Week of December 15, 2008

I propose a new rule for civil discourse in a civilized society: anyone who compares what the Nazis did to the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust with what the Israelis are doing with regard to the Palestinians, has disqualified from being taken seriously on any issue relating to Jews, Israel or the Middle East. Such people have a right to express their obscene and barbaric views, just as anti-Semites are entitled to express views denying the Holocaust. But they should be treated as pariahs by all decent people who believe in nuanced and calibrated consideration of complex and divisive issues. Comparison between the Holocaust and Israel is simply beyond the pale of reasoned discourse. It belongs to that genre of hate speech that includes claims that blacks are racially inferior, that women enjoy being raped and that all gays are pedophiles. No one who holds such views should ever be appointed to a position of trust and responsibility that requires fair judgment and an ability to distinguish truth from falsity—especially with regard to the Middle East.

Today's progressives apologize to the world for America's treatment of terrorists (not a single one of whom has been executed). Franklin Roosevelt, when faced with German saboteurs (who had caused not a single casualty), had them electrocuted and buried in numbered graves next to a sewage plant.

It is amusing that Andrew M. Cuomo, who owes his whole career to his dad, may not get the Senate seat of Hillary Rodham Clinton (who owes her whole career to her husband) because David A. Paterson (who owes his whole career to his dad) may give it to Caroline Kennedy (who owes her whole career to her dad).

You would think a state as large as New York could find someone who deserves something on his or her own.

KARL: On Sunday, John McCain said that the national security team that has been established by President-elect Obama -- Clinton, James Jones, Robert Gates -- this is a team that he could have assembled. How do you assess this incoming team?


CHENEY: Well, I must say, I think it's a pretty good team. ... And while I would not have hired Senator Clinton, I think she's tough, she's smart, she works very hard and she may turn out to be just what President Obama needs.

The Depression -- let’s call it what it is -- leaves us, well, depressed.  But there is very good news from around the world.  Our enemies are collapsing under the strain of dropping oil and gas prices.  What we had all hoped conservation and off-shore drilling would achieve, the global economic collapse is accomplishing: the defeat of OPEC, Iran, Chavez, Putin and the weakening of the financial underpinnings of Islamist terrorism.  In each of these nations, the hold of the dictator is weakening as, one after the other, they face the consequences of dropping oil prices.

I have been in archives where I saw a rat scurry across the floor. I have unearthed worms gnawing through documents. I have seen people weep, sleep, and get angry in archives. I have even seen an archivist pass out from too much drinking at lunchtime. But I have never been bored in an archive. It is a place where Faulkner's often quoted observation -"The past is never dead. It's not even past." - takes on real meaning.

President Bush is trying mightily to rewrite the history of the Iraq war before his administration leaves power. He and members of his national security brain trust, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, would like to dispel the narrative that they misled the country into war. Instead, both Bush and Rice are trying to characterize the White House as the unwitting recipient of faulty intelligence.

In recent interviews, both Bush and Rice have expressed regret that the prewar intelligence about Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction proved to be seriously flawed.

"I don't know - the biggest regret of all the presidency has to be the intelligence failure in Iraq," Bush said in an ABC interview when asked if there was one"do over" he would like to have."A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein."

The president's attempt to disassociate himself from accountability for the phony pretext for war is simply outrageous. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, were not just two guys in a crowd of"a lot of people" who were worried about Hussein's weapons capability. They were elevating the hysteria about Iraq at a time when some of this nation's most important allies were openly skeptical of U.S. claims of Hussein's weapons cache and capabilities.