No head start this week, and didn't have much time on Sunday what with going to a Global Learning Center panel on Israel/Palestine (Laura Tillem was one of the panelists). Still came up with the following links and comments:
Josh Marshall: Sorry. Iraq Wasn't a Good Faith Mistake. It Was Based on Lies. Fox News is on a kick of asking Republican presidential wannabes whether "knowing what we know now" they would still have invaded Iraq in 2003. Most candidates answered no, they wouldn't invade, although it did take Jeb Bush two guesses to get the right answer. Frank Conniff tweeted: "Stop asking GOP candidates about Iraq War. It distracts us from their stupid & incoherent thoughts on a host of other issues." Actually, they remain pretty stupid and incoherent today. Whether they would have invaded is only part of the question. Another is whether they would have contrived the phony evidence Bush and Cheney collected to support their predisposition to go to war. Marshall explains:
While it's welcome to see the would-be heirs of President Bush, including his own brother, acknowledging the obvious, this history is such a staggering crock that it's critical to go back and review what actually happened. Some of this was obvious to anyone who was paying attention. Some was only obvious to reporters covering the story who were steeped in the details. And some was only obvious to government officials who in the nature of things controlled access to information. But in the tightest concentric circle of information, at the White House, it was obviously all a crock at the time.
While it is true that "WMD" was a key premise for the war, the sheer volume of lies, willful exaggerations and comically wishful thinking are the real story.
Marshall got some catcalls for this piece, at least from those who remembered that he was one of the ones suckered into supporting Bush's folly. Many of us knew better at the time -- even if we didn't know exactly which points were fabricated, we had better instincts, mostly because we had learned painful lessons from previous wars. The real question that the presidential candidates (Clinton included) should be asked is what have they learned from the Iraq War experience? Given how many of them are itchy to rejoin and escalate the war against ISIS, it doesn't look like they learned enough.
Paul Krugman (Blinkers and Lies) repeats the point then adds something more:
Finally, and this is where Atrios comes in, part of the answer is that a lot of Very Serious People were effectively in on the con. They, too, were looking forward to a splendid little war; or they were eager to burnish their non-hippie credentials by saying, hey, look, I'm a warmonger too; or they shied away from acknowledging the obvious lies because that would have been partisan, and they pride themselves on being centrists. And now, of course, they are very anxious not to revisit their actions back then. [ . . . ]
But back to Iraq: the crucial thing to understand is that the invasion wasn't a mistake, it was a crime. We were lied into war. And we shouldn't let that ugly truth be forgotten.
I want to emphasize one more point here: the lies weren't just what the Bush administration told us about Saddam Hussein and Iraq. They also lied to us about ourselves (who America was and what US troops could and would do) and about themselves (what Bush's own ambitions were for the war). And those lies worked mostly because they built on self-delusions that Americans have been telling themselves for years, especially since the nation turned its back on reality in electing Ronald Reagan in 1980. That, too, was known (or knowable) at the time: I recall John Dower writing that the occupation of Iraq would not resemble the US occupation of Japan not only because Iraq is not Japan but also because America now is not the same country America was then. It's an easy (and sobering) exercise to sort out both sides of that ledger, and that's all it should have taken. But politicians in America aren't selected for their grasp of history. They are, rather, elected for their ability to flatter voters, telling us how wonderful we are, how capable, how competent, how righteous, how magnamimous. That's a much bigger crock than the one Marshall sees. Indeed, it's the one that swallowed him up.
Richard Silverstein: Israeli Government Most Racist, Extremist in History:
Israel named its new cabinet yesterday and the names are a Who's Who of the most rabid, racist, brutal and cruel politicians in the nation. The only one who rivals them and is missing from the show is Avigdor Lieberman, who's bowed out for political reasons of his own. In the past, nations of the world have isolated individual leaders of nations and refused to visit or meet with them because their ideas are so noxious that they fall outside the consensus of international discourse. Kurt Waldheim and Jorg Haider are examples of this. The time has come to put the Israeli government in herem. You can pick your poison among them as to which deserves special ostracism.
This intro is followed by quotes, their "Greatest Hits of Hate," with Naftali Bennett's "I've killed many Arabs in my life and there's no problem with that" and Eli Ben-Dahan's "In my opinion, they are beasts, not humans" singled out, although I'm not sure those are worse than the many cancer analogies. Not everyone managed to score an obscene quote. Some were noted for their felony records. And for an example of exception-proving-the rules, there's Benny Begin (son of terrorist prime minister Menachem Begin): "ejected from [Likud] Party leadership during last party primaries for his so-called 'moderate' views; apparently he's been included as a moderate fig-leaf for an extremist government." I remember Begin when he was a young firebrand trying to outflank his father, so score one for maturity, and subtract two for the rabid drift that has managed to make him look good (albeit only relatively).
Richard Silverstein: AIPAC Wants Congress to Criminalize BDS: I have three points to make about BDS (the boycott-divest-sanctions movement against Israel's occupation and apartheid regime): one is that if Europeans and Americans reject BDS they'll be sending a message to Palestinians that violence is their only resort. The other is that BDS is something America and Europe routinely does to express disapproval without resorting to war -- the difference here is that by starting with individuals and private organizations BDS is a grass roots movement, not just something imposed by state powers for their own purposes. Third is that Israel is enough of a democracy that its political response should be fluid -- as opposed to dictatorships (North Korea being the most extreme example) which have only been hardened by sanctions. BDS finally imposes a (small) cost on Israel for acts it gets away with the way most bullies do, and that's their basic response to BDS. Gandhi on non-violent political movements: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Trying to outlaw BDS is the kneejerk reaction of bullies. With all due respect to AIPAC's Congressional prowess, I can't see Americans abandoning their right to free speech just to let Israel ignore criticism. Indeed, it looks like AIPAC's proposal is somewhat more circuitous in that what it seeks to do is impose trading sanctions on Europe if Europe implements BDS through some back door TPP-like mechanism. Looks like Gandhi's stage three.
Richard Silverstein: GOP's Go-To Jews: One of the classic anti-semetic tropes is the suggestion that Jews are secretly running things, pulling strings to exert inordinate power. In the old days such aspersions were demonstrably untrue, but the trope seems due for a comeback, partly because one can point to real-life examples like these. And while truth be told Adelson et al. are acting more like pompous billionaires than Jews, they make matters worse when they wrap themselves in the Israeli flag and use their influence to prod the US into self-destructive wars in the Middle East.
Over the past week, the media has exposed several critical relationships between major GOP presidential candidates and their key Jewish donors, including Sen. Marco Rubio and Scott Walker. Though I didn't coin this term, it's apt to call these individuals "go-to" Jews; or in older parlance, they are the Court Jews who provide access for the pro-Israel community to the arenas of power.
Rubio has for years enjoyed the patronage of Norman Braman, a wealthy Miami auto-dealer. Braman has not only heavily financed the Senator's campaigns for state and federal office, he's employed both Rubio and his wife and engaged in an extensive set of financial relationships with them involving gifts, loans and other support.
But in just the past week or so, an even greater Jewish (blue and) white knight has emerged to bless Rubio's candidacy: none other than Sheldon Adelson. It seems the self-made fat cat Jews who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps are enamored by Rubio's life story of growing up poor as a Cuban immigrant and making something of his life in the contemporary version of the American Dream. The media report that Adelson has decided to go "all-in" with Rubio, as he did with Newt Gingrich in the last presidential campaign. Politico adds that Paul Singer, the Likudist hedge fund billionaire, is joining Rubio's camp as well.
I'm wondering when Adelson's involvement with the Chinese mob, including offering his blessing to Chinese triads engaged in gambling, prostitution and loansharking at his Macau casino, will catch up to him. GOP presidential candidates are delighted to take his $100-million (in the last election cycle -- likely to rise to $200-million in the 2016 cycle). But when will the moment come when the public will realize how dirty Sheldon's money is and severely penalize candidates who've availed themselves of it? This is a ticking bomb for Republicans. Adelson is a golden teat, till he isn't.
Walker's sugar daddy is Larry Mizel: "paving the way for Scott Walker's visit to the Holyland, where he will presumably make a pilgrimage to the Stations of the GOP pro-Israel cross. . . . Walker, having no previous pro-Israel credentials given his role as Wisconsin governor, is strongly in need of a pro-Israel heksher (kosher certification), which Mizel provides."