Bloody Kristol not only wrong but dishonest

It was not surprising to me that in his column today in the New York Times, William Kristol is completely and thoroughly wrong. Everything he says is totally and demonstrably false. What surprised me was how thoroughly dishonest the column is, especially the following excerpt:

In synagogue, right after the prayer for our country, there is a prayer for the state of Israel, asking the “rock and redeemer of the people Israel” to “spread over it the shelter of your peace.” As we recited this on Saturday, I couldn’t help but reflect that a distressingly small number of my fellow Jews seem to have given much thought at all to the fact that President Bush is one of the greatest friends the state of Israel — and, yes, the Jewish people — have had in quite a while. Bush stood with Israel when he had no political incentive to do so and received no political benefit from doing so. He was criticized by much of the world. He did it because he thought it the right thing to do.

Read the entire column

As William Kristol knows very well polls show that the vast majority of America's Jews have great misgivings about the wisdom of the sort of military solutions to Israel's disputes with the Palestinians that Kristol and his fellow neocons, including President Bush, support. It is not through some oversight or lack of thought that most American Jews are not celbrating President Bush as a savior of Israel.

Equally dishonest is Mr. Kristol's amazing claim that it is of no political benefit to an American politician to be a strong supporter of Israel's government, and therefore the politician must be doing it because of a personal conviction that it is the right thing to do. After the injury of AIPAC having hijacked our political process on this issue so that almost all our politicians are forced to blindly support Israel's every policy mistake this insult is almost too much to bear. Kristol's assertion that Bush is acting against his political interests in supporting Israel is chutzpah of the highest order.

More militant than the government of Israel?

President Bush thinks that history will vindicate him. He thinks that in 20 years historians will look back on his presidency and proclaim that in retrospect he was right and his critics wrong. If he is right then the Middle East is doomed. An editorial in the New York Times this morning points out that Bush turns out to be much more militant than the hardline government of Israel.

Everybody knew President Bush was aiming at Senator Barack Obama last week when he likened those who endorse talks with "terrorists and radicals" to appeasers of the Nazis. But now we know what Mr. Bush knew then — that Israel is in indirect peace talks with Syria, a prominent member of Mr. Bush's list of shunned nations — and it seems as if the president was going for a two-for-one in his crack about appeasement.

If so, it was breathtakingly cynical to compare the leadership of the Jewish state with those who stood aside in the face of the Nazi onslaught, and irresponsible to try to restrain this American ally from pursuing a settlement that it judges as possibly being in its best interests.

Read the entire editorial

Think about what would have to happen in the Middle East in the next few months and years for the situation to be such that historians would later conclude that President Bush had been right and the government of Israel wrong about trying to negotiate with Syria. I would think that all Americans, except perhaps those desiring a world-wide conflagration for religious reasons, would be fervently hoping their president and vice-president are in fact the misguided fools who don't know what they are doing that so many Americans have been saying they are.