Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary, War Commentary

They’re Not Against War

114 Comments

They’re just on the other side:

Upon boarding the ships, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the passengers who were armed with knives, bats and metal pipes. The soldiers used non-lethal measures to disperse the crowd. The activists, according to an IDF report, succeeded in stealing two handguns from soldiers and opened fire, leading to an escalation in violence.

Al Jazeera on Monday broadcasted footage from the Gaza flotilla’s lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, showing Israeli Navy commandos boarding the ship. Helicopters could also be seen flying overhead.

“It was like a well-planned lynch,” one IDF officer said. “These people were anything but peace activists.”

As Claudia Rossett notes, this isn’t about peace, or freedom, or humanitarian aid. It’s about making a terrorist-supporting political statement, with the added frisson of killing Jews.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s more:

In a later search aboard the Marmara, soldiers found caches of bats, clubs, knives, and slingshots used by the rioters ahead of the IDF takeover. It appeared the activists were well prepared for a fight…

…It appears that the error in planning the operation was the estimate that passengers were indeed political activists and members of humanitarian groups who seek a political provocation, but would not resort to brutal violence.

They won’t make that mistake again.

[Late evening update]

A photomontage of “peace” activists.

And it’s time for Israel to stop playing Mr. Nice Guy.

It certainly hasn’t bought them much.

Political Commentary

Transparency

18 Comments

Sestak or Gibbs? Someone is lying.

I know where I’d put my money.

[Update a few minutes later]

As usual, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover up. And why am I not shocked that there’s a Clinton involved?

[Update a few more minutes later]

I, like everyone else, expect a White House release on this late this afternoon. It’s merely a coincidence that it’s a Friday just before a three-day weekend.

[Update a while later]

Well, the WH PR staff blew it. You’re supposed to release these things late in the afternoon, after it’s impossible to get hold of anyone to ask questions, not in the morning.

[Update a few minutes later]

Republicans are skeptical. So am I. All this does is raise more questions (like why did Sestak say “someone in the White House,” which Bill Clinton hasn’t been for almost a decade).

[Update a while later]

Well, now that they’ve had time to coordinate their stories, Sestak confirms it. Even though it’s not what he said the first time.

Lying then, or lying now? I know where my money is.

[Update a few minutes later]

The Sestak smell test. And why did the White House contact Sestak’s (lawyer) brother yesterday?

Oh, what a tangled web we weave…

[Late morning update]

Jonah Goldberg isn’t buying it, either:

If it wasn’t a job offer but instead was some third-rate perk, he shouldn’t have pretended otherwise to seem like the one honest man in the whorehouse of politics. I hope he gets hounded by local press asking him to explain the disconnect. Something like: “You said you were offered a job to get out of the race. This wasn’t a job. Were you exaggerating then or are you lying now?”

Again, I know where I’d put my money.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Peter Beinart’s Hero

Ron Radosh has some thoughts on anti-Israeli Jews.

[Update late morning]

More thoughts, and good ones, from Noah Pollack:

The sad truth is that Peter Beinart isn’t any kind of trailblazer or whistleblower, and he most certainly has not earned himself any trouble by coming out as an Israel-basher. He is someone who has rather belatedly fallen completely and predictably into line with the demands his ideological compatriots make for orthodoxy when it comes to their increasingly passionate interest in assaulting Israel and championing the Palestinian cause. In Beinart’s work, we are not witnessing an act of courage but rather a spectacle of conformity.

I used to think that Beinart was smarter than that.

Political Commentary, Space

Hearing Wrap Up

2 Comments

Alan Boyle has the story on yesterday’s space-policy farce on the Hill. Jeff Foust also has a couple posts, with meeting notes, and a description of the “ruckus” caused by Jeff Hanley’s abrupt reassignment from the Constellation program.

I wish that someone (like a staffer, or former staffer) would suggest to Dana Rohrabacher that the next time Tom Young is brought forth to testify at one of these joke sessions, he ask him what experience he has with human spaceflight. Because the answer is pretty much zip.

[Update a few minutes later]

As usual (and this isn’t Alan’s fault, obviously) but ignorance abounds in his comments section, with one commenter saying we should just “…finish the Aries-1 [sic] capsules for LEO…”