[mercy]

****All this diplomacy by deflection is too clever by three-quarters. Just as corrupt Arab potentates try to protect themselves from the fury of their downtrodden subjects by fanning hatred of the U.S. and the West, we are trying, through our charade of selective antiterrorism, to deflect that hatred over to Israel exclusively. (Don't blame us, it goes — see how we're pressuring the Jews on your behalf?)****

How can so many freepers not wonder at the Bush administration when it acts this way? It is just so gutless.

[L`enn]

I wonder all the time.

[Praxeologue]

Powell/Rummy; good cop/bad cop, depending on the audience

a smart strategy

[DB]

The truth is we know little of what is really going on. I'm going to give Bush the benefit of the doubt until a significant aspect of the war turns into a major blunder.

[sarcastro]

How can so many freepers not wonder at the Bush administration when it acts this way? It is just so gutless.

bump

The same goes for conservative pundits (Brit Hume, Fox News, John Podhoretz- I'm looking in your direction).

You know, Safire takes a lot of criticism (to use a nice word) for being too "wishy-washy". Yet he has been FAR more willing to dish out authentic, conservative criticism of the Administration's (Powell in particular) middle-East policy than most other conservative columnists. I especially like when Safire says, "At the same time, columnists of my ilk are sent word that — Powell's ostensible tilt toward Arafat to the contrary — the president's hawkish heart is still in the right place." In other words, "You guys are a bunch of suck-ups." I wonder which columnists he was referring to specifically.

[VA Advogado]

How can so many freepers not wonder at the Bush administration when it acts this way? It is just so gutless.

As opposed to your brave heros in the Clinton administration that really did want to screw Israel?

[lavaroise]

The administration relies on calculations for optimum results. However, in a fight of good against evil, calculations do not apply, because to be good requires faith, not calculations of whether we will lose or win the war that way.

This is why we tolerate "friends" like Saudis while they terrorize women there. We simply calculate that if we let them do that, if we offer to the Saudi gods sacrifices of our principles, we will win, or at least lose much less according to calculations.

Safir has got it right, it is a charade, and in this charade we try to serve various gods instead of the One God, only to find ourselves servants of other successful gods. The danger is that once directly oppressed, a people cannot fight back the regime, only direct intervention from God as in Egypt would allow that to happen, but if God does not want to help us, we're screwed. Islamism and socialism are gods to be reckoned and avoided, else they will rule us for the next 1000 years.