President Jimmy Carter has an op ed in today’s Washington Post that calls the current military actions in Gaza “an unnecessary war.” As you might imagine, this provoked much hooting of derision from the Right Blogosphere. In right-wing iconography, President Carter is the Ghost of Liberal Wussiness Past, and he can have nothing to say that they will hear.
Elsewhere, however, Andrew Bacevich writes,
THE ISRAELI military action in Gaza raises both moral questions and strategic ones. The moral issues are more complex than partisans on either side are prepared to admit. Not so the strategic issues: here the verdict is clear. Israel’s return to Gaza constitutes a tacit admission of strategic failure now stretching back four decades.
How is that not true? Whatever you think of the moral issues surrounding Gaza, the Israeli policy toward the Palestinians has failed. The actions of Israel over the past several days is an admission of failure.
No matter what this particular round of fighting may achieve, the conflict will continue. Indeed, the punishment inflicted on the residents of Gaza all but ensures its perpetuation.
Again, this is the plain truth many of us have been saying. In the collective adolescent brain of the Right, because there is Palestinian terrorism and because there are people who hate Jews because they are Jews, anything Israel does is justified. And if you criticize Israel, you must be for Hamas.
But I think for most of us it’s not about being for or against anything. Indeed, if I could will the nation of Israel to stay right where it is and enjoy many centuries of security and prosperity, I would do so. If I would will Hamas to dissolve, I would do so. The plain truth that the Right refuses to acknowledge is that Israel’s policy has failed. It has been failing for a long time, and there’s no earthly reason to think it will not continue to fail.
As always, Professor Bacevich’s op ed is worth reading all the way through. But now I want to switch gears a bit and take up an article Juan Cole wrote for Salon: “Neoconservatism dies in Gaza.”
For years the neoconservative fantasy was that if Saddam Hussein were taken out, all the problems of the Middle East would somehow unravel. That this theory made no sense whatsoever never deterred them. No end of overeducated and overpaid dweebs in the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Hudson Institute, and of course the Project for a New American Century, etc. etc., pushed this magical thinking as holy writ. And, finally, it became Bush Administration policy.
However, I think Professor Cole is a fool if he think neoconservatism will shrivel up and die just because it has been shown to be colossally wrong. Magical thinkers are magical thinkers. They will take up some new and equally nonsensical idea and run with it, eventually.