Posted April 3, 2002

Sharon is now even turning off some neocons!

(That is if you call National Review neocon)

I have avoided National Review (and the WSJ) over the last week, I did not want to see the knee-jerk defense of Sharon.

SURPRISE!

Some National Review types, including Jonah Goldberg and Buckley, the patriarch himself, are making some impressive statements:

Goldberg:

...I can certainly imagine being critical of Israel. ... In fact, I oppose further settlements, don't like Sharon that much and have long favored a Palestinian state with the usual caveats that it not be just a staging ground for another anti-Israeli war. And I certainly don't like Israel's socialist economics. ... My problem with announcing these things is that it rewards the pompous bullying of the sorts of people who like to make lists.

But in this case I will make an exception.

Hey Jonah, it is even more important to say what is right when it is impolitic.  Your silence is cowardly, not defensive of your self respect.

Buckley (Extremely coherent, the crisis seems to have cleared his aging mind):

So then a U.S. initiative is needed, but it has to be more than a papal incantation on the virtues of peace.

President Bush should declare that the cause of a free and united Israel depends morally and strategically on the retrenchment of the settlements in the West Bank. Discounting East Jerusalem, we are talking of 200,000 settlers whose existence here and there in the West Bank is a nightmare for their own security and a pulsating trauma to Palestinians who yearn to govern territory that is theirs by not only by U.N. resolutions but by the logic of the strategic wheel.

Paleo-Libertarian types such as myself and many at antiwar.com need to reach out to these people, and encourage them to keep speaking up.

With even some neocons now opposing Sharon's agenda, that means an overwhelming American consensus is emerging.

Reminds me of late 60s, early 70s, when I and my conservative friends turned strong against the war (Prior to learning libertarian antiwar philosophy in the 80s).

R.O.

Borders Issue

I feel I just have to answer Noble Barean's write-in comments in which he challenges Mr. HaCohen to look at a pre-1967 map of Israel and see which group was where. I challenge Mr. Barean to look at a 1947 map of the same area since he places so much credence on maps, and see who was where then. Which map is right, Mr. Barean? Since I don't recall the Palestinians voluntarily placing their nation on the cutting block to be chopped into pieces and stolen from them without compensation, I can certainly understand that they may have a 50-year-old unresolved issue about borders and property rights.

~ CJW, Florida

Confused

I must say I appreciate your site and your coverage of articles about the state of war in the world, very much. I find a lot of information I can't read in Swedish papers or other media.

The American empire is blaming a lot of others for using violence and being terrorists. I'm therefor very pleased to read an article about schools in America and how they treat pupils using violence to each other. The problem is that it doesn't make sense to me. The empire's only way to solve problems in the world seems to be with weapons or threats. I fear the American children will be confused.

~ Stefan G., Sweden

Fantastic

I've been reading your columns and checking out the articles linked on your site since the beginning of The War.... I just want to say that I think you're doing a fantastic job and providing an invaluable service. Without your site, I don't know where my head would be regarding this sh*t. thanks.

~ Omar G., Canada

Hoping for a Miracle

I don't know about the rest of you, but for me there's a certain point where intellect simply fails: the image of Arafat crouching in candlelight on a bare floor while appealing for understanding to everyone from CNN to the leaders of nations around the world -- somehow that one puts me over the line. That's when this whole thing starts to really feel like that old Italian woman sitting in a chair inside her bombed out apartment building, and when Yossarian asks what in God's name has happened, only one thing remains to be said really, and the old woman says it, in that sad, slow Italian accent, repeatedly: "Cetch-a 22...Cetch-a 22."

But in those days war movies dared to have a sense of the ridiculous. Now, when the scene around Arafat's compound keeps getting mixed up in my mind with the scene in Dr. Strangelove where they send the US Army into the compound taken over by Colonel Jack D. Ripper (except I'm not sure if Ripper's being played Arafat or Sharon, and in that case who is Peter Sellers playing?).

When does violence escalate so beyond a tolerable level that it becomes, ipso facto, a caricature fit for Mad Magazine? When does Arafat, candlelit and subsisting on US Army-supplied MREs, turn into, say the Incredible Hulk? And am I wrong, or doesn't Sharon sort of already resemble one of those bald, wrinkle-foreheaded bad guys in Dick Tracy? And will President Bush ever again lose the smug self-righteousness he exudes in every photo I've seen of him lately? What did James Coburn say in The President's Analyst: "I'm not paranoid, they're all spies!"

Is there anything an ordinary American citizen can do to convey to the rest of the world the horror most American's feel at this escalation of events in the Middle East? I include myself in this question -- because, like many people, I'm overwhelmed by what has seemed a continuous barrage of Bad News, ever since the morning of September 11th, whether we like to admit that date as "watershed" or not. One terrible problem for me personally -- and I 'm sure this is also true for a great many people -- is that I'm a member of a generation that came of age (euphemistically, at any rate) during the great decades of visionary science fiction. By this I mean the 1960s and 1970s -- the works of Bester and Dick and Farmer and Le Guin and Ellison, to name only a few. You see, we read all about it years ago. We read about terrorists and so-called smart bombs and evil computers and people's individual lives, basically, not being worth the corporate stationary they're printed on (think, rather: imprinted on, at least pending layoffs).

I really don't have adequate words for the sorrow and horror I feel at what is happening to our world, to people who, other than seeing chaos in each others' eyes, see nothing at all -- no god, no human friendship, no possibility of ever returning home. It makes my intellect mush, and my conversation weary. I don't know what I hope for -- a miracle maybe. You just kind of wonder what God's doing this holiday weekend. ...We could really use some help.

~ NL

Rapprochement

Your website is an important source of news! For 5 months I wrote a column for a local alternative paper, "Undercovered," about news of the war in Afghanistan not covered by major media, and this turned out to be the single most important source. Thank you.

I have an idea for you. My son and his wife are on the West Bank now, working for two weeks with International Solidarity Movement, and the Palestinian host group is Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between people. Their web site is www.rapprochement.org. If you sign up for the rapprochement e-mail list, they send bulletins about what is happening each day. Internationals, using themselves as human shields, have gotten medical help into the bombarded buildings in Ramallah, have been protesting the past two days in front of invading Israeli tanks, and are staying with Palestinian families in refugee camps near Bethlehem, hoping that if they stay with the families, the families will not get bombarded.

~ Kate G.

Blackmail

I'm no expert on war matters, or strategies or what not. But ... [Justin Raimondo's] articles regarding a possible Israel conspiracy in the 911 matter gets me thinking these last couple of days.

Mr Bush's behaviour, as well as his team, seems quite weird in the light of what is happening in the middle east, especially in Palestine. He has become quite silent on the massacre that is taking place in Ramallah, as if nothing was happening. Worse, the irony of telling Mr. Arafat to stop the terrorism while he is being besieged is out of this world.

So, I thought, maybe Israel is blackmailing the US in this way: "If you do anything to stop us from butchering our neighbours, we will tell the world that you hired us to do the 911 terror bit in New York, so you could have your way in Afghanistan and get to the oil", and so forth.

~ Mme Diane C., Canada