NYT's David Brooks Accuses Kos of Being "Vicious" but Refuses to Say Why
[Lieberman is] also agitated and angry, and anybody would be, by the vitriolic and vicious attacks he's withstood for the past two or three years, which can't be repeated on the television. He's been the subject of an internet assault which is unprecedented...We're talking about the netroots, who are the real problems for Lieberman, people generated by the Daily Kos and other web sites-- I find privately most of the Democrats despise those people because... they practice politics so viciously. [But the Democrats] don't want to get in the crosshairs. And they don't want to offend the liberal base of primary voters.
(This transcript is from Malachite, on Daily Kos.)
Brooks may have a point. But it would be impossible to know that till he speaks directly about what he means rather than employing broadbrush innuendo and referring portentously to "private" conversations. Why can't he tell us on television? What is wrong with television that when the liberal base of the Democratic party makes charges against a leading senator, they cannot be repeated? Is the MSM mere shadow theater?
I of course want to saddle up my hobbyhorse: the Israel issue. I wonder whether Brooks is not referring to strains within the leftwing Democratic party base over Israel. Here's BioPitt, complaining lately on Kos about anti-Israel voices that refuse to denounce terrorism:
It's also becoming abundantly clear why there's a trickle (not a flood, but a trickle) of Jews leaving the Democratic Party, and why few Jews associate themselves with anti-Iraq War protests, even though they, like myself, may feel the same sentiments as you do about that war (except for the "started by Zionists" canard).By your actions, by your refusal to sympathize with Jews and Israelis without saying "but", by your refusal to recognize the nature of a rejectionist, annihilationist movement, you paint yourselves into a corner that makes you the virtual laughingstock of cyberspace.
Obviously these issues figure in the Lieberman-Lamont race. Israel was not mentioned in the debate the other night, but one of my commenters brought it up, all the way from New Zealand. Peter Morris:
Why is it so hard saying it. Lieberman was for the Iraq war because of Israel. He didn't put the country first or even his party first. He put Israel first. There, now that isn't so hard saying isn't it.
Let's try and sort out the complexities: as Kos reports, Jewish voters are generally opposed to the war and not sticking with Lieberman. But as I have argued here, a religious devotion to Israel, in which I was involved as a young man, surely played a part in support by liberal hawks for the Iraq war. And as the Walt-Mearsheimer groundswell has shown, many of the people called upon to wage the war on terror, the military, seem to want to think about this. Especially as the over-identification of Israel's interests and ours plays out in the Iran drumbeat.
Even if these are the views Brooks can't talk about on television, they are important politically. They help explain why right and left are seeking common ground: why the Libertarian Party has joined forces with the Green Party in Maryland to support the antiwar candidacy of Kevin Zeese, the only campaign I have seen on television in which the issue of the identification of American interests with Israel's is brought up. They explain why the greatest concern about human rights in the occupied territories appears in the Nation and The American Conservative (c.f., its coverage by Scott McConnell.Maybe we are wrong when we say that the U.S. was influenced by Israel in its decision to occupy Arab lands and initiate a cycle of violence as the answer to radical Islam. Or when we say that separating America's interests from Israel's (somewhat) is an essential step in draining the terrorist swamps (as opposed to the neoconservatives and Paul Berman and Ken Pollack, who said that there was no connection between American non-participation in the peace process in Israel and an American invasion of Iraq). Maybe we don't know half the story (as the commenters who say that Israel is buoying the American high-tech economy protest to me all the time). Fine; show us we are wrong in the good old American way. Have the discussion openly.
"Maybe we don't know half the story (as the commenters who say that Israel is buoying the American high-tech economy protest to me all the time)..."
-- are you sure there is more than one? I have the impression that it is always the same person, namely, the one like 'Joey Kavod'.
Of course, it's all about Israel. The extreme left wants to deny Israel's right to exist and they see Joe Lieberman as the "ultimate Zionist." This radical left believes Israel destroyed the World Trade Center and defeating Lieberman would be justice.
It's not about Iraq; the defeat of Joe Lieberman is to avenge Yasser Arafat.
Israel? Are you kidding me? Look people, "EVERYTHING" is not about Israel. What's even more stunning is that you believe "liberals" are somehow against Israel. Liberals and the Democratic Party have always supported Israel; Republicans and the right-wing Oil Lobby have always supported their own interests...which are the Arab nations. When Israel starts pumping out 80% of the world's oil, the Republican Party will become Israel's best friend...right now they are just using Israel. Joe Lieberman isn't in trouble because he's Jewish and supports Israel, but rather because he has lost touch with the people of Connecticut. It's pretty simple.
Phil: Fine; show us we are wrong in the good old American way. Have the discussion openly.
Well, you're right. The last thing American Likudniks want to see is an open discussion of the
America-Israel relationship. That's why Alan Dershowitz was near hysterical over the Mearsheimer-Walt paper on the Israel Lobby. He was smart enough to know that a lot of people were privately troubled by America's unexamined and uncritical support for Israel. If the Mearsheimer-Walt paper made it possible for them to talk out loud about our Israel policy, then the cat was out of the bag, the toothpaste was out of the tube and who knows where the matter would end up, except that it wouldn't be anywhere good for Israel. In Dershowitz's view "The Israel Lobby" had to be strangled in the crib before it got traction, hence all the references by Dershowitz (and the paper's other critics) to Hitler, the Holocaust and David Duke's admiration. Dershowitz feared "The Israel Lobby" like Rommel feared the Normandy Invasion. If it wasn't stopped on the beaches it never would be stopped at all.
Indeed. The radical left's opposition to the existence of Israel has only grown. One must remember the silence at the DNC convention in 2004 after John Edwards proclaimed for strong support for Israel. It's bigotry is evidence by that they support Hamas over the Israeli government.
Ned Lamont support comes from those on the left that see "Zionism" and the "Jew menance" everywhere. Lieberman also plays into their Jewphobia by being an orthodox Jew -- a "neocon."
First: Brooks is a tool; he sits in on the official Republican strategy meetings. So everything he says should be discounted as propaganda.
As to Lieberman: It really isn't about the Iraq War for the Netroots (of whom I number myself). It's about Dick Cheney. And it boils down to this: Do you believe that the world & America are infinitely worse off because Dick Cheney has been Commander-in-Chief these past six years, rather than Al Gore?
Those on the left of the blogosphere believe this to be the case.
But poor Joe, for obvious reasons, holds to the middle-of-the-road position, one I held in late 2000: It doesn't really matter who sits in the White House. (How much damage can the president do, anyhow)? Joe has been acting as if the 2000 election didn't really matter; the men in the White House are as much patriots and good Americans as are he and Al Gore.
For those of us in left blogistan, who believe Cheney to be Satan incarnate, that is what we find intolerable. And that is why we are chipping in to elect Lamont.
To accuse David Brooks of being a firebrand conservative is a falsehood. He's more of a Christine Whitman type of Republican. It's the only type the New York Times would stand.
And the only reason why Al Gore got so close to becoming president was due to him selecting Joe Lieberman as his running mate. Joe Lieberman performed well in his debate while Al Gore flubbed all three of his debates. BTW, Al gore held more conservative views as senator than did Joe Lieberman.
Israel is the main reason why Joe Lieberman is hated by the Dean wing of the Democratic party. The left's pathological hatred of Israel leads them to belive that Bush/Cheney/Sharon are more of a "devil incarnate" than Hussein or bin Laden.
And that's just plain insanity.
If you complainers about Israel understood that the value of Israel to America's economy and America's global competitiveness (a concept most of you probably don't even understand) you would not a be babbling about the wrong issues as you all seem to be transfixed on.
Read this, then ask an economist what the value of this is to America.
"Israel is second to America in the number of companies listed on NASDAQ, and the Economist magazine says that the country attracts twice the number of venture-capital (VC) investments as the whole of Europe. In 2003, 55% of Israel 's exports were high technology, compared with the OECD average of 26%. Tech giants such as IBM, Motorola, Boeing and Cisco have research centres in Israel , which is also where Intel developed its Centrino chip.
The Intel Corporation, the world's largest chip maker, announced in December 2005 that it would invest $3.5 billion to build a new plant, adjacent to an existing one that makes Pentium 4 chips, at an industrial park in Kiryat Gat, southern Israel.
Intel already has six design and production facilities in Israel and more than 6,000 workers, making it one of the country's largest private employers. It will be adding at least 2,000 jobs at the new plant, which will produce 12-inch chip wafers, the company says.
"Intel has a long history of high-tech manufacturing in Israel, and this is a natural continuation of that," said Alex Kornhauser, the general manger of Intel's operations in Israel. "When the manufacturing requires highly skilled people, we believe we have a competitive advantage here. Israel agreed to give Intel incentives totaling $525 million, according to the New York Times. The Israeli government offered Intel a 10 percent tax rate, compared with 35 percent in the United States.
The Economist says that Israel has 135 engineers per 10,000 employees, compared with 70 in America , 65 in Japan , and 28 in the UK. The magazine says that naturally, cultural factors play a part too. Around 5% of start-ups in America are headed by repeat entrepreneurs compared with 30% in Israel. In technology, as in so many other ways, Israel is a special case."
http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10004428.shtml
There is a downside to the US's relationship with Israel as Walt/Mer. explain, but don't ignore the hard economic fact about Israel, and America's need to protect it's own economic interests vis a vis Israel.
Maybe Joe Lieberman supports the war for the same reasons that Bush and Cheney do: to make their friends rich with war contracts and high oil prices.
How does the war even help Israel?
If Israel wanted to get rid of the Iraqi threat they could have done it themselves. Israel must not have perceived a threat. Israel has a history of taking care of it's own defense problems.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2295792449224502914
What is the correlation that Israel had an interest in the war?
Oh, I get it, Joey : the reason we goys think the problem is Israel rather than NASDAQ is because we are too stupid to understand NASDAQ!
NASDAQ?
Did anybody happen to get a chance to reach Drobney's article at Huffington Post? The responses to it are really interesting.
Israel -- not -- Iraq will dominate the differences between Lieberman and Lamont in the next 30 days.
Whether in fact the anonymous person is 'Joey', who keeps saying that without its support for Israel (its dependence on Israel, in fact) the USA would fall behind (whom, if not the power to whom Israel would then turn for patronage, i.e., China?) in the technology stakes - his assumption that only Jews have the innate intelligence to do this sort of development, and that American Jews would not be able to do it without Israeli ones, is most suspicious. New technology always likes to be seen as unique, but an older American view of technological development which I still rather like states "It steam-engines when it comes steam-engine time".
We don't like this president, his policies are and will continue to be a disaster for this country for years to come. Joe won't acknowledge that,and we have had enough: case closed.
Well, I'm a Mapai-socialist who will be voting Republican for the rest of the century.
The left is saturated with vicious anti-Semites who drool at the thought of finishing the Holocaust, Israeli-Jewish blood dripping from every wall. May they ALL get cancer, from Sheehan to M&W to Fink to Goodman to Lamont.