assimilation the mainstream media was cooing just a few days ago, putting smiley-face spin on an alarming Rasmussen poll.

The courteous thing to do would have been to have explained why that Rasmussen poll was so alarming and why the "mainstream media" was so wrong. I, for example, would like to see if "seamless assimilation" is McCarthy's phrase or if it is the media's. I have my suspicions. I guess I'll never know. I was able to track this down, but it does not argue what McCarthy says it argues. Again -- the courtesy of letting us know what you are talking about would be appreciated. Thanks.

Alas, Defreitas/Mohammed turns out to be the part of the story the press dutifully buried in paragraph 19: He is that nettlesome one of every four American Muslim males who thinks mass-homicide strikes against civilians, like the one he and his cell were scheming, are a perfectly sensible way to settle grievances.

Wait -- every media outlet that produces printed words "buried" the story in paragraph 19? Is this hyperbole? Is there a specific story to which he is referring? Plus, why the word "nettlesome"? unless someone has used that word you appear to be placing it in the mouths of others. That seems dishonest. And since the USA Today story I just liunked discusses the one in four figure, and since the USA Today is nothing if not meainstream, and since no reasonable person believes that suicide bombing is a "perfectly sensible way to settle grievances," who exactly is the target of the ire dripping from this paragraph? (Note: I've no idea if ire drips. It might ooze. Or fester. I'm unclear of its viscosity.)

Does this mean he never really assimilated during his long journey from Guyana to treason against the adopted country he so abhors? Not hardly. For that one in four Muslim males turns out to be in pretty much the same place as one of every two members of the United States Congress — already tacking toward two of every three as we look ahead to September. All are content to let Islamist savagery carry the day.

Three questions: 1) Did he really just use the phrase "Not hardly" in an article in a major American intellectual journal? (That question is rhetorical -- the answer is yes.) 2) Did he really just compare the one in four Muslim males who embrace terrorism to half and approaching two-thirds of Congress? (It's rhetorical -- the answer is, yes, he did. That's pretty fucking bold.) 3) Did anyone else have to read that paragraph three times to get any sense of what he was trying to say? (See my opening salvo re: execrable writing).

Militant Islam, you see, is mustered in Iraq, where al Qaeda — the inspiration for Defreitas and his cohorts — has called America out. Like Defreitas & Co., Osama bin Laden and his ranks see themselves in a world war between the United States and a vision of Islam shared by tens of millions. (Think one-in-four, writ large). Iraq, they have decided, is their frontline, though very far from their only line. Everywhere, America is their target. Everywhere, terror — the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent men, women, and children — is their weapon of choice.

Well, first, militant Islam is not only, exclusively, or even largely mustered in Iraq. A sign of this? The subject of your freaking article. He apparently is "mustered" in the United States. Osama bin Laden? Not in Iraq. Otherwise this is cut-rate Victor Davis Hanson hypermasculine prose determined to tell us what a bad ass the writer is when he's not sitting behind a keyboard. (You may recall that I sometimes have issues with Hanson as well.)

For the new Democratic Congress and its growing wake of jittery Republicans, that turns out to be a choice worth living with. Oh yes, they’ll sputter about how barbaric and unsavory it all is. But, like those one in four Muslim males, they’re prepared to let terror rule the day. That’s the plan: Al Qaeda blows up things and people; we leave, grumbling all the way home about civil wars and intractable hatreds between the Religion of Peace’s murderous sects; and al Qaeda triumphs … with bin Laden reminding his acolytes: See, I told you, they’re a paper tiger — make it bloody for them and we win.

I'd love to be able to focus on the substance of the argument, which is pretty shoddy. But the writing just keeps distracting me. His first line of the paragraph says that Democrats and some Republicans are living with a choice. What is the choice? Where has he indicated that these people are looking at two options and weighing them? Where the hell is the NRO editorial staff? Meanwhile, this conservative tactic is beginning to piss me off -- agree with every single element of their argument or else you are not only wrong, you are "prepared to let terror rule the day." It's odd how McCarthy and his ilk are prepared to let Osama dictate our policy when it is convenient for them. It also fascinates me how more and more Americans are beginning to question some of our policies in Iraq and elsewhere and yet the logical conclusion that some of our Ultimate Fighting Champions of the Keyboards can draw is that all of those people are willing to coddle terrorists.

Naturally, we’ll tell ourselves they’re not winning at all. They want Iraq? Let ‘em have it. Just like — when they killed enough of us — we let ’em have Lebanon in 1983 and Somalia in 1993. Who, after all, needs these hellholes?

The Lebanon-Somalia argument has some merit, I suppose. But unlike those situations, we have stuck it out in Iraq for quite a long time -- a lot longer than in either Somalia or Lebanon. Longer than we were involved in World War II or Korea. So while in the general contours the analogy might make some sense, it really is fairly poorly applied in this case. Plus, does leaving Iraq really mean that we would be giving up waging war or otherwise containing Jihadists, terrorists, what have you? It seems pretty daft to place the world in these categories in which remaining in Iraq to the bitter end is the only gauge of seriousness.

Except … militant Islam doesn’t just want the hellholes. It wants everything. It will take the hellholes. For now. But don’t think for a second they’ll be appeased.

True for what it's worth. But since when does leaving Iraq mean that we are going to let them storm Jones Beach, or goosestep down Newbury Street, or roll tanks down Rodeo Drive? And what of the reasons for Iraq's chaos? In what possible way has this administration earned our trust in him to the point that we ought to blindly follow his policies?

The appetite grows as it feeds. Jihadists won’t stop until they break our will. Give them Somalia and they want the World Trade Center. Give them Iraq and they want JFK … and Fort Dix. They’re coming for us, they’re only too delighted to tell us they’re coming for us, and still we’re stunned when their insatiable hatred draws a bead smack in the middle of our shrinking comfort zone — this time, where a thousand flights move 125,000 people every single day.

First off, turn off the automatic cliche generator for a few minutes, will ya? Second, what on earth is the parallel between Somalia and the World Trade Center? Third, what is this idiocy that if we leave Iraq we are ready to yield JFK or Fort Dix? (And how little respect do you have for the troops at Fort Dix to think they would lose it? Why do conservatives hate our troops?) Would it kill you to stop making dumb arguments? Are you being paid by the dumb argument? If so, the day this article appeared was a profitable one, sir.

It wasn’t merely on the flights and the unlucky infidels that Defreitas and his confederates set their sights. The complaint filed by the government explains that the “brothers” wanted to do “something bigger than the World Trade Center.” Defreitas had worked at JFK. He knew its ins and outs. He wasn’t interested in the passenger terminals — that would be child’s play. He homed in on the fuel tanks and pipelines, thousands upon thousands of flammable gallons. Enough to outdo September 11. Enough to decimate the economy. Enough to make of Queens what Ahmadinejad vows to make of Israel … and, eventually, America.

Yes, scary that. But, as the Times article I linked to above indicates, almost surely unworkable even on a smaller scale than his mildest delusions imagined. Whatever happened to realistic assessment of threats with the understanding that wasting resources for pie in the sky ideas takes them from actual threats? Why has the conservative insurgency chosen to run headlong from competence?

Defreitas and his fellow jihadists, most haling from Guyana but with ties to Trinidad’s ruthless Jama’at al Muslimeen (the Muslim Group), wanted to do their part in what they unflinchingly called “the war for Islam.” They wanted to kill JFK, and kill us. A second time.

Yes. And they had virtually no chance of succeeding. None. And they have been caught. So how, exactly, is this an object lesson for remaining in Iraq? My head is in actual physical pain from the illogic.

They know there’s a war out there. Not just Iraq or Afghanistan, but Dar al Islam and Dar al Harb — jihadists versus civilization. Global. For us to win, it will not be enough to stabilize Baghdad, sow democracy and empower moderates. It’s about breaking the enemy’s will, as they are working feverishly to break ours.

Poorly written, but fine as par as boilerplate goes. Nothing we don't know, of course. And at least in this paragraph he's not implying that those who disagree with him are akin to Jihadists. So he's got that going for him. Which is nice.

Thanks to excellent police work, this time they were stopped. But there will be a next time, and another. The jihadists know what’s at stake. Do we?

Yes, in fact, I think we do. And I think that honest debate and discussion, and not demonizing those who disagree with your foreign policy prescriptions, might be the best way to continue to protect America and our allies. Your piece, however, is not an example of honest debate. And seriously -- it is very poorly written.

Victor Davis Hanson and the Search For Untruth

It has been apparent for some time that Victor Davis Hanson's ultimate goal is to be the rootinest, tootinest, toughest hombre ever to sit before a word processor. The short, direct sentences! The Hemingwayesque phrasing! The muscular assertions! Don't support the war? You are an effete lefty pussy. Probably a liar as well. You wouldn't last one minute at the OK Corral that is the Hoover Institute's Palo Alto, where men like their whiskey straight, their six-shooters drawn fast, and their women swooning.

Unfortunately, there is an almost direct inverse relationship between Hanson's Landisesque testosterone infusion over the last five years and his fatuousness. His latest article is a case in point. So it's time for a long overdue dcat parsing. Let's see how well Hanson holds up to scrutiny. I'll place Hanson's words in quotation marks and will precede mine with *** . And away we go:

"'This war is lost,' Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid recently proclaimed.

That pessimism about Iraq is now widely shared by his Democratic colleagues. But many of these converted doves aren't being quite honest about why they've radically changed their views of the war."

*** An accusation of dishonesty is pretty ballsy from someone who has already framed the discussion so dishonestly, isn't it? Who among the candidates of whom he speaks qualifies as a dove? A dove would oppose most or all wars. So Hanson has a pretty immense burden -- it is incumbent upon him to prove dishonesty, and also to prove that opposing a bungled Iraq War qualifies as "dovish." I'll trust that he will do so.

"Most of the serious Democratic presidential candidates -- Sens. Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd, and former Sen. Jonathan Edwards -- once voted, along with Reid, to authorize the war. Sen. Barack Obama didn't. But, then, he wasn't in the Senate at the time."

*** This is fine as far as it goes. But surely a historian is not going to ignore that things change over time. He is not going to pretend that the last four-plus years never happened. Is he?

"Now these former supporters of Iraq find themselves under assault by a Democratic base that demands apologies. Only Edwards has said he is sorry for his vote of support.

But if the Democratic Party is now almost uniformly anti-war, it is also understandable why it can't field a single major presidential candidate who was in Congress when it counted and tried to stop the invasion."

*** Yup. That's precisely what he is going to do. I'll give him credit for cajones not only for making such a brazenly intellectually dishonest argument, but for doing so seconds after framing the issue as one of fundamental dishonesty on the part of the Democratic candidates. When you write like the Marlboro Man you can pooh pooh niceties such as intellectual integrity. That shit's for vegans and stay-at-home dads.

"After all, responsible Democrats in national office had been convinced by Bill Clinton for eight years and then George W. Bush for two that Saddam's Iraq was both a conventional and terrorist threat to the United States and its regional allies."

*** And "responsible Republicans" cried foul every single time Clinton used even a hint of force against Saddam Hussein throughout the 1990s. And Saddam Hussein was neither the only nor was he the most significant threat in the post-9/11 world. So Hanson is raising a glib red herring. (And Hussein would not have been a threat had George W. Bush removed him from power when ther opportunity was before him, but that would not fit the partisan trope, so we'll ignore it.)

"Most in Congress accepted that Saddam was a genocidal mass murderer. They knew he used his petrodollars to acquire dangerous weapons. And they felt his savagery was intolerable in a post-9/11 world. There was no debate that Saddam gave money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers or offered sanctuary to terrorists like Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal. And few Democrats questioned whether the al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist group Ansar al-Islam was in Kurdistan."

*** Absolutely. No one denied that then. No one denies it now. Which is why its assertion here and now means fuckall. That Saddam was a potential threat did not mean that we had to go to war in March of 2003, and it did not mean that we had to handle that war incompetently at every point, and it does not mean that we have to line up behind incompetence now. I frankly believe we need to stay in Iraq now, but to imply that not following this administration's chosen course is to coddle Hussein is about as brazenly dishonest as an argument can get.

"In other words, Democrats, like most others, wanted Saddam taken out for a variety of reasons beyond fears of WMD. Moreover, it was the Clinton-appointed CIA director George Tenet who supplied both Democrats and Republicans in Congress with much of the intelligence they would later cite in deciding to attack Saddam."

*** And it was the Bush administration that manipulated intelligence and heard only what they wanted to hear while ignoring countervailing information. George Tenet does not have the power to declare war. Only in a partisan screed would Tenet's appointment by Clinton be necessary to invoke.

"When both congressional Democrats and Republicans cast their votes to go along with President Bush, they even crafted 23 formal causes for war. So far only the writ concerning the fear of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction has in hindsight proven false."

*** Fair enough. But of those 23 a good number were predicated on the threat Saddam posed then based on WMD's and such. The Democrats were dumb to endorse what amounted to a blank check. And we've been over this before -- in the hierarchy of reasons the administration put forward, WMD's were first, second, and third among equals. To conflate these all as being of equal value is absurd.

"But we no longer hear much about these various reasons why the Democrats understandably supported the removal of Saddam Hussein. Instead, they now most often plead they were hoodwinked by sneaky warmongering neocons or sexed-up partisan intelligence reports."

*** "They" do? Who, exactly? Let's see some evidence that a single one of the Democratic candidates have this simplistic a stance. Hanson is brilliant at creating straw men, knocking them down, and then claiming some sort of heroic victory. Straw men, after all, do not fight back. It's a simple question, really: Does Hanson think that absent the WMD claims the Democrats would have voted to go to war with Iraq? Is there evidence for this counterfactual? It is a shame that the pre-war intelligence got mucked up as badly as it did, but given that the Democrats were not in power in either Congress or the executive, Hanson's argument sounds remarkebly like passing the buck.

"There is nothing wrong with changing your mind, especially in matters as serious as war -- but the public at least deserves a sincere explanation for this radical about-face."

*** Hanson is being ironic, right? He's winking at us through the smoky prose? He must be. Because surely he is not making an argument about being honest to the American people and aiming it at Democrats. Is he?

"So why not come clean about their changes of heart?"

*** Once again -- an assertion absent evidence to make a fairly brazen accusation.

"Many Democrats apparently think that claiming they were victimized by Bush and the neocons is more palatable than confessing to their own demoralization with the news from the front."

*** Wait a second: did you not lead off your article -- this one, the one we are all so enjoying, the one that is providing so much insight and entertainment, the one with the swagger and panache that makes weak men cower, with the following lines?: "'This war is lost,' Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid recently proclaimed.
That pessimism about Iraq is now widely shared by his Democratic colleagues." Why, yes, you did. So what you seem to mean by Democrats being unwilling to confess to their own demoralization actually is "The Democrats are so clear about their demoralization that I am going to lead my article off with what I believe is a telling quotation about that demoralization." My version is not as testeronalicious, I know, but it is honest and -- wait for this one -- fair.

"Others may fear that admitting publicly that a disheartened America should not or cannot finish a conflict would send a dangerous message to our enemies. So while these Democrats accuse President Bush of being hardheaded and unwavering on Iraq, they are still afraid that their own mea culpas would send an equally dangerous message of inconsistency abroad."

*** You are predicating this all on an argument you concocted in the mean streets of Palo Alto: that the Democrats actually want to apologize but are too dishonest to do so. And yet Occam's Razor might lead us to another conclusion: that knowing what they knew and when they knew it, they authorized the president to use force. They now believe, based on four years of incompetence, that it was a mistake. You want them to come shamefaced before you based on nothing other than a fantasy you have concocted that will fit in nicely with your views of Democrats. It's cute and clever and all, but it ignores a recent history that tells us a lot more than this paper-thin scenario you have created out of whole cloth.

"Democrats need to admit the truth: that removing a dangerous Saddam Hussein and promoting democracy in his place seemed a good idea to them in 2003-4 when the cost appeared tolerable. Now, in 2007, with over 3,000 American lives lost in Iraq, they feel differently."

*** This is the most reasonable thing you have written thus far, which is why it does not follow from everything else in the article. And it is still pretty inane. There is more to any anti-war argument, even the worst of them -- and there are lots of bad ones -- than "3000 American lives lost in Iraq." The reductionist cant is getting to be too much. I hope the article is almost finished.

"In other words, Democrats could argue that somewhere along the line -- whether it was after Fallujah or the start of sectarian Sunni-Shiite violence -- they either lost confidence in the United States' very ability to stabilize Iraq, or felt that even if we could, it was no longer worth the tab in American blood and treasure."
*** Yes, because these are the only options. Nothing to do with mishandling of the war. Nothing to do with torture. And of course Democrats do in fact make both arguments that you claim they are unwilling to make. But they do so in a way more sophisticated than your simplistic approach allows, so reduce away! No complexity! Complexity is for the tofu and birkenstocks crowd. No surrender!

"That confession could, of course, be nuanced with exculpatory arguments about the mistakes made by those in the Bush administration, such as: 'Our necessary war that I voted for to remove Saddam worked; your optional one to stay on to promote democracy didn't.'"

*** If you're wondering if he just created words to put in the mouths of the Democrats to make the Democrats look bad and the Republicans to look good, he did. Clever!

"Such an explanation of turnabout would be transparent and invite a public discussion. And it would certainly be more legitimate that the current protestations of 'the neo-cons made me do it.'"

*** It's sort of embarassing to have to tell a respected senior professor this, especially one with such a visible platform in the punditocracy, but quotation marks actually have a purpose. When you create a quotation that no one actually has said, and when you ascribe it to people who think differently from you, that is intellectually dishonest. It is sloppy. No one in the Democratic Party has ever uttered those words. Again, the irony would be staggering given the theme of the argument, but hairy-chested Old Spice men such as Victor Davis Hanson sneer at irony -- that shit is for metrosexual English professors.

"With America still engaged in a tough war, that kind of excuse-making just doesn't cut it."

*** Leave it to Hanson and his ilk to remind us that we are in a war. I still have no idea what excuse-making he is referring to, as he has asserted but not shown as much, but I am glad he closed with such a vibrant example of the Hanson style.

There are arguments for and against the war, there are arguments for and against the surge, there are arguments for and against troop withdrawal. Hanson manages to make absolutely zero of these arguments in this piece. Intellectual honesty really is not a sign of weakness. It's too bad that too many folks on both sides of the debate have not picked up on this reality.

McCain on The Daily Show

Wow. Jon Stewart just kicked the crap out of John McCain in a discussion on Iraq on The Daily Show to the point where McCain's only recourse was to try to filibuster, not allowing Stewart to get in a word while McCain spewed boilerplate and invoked his service to claim moral superiority. (Isn't it funny how fickle the GOP is on how and when one can invoke military service to try to invalidate what are fundamentally policy and political arguments?)

One of the fundamentally intriguing aspects of this discussion was that it shows how politicians live in a hermetically sealed and insulated world. Their debates follow rules that allow them to spew without engaging the opposition. The media, pro or con, has to accept a certain level of soundbiting and talking points. But when a smart person from outside of the Beltway has a chance to challenge them they often show an inability to react. When pushed on his talking points McCain showed an inability to adjust. He just tried to talk longer and faster. This apparently is what passes for "Straight Talk" from the engineer of the Straight Talk Express.

Iraq: Who's Winning, Who's Won?

Foreign Policy has a special feature on who is winning in Iraq. They provide a list of ten, with Iran at the top. Some of the individual articles are subscriber only, but you get a pretty good sense of the whole from what you can access. Suffice it to say, the United States does not slip into the top ten.

Quick Hits

Two worthwhile pieces today over at TNR online:

Rick Perlstein uncovers what he calls "the most perversely successful propaganda campaign in American history," namely that liberals sold out Vietnam in the last years of that conflict, abandoning our troops in a time of need and thus stealing victory in that conflict.

Meanwhile Joshua Kurlantzick explains why conservatives, for all their anti-State bombast, actually love, or at least need, Foggy Bottom. It comes down to reality versus rhetoric, not surprisingly. It is easy to lambaste the State department, but the reality is that the rle of the foreign service is vital, and conservatives in power know this as well as anyone. But why let facts get in the way of a good meme?

Norm Goda on Saddam's Execution

I intended to post it when it appeared last week, but HNN has a must-read article on Saddam's Execution from Ohio University's Norm Goda. As a dubious bonus, you can read a tired rehashing of all of the old, irrelevant hobby horse anti-Israel arguments that the usual suspects bring forth even in an article that has virtually nothing to do with Israel.

A Donnybroook at the Plank

I'm in the middle of a good old fashioned donnybrook over at The Plank. In comments related to a post about Lieberman, things have turned heated about the old "chickenhawk" meme. While I'm not defending the administration I am trying to get people to clarify some of their thoughts. And maybe not to refer to everyone in the administration as "pussies' and "cowards." Go see for yourselves.