The New Republic

Some of you may recall my infatuation with Barack Obama.  I am a bit less taken with him now...actually not less taken with him, but with his views on foreign policy.  I am still convinced that he is the genuine article, unlike his opponent, the lady with stick-figure passion and no real humor at all.  And certainly no sense of humor about herself.  And, yes, a president who is a person of color -- which is not a sufficient reason to vote for him -- would change the dynamics of America's relationship with the world.  Still, he has to have sound views about that relationship.  The fact is th READ MORE >>

Almost everybody knows that people who think in analogies think sloppily.Desmond Tutu, leader of the Anglican Church in South Africa, clings to his comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa.  It is such a gross analogy, factually and philosophically, that by now it almost needs no rebuttal.So now comes Condi Rice, who grew up in the Jim Crow American south, and compares life for the Palestinians in the Holy Land with her own life in what had been the Confederacy.  Actually, she made quite a lot of her o READ MORE >>

I am sure some of you aren't interested in this, maybe even thinking it's detritus.  I found it fascinating, especially given that it came out in Ha'aretz on the 60th anniversary of the U.N. Partition Plan for Palestine.  An Israeli historian has discovered in U.N. READ MORE >>

Towards the end of tonight's debate, a retired Army Brigadier General named Keith Kerr asked the candidates -- via, of course, a YouTube video -- about their thoughts on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Kerr revealed that he is himself gay, but came out after his 43 years in the military. READ MORE >>

There are two articles of particular interest at the New York Times on-line at the moment of this writing, about 12:30 pam., Wednesday, November 28.  One article is by Ariane Bernard, and it was posted mid-afternoon.  The other, very up-to--date, was written by the veteran and seasoned journalist Elaine Sciolino. READ MORE >>

Political commentators have been parsing George Bush's words at Annapolis.  They were eloquent and realistic, and they did not force Israel into concessions before the negotiations with the Palestinians even began.Mohammed Abbas' remarks were designed -- I guess, understandably -- to cover his back, quite literally.  He did his litany of Palestinian demands only some READ MORE >>

There was an inadvertent debate this morning between two op-ed pieces: one in the New York Times by Roger Cohen (he, of the priestly caste among the Jews); the other in the Wall Street Journal by Bernard Lewis (a scholar of titanic stature but a Jew as ordinary as the rest of us Israelites).  The two essays of roughly a thousand words each appear to be addressed to the outcome of tomorrow's conference at Annapolis.  They are not.  They are different ways of reading history...or, of one of them, not reading history at all. READ MORE >>

One doesn't normally head to Shelby Steele for wisdom on foreignaffairs.  But here in the morning's Wall Street Journal is aprovocative and counter-intuitive by Steele which is headed by thesurprising (for Steele) line, "Obama Is Right On Iran."  Yes, it ismore than a bit patronizing.  Still, it does make a complicated argumentthat candidate Obama does not make.  "Diplomacy," Steele, writes is "nowthe most glamorous word in the Democratic 'antiwar' lexicon."  READ MORE >>

The Democrats do not grasp that they are in intellectual and moraltrouble.  They can no longer say that more troops in Iraq will nothelp.  They did.  As Clive Crook wrote in this morning's FT (an anti-warcolumnist in an anti-war paper), "Up to now, Democrats have beenstinting in their recognition that the situation in Iraq hasimproved...That is the wrong posture They need to celebrate the success, aslong as it lasts, as enthusiastically as the Republicans.  They also nee READ MORE >>

In 1933, the Oxford Union debated and then voted by a tally of 275 to 153 that this House "will not fight for King and Country."  Well, as it happens, that House did fight for King and Country, valiantly and bloodily.  But 1933 was the year that Hitler came to power, and almost no one could see that war would be forced on England.  Or that the success of this resolution in an institution of the British social and intellectual elite might actually encourage Hitler in his political dementia.I've met a few individuals who actually voted for this resolution, and one of them -- in the 1980's -- READ MORE >>