Thank you, Mr. Auster, for your great post.

Bush is working hard to lose the votes of supporters of Israel in ‘04. Today’s criticism of Israel’s attempt to eliminate an important terrorist is nearly the last straw. How can Bush defend his double standard: one for Israel and the other for the United States? Could it be that Bush’s chumminess with Saudi “princes” reflects something weightier than Realpolitik? It’s getting to the point where a few principled members of the administration should resign, to avoid further complicity in the process of making the Middle East judenrein.

Oh yes, Buchanan; almost forgot about him. Here’s part of what he says on his mag’s Web site today: “Americans believe in separation of church and state, that religious indoctrination has no place in state schools. But, like pre-Vatican-II Catholics, Muslims believe that indoctrinating children in the faith of their fathers is the primary purpose of education.

“Acolytes of American values believe the Bill of Rights gives infidels the right to preach, sodomites the right to practice, Larry Flynt and Salman Rushdie the right to publish, and every woman and wife the right to fornicate freely and have an abortion. Try selling that in Riyadh or Rawalpindi, and the authoritarian rulers will have to rescue you from the people’s will.”

The faith of Muslims’ fathers is reflected in school lessons that Jews are pigs and monkeys, that it’s usually OK to kill infidels, that Jews use the blood of Muslim children to make pastry, and that The Protocols of the Learmed Elders of Zion is an authentic document produced by the leaders of World Jewry. As to Buchanan’s characterization of American values, the Saudi Minister of Education couldn’t have put it better.

Poor homeless Pat! Is there no country he can feel comfortable in? I was mistaken a few months ago when I said he’d turned into a multiculturalist. No, multiculturalists laud every culture but their own, whereas Buchanan believes Islam is OK for Muslim countries but wouldn’t want to live in any of them himself, any more than they’d want him to.

Yes, to say that the war was simply waged to further Israel’s interests is ridiculous - the Middle East is still populated by millions who would just as soon annihilate the Jewish state - including the Palestinian leadership Bush is pushing Israel to make concessions to. BTW, isn’t it outrageous that the “road map” calls for a Palestinian state BEFORE its borders are delineated? Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

In case there are readers who disbelieve that Buchanan said the sole or decisive purpose of the war on Iraq was to help Israel, here is Buchanan’s concluding sentence from a long cover article at The American Conservative, with the ominous title “Whose War?” (got it?), published just before the Iraq war began:

“Though we have said repeatedly that we admire much of what this president has done, he will not deserve re-election if he does not jettison the neoconservatives’ agenda of endless wars on the Islamic world that serve only the interests of a country other than the one he was elected to preserve and protect.”
Patrick J. Buchanan, “Whose War,” The American Conservative, March 24, 2003.
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html

Thus, just as President Bush was preparing to launch this mighty campaign against Iraq, Buchanan was charging that Bush was being led by a mainly-Jewish group of advisors to fight a war that served ONLY the interests of Israel.

Such charges by Buchanan and his colleagues span the whole period of the war debate. Here is his managing editor Scott McConnell writing in early 2002:

“Despite its success in inserting recklessly belligerent phrases into Bush’s State of the Union speech, the War Party occupies a vulnerable position in the broad geography of American politics. Its core members understand full well that the American rage against terrorists who attacked us is not the same as an American desire to take out every country that has ever looked cross-eyed at Israel.”

Scott McConnell, “Expanding The War: The Public Opinion Battle,” antiwar.com Feburary 19, 2002.

Thus, according to McConnell, it’s not that Israel’s Arab neighbors have ever harmed her or wanted to destroy her. Oh, no, they’ve just been “looking cross-eyed” at her! And, according to McConnell, the mainly-Jewish neoconservatives who controlled Bush’s brain were manipulating America into expending its treasure and the lives of its young men on a war the real purpose of which was not its stated purpose of protecting America and ridding the world of a dangerous tyrant, but the mainly Jewish neocons’ hidden agenda of toppling those governments that had done nothing more offensive than look cross-eyed at Israel.

Buchanan and McConnell and their colleagues have made these, and many other statements like these, and they have to live with the consequences.

Bush’s “road map”—which today included scolding Israel for trying to kill a terrorist leader—is so insane that even the posters at the number one Love-Bush website, Lucianne.com, are turning against him.

http://lucianne.com/threads2.asp?artnum=49115

Mr. Bush is wholly insensitive about the plight of American landholders along the Mexican border and of white American culture in general. Therefore, it will be unsurprising to learn that Mr. Bush is insensitive about Israel’s border and culture. His behavior is consistent with the idea that he lacks core political principles unless getting elected is a principle. This strategy worked in the 2000 election, so I don’t see him giving it up. Bush supporters need not worry. As soon as he divines a change in his political fortune such as will happen when he is hit with Israel’s sledgehammer supporters in America, he is not likely to change course.

Some might infer Mr. Bush is ruthless. He doesn’t appear as ruthless as many other historical figures. Moreover, unless America is hit with a catastrophe such as a depression or a bloody war, it is very unlikely anyone will learn how ruthless Mr. Bush or anyone of us is.

So it would appear Mr. Bush is likely to be the “conservative” champion-candidate once again in 2004, and the rest of my fellow “nut balls” will once again not vote for him.

Here’s a comment I posted at FrontPage on the “peace process.”

http://www.frontpagemag.com/GoPostal/commentdetail.asp?ID=8263&commentID=106524

Subject: RE: Is there more than meets the eye

Comment:

Mike wonders:

“Or perhaps Bush and Sharon know that the Palestinians won’t hold up their end of the bargain and their failing to do so will turn world opinion more towards Israel solving the terrorist problem through a military solution. Is this possible?”

The problem with this scenario is that we had already reached this point in spring 2002 when Sharon after a year of enduring terrorist attacks finally sent Israeli forces into the Palestinian areas in a serious way. Two months later Bush issued his epoch-making (or so it seemed at the time) speech outlining a rational Mideast policy. So we’ve already been through this. We’ve already established that the Palestinians cannot be dealt with except through force. Why does this have to be established again?

One possible answer is that, while WE understood this, the British left and Europe did NOT understand it. That’s why Bush was forced, by his quid pro quo with Blair, to embark once again on an “Oslo II.” So, maybe Bush and Sharon are thinking: “After all, this is an even more serious attempt for peace, we’ve gotten the Palestinians to have a more acceptable public representative, we’re meeting with them, and so on. So if the Palestianians keep up the terror, then maybe THIS time the left will finally understand that the ‘peace process’ doesn’t work and will stand back and let Israel make war on the terrorists as it must. “

That’s the only scenario I can see that makes Bush’s and Sharon’s actions seem rational. But it’s still horrible. It’s a strategy that treats the lives and limbs of Israelis as coins to be paid to world leftist opinion, until the left finally stops demanding that Israel commit suicide

The left will never admit this - any more than they will admit that the Soviet regime was truly barbarous. Israel as a particular Jewish nation is anathema to everything the left holds dear. That’s why they keep on working the negotiation angle to open Israel to a Palestinian “right of return.” If this is truly Bush’s strategy - it is quite hopeless.