Author: IseFire

From the Office of NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson:

[Comptroller Thompson] had mentioned [recently] resistance from Micron Technology to adhering to a shareholder vote and adding new language to protect LGBT members of its workforce from discrimination.

As a result of pressure from Bill and the New York City Pension Funds, Micron Technology Inc. has notified us that it is reversing its stance and has now agreed to add language pertaining specifically to s-xual orientation to its anti-discrimination policies….
The Advocate has just posted the development on its web site. You can view this – and our official statement on the matter – at http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid45001.asp

The Republican fund-raising machine is back to some old tricks: the bogus, telemarketed "National Leadership Award" pitch/scam dating back to at least 2002 and ethically-challenged former Congressman Tom DeLay.

A friend of mine in the corporate world received this voice mail in mid-March 2007, as related to him by e-mail from his administrative assistant:

Heather Yolan from Congressman Tom Cole’s office called and said they would like to recognize you with a National Leadership Award, and would like to talk to you about a press release ASAP…their number is 1-877-213-0603.

I love the ASAP bit.

So, the calls are now associated with the likes of Republican Congressman Tom Cole…and Tom Reynolds, as well. Here’s another recent example. And here. And here.

The blog Disregard Evil Tongues summarizes the pitch:

I was promised a suitable plaque to proudly display in my office to show my workers how I support the President and his policies. I would get a fine wooden gavel for my desk. (The better to hit my co-workers who are not impressed by the plaque) I would be invited to the President’s dinner in Washington where I would be able to voice my opinions on the problems impacting small business….I would be named an Honorary Chairman of the Small Business Leadership Committee….

But the catch: the Baloney Leadership Committee and all the rest of it can be yours only for the price of a contribution to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

That is right, for a mere $500.00 I could help the NRCC spread the word of their support of small business, and the NRCC was certain my name would carry a lot of weight in the [community] and would I be willing to send the money in two easy payments.

Elizabeth Drew in the a recent issue of The New York Review of Books gives as convincing of a narrative concerning the nature of the Democrats’ victory in November 2006 as I’ve read anywhere. There are some important observations in the Drew’s article.

First, the situation for the GOP going into the elections of November, 2006:

In an interview, the astute Republican lobbyist and activist Vin Weber said of the Christian conservatives, "They really are to the Republican party what labor or African-Americans are to the Democrats–similar in numbers and impact." Weber told me, "The evangelical vote is simply larger than that of other Republican constituencies."

The Rove "genius," his daunting get-out-the-vote machinery mobilizing Republican activists on the ground, as well as his ability to frame issues from gay marriage to fighting terrorism in a way that puts Democrats on the defensive, added to the mystique of Republican invincibility. But Rove’s real innovation was to develop a far more sophisticated "targeting" operation– figuring out, for example, where the Christian right and evangelical voters are to be found, and making sure they get to the polls.

However, "Mechanics alone can’t win elections," Drew rightly points out, and the American "electorate is closely divided." The result of the November 2006 election–that is, the Democratic Party’s capture of the House and Senate–was because "59 percent of independents voted for Democrats–up from 49 percent in 2004." Why? In part because the "embrace of Christian conservatives has helped push the Republican Party far to the right, leaving more centrist and independent voters up for grabs."

But the even greater motivator of anti-Republican votes (which tended to be pro-Democratic only incidentally, except in the case of voters in their 20’s) was the issue of Iraq.

Drew gets this.

By late September [2006], most of the public had come to realize that the war in Iraq was an entirely separate matter from the "war on terror." In the past, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other administration figures had, with considerable success, tried to conjoin the two issues. Iraq, Bush said repeatedly, was the "central front in the war on terror."

Drew cites a poll indicating that

during September a large part of the public figured out that it had been sold a bill of goods: that the increasingly costly and unsuccessful war in Iraq wasn’t part of the war on terrorism, as Bush and Cheney had been asserting that it was.

Well, impressive. For four years Cheney and Rove successfully used "the same sales pitch" with the public. That it took until September 2006 for enough Americans to figure this out is simply appalling.

But, figure it out–belatedly–enough American voters did. As David Price (D-NC) summarizes for Drew:

"The election was much more a referendum on Bush and Iraq and the Republican stewardship of the House than a response to what [Democrats] said. It wasn’t that we had such an inspiring program."

Or as Bill Clinton put it: Democrats have been given "not a mandate but an opportunity."

An aggressive Democratic posture vis-a-vis the Bush administration’s Iraq idiocy is what is now needed. Needed badly. And it’s yet to materialize. Such a successful aggressive Democratic stance will create a beach head from which Democrats can begin to more thoroughly counter:

1. the Religious Right’s anti-republic and crypto-theocratic agenda, with all its dehumanizing homophobia, racism, and misogyny, and

2. the Old Guard Corporatists’ gold-worshiping agenda, with all its Social Darwinism–a grotesque socio-economic caricature of the Darwinism of the biological sciences, a callous and anti-humanistic worldview that deems the poor worthy of their poverty always and in every case, and the wealthy worthy of their wealth that effortless makes more wealth–first and foremost for themselves–always and in every case.

But such a resistance to the President on Iraq creates something else yet again, something even more important in the longterm (which, by American political standards is all of 8-15 years) . . . vision and inspiration upon which a viable Democratic forcefulness (as opposed to typical defensiveness) can endure. Here is the rub Democrats can at this point only hope to encounter.

What will it be and who will articulate it? A vision of an America leading an international and rationalistic global community? Unlikely. Perhaps an America in which a Democratic presidential candidate at least calls for a sweeping New Deal-style national program towards energy independence and scientific innovation.

As Michael Tomasky describes in the current The New York Review of Books, some Democrats, like Rep. Rahm Emanuel, think the Great Idea needed is the creation of mandatory national service among the young. Some, like Chuck Schumer think (seriously) that it’s limiting children’s access to the Internet by 50%.

Emanuel’s in particular is not a bad idea at all (Gen. Wes Clark proposed something similar as part of is 2004 campaign for president), and Schumer’s isn’t entirely off-base, but I feel worried if these ideas represent the best that the Democrats can muster.

Regardless, it is way past time for Democrats to seize November’s opportunity.

(Cross-posted here.)

Fifty years ago today (Oct. 29), Israel attacked Egypt in collusion with the UK and France; in early November, the UK and France entered the conflict militarily, as had been secretly agreed among the three allied nations. UK forces seized the Suez Canel (photo), which all along had been the real purpose of the three-nation assault on Egypt.

This invasion of an Arab country was in defiance of international law and world opinion. The US did not support the invasion. In fact, the US response forced the UK troops to withdraw in humiliation. Recently, Geoffrey Wheatcroft of The Boston Globe wrote about this in light of the invasion of Iraq.

From the article:

[UK Prime Minister] Tony Blair has quite enough worries. But he might still find time to reflect on the events of 50 years ago, when an attack on an Arab country–involving a conspiracy to misrepresent the real reasons–brought a dismal end to the career of [Prime Minister] Sir Anthony Eden.
…..

In 1956, not only did London and Paris act in secret collusion with Tel Aviv, the United States was almost hostile to Israel–and toward ill-considered Western adventures in the Middle East. Today, Blair might ponder whether he should have acted as President Bush’s candid friend, in the way that Eisenhower did with Eden, counseling the president against a rash enterprise rather than grandiosely supporting him “to the last."

…..
[At the time, Prime Minister Eden] was reminded in friendly but forceful terms of the sheer unwisdom of “the use of force" against an Arab country-which would, “it seems to me, vastly increase the area of jeopardy." The “appeaser" in this case was General Dwight David Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, in the day when things were different in the White House and the Republican Party. If Eden persevered in his folly, Ike wrote to the prime minister on Sept. 3, 1956, in words just as chilling today, not only the peoples of the Middle East but “all of Asia and Africa, would be consolidated against the West to a degree which, I fear, could not be overcome in a generation."

So, Ike knew: for the British to invade an Arab nation then, without the support of other nations, would turn the world and particularly the Islamic world against the UK. So, Ike knew: Don’t do it.

In this regard, I like Ike. I think Rev. Bu$h & NeoCon Republicans, Inc. (Donald Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Board), may not.

What’s a liberal, what’s a progressive, what’s a populist? I’m not always sure. But, some concerns about Democratic candidate for Senate (TN), Rep. Harold Fold, Jr., has me thinking about that.

From the Salon.com article, "How Would Jesus Vote?"

On the [senatorial] campaign trail, [Democratic Rep. Harold Ford] portrays himself as a moderate, saying he opposes the politics of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, endorses the House Republican immigration plan, and supports a state ban on gay marriage. To prove his point, Ford’s get-out-the-vote rallies often double as prayer meetings. During a recent debate with his Republican opponent, former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker, Ford repeatedly asked state residents to give him their prayers along with their votes. On his Web site, under the banner "My Faith Is My Guide," Ford writes that he is running for Senate "to put my faith and beliefs into action."

In light of only the Salon.com article there is no difference between Ford’s stated policy positions and those of most members of the Religious Right.

(My guess is that their would be differences on some economic issues, however.) What is more, Ford’s "Gee, aw shucks," down-home style is nearly as practiced as George W. Bush’s. Get this:

"[John] Kerry and I are very different people," Ford said, as he hurried toward the gates of Neyland Stadium, having arrived at the game against the University of Alabama deep into the second quarter. "I serve a big God, he gives me strength every day, and I go to work. I am not that smart. I don’t try to outsmart him. I just go to work every day."

Ain’t that sweet?

The differences between Ford and his Republican opponent are very real, I’m sure; but, aren’t they primarily differences grounded in the practicalities of Democratic Party workings, in the differences between Ford, who would have to work with more progressive fellow Democrats, and his opponent who would work with the leadership of what has been one of the worst Congresses in American history; in the differences between Ford, who would count towards a Democratic majority in the Senate, and his opponent, who would count towards the now threatened Republican near-hegemony in U.S. government.

Again . . . those differences do matter. Greatly. But so do the differences between rationalism and religiosity, between a respect for the advancement of civil rights and folksy homophobia.

Do I hope Ford wins? Yes. Do I like what he has to say according to the Salon.com article? Mostly I don’t . . . I merely like the negative consequences the GOP is apparently suffering locally as a result of what he says. (I’m being upfront here that I’m not aware of Ford’s positions beyond this single Salon.com article!)

Regular readers of my own wee blog will know that I was far in the front of the call for new Democratic candidates who would use visionary and specifically biblical language–even evangelical rhetorical "hooks" (after all, Bush has done so successfully for 6 years, though the act seems to be wearing thin)…but in the service of an unapologetically progressive vision. (And–what is more–I was quick to bemoan the false or at least false-sounding attempts to do so by politicians, like Sen. John Kerry, who would be better off being honest to what I think is their basically secular convictions.) However, I have never wanted visionary and specifically biblical language used by Dems to support policies in concert with significant multiple parts of the Religious Right’s own agenda. Yet, that’s arguably what Ford is doing.

So, the partisan in me is pleased by Ford’s strength in the polls. The liberal and rationalist in me is slightly worried: is Ford a sign of things to come, a harbinger of a fight within the Democratic Party between populist Democrats–who I tend to think of as Democrats who are effectively anti-intellectual and substantially conservative on social issues and select economic issues–and liberal Democrats, who, as I see them, are more apt to be secular and, in terms of policy, innovative.

Can one be a liberal and populist? I think so. I’m not sure. (What would he or she be? A version of a Southern- or Midwestern-born Sam Harris with NASCAR metaphors? A US-coal mining-town-born Richard Dawkins…obviously without the English accent?)

Either kind of the two (of many types?) of Democrats I’ve defined–"populist" and "liberal"–is more likely to save Social Security, demand that government not turn its back to the poor, or follow a more prudent foreign policy than today’s Republicans! 

But over issues like gay marriage or even science education (e.g., the battle between Creationism myth fans and those supporting the teaching of the scientific method), might not Democrats soon come to internecine rhetorical blows if too much thinking like Ford’s is unchallenged–not rejected, but tolerantly confronted–by fellow Dems under our truly and thankfully big tent. Will there at least be discussion? I hope so, and I hope it will be in the spirit of mutual support, for in neither victory nor defeat can Democrats afford to tear each other down. Conversely, no party can afford to have internal discussions and genuine disagreements stifled.

I think so. I’m cautiously optimistic.

I hope Ford wins. But I also hope that he comes to see some things differently, and perhaps comes to support–even if but incrementally–bolder, braver positions, and even to articulate them as he is apparently well-suited to do to his particular constituents–be they his constituents as a Representative or–let it be so–as a Senator.

(Any comments regarding what readers think are the differences or similarities between “progressives,” “liberals,” and “populists” would be greatly appreciated!)

Promoted by Steven D. This is horrible news.

This story doesn’t discuss causality or trends (e.g., no numbers from past polls). But in light of April’s National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), reported on in The New York Times, that concluded that the Iraq war has spawned "a new generation of Islamic radicalism" and globalized it, is there any reasonable doubt that the US presence in Iraq is one reason why jihad is embraced by the most populous Muslim nation on the planet?
From the article:

AKARTA (Reuters) – Around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims support jihad and justify bomb attacks on Indonesia’s tourist island of Bali as defending the faith, a survey released on Sunday showed.

Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country, with 220 million people, 85 percent of whom follow Islam, giving the Asian archipelago the largest Muslim population of any nation in the world.

Today Gore Vidal turns 81. Gore Vidal was interviewed on C-SPAN on April 29, 2006, relative to his new memoir, Point-to-Point Navigation, which will be out soon and can be ordered now online. In the interview, he described himself very simply as “an ancestral voice prophesying war.”
Below the flip is some of what he had to say in the interview about the media, Iran, George W. Bush, and other topics. (The transcription is mine, as are any errors.)
Just because a president gets us into military messes doesn’t make him a wartime president, however much he may want to be one, however often he calls himself one.
…..
Anything the administration says–and this is what is so startling having lived in and around politics for 70 years now–I’ve never seen much an unquestioning media. Whatever the president says, they repeat it because, “You see, he’s president.” Well, suppose [what he is saying is] a lie, and you know it’s a lie. These journalists are not dumb.”
…..
[For] us as a polity to the republic, it’s going to take tow to three generations to get the Constitution back, to get money power back to Congress, declarations of war back to the House of Representatives. Everything has just been skewed.
…..
Congressman Conyers went up to Ohio…. He did a report on how the election was stolen in 2004…. He wrote a report on it, a very good one….I thought, “Well, something was going to happen. This is devastating: second election stolen in a row, presidential.” And no mention in The New York Times of his book; no mention in The Washington Post, which is now a court circular for the emperor at home, and suddenly there were no reviews anywhere, and I thought: “The country’s gone.” If the people don’t care about the republic, there’s nothing left to care about, because there is no country. That’s all we have.
…..
[Regarding Katrina:] African Americans were abandoned to the waters.
[Vidal offered a proposal that there be a Constitutional amendment for a recall of a President because the founders could not have foreseen gerrymandering and billions of dollars spent in campaigning as two tools basically ensuring the reelection of “the same people over and over again.” Currently, there’s really “no chance of the peoples’ voice being heard.”]
…..
We are on an edge of the abyss.
…..
These fools are going to go ahead and attack Iran, and with that the Third World War begins, and this country going to be destroyed. We’re too small to carry on like this…. We’re broke. There is no money. There’s going to be trouble servicing the debt–paying the interest on all those treasuries that we have loaned to other counties or let other countries invest in.”
…..
No one rejoices to see his country die.
…..
Just as you think they can’t push it any further they push it a bit further. It’s greed. It’s to get money for themselves, for friends, jobs, a sense of being somebody. Simultaneously [this] goes along with an ignorance that is just startling. You can’t blame most American presidents for not knowing much about economics, but they should know something about history…. These people know nothing about anything. And everybody knows they don’t.
…..
He’s President Jonah. He jinxed everything he does.
…..
I quite agree with those blue collar workers who say, “What do you mean, ‘Jobs we don’t want to do?’ We don’t want to do [them] for nothing. But as we have no labor unions, and as we have no minimal wage, they are asking us to work for nothing: no health care [and a] God-awful educational system for the general public.”
…..
I’ve always said, when the bright blue collar workers wake up to the situation in the country, then you have a revolutionary atmosphere in which things will be changed…. The awakening of the American working class is something to be prayed for.

I would like to gloss MikeBaseball’s diary over on dKos with a “call to action”-related link. I urge readers to contact American Airlines and its spokesperson Tim Wagner to express concern over what the apparently bigoted attitude of member of an American Airlines crew towards two passengers who happened to 1) be of the same sex and 2) show affection.

The threat from the crew to land the plane–citing security concerns–if the two men didn’t stop “arguing” with a flight attendant seems highly exploitive and abusive, as well as condescendingly expressed, provided that events were accurately reported in this week’s The New Yorker. At the very least, Mr. Wagner’s insinuation that the two men were making passengers uncomfortable demands a clarification of American Airlines’ relevant policies.

Please read the rest of the diary after the flip; it may inform your e-mail to AA.
American Airlines overall has had a good record relative to corporate responsibility towards gay employees, and American is a visible sponsor of the Pride celebration in San Francisco. They had a large section in the NYC Heritage of Pride March in 2005, complete with a nearly Macy’s Parade-quality balloon shaped like a plane.

However, that positive record of the airline is all the more reason to contact American, which must be encouraged to continue to be a leader in treating gay employees and customers as equal in humanity and rights with heterosexual employees and customers.

The following are only excerpts from the article mentioned. I encourage readers to click-through to the article on The New Yorker’s site and examine the article in full.

“On August 22nd…Ralph Jackson ([seat]21A) and David Leisner (21B) were returning from two weeks in France, while Huffa Frobes-Cross (21F) had stopped over in Paris on his way back from South Africa. Assigned to seats 20A and 20B were George Tsikhiseli, a television journalist, and his writer boyfriend, Stephan Varnier.
…..
Shortly after takeoff, Varnier nodded off, leaning his head on Tsikhiseli. A stewardess came over to their row. “The purser wants you to stop that,” she said.

“I opened my eyes and was, like, `Stop what?’ ” Varnier recalled the other day.

“The touching and the kissing,” the stewardess said, before walking away.

Tsikhiseli and Varnier were taken aback.
…..
In the row behind them were Leisner and Jackson.
…..
Leisner and Jackson, who were “astounded,” leaned forward to ask if they’d heard correctly.
…..
Tim Wagner, a spokesman for American, said that the stewardess’s injunction to the men was reasonable, and would have been made whether the couple was gay or straight. “Our passengers need to recognize that they are in an environment with all ages, backgrounds, creeds, and races. We have an obligation to make as many of them feel as comfortable as possible,” he said.

From "Mindless in Iraq," by Peter W. Galbraith in The New York Review of Books, a set of reviews of Iraq-related current affairs titles.

As we now know, Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon had no plan to secure any part of Baghdad. It allowed looters to destroy Iraq’s governmental infrastructure and to steal thousands of tons of high explosives, weapons, and radioactive materials. And it had no coherent plan for Iraq’s postwar governance.

In reference to Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, by Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor:

Greg Newbold, who later joined the revolt of the generals, told Gordon and Trainor of his reaction to Rumsfeld’s 125,000-troop figure: "My only regret is that at the time I did not say ,Mr. Secretary, if you try to put a number on a mission like this you may cause enormous mistakes…. Give the military what you would like to see them do, and then let them come up with it. I was the junior guy in the room, but I regret not saying it.’"

Regarding Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco, by David L. Phillips:

Men who had put their lives on the line in combat were mostly unwilling to put their careers on the line to speak out against a plan based on numbers pulled out of the air by a cranky sixty-nine-year-old.

Referring to Ahmad’s War, Ahmad’s Peace: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq, by Michael Goldfarb:

Shawkat, [an Iraqi,] founded a newspaper that used Iraq’s new press freedoms to protest against this new form of the old order. He was murdered after ignoring a succession of death threats.

Goldfarb contrasts the casualness with which the Americans approached the occupation with the deadly consequences for his friend. His prose reflects his understandable outrage when he writes about how the Coalition Provisional Authority had been turned into an extension of the Bush-Cheney ’04 reelection campaign. Other nations’ professional foreign-service officers found it shocking that senior CPA figures [in Iraq] attended meetings with their Bush-Cheney lapel pins on…. Didn’t they know they were representing all Americans, not just the president’s supporters?

Goldfarb describes a young Republican, sent by the Bush administration to instruct the Iraqis on democracy, who explained to a gathering of tribal and community leaders assembled at the Baghdad Hunt Club that "a political party exists to channel power…. Once you have political power, then you can create, you can do what you want with government, right?"

Goldfarb comments:

To people who had survived the Ba’ath, a political party that really knew how to channel power, the lecture must have seemed ridiculous…. By now I was full of slow-burning anger. My friend Ahmad had died for this? So some kid could stand inside a privately guarded compound, explaining that "a political party exists to channel power" on a street guarded by American soldiers in a city where, one year after the overthrow of Saddam, the original meeting site [at a Baghdad Hotel] was so insecure that local police could not defend it? This was bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq? The most powerful nation in history had rendered itself utterly powerless here.

Galbraith’s review also covers The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq, by Fouad Ajami.

BBC Radio 4 brought MPs together in London to debate the crisis in the Middle East. The debate was recorded as live on August 17 from 5:15 – 7:00 pm GMT. An edited hour-long version was then broadcast that night at 9:00 pm, and can be heard here.

A summary (w/ links) follows after the fold….

The most eloquent speaker, about 38 minutes in, may have been Jeremy Hunt (Con). He argued that what would have been outlined on 7/7/2005 (the date of the London bombings) as the worst possible outcome of UK foreign policy is coming to pass:
*Islamic extremists succeeding in "weaving together" the terrorist attacks of London, New York, Madrid, and Bali with the conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine-Israel;
*Islamic extremists succeeding in "uniting behind them moderate Islamic opinion," and
*A radical Islamic state getting its hands on nuclear weapons.

Hunt described the current situation in the Middle East as a "foreign policy disaster of the highest magnitude" that is "in good measure of our own making." He stressed that the it was as naive to put full faith in military force as it is to put full faith in diplomacy (the implication being that Bush vis-a-vis Iraq and Bush & Olmert vis-a-vis Lebanon this summer put too much faith in military force).

He sees that a battle for the "hearts and mind" of moderate Muslims is being waged, and he asked relative to that: "who can quantify" the number of friends that Israel has lost by the displacement of over 1,000,000 Lebanese; "who can quantify" the number of recruits to terrorist organizations by the deaths of over 1,000 Lebanese, or for that matter by the deaths of civilians in Iraq, which in 2006 is over 30% higher than it was two years ago (with the number of British casualties having doubled)?

Tim Yeo (Con) pointed out that Tony Blair and the Government were "silent" on the issue of Lebanon when the fighting raged there. He said Blair had been a "nodding donkey" while in the US during the wide-ranging Israel attacks meant to destroy Hezbollah, in stark contrast to Margaret Thatcher who during the Middle East crisis of her day gave George H. W. Bush advice both privately and publicly. Yeo stated bluntly that Tony Blair’s "unquestioning support" of the US perspective on international affairs has "increased the dangers of a serious terrorist attack on the British people." History will judge Blair "very harshly indeed," Yeo said, for having made the world a more dangerous than it was in 1997.

Susan Kramer (LibDem) rightly declared that the refusal of the British Government to call for an immediate cease fire was essentially read by the Israelis as "a green light to proceed with a disproportionate response," and has "shattered any trust" between Britain and the the people of Lebanon.

Kramer reminded members that the IRA used the same extreme "no surrender" and similarly radical, reckless language that Hezbollah does (e.g., Hezbollah calls for Israel’s destruction), but the clashing parties involved in the Northern Ireland issue persisted in negotiations, and eventually great progress was made. She called for a similar commitment to negotiations on the part of the parties involved in the Middle East, including the US and Israel. (I.e., the US and Israel may not like the prospect of negotiations with Hezbollah, but negotiations of some manner need to be attempted regardless.)

Lord Triesman (Lab) represented the Government’s point of view and outlined a sensible goal of a Lebanon "genuinely sovereign and democratic," in which the government alone has "the monopoly right for the use of force," and which is free of "private, marauding militias" who are answerable not to the Lebanese people but to "to Iran and Syria," the former of which has expressly declared its desire to wipe Israel off "the face of the map." He argued the unconvincing case that somehow not calling for a ceasefire aided in fulfilling the Government’s worthy goal.

Triesman reminded listeners that "no civilized country" would allow its citizens to be "rocketed every night, to have militias come into its soil" and "abduct its soldiers" and that the "outcry would have been deafening" had any Government allowed such to befall the UK. A colleague of Triesman’s complained that calls for cease fires in the early days of the recent conflict were too often calls for Israel to do so unilaterally, with no attendant call on Hezbollah to cease its attacks, too.

Simon Hughes (LibDem) outlined 5 principles to be applied to the larger situation of Israel’s security and Middle Eastern peace:
1. the right of Israel to exist in peace and security within internationally recognized boundaries and the right of Palestine to exist in the peace and security within internationally recognized boundaries, something promised them in 1947 and still undelivered;
2. the open status of Jerusalem to people of all faiths;
3. terrorism is not permissible;
4. all those elected in Palestine have to be worked with and recognized; and
5. international law must prevail.

Hughes said that Israel must recognize the 1967 UN resolution and stop settling people outside of the boundaries set forth in that resolution.

Douglas Carswell (Con) believes that the lack of democracy in the Middle East is the "engine" that drives so many of the problems in the region. (Someone ought to tell him that he’s holding the Union Jack upside down in this photo.) Carswell used President Bush’s "axis of evil" term to describe a four- not three-part axis of Syria, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah pledged to destroy Israel. He conceded "not everything Israel does is right." He predicted "dark days ahead." He also pointed out rightly that the debate over the invasion of Lebanon is nowhere more fierce than in Israel itself.

When asked about John Prescott’s description of President Bush’s foreign policy as crap, Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Lab) stated that President Bush is not her "favorite politician." Importantly, she pointed out that Israel is not doing itself any favors by arresting freely and democratically elected Palestinian leaders.

Mike Weir (SNP) stressed that as "a friend of the United States" the UK should have stood up during the early days of the Israeli attacks within Lebanon and said to the US, "’You’re wrong to allow Israel to do this.’" He declared as "worthless" Prime Minister Tony Blair’s description of the US-UK relationship as being–in a phrase used now for decades–"the special relationship" in which the UK is a valued partner.

My endnote: As a regular listener to BBC Radio 4’s news programs, I am very disappointed by and concerned about the increasingly anti-American language I hear on-air. It seems to becoming fashionable on BBC Radio to dislike all things American, not just the policies of George W. Bush–which polls show most Americans themselves dislike. I know of at least one commentary in the UK print media during the run-up to the US 2004 General Election in which an explicit warning was given: the people of the UK like most things about America–certain the ideal of America–and the American people, while loathing the American president, particularly his amateurish foreign diplomacy, rhetorical tone-deafness, religiousity, apparent arrogance, and myopic foreign policy; however, if you, the US voters, actually by a majority vote for him (which did not happen in 2000!), UK anger will begin to be more broadly directed against the US as a whole: its culture and its people.

I think that that is happening.

While I would remind UK readers that George W. Bush has an approval rating in the US in the 30s %, which is only slightly higher than Blair’s in the UK, it certainly must be said that no President has done more harm to the special relationship than George W. Bush. Even when Eisenhower forced a cease-fire upon the UK-France-Israel alliance to the UK’s great detriment during the Suez Crisis in 1956, he did so as a President who had as Supreme Allied Commander during WWII demonstrated his admiration of Britain and respect for her military and political leaders; what is more, the pressure on the UK was exercised with the support of the significant Commonwealth nations of Canada and Australia.

But George Bush has no such diplomatic or political capital to squander vis-a-vis the special relationship; his manipulation of Tony Blair was uncalled for, and he demonstrates a persistent disdain for the UK’s foreign policy experience…that was gained at times in the past at a very high cost, and is probably ignored the the US’s peril.

Since it takes two to make a head-on collision, it must be said that Tony Blair is also to blame for the deterioration in the special relationship. He has yet to find a way to out-maneuver President Bush’s dangerous policies, and instead seems to be their happy co-executor.