Krugman hoists the chicken hawks on their own petard. Some of these contrasting quotes are downright incredible, underscoring just how distant from reality our leaders stand when it comes to Iraq (and most everything else). Every one is a gem, but Krugman will be called hysterical and anti-American, simply for quoting our own leaders.

March of Folly
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 17, 2006

Since those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it – and since the cast of characters making pronouncements on the crisis in the Middle East is very much the same as it was three or four years ago – it seems like a good idea to travel down memory lane. Here’s what they said and when they said it:

“The greatest thing to come out of [invading Iraq] for the world economy…would be $20 a barrel for oil.” Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation (which owns Fox News), February 2003

“Oil Touches Record $78 on Mideast Conflict.” Headline on foxnews.com, July 14, 2006

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All the usual suspects on the far-right are singing in chorus, led on by the Big Momma of the wingutosphere: Israel ueber alles, no matter what. If you see the article Maglalangadingding reprints, French people are defined by the act of burning Jewish synagogues and the Vatican is a hotbed of Palestinian apologism. Two powers, the US and Israel, have free license to do as they please with no restraints, no limits, no matter what the cost. Those who criticize them or call for restraint are weak or antisemitic or both. Should Israel defend itself? Of course it should. But there are always limits to how far one should go. Israel has crossed those limits and the victim in the end will be Israel.

I supported Israel in many of its conflicts, but this time I can’t. Steve Clemons offers some much needed insight:

Why is Israel pounding most of Lebanon rather than just the South and rather than pinpointing its attack against Hezbollah assets? Why the dramatic bombing of explosive fuel centers? The attacks both in Gaza and in Beirut seem made for Fox News, CNN and the next Schwarzenegger movie.

I think that there is little doubt that a significant part of the explanation can be attributed to the fact that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his more liberal partner in this effort, Amir Peretz — now Defense Minister — are not former field command generals and want to demonstrate that they can be responsible stewards of Israel’s national security — and that they won’t be timid in using Israel’s military capabilities.

But that doesn’t explain it all. The Israeli response to the Hezbollah incursion is exactly what Hezbollah wanted. Adversaries rarely give each other the behaviors the other actually desires unless there are other objectives involved.

Clemons follows with a compelling argument as to how Israel’s excesses are posing a direct threat to US goals, such as reaching an agreement with Iran on its nuclear policy and reducing the number of US troops in Iraq – and why Israel may be intentionally derailing us.

The flamboyant, over the top reactions to attacks on Israel’s military check points and the abduction of soldiers — which I agree Israel must respond to — seems to be part establishing “bona fides” by Olmert, but far more important, REMOVING from the table important policy options that the U.S. might have pursued.

Israel is constraining American foreign policy in amazing and troubling ways by its actions. And a former senior CIA official and another senior Marine who are well-versed in both Israeli and broad Middle East affairs, agreed that serious strategists in Israel are more concerned about America tilting towards new bargains in the region than they are either about the challenge from Hamas or Hezbollah or showing that Olmert knows how to pull the trigger….

Keeping America from cutting new deals in the region — which many in the national security establishment thinks are vital — may actually be what is going on, and the smarter-than-average analysts are beginning to see that.

I know, I know, we are supposed to tiptoe around anything having to do with Israel and bless their every move. But this time, what Israel is doing is bad for the US, bad for its neighbors and bad, in the long run, for Israel. There’s good reason Condi is calling for restraint, and those like Malkin who give Israel carte blanche are acting against America’s interests, and Israel’s as well.

Update: It’s all making more sense: perhaps Israel’s response is purely strategic, and designed to result in a war on Iran. Let’s watch and see.

Updat 2: Signs of sanity: one of the warbloggers’ own has the courage to tell it like it is: Israel was right to act, but it has acted in the wrong way, and there will be a price. By being so forthright, he drew the full wrath of the righties, forcing him to close down all comments on his blog. This topic is radioactive and brings out the very worst in normally rational people.

Lebanon is Totten’s specialty, and his post is a breath of fresh are in the section of the blogoshpere that seems at the moment totally deprived of oxygen.

What should the Israelis have done instead? They should have treated Hezbollahland as a country, which it basically is, and attacked it. They should have treated Lebanon as a separate country, which it basically is, and left it alone. Mainstream Lebanese have no problem when Israel hammers Hezbollah in its little enclave. Somebody has to do it, and it cannot be them. If you want to embolden Lebanese to work with Israelis against Hezbollah, or at least move in to Hezbollah’s bombed out positions, don’t attack all of Lebanon.

Israel should not have bombed Central Beirut, which was almost monolithically anti-Hezbollah. They should not have bombed my old neighborhood, which was almost monolithically anti-Hezbollah. They should not have bombed the Maronite city of Jounieh, which was not merely anti-Hezbollah but also somewhat pro-Israel.

Israelis thinks everyone hates them. It isn’t true, especially not in Lebanon. But they will make it so if they do not pay more attention to the internal characteristics of neighboring countries. “The Arabs” do not exist as a bloc except in the feverish dreams of the Nasserists and the Baath.

The most outspoken and angry editorial I’ve ever seen in the NY Times. Oh, and it’s completely true as well.

It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.

Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone. While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.

One result has been a frayed democratic fabric in a country founded on a constitutional system of checks and balances. Another has been a less effective war on terror.

That’s just for starters. It’s long, and shrill and you should read every word. It’s about time the media shook itself out of the post-911 stupor where we had to kiss Commander Codpiece’s ring or be seen as anti-American.

Chinese Uighers who thought they were escaping torture and imprisonment jump from the frying pan into the fire. God bless our magnificent war on terror.

Vintage Rich.

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You ‘Axis of Evil’
By FRANK RICH
Published: July 16, 2006

AS American foreign policy lies in ruins from Pyongyang to Baghdad to Beirut, its epitaph is already being written in Washington. Last week’s Time cover, “The End of Cowboy Diplomacy,” lays out the conventional wisdom: the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war, upended by chaos in Iraq and the nuclear intransigence of North Korea and Iran, is now officially kaput. In its stead, a sadder but more patient White House, under the sway of Condi Rice, is embracing the fine art of multilateral diplomacy and dumping the “bring ’em on” gun-slinging that got the world into this jam.

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Shocking. Hidden away in the Saturday edition of the WSJ.

Go read this priceless example of Chinese bureau-babble. Can you believe they’re still churning out this shit? When they put it in an English-language media, have they no idea how idiotic they appear?

One of the best articles on the insidiousness of the American right I have ever seen, with some good stuff on China and Korea as a bonus. Very long, very serious, very smart. My only complaint is a flawed analogy, used throughout the article, to Wagner’s opera Goetterdaemmerung, which the author doesn’t really understand, but no matter. It’s a masterpiece, especially if you are a student of 20th century European/American history.

New to me, anyway. It’s a Taiwan blog, but lots of stuff on China, including translations of Chinese articles. There are very few posts, but each one seems to be absolutely first-rate. Check it out now (though if you’re in China, be forewarned, it’s a blogspot site sop you’ll need a proxy).

It’s literally beyond belief. How can we ever recover from this catastrophe?

So eerie, how the wail of despair has become so deafening, we scarcely even notice, let alone express our concern, that we are right on the verge of an unprecedented regional war. It’s playing non-stop on the news, but there’s a surreal quality to it because we feel so impotent – Iraq has made us weak, and all we seem able to do is watch in a helpless stupor. And a mere three years ago, the chorus from the government, amplified by the likes of Instacracker and Belmont Club and the right-wing press, lulled millions into a fantasy: a promise of permanent democracy and peace in the Middle East, if only we could bring down Saddam Hussein. He’s not the only one who was taken down. Will America ever heal itself and rise to its heights of a few short years ago? Probably, because this is an amazingly resilient and powerful country, no matter how much Bush has crippled us. But the process will take years, and there’s going to be lots more pain along the way. I can’t wait until the November elections. Until then, it’s a wonderful time to be living overseas.