printMichael Scheuer is so predicable in his attempts to be unpredictable. I knew right away what Scheuer would say when Judge Napolitano, of Freedom Watch, brought up the matter of US spying on Israel. The Jewish State is no ally; it deserves what it gets, said Scheuer.
Oh the contradictions! The likes of Scheuer see the US as a bad actor everywhere around the world. Except when it comes to the Jewish State. When it concerns Israel, big bad America suddenly becomes poor little Empire.
Inconsistency in thinking is never a nice thing to behold.
Scheuer also claimed that Israel has been stealing America’s intellectual property, an assertion for which he offered no evidence.
Who do you think invented Microsoft’s “Kinect,” which is in the Guinness Book of Records as the “Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device” ever? Scheuer would like to claim the invention for the US, but it belongs to an Israeli outfit called PrimeSense.
Jealously is as ugly as inconsistency. My sources in the high-tech industry confirm that Israel has been on the cutting edge for quite sometime. Significant is the trend. And it is unmistakable: “Emerging markets,” as Israel is, are becoming freer, whereas America is becoming less free. The devil is in that detail.
Moreover, there is the issue of education. Take Germany. It is socialistic like Israel, but has a splendid education system, which remains unburdened by political correctness. The Germans run the same sort of schools I attended growing up in Israel, where, because no pedagogue believes all kids are created equal, students are streamed into different tracks. Israel, I suspect, is unencumbered by the kind of education system that graduates retarded kids as America does.
UPDATE: THE “SIR” THING. Kerry, it’s uncanny. I was thinking the same. Scheuer’s habit of saying “Sir” constantly is his way of appearing like a straight arrow. You know; like man with military discipline. “Take what I say to the bank, Sir.” It’s so phony.
You know what else annoys me about Scheuer? And this may sound silly of me, but he says “sir,” way too much when he’s being interviewed.
Nations often spy on each other as a WPA program for the spies to have something to do to feel useful.
Scheuer has had a bug up his butt about Israel for years for reasons I can’t really fathom – possibly just as a response to the neocon idiots
I tend to use the word “sir” more than even most Americans (and certainly very much more than Australians, military or otherwise) do. These days, amid Australia’s crass egalitarianism, I find that one well placed “sir” amid a rebuke – as in, for instance, “That, sir, constitutes the purest neocon bilge” – is so unexpected by the average hearer as to possess an offensive impact equaling about 10 F-words or C-words.
But the all-time best employment of the term was once undertaken by a commanding officer in the British army, whose name I don’t know. He is said (according to a SPECTATOR letter from many years back) to have bellowed at a neophyte: “Sir, you will call me ‘sir’. And I, sir, will call you ‘sir.’ The difference will be, sir, that when you call me ‘sir,’ YOU WILL MEAN IT.”
All friends and neighbors should be aware of the events around them. So should nations; but, adding venom to awareness is foolish. You’ve argued the “intellectual property” argument before and Michael Scheuer doesn’t add any new arguments. Japan also refuses to accept American copyright, so what! Even so, Israel is ahead of the US in some areas and Sheuer can only be envious. 6.4 Billion people, 15 million Jews and its all their fault, so we have to watch them carefully.
Israel has spied on us. Bad. We have spied on Israel. Also bad. It’s a complicated world filled with complicated poeple. Israel is our ally and we are their ally regardless of the curent idiots in power in Washington. Most of them are hardly Americans anyway. Get over the little messes and get on with the fight for survival against the Muslims.
I couldn’t agree more with the comments regarding Sheuer’s use of sir its totally contrived.I also cringe when he’s introduced as former head of the OBL unit as if he were in danger in his cubicle.
For those that may have missed it, my last sentence was sarcasm.
Three short comments: (1) I am always leery about a CIA, especially an “operations division” capable of causing trouble and not being under the Defense Department. Even worse is when people from them start interfering in American politics while also hiding from sight using “secrecy” – Valerie Plame and her husband are good examples.
(2) Funny reading about being Jews as “the chosen people”:
http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2002/08/03/god-names-next.html
(3) And an interesting piece by Professor Walter Block over whether Ron Paul is anti-Semitic:
http://lewrockwell.com/block/block183.html