John F. Kerry

Charles Krauthamer. dude always puts things in great perspective. for someone like me , who really wants to know about this shit, and not just hear yahookans say omgzors piracy !! or whatever else , but to actually know the facts, krauthamer is the man to turn to.


ps. even if u dont like krauthamer, i highly recomend finding 1 or 2 really good op ed writers in a well respected newspaper like the nytimes (lol yea i called the nytimes well respected its kinda lolable) or the washington post or the la times.... and follow their articles for a while... its interesting and illuminating to find a good intelligent writer and follow their writing for a while - for me helps to get a neat new perspective on things...


so without further adieu, mr krauthamer, enlighten us please....
(ps if someone wants to post a tom friedman or some other dude who takes an opposite view piece, that would actually be pretty cool, please do ).




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Krauthammer: Those troublesome Jews
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The world is outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers.

But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel -- a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.

In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded ("quarantined") Cuba. Arms-bearing Russian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.
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Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel's offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza -- as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.

Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.

Israel has already twice intercepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?

But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because, blockade is Israel's fallback as the world systematically de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself -- forward and active defense.

(1) Forward defense: As a small, densely populated country surrounded by hostile states, Israel had, for its first half-century, adopted forward defense -- fighting wars on enemy territory (such as the Sinai and Golan Heights) rather than its own.

Where possible (Sinai, for example) Israel has traded territory for peace. But where peace offers were refused, Israel retained the territory as a protective buffer zone. Thus Israel retained a small strip of southern Lebanon to protect the villages of northern Israel. And it took many losses in Gaza, rather than expose Israeli border towns to Palestinian terror attacks. It is for the same reason America wages a grinding war in Afghanistan: You fight them there, so you don't have to fight them here.

But under overwhelming outside pressure, Israel gave it up. The Israelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgencies -- and therefore withdrawal, by removing the cause, would bring peace.

Land for peace. Remember? Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land -- evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.

(2) Active defense: Israel then had to switch to active defense -- military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat (to borrow President Obama's description of our campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda) the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew.

The result? The Lebanon war of 2006 and Gaza operation of 2008-09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community that had demanded the land-for-peace Israeli withdrawals in the first place. Worse, the U.N. Goldstone report, which essentially criminalized Israel's defensive operation in Gaza while whitewashing the casus belli -- the preceding and unprovoked Hamas rocket war -- effectively de-legitimized any active Israeli defense against its self-declared terror enemies.

(3) Passive defense: Without forward or active defense, Israel is left with but the most passive and benign of all defenses -- a blockade to simply prevent enemy rearmament. Yet, as we speak, this too is headed for international de-legitimation. Even the United States is now moving toward having it abolished.

But, if none of these is permissible, what's left?

Ah, but that's the point. It's the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who've had quite enough of the Jewish problem.

What's left? Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. Why, just last week, the Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel's possession of nuclear weapons -- thus de-legitimizing Israel's very last line of defense: deterrence.

The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million -- that number again -- hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists -- Iranian in particular -- openly prepare a more final solution.

letters@ charleskrauthammer.c om

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Nasa under Obama

DubStyle311

Good article. Krauthamer rules.

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I may be wrong, but I doubt it.

John F. Kerry

long time no see dubstyle

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Nasa under Obama

DubStyle311

It'll probably be a while before you see me again. I do pop in now and then though. How is everyone? Business as usual I see.

p.s. lol @ verk on the mod list

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I may be wrong, but I doubt it.

Dantastic

lol at getting "facts" from mainstream media...

shits hillarious

DubStyle311

^

Who are you?

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I may be wrong, but I doubt it.

stoneric

This guy is a clown. To say the the ships just need to be inspected and all aid will flow thru is fucking laughable. israel decides what goes in. That's the problem. The poor victim israel is systematically starving 1.5 million people. And to justify the ridiculous disproportinate response in Lebanon and Gaza shows what a neocon douchebag he is. Everybody gets it, israel deserves to be secure. It's their brutality that pisses everyone off.

And the ny times is a joke.

stoneric

As compared to you?

Dantastic

HAHAHAHA BURN

Geeno

NY times is run by jews

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Dantastic

satanic jews

"I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan." - Rev 2:9

"Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee."- Rev 3:9

The Rev

The book of Revelation was an apocalyptic message (a message of events yet to come to pass) from one Jew to another. What these passages talk about, essentially, is "people who say they're on our side when they're not", not a condemnation of the Jews. In fact, it wasn't until after the death of Jesus, and the spreading of the Christian church by Paul, that non-jews were even included in Jesus' New Covenant.

Alot of people may not like the jews, but God isn't one of them.



The Rev

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Waves

ironic post of the century?



ps- everybody hates you and thinks you look like a rapist

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On this life that we call home
The years go fast and the days go so slow

verklingen

something other than war, hopefully. but of course, i hear that's not an option

israel isn't denying invitations to suicide. in fact i can make a case for it actively seeking out national suicide. think of it: perpetuating the same conflict generation to generation, leaving the gift of fighting and bloodshed for the enjoyment of their sons and daughters.

of course, their aggressors are no different. why do both these peoples with rich, high-society histories and traditions vie for the best place to die? there is shared blame here, but we harp on israel more because, for better or worse, israel has been idealized in our culture for milenia, and it is easier to find the fault in others than ourselves.

why would israel continue doing this thing that is so plainly failing? the outcry is a lot like someone at home screaming at the tv during a game of football. it might seem petty and maybe even misguided, but there is legitimate cause for exasperation. and don't come back to say that they wouldn't fail if they could operate as they wish. why then is there still the same conflict after all this time?

if you ask me, it will be israel's situation which finally teaches us that war is no solution.

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“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

stoneric

tom friedman. Pffffttt. How about Glen Greenwald or Philip Giraldi or Ray Mcgovern or Jeremy Scahill or Juan Cole or Tom Englehardt or Justin Raimondo....on any foreign policy issues.

John F. Kerry

well, heres another interesting op ed for u to peruse or not.


takes a slightly less pro israel position, i figured u guys would like that

Op-Ed Contributor - Chosen, but Not Special - NYTimes.com


excerp: .... "Let us shed our illusions, starting with ourselves, whoever we are and however august our inheritance of stupidity. Let us not forget the eternal hole in our human pocket. Let us not, henceforward, judge Israel or seek to have it judged for its intelligence, for its prowess, for its righteousness or for its moral authority, by any standard other than the pathetic, debased and rickety one that we apply, so inconsistently and self-servingly, to ourselves and to everybody else. And let us not forgive ourselves — any more than we forgive Israel, or than Israel can forgive itself — for that terrible inconsistency."

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Nasa under Obama