LEFT OF DAYTON
Why Aren’t More Americans Dancing To Israel’s Tune?
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By Max Blumenthal/Senior Writer for The Daily Beast
Posted January 5, 2009 | 08:17 AM (EST)
Almost as soon as the first Israeli missile struck the Gaza Strip, a
veteran cheering squad suited up to support the home team. “Israel is
so scrupulous about civilian life,” Charles Krauthammer claimed in the
Washington Post. Echoing Krauthammer, Alan Dershowitz called the
Israeli attack on Gaza, “Perfectly ‘Proportionate.'” And in the New
York Times, Israeli historian Benny Morris described his country’s
airstrikes as “highly efficient.”
While the cheerleaders testified to the superior moral fiber of their
team, the Palestinian civilian death toll mounted. Israeli missiles
tore at least fifteen Palestinian police cadets to shreds at a
graduation ceremony, blew twelve worshipers to pieces (including six
children) while they left evening prayers at a mosque, flattened the
elite American International School, killed five sisters while they
slept in their beds, and liquidated 9 women and children in order to
kill a single Hamas leader. So far, Israeli forces have killed at
least 500 Gazans and wounded some two thousand, including hundreds of
children. Yesterday, the IDF blanketed parts of Gaza with white
phosphorus, a chemical weapon Saddam Hussein once deployed against
Kurdish rebels. (more…)
Religious intolerance at Wright Patt?
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Unraveling Iraq:12 Answers to Questions No One Is Bothering to Ask about Iraq/By Tom Engelhardt
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12 Answers to Questions No One Is Bothering to Ask about Iraq
By Tom Engelhardt
Can there be any question that, since the invasion of 2003, Iraq has been unraveling? And here’s the curious thing: Despite a lack of decent information and analysis on crucial aspects of the Iraqi catastrophe, despite the way much of the Iraq story fell off newspaper front pages and out of the TV news in the last year, despite so many reports on the “success” of the President’s surge strategy, Americans sense this perfectly well. In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, 56% of Americans “say the United States should withdraw its military forces to avoid further casualties” and this has, as the Post notes, been a majority position since January 2007, the month that the surge was first announced. Imagine what might happen if the American public knew more about the actual state of affairs in Iraq — and of thinking in Washington. So, here, in an attempt to unravel the situation in ever-unraveling Iraq are twelve answers to questions which should be asked far more often in this country:
1. Yes, the war has morphed into the U.S. military’s worst Iraq nightmare: Few now remember, but before George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, top administration and Pentagon officials had a single overriding nightmare — not chemical, but urban, warfare. Saddam Hussein, they feared, would lure American forces into “Fortress Baghdad,” as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld labeled it. There, they would find themselves fighting block by block, especially in the warren of streets that make up the Iraqi capital’s poorest districts. (more…)
Photograph of Bill Clinton and Rev. Wright Surfaces
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The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and President Bill Clinton at a prayer breakfast at the White House in September 1998.
During one of the most difficult periods in the presidency of Bill Clinton, he addressed a group of clerics at an annual prayer breakfast in September 1998 just as the Starr report outlining his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky was about to be published.
Among those in attendance, was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., who is seen shaking hands with Mr. Clinton in a photograph provided today by the Obama campaign. Mr. Wright’s relationship with Senator Barack Obama, as his longtime pastor, has been the subject of considerable controversy in recent days because of incendiary excerpts of sermons Mr. Wright gave at their church, Trinity United Church of Christ, in Chicago. (more…)
Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think
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| A Book Americans Must Read Before Time Runs Out |
| by Michael Scheuer |
 Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really ThinkJohn L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed Gallup Press, 2008, 230 pp .A new book by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed ought to have a profound and transforming influence on Americans’ view of their government’s confrontation with Islam. The book, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, presents the results of six years of Gallup polling in the Muslim world between 2001 and 2007. “With the random sampling method that Gallup used,” the authors explain, “results are statistically valid with a plus or minus 3-point margin of error. In totality, we surveyed a sample representing more than 90% of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims, making this the largest, most comprehensive study of contemporary Muslims ever done” (xi). Based on this data, Esposito and Mogahed have determined that Washington’s conflict with Islam is “more about policy than principle” (xi). The pivotal findings of this massive study for U.S. national security pertain to the motivation of the Muslims who oppose the United States and the authors’ claim that “[o]ne of the most important insights provided by Gallup’s data is that the issues that drive radicals are also issues for moderates” (93).
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Barak Obama Isn’t a Muslim…But Over 1 BILLION People Are!
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The headline line grabbed me by the balls, eyeballs that is.
Obama: I Am Not a Muslim.
“I’ve been to the same church — the same Christian church — for almost 20 years,” Obama said, stressing the word Christian and drawing cheers from the faithful in reply. “I was sworn in with my hand on the family Bible. Whenever I’m in the United States Senate, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. So if you get some silly e-mail . . . send it back to whoever sent it and tell them this is all crazy. Educate.“
The Christian author Jim Wallis was on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart discussing his new book, the Great Awakening, last night, and one of the things he said was: “the dominance of the Christian Right over our politics is finally finished”. I really want to believe him, but, when I see politicians like Mr Obama flat out pandering to religious conservatives, acting like being called a Muslim was somehow a smear, something dishonorable, I have to wonder if that is in fact so.
Ok, Barak, we know you are “Christian”. We get it. But how about instead of taking the low road of defensive defiance you stop pandering to a right wing rumor mill?
A couple of your fore bearers were MUSLIM. Wake Up and Smell the Coffee. You want change?? Howzabout talking about being a president who has cultural roots that connect him to a world in which we are in the deepest ideological conflict. Isn’t it possible that you could use that heritage to reach out, to give substance to your call for CHANGE??
The High Road has you giving forth about tolerance, responding to the rumor mill with withering wit, dispatching the hate mongers to the political compost pile.The question to ask is why is it that being called Muslim can be used as a smear? Define the kind of people who would do that. Denounce them not because they called you a Muslim, but because what they did was bigoted & hateful.
THE CASE FOR TALKING TO TEHRAN: by Trita Parsi
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Israel is in state of strategic paralysis. Its longstanding policy on Iran — depict Tehran as a global threat, pressure Washington to prevent Iran from going nuclear, and evade an American-Iranian dialogue — has been dealt a severe blow by the recently released National Intelligence Estimate.
The Iran policy Israel has pursued to date must now be put aside and a genuine effort must be made to develop a Plan B that recognizes the new strategic realities in the region. A broad diplomatic opening between Washington and Tehran is increasingly likely, and it is a distinct probability that an American-Iranian deal will entail some level of enrichment on Iranian soil. Arab states can be expected to step up efforts at rapprochement in order to avoid lagging behind the United States in warming up to Iran, making a policy of containing and isolating Tehran more and more difficult to pursue.
Israeli interests, therefore, would best be served by Jerusalem throwing its weight behind genuine diplomacy with Tehran in order to ensure that it is not left out of an American-Iranian deal. (more…)
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