Antiwar.com Blog

Ran HaCohen is back and as BS-averse as ever. Check out “Abusing Anti-Semitism”. A sample:

Nowadays, an orthodox Jew can run for the most powerful office on earth, the president of the United States (I personally hope he doesn’t win). A Jew can be the mayor of Amsterdam in “anti-semitic” Holland, a minister in “anti-semitic” Britain, a leading intellectual in “anti-semitic” France, a president of “anti-semitic” Switzerland, editor-in-chief of a major daily in “anti-semitic” Denmark, or an industrial tycoon in “anti-semitic” Russia. None of this was imaginable a century ago. Jews have free and unlimited access to every institution in every country they live in; Ironically, a converted Jew is even mentioned as a possible successor to the Holy See. At the same time, “anti-semitic” Germany (home to the world’s fastest-growing Jewish community) gives Israel three military submarines for free, “anti-semitic” France has proliferated to Israel the nuclear technology for its weapons of mass destruction, and “anti-semitic” Europe has welcomed Israel as a single non-European country to everything from football and basketball leagues to the Eurovision Song Contest, and has granted Israeli universities a special status for scientific fund-raising.

Ran and I both have a Yom Kippur theme going today. What are the odds?

Great title from the Sunday Mirror. Iraq war quote of the day, from Lady Thatcher:

Britain should never have been involved and it will be very difficult to get our troops out in anything like the near future.

As a supplement to today’s article, “Toward a Meaningful Yom Kippur,” I’ll include these lines from Leonard Cohen:

You who build these altars now
to sacrifice these children,
you must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
and you never have been tempted
by a demon or a god.
You who stand above them now,
your hatchets blunt and bloody,
you were not there before,
when I lay upon a mountain
and my father’s hand was trembling
with the beauty of the Word.

–from “Story of Isaac”

I think this pretty well captures the madness of the pseudoreligious militarism that plagues the Middle East (not just Israel).

Continue reading ““Story of Isaac””

He might consider putting some over Paul Wolfowitz’s mouth. Another brilliant gem from the undersecretary:

Pressed by House Democrats about whether the administration planned to withdraw U.S. troops right before the 2004 presidential election, Wolfowitz assured them that no decisions were being made on political grounds.

“These are national security decisions; they have to be made on that basis,” he said.

Wolfowitz said that doesn’t mean that “we’re not trying to, in fact, get more Iraqis on the front lines, get them dying for their country so fewer Americans have to.”

(Link courtesy of David Sneek.)

Nebojsa mentioned the US govt’s hilariotic idea of sending Mongolian troops to Iraq (below). It’s worth mentioning also that a bin Laden message aired worldwide last year compared Powell & Cheney to Hulagu, so sending a token force of Mongols to Iraq will be a propaganda victory (& no doubt effective recruiting tool) for al Qaeda.

(Explanation for Americans: this is ironic because al Qaeda, not the Iraqi gov’t, attacked the USA on Sep. 11, ’01.)

Was looking for a picture and stumbled across this gem:

Clark for President!