Israel is not the 51st state....why should Barack Obama be running for President of Israel?

Cernig makes an interesting point about Captain Codpiece's speech before the Knesset yesterday. The conventional wisdom, even offered by Keith Olbermann last night, is that it was Bush injecting himself into the presidential race while speaking in another country. But Cernig thinks it's about something else:

Most American pundits want to see Bush's remarks as an attack on Barrack Obama but folks - it's not always about your country and your political races. For one thing, as Brian Katulis adroitly notes, if negotiating is appeasement then the Bush administration has done an awful lot of appeasement itself over the last seven years. And Brian doesn't even mention working with Sunni Awakening members in Iraq who not too long ago were terrorists attacking US forces! For another, if Bush's remarks were really intended to help John McCain, the latter wouldn't go shooting himself in the foot like this:

“Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain,'’ Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign bus after a speech in Columbus, Ohio. “I believe that it’s not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.'’

Need I say that "Iran-Contra" and "appeasement" really do belong in the same sentence together?

[snip]

Bush, in his speech to the Knesset, signalled clearly that his administration will quietly support Israel if it decided to take direct action against Iran - as it did recently against Syria. It's worth noting that any Israeli attack on Iran would almost certainly have to transit Iraqi airspace.

It's no wonder that there are people in this country still muttering about the Jewish Lobby and the 12 Jewish bankers and Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew, when it often seems as if Israel is, in terms of Washington policy, not an ally like any other ally, but some kind of 51st superstate whose interests and needs (and paranoia) must by definition override all other foreign policy considerations.

It may be amusing to watch Tweety (who I notice is back to being Tweety again after correcting his recent red dyejob; perhaps he read He Who Must Not Be Mentioned and decided that he'd rather be Tweety than Gossamer after all) eviscerate the histrionic Kevin James (the radio idiot, not the stand-up comic) on national television (h/t):

...but leaving aside the fact that James seems to actually HAVE spent the last six years hiding under the bed with a roll of duct tape in one hand and a package of plastic sheeting in the other (and you'd also figure a pipeful of crack in his mouth, based on his demeanor), the level of hysteria on the right over poor, pitiful Israel -- the Hillary Clinton of nations in its ability to kick just about anyone's ass from here to Sunday when crossed, but which more useful to some people as a damsel in distress -- is profoundly disturbing.

Barack Obama's loyalty to this country is constantly questioned. I have even been asked by a friend whether I truly believe he's loyal to our country -- and the fact that she no longer wants to discuss the election with me means her wingnut friends sending her e-mails about how he's a secret Muslim terrorist have won that particular battle of the mind. His loyalty is questioned because of his funny name, the color of his skin, his African father and his hippie mother, and his ability to hold two thoughts in his head in the same time and see colors other than -- no pun intended -- black and white.

But lately it seems his loyalty to Israel is also constantly being questioned, because he doesn't follow the Official U.S. Line of Everything Israel Does Is By Definition Virtuous and Right -- a line that has done nothing to resolve the conflict in the area and which is an assumption that we grant to no other ally in the world. But more disturbingly, it seems as if pledging unquestioning loyalty oaths to Israel is a prerequisite for the presidency, in the eyes of the Republican Party.

It isn't about appealing to Jewish voters, either, though I'm sure that's part of it. But in a recent poll, only 23% of Jewish voters in the U.S. cited Israel as a top issue and fully 40% of Jewish voters regarded Israel as "extreme" -- a smaller percentage than regarded Iran, Hamas, or Hezbollah as extreme, but given the assumption that Israel trumps all in the minds of Jewish voters, it would seem that this No Questioning Israel litmus test is perhaps just a bit unreasonable.

Of course even as I write, Pat Buchanan is on Morning Joe insisting that Israel IS the most important thing on the minds of Jewish voters, so once again, it seems there is a disconnect between what's actually happening and what pundits say are happening.

Every four years we go through this assiduous courting of "The Jewish Vote", as if a group of the kind of polyglot, squabbling people that American Jews are, can ever be lumped together into one group. This year it seems to be even more ferocious, here at the intersection of Bonb Iran Lane Avenue and He's Really a Musliim Terrorist Lane.