Um, tenandout, Condi Rice grew up in that Jim Crow South that you say is a myth. You can argue about which region is more prejudiced now and I wouldn't know who is right, but obviously you have no credibility on the subject.

Posted at January 26, 2008 3:18 PM in response to Stereotyping Muslims

That in response to the claim that hundreds or thousands of Palestinians would die, along with dozens of IDF people. Apparently then, the loss of human life isn't so important.

Posted at January 26, 2008 3:09 PM in response to Hamas Defeats Israeli Blockade. What Next?

Erica, I haven't seen the movie and it's possible I'd agree with you if I did. But it's probably more likely I wouldn't, based on what the following two links say--

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/010608a.html

http://tomdispatch.com/post/174877/chalmers_johnson_an_imperialist_comedy

I'm not sure how to do links here, so you may have to cut and paste.

Posted at January 13, 2008 5:17 PM in response to More on Charlie Wilson's War

Glad you were here, Seth. I don't have the energy to type what I think of this terrorist supporting crap. Unita--my God. I have no intention of watching this stupid movie, mainly because I gather it glorifies the kind of people who supported mass murder overseas.

Posted at January 11, 2008 4:43 PM in response to More on Charlie Wilson's War

Why shouldn't I whine when my candidate loses elections? That word "whining", of course, is meant to be dismissive. If I think the mainstream is wrong, then it's my civic duty to point out that people are voting for the wrong candidates. You, I take it, would call that "whining".

Posted at November 8, 2007 8:16 PM in response to The Reasoning of Ralph Nader, In Brief

I haven't read Packer's book, but people who have tell me it's both worth reading and also infuriatingly dishonest about people who were right all along about the war.

There are other reporters in Iraq who seem worth reading to me. Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, and Nir Rosen come to mind. I'll stick with them and ignore Packer.

Posted at October 8, 2007 1:41 PM in response to A Footnote on Kanan Makiya, George Packer, and Learning from Errors

I wouldn't go there if I were you. Yeah, Israel and the US were partners in the Cold War. Israel often stepped in to support brutal dictators, for instance, when the US ostensibly wasn't going to do so.

Tony Karon was mentioned here. As he can tell you, Israel and apartheid South Africa were allies. Israel also helped train and arm Guatemala's security forces, the same ones that murdered 200,000 people. Israel actually has a long rather ugly history of arming rightwing murderers.

Which doesn't make them worse than the US, of course. I suspect there was some under the table agreement between various US administrations and Israel about having them support unsavory regimes when Congress tied the Administration's hands, but I have no proof of this.

Posted at October 7, 2007 11:00 AM in response to Time to weigh in on the Israel lobby debate

Not to question your deceased friend, but during the Korean War the US leveled most of the towns in both North and South Korea. I'm not going to hunt for the quote online, but Curtis LeMay later said the US bombing killed a million people. Other estimates vary from several hundred thousand up to 2 million civilians.

So frankly, I doubt the US military leadership was overly concerned about the deaths of Korean civilians and I don't think the US was innocent of war crimes in its aerial bombing policy in Korea. Perhaps it was just as you say in the opening stages, but far too often Western nations with air superiority rationalize doing whatever they want to do with it. (See Israel in Lebanon in 2006 for a recent example.)

Which is not to say that your friend wasn't torn up inside by his experience. But I've long since stopped believing what Western generals and politicians (American, Israeli or others) say about their humanitarian intentions.

Posted at October 1, 2007 5:30 PM in response to The Dead Children of Palestine

Arafat turned down the Camp David offer in the summer of 2000 and a great many people think he was right to do so. His unwillingness to jump on the possibility of a better agreement at Taba is where I think one could blame him. He thought the new Bush would be like the old Bush and that he could get a better deal with him than under Clinton. A bad miscalculation. But I don't think that Bush and Sharon should be absolved for their share of the blame, as if Sharon's total lack of interest in offering the Palestinians a fair peace offer is somehow acceptable while Arafat's dithering is morally wrong. Bush, of course, is blameless, because he's too stupid to know what he's doing.

Posted at September 7, 2007 5:08 PM in response to Walt-Mearsheimer's Best Seller: Why the Hysteria?

Since I limited my critique of destor to this one instance and didn't suggest he be banned, nor did I suggest any criterion for banning destor, your post makes no sense except as a response to some imaginary one you thought I typed.

We are in agreement about that imaginary post. I'm just a little annoyed that you projected your imagined post on top of mine.

Posted at July 9, 2007 6:47 AM in response to Tufts Bans Review Likudniks Object To