Category Archives: Just War

Updated: The POTUS's Plans For 'Palestine'

Barack Obama, Foreign Aid, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War

Obama’s plans for Israel: “two states living side by side in peace and security – a Jewish State of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people. … The time has come to re-launch negotiations – without preconditions – that address the permanent-status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians; borders, refugees and Jerusalem.”

QUESTION: Contiguous? How do you make the West Bank and Gaza contiguous without making Israel unconnected?

West_Bank__Gaza_Map_2007_Settlements.1912940

QUESTION: “Occupation that began in 1967”? As far as I recall, the 1967 war was a war of aggression begun by the Arabs and won by Israel. I lived through it.

Obama: “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.”

Well, then, if “America” objects, then that’s all there is to it.

QUESTION: Why bring up “borders, refugees and Jerusalem” if the POTUS’ goal is not to get Israel to go back to the 1967 line, absorb self-styled Palestinian refugees (“right of return”), and divide the Jewish Capital?

All the stuff Obama liked about “Abdullah’s Plans for Israel.”

Update (Sept. 24): Conversely, I imagine that there are many countries that receive USAID but are not told what to do by Rome. The Arab countries, for example. Other than the staple stupidity about the need to democratize (and thus empower the Jihadi Muslim Brotherhood), I have never heard the US insist Egypt do this or the other. And why is aid to Israel always depicted in a different light than aid to other nations? Foreign aid is bad when given to Israel and to Egypt.

Update III: Middle America Or Meathead’s America?

America, BAB's A List, Christian Right, Human Accomplishment, Iraq, Israel, Just War, Paleoconservatism, Palestinian Authority, Political Philosophy, Republicans, The State, Welfare

THE EXCERPT is from “Is heartland America Ignorant And Gullible?”, my new WND.COM column, now (Sept. 12) on Taki’s:

“Given the perpetual parade of ‘intellectuals’ who are not intelligent in our media — Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS and the ‘parrot press’ — I don’t expect you to be familiar with political philosopher Paul E. Gottfried. Nevertheless, Paul (he’s a friend) is one of the most important intellectuals in America.”

“Historian Eugene Genovese calls Paul incorruptible, ‘an American intellectual of superior talent.’ Author and historian John Lukacs praises Professor Gottfried as ‘a very profound thinker.’ And L. Brent Bozell III salutes his ‘amazing intellectual courage’ — courage in the face of the malign, philistine forces of the liberal and neoconservative mainstream.”

Over the years, I’ve interviewed Professor Gottfried pursuant to the publication of his many books. I do so again on the occasion of the publication of “Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers.”

READ THE interview, “Is heartland America Ignorant And Gullible?”, now on WND.COM. And on Taki’s Magazine on the weekend.

Update I (Sept. 11): Please note that the always-genial and brutally candid Paul Gottfried has replied to his detractors in the Comments Section. Some of the critics have been quite harsh (and this forum is moderated).

Update II: Randy, the war on Iraq is not going to be adjudicated again here, not ever. I chronicled the invasion of Iraq at great length, applying fact and every ounce of reason in my possession to repudiate and denounce that war crime. The case is closed! Neoconservative ideologues stand in the dock for aiding and abetting a war crime. Any reader is welcome to read my article archive on the topic (search the blog archives too). I can well imagine that many ideologues who supported the war urgently need to make peace with their maker, or consciences, for their role in a crime of such moral and material magnitude.

Update III (Sept. 12): Hayim, one doesn’t have to endorse everything Paul Gottfried writes or espouses to appreciate his contribution and steadfast principles. As someone who is ostracized by even more factions than Paul, I recognize the strength of character it takes to resist group pressure to conform and compromise one’s notion of right and wrong.

As to the article you cited, and which I skimmed: I have quoted Dershowitz on Israel and find his commentary worthwhile. I do not appreciate the dichotomy—or hypocrisy—the likes of Dershowitz evince in that they are hard-core rightists when it comes to Israel’s right to preserve its ethnic identity. But anyone arguing that the preservation of the historical America is essential to the preservation of freedom itself is a racist in Dershowitz’ books. That aspect of the Jewish Diaspora sickens me. Israelis are nothing like these American Jews.

In “Harvard Hucksters Hype Israeli Pseudo-Historians,” I expressed exactly what I thought of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of “The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

Norman Finkelstein I include among “dwarfs standing on the shoulders of Jewish giants. Noam Chomsky (‘The Godfather’), Steven and Hillary Rose … Joel Kovel, Tanya Reinhart in Tel Aviv, and Michael Cohen in Swansea—these are but a few of the new anti-Semitism’s leading Jewish lights.”

Where I agree with Paul is in his assertion that there is among the anointed Jewish leadership a crass abuse of “the Holocaust for propagandistic purposes.” No doubt about it. And it’s repulsive. To the extend Finkelstein exposes this, to that extent he makes a valid point. The Holocaust industry makes even me turn away from a catastrophe that has truncated my own family tree.

I also find the premise of the Daniel Goldhagen book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, appalling.

I think that on the whole Joan Peterson’s book is pretty good. If there are a few factual problems—and I don’t know that there are—they serve in this context as a fig leaf for those who would deny the central truth about the Jewish settlement of Israel:

“The territory within which the State of Israel was established did not form part of any larger state that opposed its creation. The territory was, moreover, one where Jews formed a majority on land they had purchased legitimately.”

Unanimously, this Jewish majority issued a declaration of independence promising that ‘the State of Israel will … foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants,’ not for the benefit of mankind. They promised that the country would ‘be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisioned by the prophets of Israel”; that it would ‘ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex,’ and ‘safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.”

It is a joke to claim, as the anti-Israel right does, that Israel doesn’t respect the rights of all its inhabitants, Arabs included. Let the Raimondos of this world—hopefully there is only one of his kind—go live/or vacation in the Palestinian Authority.

Above all, it is undeniable that Arabs had trashed the Holy Land throughout their occupation of the place. It took Jews to dry the swamps—they died in droves of malaria doing so—to plant orchards, start industries, and generally build from a howling wilderness a prosperous country.

You won’t find me lamenting that wonderful achievement.

Updated: Memorial Day Message (On Just War & Against Pacifism)

Foreign Policy, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Just War, Propaganda, The Military, War

Since the Messiah was anointed (1/20/09), 72 soldiers have died in Iraq. He campaigned on bringing them home.
Glenn Beck asked every American encountering a uniformed man or woman to thank them in person for their sacrifice. No! Enough of this meaningless jabbering. I thank all the Ramos’s and Compeans of this great nation, who stand on this country’s soil and defend their countrymen from the worst of mankind.

To those who fight phantoms in far-flung destinations; I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’ve been snookered into living and dying for a lie. But I will not honor a lie, or those who give their lives for it. I cry for them, as I have from day one, but I can’t honor them.

To those who enlisted thinking they’d fight for their country and were subjected to one backdoor draft after another in the cause of illegal, unjust wars—I am sorry. My heart hurts for you, but I will not worship Moloch.

I honor those sad, sad draftees to Vietnam and to WW II. The first valiant batch had no option; the same goes for the last, which fought a just war.

“What I learned growing up in a war-torn region is that a brave nation fights only because it must; a cowardly nation fights because it can.”

LET THE SUNSHINE IN. This wonderfully executed tract of a lost soul shipping-out says it all for me (watch this classic antiwar film again, if you can):

Update (May 27): AGAINST PACIFISM. Pacifism is evil. Myron, whose delicious postings on BAB we relish—and who deserves a fan-base—has fallen into that error. There are most certainly just wars, just as surely as there is evil in the human heart. Myron, quit hanging around anarchists in cyberspace, or else you will, as the hard-left has and does, continue to reduce human evil to the state’s doing, thus relinquishing the philosophical cornerstone of civilization: free will and human agency. Here on BAB I argue from the vantage point of those tenets. Anarchism, invariably and by default, argues from the stance of social determinism. Or, in simple terms: the State made me do it.

Updated: Memorial Day Message (On Just War & Against Pacifism)

Foreign Policy, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Just War, Propaganda, The Military, War

Since the Messiah was anointed (1/20/09), 72 soldiers have died in Iraq. He campaigned on bringing them home.
Glenn Beck asked every American encountering a uniformed man or woman to thank them in person for their sacrifice. No! Enough of this meaningless jabbering. I thank all the Ramos’s and Compeans of this great nation, who stand on this country’s soil and defend their countrymen from the worst of mankind.

To those who fight phantoms in far-flung destinations; I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’ve been snookered into living and dying for a lie. But I will not honor a lie, or those who give their lives for it. I cry for them, as I have from day one, but I can’t honor them.

To those who enlisted thinking they’d fight for their country and were subjected to one backdoor draft after another in the cause of illegal, unjust wars—I am sorry. My heart hurts for you, but I will not worship Moloch.

I honor those sad, sad draftees to Vietnam and to WW II. The first valiant batch had no option; the same goes for the last, which fought a just war.

“What I learned growing up in a war-torn region is that a brave nation fights only because it must; a cowardly nation fights because it can.”

LET THE SUNSHINE IN. This wonderfully executed tract of a lost soul shipping-out says it all for me (watch this classic antiwar film again, if you can):

Update (May 27): AGAINST PACIFISM. Pacifism is evil. Myron, whose delicious postings on BAB we relish—and who deserves a fan-base—has fallen into that error. There are most certainly just wars, just as surely as there is evil in the human heart. Myron, quit hanging around anarchists in cyberspace, or else you will, as the hard-left has and does, continue to reduce human evil to the state’s doing, thus relinquishing the philosophical cornerstone of civilization: free will and human agency. Here on BAB I argue from the vantage point of those tenets. Anarchism, invariably and by default, argues from the stance of social determinism. Or, in simple terms: the State made me do it.