Monday, February 13, 2012

A couple of inches of snow, but temps high enough

that the roads are just slushy here. So I'm perusing the 'net, and finding things like this:
There are two possible conflicts on the table in Washington. One is with Iran and the other with Syria. The Iran conflict is the one that Washington doesn’t want. Its most likely trigger at this stage is an Israeli assault on Iran’s nuclear program. Like most of the wars centering around Israel, this one is existential and of no interest to the philosopher kings in D.C. who wage wars with the grand purpose of making the world a better place.

Washington does not particularly care whether Iran gets nukes or doesn’t get nukes. It cares about History. With a capital “H.” Libya got bombed because it was on the wrong side of history. Syria is about to get bombed because it’s on the wrong side of history. There are people in the administration like Samantha Power who would like to bomb Israel for being on the wrong side of history, but they don’t think that even J Street and Peter Beinart could spin that as a pro-Israel move.
...
Washington needs the Syrian war to happen, and it needs to keep a conflict with Iran from happening. The great diplomatic problem of Israel has always been that its leader insist on viewing conflicts in practical terms. Israel does not fight wars to make the world safe for democracy, it fights wars because there’s someone shooting missiles as it. This is an unacceptable reason for a war in a postmodern world where wars are fought to preserve the international order, protect civilization, make the world safe for democracy and prove that human rights violations will be punished by the duly constituted body of international jurisprudence.
Which does indeed sound like what's been coming out of Sodom-on-the-Potomac.


Thanks to Rodger I read this: a man honest enough to look at both sides of a situation, and stubborn enough to not back off from telling the story. And getting mugged by former friends for daring to do so.

And with that, screw the news; that's about all the Hopey-Changey!!! I can take this morning.

1 comment:

Keith said...

On the Philosopher king and their need for war; check out the philosophy of Leo-Strauss, it explains a lot.

He sees war as a vital way to unite a nation behind its leaders, and to give people meaning (yeah, finger down the throat time, the politics of meaning, yuk)...