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Wednesday, March 26, 2008
For some lefties, the worst four letter word starts with "J"
General Tony McPeak, current foreign policy adviser to the Audacity of Hype, had some things to say about the Middle East, particularly why so many Administrations have been unable to end Israeli-Arab hostilities:
The interviewer asked McPeak: "So where's the problem? State? White House?"
McPeak replied: "New York City. Miami. We have a large vote -- vote, here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it."
Not good; not good at all.
Posted by D.J. McGuire on March 26, 2008 in International Politics | Permalink
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I'm happy that Obama himself sees the issue with much more subtlety. In a small engagement with 100 Jewish community leaders in Cleveland he had this to say:
"I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have a honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we’re not going to make progress. And frankly some of the commentary that I’ve seen which suggests guilt by association or the notion that unless we are never ever going to ask any difficult questions about how we move peace forward or secure Israel that is non military or non belligerent or doesn’t talk about just crushing the opposition that that somehow is being soft or anti-Israel, I think we’re going to have problems moving forward."
http://elections.jta.org/2008/02/25/obama-reaches-out-to-jewish-leaders/#more-185
The whole speech is a very interesting read because you can tell he's speaking with a bit more candour than he normally does.
I'm the first to critique a number of aspects of Obama's foreign policy (and on domestic issues I pity the Americans who may have to live under his New New Deal) especially his eagerness to intervene wherever and whenever something bad happens in the world. In Africa alone he's talked about getting more involved in Sudan, Chad, Liberian, Kenya, and DR Congo. But I think that his thoughts on Israel shouldn't be dismissed so quickly. He believes in the importance of the U.S. - Israeli alliance and strongly defends Israel's right to exist. I doubt that Obama has the "right" or the "best" policy on Israel, in fact I'm pretty certain that he doesn't, but his point about the difference in "allowable discourse" in Israel vs. the U.S. is right on. I hate reading the NYTimes, WS Journal etc to find out news or read opinions about the near-east because there's a lot of posturing a smearing and very little real analysis, I prefer normally to turn to Haaretz or the Jerusalem Post. Maybe if different opinions were expressed and evaluated on their own merits rather than on whether the ADL, AIPAC, or the AEI find them objectionable there could be some real progress on building a good Israel policy.
Posted by: Kalim Kassam | 2008-03-26 9:42:57 AM
McPeak was detested in the Air Force because he attempted to introduce a new Class A Blue Uniform which looked like it was designed for Commercial bus drivers in Central America -needless to say,the idea collapsed through lack of momentum and McPeak soon
vanished. USAF today is too busy knocking off Ragheads to pay attention to the McPeaks of this world. Macleod
Posted by: Jack Macleod | 2008-03-26 9:48:26 AM
The problem with Israeli-Arab hostilities is Israel's fault.
Israel doesn't make enough effort to get the truth out about their position, Israel always apologizes before investigating an allegation like the Jenin massacre or Mohammed al Dura, and last but not least Israel is always ready to go that extra mile that no other militarily powerful nation would go to compromise for peace and that undermines Israel's moral position in the eyes of the world.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-26 9:52:50 AM
When General McPeak says "unable to end Israeli-Arab hostilities:" he means and end to Israel. He is an advisor to Barrack HUSSEIN Obama of the Anti-Semitic Church in Chicago allied with the Anti-Semtic (Black) Nation of Islam. Doesn't that say it all?
There can be no honest dealing with the children of Ishmael or Mohammad. Ain't gonna happen lads, try as you might. And I don't like the New York Times either. See, we can agree on something!
Barrack HUSSEIN Obama and the General have all eternity to see the error of their ways.
Posted by: RobertG | 2008-03-26 11:57:16 AM
>"If a problem has no solution, it's not a problem, it's a fact. Accept it."
~Henry Kissinger
There is no solution to end Israeli-Arab hostilities if Israel does all the compromising and the Arabs initiate all of the hostilities.
Even calling it "Israeli-Arab hostilities" suggests that Israel is to fault when the Arabs are clearly the aggressors and Israel is the victim.
Until it is simply called "Arab hostility", really naming the problem correctly, there will be no solution.
No American administration has ever done that.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-26 12:27:29 PM
Speller - you raise a very valid point. While true it is also true that it has become almost impossible to get the truth out when from the UN to MSM and university campuses, the lies and propaganda from the other side is relentless. Even the idea of a Palestinian people was a KGB invention which has been a total success.
Add to this the fact that in spite of what so many liberal Jews believe, the U.S. (particularly the State Dept.) has never been a solid friend of Israel. Every time the Americans have declared that they will broker "peace" with some kind of deal, Oslo, Road Map, etc..., it has only brought the spilling of more Jewish blood and Israel closer to annihilation. Sadly the Americans have not been beyond meddling and influence in Israeli elections to ensure that their man win. What I am saying is that until Israel understands that no country, including the U.S., can be counted on in all times and all situation, she will continue to yield to pressure whose end result will be her destruction.
Last of all is the internal cancer of leftism within the Israeli government, bureaucracy, education and courts. Israel remains in dire need of strong Jewish leadership.
Posted by: Alain | 2008-03-26 12:38:39 PM
It was the intellectual class whose musings eventually led to Auchwitz, if memory serves. Take their long history of anti-Semitism, their then-fashionable ideas about eugenics, add a dash of German Manifest Destiny, and voilà! Holocaust.
It's also worth noting that the same intellectual class embraced communism as the wave of the future. Perhaps "intellectual" is the wrong term for them. How about "smirking chimps"?
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-03-26 1:55:06 PM
Alain:
No disrespect intended, but since the Zionist movement purports to be secular and by self-definition non-religious, what difference could strong Jewish leadership make?
Look at it this way. The area is called the Holy Land, in which the secular movement's religious ancestors lived is named Israel and it becomes a home for ...?
Secular people whose ancestors happened to be Jewish or people practising the tenets of Judaism?
Since I'm not Jewish, those distinctions have always perplexed me.
Posted by: set you free | 2008-03-26 1:59:11 PM
Set You Free, the attribute of Jewishness is more of an ethnic distinction than a religious one. It is passed through the mother. Even if one born of a Jewish mother renounces Judaism and becomes apostate, they are still considered Jews by all factions of Judaism.
On the other hand, for converts, it's a bit different. Conversion is discouraged, but with persistence one can receive the Geirei tzedek, by which he is accepted as a Jew by the movement performing the ritual. That is, if he is converted as a Reformed Jew, he is not considered Jewish by an Orthodox Jew, and vice versa.
The state of Israel was created to allow all the Jews of the world a home, if they wished to leave the country in which they currently resided. Given the remarkable and in many ways unique persecution the Jews have suffered through the centuries, it's understandable there are strong restrictions on what a non-Jew may do or own in Israel.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-03-26 2:09:45 PM
In any case, it has to be conceded that Israel is a much more progressive, free, and tolerant state than the nations that surround it. As the Middle East's sole true democracy, inhabited by a remarkably productive people who typically do NOT blow themselves up in pizza parlours and wedding halls, they're a good place to start looking for friends in the Middle East.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-03-26 2:12:33 PM
>"It's also worth noting that the same intellectual class embraced communism as the wave of the future. Perhaps "intellectual" is the wrong term for them. How about "smirking chimps"?
Shane Matthews | 26-Mar-08 1:55:06 PM
"Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America."
~Lillian Hellman
1905-1984, American Playwright
"Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man."
~Erich Fromm
1900-1980, American Psychologist
"An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows."
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
The German people were entirely complicit in the Holocaust.
They liked the booty they shared in that war and conflict won them, and the German economy was not even put on a war footing until mid 1942.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-26 2:37:32 PM
Hitler was a member of the intellectual class? Rumor abounds regarding his monorchism, but born of the intellectual class, that's a new one. Of course historical revisionism vis-a-vis the Nazis and the German people runs unabated, like shite on an Iraqi roadside.
Posted by: DJ | 2008-03-26 2:45:45 PM
They liked the booty they shared in that war and conflict won them, and the German economy was not even put on a war footing until mid 1942.
Posted by: Speller | 26-Mar-08 2:37:32 PM
Adam Tooze has put that argument to rest in his book " THE WAGES OF DESTRUCTION ", though I would be interested to see the statistics you are using to justify your claim.
Posted by: The Stig | 2008-03-26 3:02:31 PM
Set, actually Zionism is a basic tenet of Judaism, which includes all observant (religious) Jews. Yet you are correct that the socialist Jews sought to invent a secular Zionism while rejecting its religious place. Their goal has been and is to create an Israeli national identity while disregarding Jewish identity, and it is not working.
The Arabs remain opposed to the very existence of any state in the M-E that is not Muslim. So even if the secular Zionists succeeded in their goal, the Arabs would still seek its total destruction.
This brings us back to the beginning in that no one can expect to broker a peace agreement between the two. Either the Muslims must change their ideology or Israel must be destroyed as a non Muslim state in the M-E.
Posted by: Alain | 2008-03-26 3:52:16 PM
Actually, DJ, Hitler wasn't an academic, but he was an artist, and he did write a book. He did not invent eugenics or anti-Semitism, but he sure did perfect them. Stalin was not an intellectual either, but in the 1930s intellectuals in America and especially Canada thought he was the most wonderful man. Of course that was before all the gulags and purges and homicidal paranoia became common knowledge, but even afterward, intellectuals were slow to turn away from communism (look at Trudeau). Indeed, many still cling to it today, only now they're careful to call it "social democracy" or "liberal democracy." And of course that great capitalist Satan, America, they hate as much as ever.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-03-26 4:43:33 PM
Stig,
Tooze largely agrees with me.
Speer took over as Minister of Armaments and War Production in '42 and production went up X4.
Kar98K production rose by X2, MP40 and MG42 production rose X4, and Tank production went up almost X5 AND the tanks were heavier PzKpfw IVF2-J models plus the PzKpfw VIa Tiger, PzKpfw VA-G series and PzKpfw VIb King Tiger.
Eastern Europe was stripped of everything from food crops to violins to clothes, slave labour produced construction projects and armament labour while German women stayed home, cooked, and raised little Nazis, unlike the woman of the Allied nations who took to the factories in droves and joined women's military support units.
The German people went to the theatre, ate chocolate, and enjoyed a pretty good life compared to most other European citizens during the war.
Of course there was a chronic shortage of fuel, but if Tiize is correct and Hitler was motivated so deeply by economic shortages you'd think North Africa would have been given greater priority than it was.
Here is a Russian page of Photo Albums captured from German Troops on the Eastern Front.
http://reibert.info/gallery/v/foto_album/
Album 03 has some shots of the Maginot Line so the soldier that owned it was a France vet.
Album 06 has some shots of a field of burned out T-34s and a number of shots of a PaK38 so the album owner was probably in an anti-tank crew.
Most shots are training, I think.
It's interesting and shows the Germans happy, well fed, and of high morale.
Here are 116 photos of SS guards participating in sing-alongs and enjoying their free time at a recreation home near Auschwitz.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,507175,00.html
Good times for the Nazis to be sure.
They thought it would never end.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-26 4:56:23 PM
"He did not invent eugenics or anti-Semitism, but he sure did perfect them. "
Really? It appears they are still being perfected.
"A Life (Un)Worthy of Living: Reproductive Genetics in Israel and Germany, Hashiloni-Dolev, Yael
"shows that the Israeli attitudes are closer to the progressive era attitudes that prevailed 100 years ago. As a modern, progressive state that embraces science and eugenics, it is quite absurd to claim that there is anything but solid science driving the genetic revolution, and one cannot separate eugenics from this scientific advancement. In Israel, the purpose is to have only healthy children, have as many children as possible, while giving preference to the life of the mother over the fetus where the interest of each is in conflict.
Hashiloni-Dolev states, “These data simply shocked and amazed me, as it demonstrated not only that Israeli geneticists were shown to be extremely enthusiastic about the personal and social uses of reproductive genetics, but also that German geneticists were found to be extremely cautious concerning the same medical technology, its uses and desirable social outcomes. In fact, Wertz and Fletcher’s findings revealed that Israeli and German geneticists were placed on two extremes, one enthusiastic, the other halfhearted, concerning the uses and outcomes of reproductive genetics, while geneticists from all other ‘advanced liberal societies’ were placed somewhere between those two poles.”
Posted by: DJ | 2008-03-26 5:35:11 PM
Stig,
Tooze largely agrees with me.Speer took over as Minister of Armaments and War Production in '42 and production went up X4.
Posted by: Speller | 26-Mar-08 4:56:23 PM
Unfortunately Tooze doesn't agree with you, nor did production go up by a factor of 4. Overall German military production was in decline from mid-1941. Building more tanks while you have cut the number of ships being built is merely a rationalization of resources not an increase in production.
Posted by: The Stig | 2008-03-26 6:02:21 PM
"The German people went to the theatre, ate chocolate, and enjoyed a pretty good life compared to most other European citizens during the war."
Sounds familiar.
"Slezkine describes the life of the largely Jewish elite in Moscow and Leningrad where they attended the theater, sent their children to the best schools, had peasant women (whose families were often the victims of mass murder) for nannies, spent weekends at pleasant dachas and vacationed at the Black Sea.
Again, Slezkine discusses the heavily Jewish NKVD and the Jewish leadership of the Great Terror of the 1930s. Then, he writes that in 1937 the prototypical Jewish State official “probably would have been living in elite housing in downtown Moscow . . . with access to special stores, a house in the country (dacha), and a live-in peasant nanny or maid”. He writes long and lovingly detailed sketches of life at the dachas of the elite—the “open verandas overlooking small gardens enclosed by picket fences…”
The reader is left on his own to recall the horrors of the Ukrainian famine, the liquidation of the Kulaks, and the Gulag."
Posted by: DJ | 2008-03-26 6:36:04 PM
Photos are notoriously suspect.
"The Wehrmacht exhibition," declared a leading Socialist party (SPD) politician in the German parliament, "is an important contribution to enlightenment. It gives a voice to the victims and, hopefully, to our consciences as well." To applause from the entire body, a representative of the "moderate" CDU party declared: "I ask that such an exhibition about crimes committed by the German army be accepted with humility, in the spirit of the words of Ignatius, who said: truth against ourselves, that is humility."
Most of the approximately 800 photographs in the exhibition are from Soviet-era Russian sources. More than half of the total are non-incriminating, while most of the 34 photos proven to be fraudulent or misrepresented actually show victims of the Soviets, and of other non-German forces. Exhibition organizer Hannes Herr also admitted that some of the photographs had been retouched. In some instances, photos taken from different angles of the same event or scene were displayed at different places in the exhibition with captions telling viewers that they showed atrocities at different locations. Also presented in the exhibition were documents that included phony confessions by Germans that had been extracted under torture from Soviets."
"The Exhibition "The German Army and Genocide Crimes Against Prisoners of War, Jews and Other Civilians in the East 1939–1944" at the Cooper Union has been postponed. The NYU film program scheduled in conjunction with the exhibition for January 2000 has been postponed as well.
This symposium is held with the support and cooperation of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, the Goethe Institut, The New School University, NYU and the Remarque Institute."
http://www.cooper.edu/germanarmy/sympos.html
Posted by: DJ | 2008-03-26 6:51:05 PM
Reproductive genetics is not the same thing as eugenics, DJ. Your whole argument seems little more than a diversion.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-03-26 7:10:58 PM
If so, then it is only a diversion from empty rhetoric and uniformed opinion.
"Since the postwar period, both the public (the Shane Matthews of the world) and the scientific communities have associated eugenics with Nazi abuses, such as enforced racial hygiene, human experimentation, and the extermination of undesired population groups. However, developments in genetic, genomic, and reproductive technologies at the end of the 20th century have raised many new questions and concerns about what exactly constitutes the meaning of eugenics and what its ethical and moral status is in the modern era."
Apparently amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling are simply more diversion. Ignorance abounds.
Posted by: DJ | 2008-03-26 9:05:39 PM
Wanting to rid humanity of the scourge of genetic diseases via non-destructive medical means is hardly the same as exterminating undesirable groups, DJ. And can the ignorance shtick--it makes you sound like an tenured college prof promoted beyond his intelligence. Your pompous arrogance says way more about you than the people you direct it at--didn't you know that?
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-03-26 10:18:27 PM
>"Unfortunately Tooze doesn't agree with you, nor did production go up by a factor of 4. Overall German military production was in decline from mid-1941. Building more tanks while you have cut the number of ships being built is merely a rationalization of resources not an increase in production."
The Stig | 26-Mar-08 6:02:21 PM
Production did go up X4 and building more tanks was an allocation of resources while U-boat output increased dramatically as well.
>"From 1940 – 1943 the manufacturing time for U-boats was notably decreased. The shipyards adopted the system of pre-fabrication, first used on a mass basis by the US Navy during WWI for the construction of merchant vessels. But this was only done with the hull itself. Outfitting was still done as before. About 19 shipyards assembled between 24 to 26 U-boats per month of Types VII c, IX c and IX d. Using this same system to build the new, and quite larger, Type XXI would have meant a build rate of approximately 20 U-boats per month. This was considered to be too low by the Naval High Command (OKM = Oberkommando der Marine). An alternative construction method was needed to get the higher numbers needed."
>"This remarkable feat of political maneuvering brought immediate results: Tank production increased fivefold and plane production fourfold by the war's end. Two factors permitted Speer to succeed where his predecessors had failed: He had the full faith of the Fuehrer behind him, and he worked with fanatical zeal."
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2002/09/26/speer/index1.html
>"In February, 1942, Adolf Hitler appointed Speer as Minister of Armaments. A good administrator, Speer considerably raised production levels of armaments. Working closely with Karl Doenitz Speer was able to announce that Germany was producing 42 U-boats a month by 1945."
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERspeer.htm
>" Richard Overy notes that up until 1941period, each 100,000 tons of steel allocated resulted in 10,000 tons of weapons. After the overhaul of the war economy that Speer oversaw, that figure quadrupled to 40,000 tons of weapons for every 100,000 tons of steel allocated! In 1940 the allocation of steel to the KM was about 1.67 million tons which generated only about 250,000 tons of warships or ~ 15%. In 1944 the steel allocated was ~ 1.25 million tons while the warships built amounted to about 365,000 tons or about 30%. During this period you see weapons cost per unit tumble as massive production takes over so the net increase in cost is marginal."
>"Poor controls of manufacture up to 1941/42 is the key. If you look at the steel allocations to the military for armaments, it amounts to….
800,000 tons per month in 1938;”USSBS –Ordnance Industry report” [1947 report]
~900,000 tons per month in 1939; Milward ;“The German Economy at War” pp 30
930,000 tons per month in 1940; Milward ;“The German Economy at War” pp 30
670,000 tons per month In 1942; Dunn Jr ; “The Soviet Economy at War”pp40
960,000 tons per month In 1942; assumed from Raw steel conversion of 0.7
850,000 tons per month in 1944;”USSBS -Tank Report “Exhibit D” [1947 report]
1,214,000 tons per month in 1944;”USSBS -Tank Report “Exhibit D” [1947 report] raw steel production
And yet look at the difference in out put between those periods orders of magnitude more out put by 1944 for general armament!!!
War material out put [The Historical Encyclopedia of World War” pp196]
1938 20% of 1943 level
1939 25% of 1943 level
1940 44% of 1943 level
1942 64% of 1943 level
1944 125% of 1943 level
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=58571&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=105
>"I would be interested to see the statistics you are using to justify your claim."
The Stig | 26-Mar-08 3:02:31 PM
Now Stig, your turn to cite some statistics.
Links please.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-26 11:57:31 PM
Now Stig, your turn to cite some statistics.
Links please.
Posted by: Speller | 26-Mar-08 11:57:31 PM
Below are the links. Table 3 in the .xls file shows overall armaments index.
www.hist.cam.ac.uk/academic_staff/further_details/tooze-arming-reich.xls
http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/academic_staff/further_details/tooze-arming-reich.pdf
Posted by: The Stig | 2008-03-27 8:16:26 AM
I couldn't find a Table 3 Stig.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-03-27 10:52:25 AM
I couldn't find a Table 3 Stig.
Posted by: Speller | 27-Mar-08 10:52:25 AM
www.hist.cam.ac.uk/academic_staff/further_details/tooze-arming-reich.xls
Once the .xls file is opened go to the Table3 Wagenfueh Index tab at the bottom
Posted by: The Stig | 2008-03-27 1:01:04 PM
shane and alain:
Thanks for your explanations.
Posted by: set you free | 2008-03-27 1:07:33 PM
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