Some thoughts:

I relate a story told by Judge Mukasey, George W. Bush’s last attorney general. He was down at Guantanamo in February 2008. He looked at “high-value” detainees — the worst of the worst — on video monitors. He did not see Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, however. (Remember that “KSM” is the guy who “masterminded” the 9/11 attacks, which killed 3,000 people. He’s also the beauty who beheaded the Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl. Etc.) KSM was not in his cell; he was off having his Red Cross visit.

Mukasey did see the exercise room adjacent to KSM’s cell, however. And he remarked something: KSM had the same elliptical machine that he, the attorney general, did, back in Washington — at his apartment building, the Lansburgh. Only there was this difference: Mukasey had to share that elliptical machine with the other residents of the building; there was a scramble in the morning to get to it. KSM had an elliptical machine all to himself.

As I say in my column, how much more tenderly do America’s critics expect us to treat these people? Are we to administer abdominal massages, the kind that recently made ex-vice-presidential news? (Wouldn’t the “world community” call that “torture”?)

Of course not. It’s Obama now, not Bush.

…of the new anti-semites on the left:

The deployment of “decoy Jews”…is being criticized by leftist parties such as the Dutch Greens. Evelien van Roemburg, an Amsterdam counselor of the Green Left Party, says that using a decoy by the police amounts to provoking a crime, which is itself a criminal offence under Dutch law.

Got that? If you go out looking like a Jew, and a Muslim physically assaults you, it’s your fault — kind of like it’s your fault if you’re a girl and your skirt is too short. To be on the safe side: Don’t look Jewish. And if you do look Jewish, you had better be Jewish, or the Dutch Greens won’t like it. Or something.

The new anti-Semitism is sometimes hard to keep up with.

Or, if you’re a Muslim, and you assault a Jew who is actually a Jew, that’s kind of bad, but if you assault a Jew who turns out to be a decoy — even though you thought he was a Jew — that’s not so bad, because you were tricked . . . or something.

The new anti-Semitism can give you a headache.

Maybe it would be simpler if they’d just return to the old days, and make the real Jews wear yellow magen Davids.

A link roundup.

My question is, when did he go from being General Betrayus to General Petraeus? When George Bush left office? I think people are going to have a lot of fun in the next couple days digging up derogatory quotes from the secretary of state, president and vice president from happier, anti-Petraeus days, when they were in the minority and had the luxury of being politically irresponsible.

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, some similar thoughts from VDH:

It is one of ironies of our present warped climate that Petraeus will face far less criticism from the media and politicians than during 2007–8 (there will be no more “General Betray Us” ads or “suspension of disbelief” ridicule), because his success this time will reflect well on Obama rather than George Bush. It is a further irony that Obama is surging with Petraeus despite not long ago declaring that such a strategy and such a commander were failures in Iraq. And it is an even further irony that he is now rightly calling for “common purpose” when — again not long ago, at a critical juncture in Iraq — Obama himself, for partisan purposes on the campaign trail, had no interest in the common purpose of military success in Iraq.

It’s a lot easier to campaign than to govern.

[Update mid afternoon]

And so it begins. Here’s an example of a little less than three years ago, from the senator who is now president:

“The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops,” Mr. Obama said. “Not in six months or one year — now.”

In his address, Mr. Obama proposed removing American combat troops at a pace of one or two brigades a month, which is about twice as fast as American commanders in Iraq have deemed prudent. There are currently about 20 combat brigades in Iraq, which General Petraeus has committed to reducing to 15 next summer.

As I said, it’s easier to campaign. Especially when you’re a Democrat, and the press never holds you accountable for your past words or actions.

“Grim” has the story. As is often (almost always) the case, it was a confluence of circumstances. But of course, Michael Yon warned us that something this might happen.

And really, with all due respect, you have to question the judgement of a general who claimed to have voted for Obama.

…about the McChrystal fooforaw:

…surely officers in Afghanistan should know that the purpose of Rolling Stone magazine is not to emphasize either their competency or their insight. And as a general rule, anytime a liberal journalist wishes to empathize with a frustrated officer, it is usually to exaggerate the officer’s unhappiness and use it for his own political purposes, which rarely if ever are those of the military.

If an officer cannot figure out Rolling Stone, how can he understand the Taliban?

Somebody needs to lose their job over this. I’d sure like to see Holbrooke and Eikenberry go, but we probably won’t be so lucky.

Afghanistan seems to be becoming Obama’s Vietnam.

[Update a while later]

Don’t blame McChrystal — blame Obama:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal should not lose his job because of the article about him in Rolling Stone magazine. If anyone deserves blame for the latest airing of the administration’s internal feuds over Afghanistan, it is President Obama.

For months Obama has tolerated deep divisions between his military and civilian aides over how to implement the counterinsurgency strategy he announced last December. The divide has made it practically impossible to fashion a coherent politico-military plan, led to frequent disputes over tactics and contributed to a sharp deterioration in the administration’s relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The virtue of the Rolling Stone article is that Obama may finally have to confront the trouble. But the dismissal of McChrystal would be the wrong outcome. It could spell disaster for the military campaign he is now overseeing in southern Afghanistan, and it would reward those in the administration who have been trying to undermine him, including through media leaks of their own.

It’s the wrong thing to do, so it’s the likeliest outcome.

[Update a couple minutes later]

McChrystal’s real offense:

One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. “Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force,” the laminated card reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight, that’s like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won’t have to make arrests. “Does that make any f–king sense?” Pfc. Jared Pautsch. “We should just drop a f–king bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?”

Well, those rules of engagement are what the administration wants.

[Late morning update]

Why Obama can’t fire the general.

[Update a few minutes later]

The Rolling Stone article isn’t about a general’s insubordination — it’s about the administration’s mistakes. Well, this is what the country voted for.

[Update early afternoon]

John McCain: “Fire Eikenberry”

[Update a while later]

McChrystal has reportedly submitted his resignation. The best result might be for the president to not accept it. An even better result would be for him not accept it, but to fire Eikenberry and Holbrooke instead. But that won’t happen, unfortunately.

…about Helen Thomas:

I merely asked a question with a video camera to a columnist. She answered me with an opinion that was unacceptable not just to me but to former and current press secretaries, politicians, the president, her agent and a great many other people. Her freedom of speech was not stifled; on the contrary, it was respected.

She didn’t say that the blockade was unjust, or that aid was not getting to Gaza, or that there was a massacre on the high seas, or that East Jerusalem is occupied, or that the settlements are immoral . . . and get out and go back to West Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Eilat. No. This was not the two-state solution. This was get the hell out and go back to the places of the final solution, Poland and Germany. The Jew has no connection with the land of Israel.

And why? Because, as Thomas went on to explain to me, “I’m from Arab descent.” That’s it? That’s all you got? Do we all travel with only our parents’ stereotypes to guide us, never going beyond them to get to a peaceful destination?

In the past weeks I have relived this moment over and over, on television and radio, in newspapers and blogs. I’ve listened to a constant stream of commentary. And my sharpest impression is this: Where before I saw a foggy anti-Israel, anti-Jewish link, it’s now clear. This feeling is not about statehood. It’s about an ingrown, organic hate. It’s a sentiment that bears no connection to history, dates, passages or verses. Erase the facts, the dates and the lore. Erase the Jew. Incredibly, even the Nazis said to the Jews, “Go home to Palestine.” But Thomas and a babbling stream in our world and country dictate to Jewish people to “go home to Poland and Germany.” Yeah, I said “oooh.”

I think that it’s theoretically possible to express the kind of hatred of Israel that many do and not be anti-semitic. But I don’t think it happens much in real life.

The other day Jim Davis asked me in comments why I (and the Tea Partiers) object to being called “racist” because we oppose President Obama’s policies (or “liberal” or “progressive” policies in general), when I’m willing to call people anti-semitic for their views about Israel.

Here’s the difference. I would be (and have been) criticizing those policies regardless of who was advocating them, or what color their skin is. I’m pretty sure that’s true of most of the Tea Partiers as well. The fact that a black man has ascended to the presidency doesn’t somehow magically and suddenly make such criticism racist.

Israel’s attackers, on the other hand, have a double standard. They attack it for things (e.g., abusing Arabs) that they completely ignore when other countries (notably Arab countries) do them on a much grander scale. They accuse it of war crimes when it takes greater pains, and greater risks to its own troops, than any nation in history, with the possible exception of the US, to minimize collateral civilian casualties. But these same hypocrites ignore or defend the real war crimes of the “Palestinians” — hiding weapons in hospitals and churches and mosques, sneaking through borders in ambulances, deliberately targeting children, fighting out of uniform, using their own women and children as human shields — while castigating Israel.

So yeah, sorry, I think there’s something else going on there. And Helen Thomas just made a massive Kinsleyan gaffe, and revealed what she (and many others) really think. Oooh, indeed.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I’ve observed this before, but leftists seem (unaccountably to me) to get their panties much more in a twist about human rights abuses when they’re cross race. Israel making Arabs second-class citizens? The horror! Saddam murdering thousands of his own people? Hey, it’s his business. Mao wiping out tens of millions of Chinese? No biggie, they’re his people. Gotta break some eggs to make the omelette, you know.

Another example was apartheid in South Africa. Not to defend it, but was it really that much worse than what Idi Amin or Mengistu were up to? Really?

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, Israel is going to partially lift the Gaza blockade. That won’t satisfy the critics, though. They won’t be happy until the weapons are flowing freely in. And probably not even then.

[Late evening update]

But there’s no anti-semitism involved:

Radicals, Islamists and Longshoremen blockade Israeli ship in Oakland.

And when someone compares the Israelis to Nazis, it can only be either anti-semitism or profound stupidity and ignorance, even when (or especially when) it’s a Nobel Prize winner. It’s been said before, but the Nobel Prize (in fields other than science) ain’t what it used to be. If it ever was…

[Tuesday morning update]

More useful thoughts from (Christian) Mike Potemra:

…the support for Israel that is offered by me and like-minded people is based not on headline-devouring apocalypticism but on something perduring and eternal: a sense that the fate of the Jews implicates humanity, that a world that refuses to find a place for the Jews is engaged in a rejection of even more fundamental truths. This State of Israel is, yes, a state like all other states; that should go without saying. But how strange that, of all the 200 or so states-just-like-other-states in the world today, this one alone is treated increasingly as a pariah that’s on a deserved path to being wiped out.

I am not ashamed to say that some of my own support for Israel is based in religious motives, even if these motives are not those presented in caricature form by the cultured despisers. And I resent the caricature less than I otherwise would, because I view it as rooted in a deeper obtuseness, the one these despisers show in regard even to their own self-interest and to their own intellectual consistency. The only country in the region with liberal values — that lets, e.g., its religious minorities vote; that has, e.g., gay-pride parades — is the one they view as an embarrassment. This, again, is a level of obtuseness that cannot be explained on a purely rational basis.

It’s the oldest hatred in the world. Of course it’s not rational.

[Bumped]

More (chilling) observations from Bruce Bawer. Earlier post here.

[Via Jay Nordlinger]

Mort Zuckerman has figured out that he was one of the rubes:

Obama clearly wishes to do good and means well. But he is one of those people who believe that the world was born with the word and exists by means of persuasion, such that there is no person or country that you cannot, by means of logical and moral argument, bring around to your side. He speaks as a teacher, as someone imparting values and generalities appropriate for a Sunday morning sermon, not as a tough-minded leader. He urges that things “must be done” and “should be done” and that “it is time” to do them. As the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Les Gelb, put it, there is “the impression that Obama might confuse speeches with policy.” Another journalist put it differently when he described Obama as an “NPR [National Public Radio] president who gives wonderful speeches.” In other words, he talks the talk but doesn’t know how to walk the walk. The Obama presidency has so far been characterized by a well-intentioned but excessive belief in the power of rhetoric with too little appreciation of reality and loyalty.

Well, I suppose he wishes to “do good,” by his definition of “good.” Of course, that’s kind of meaningless. So did Adolf Hitler, after all. And we know what the paving stones of the road to Hell are. Of course, I’ve never thought his speeches were particularly wonderful, either, unless by “wonderful” one means gaseous if not vacuous.

[Late afternoon update]

Bill Quick isn’t very impressed by Peggy Noonan’s and Zuckerman’s uptake speed:

Listen up, you punked, chumped boobs: We looked at Obama not through your rose colored hallucinations, but through the cold, clear spectacles of reality. None of what he’s done since has surprised us one bit. In fact, many of us, myself included, predicted it even before his coronation by people like you. Yes, it’s nice that after a year and a half of horrible examples, the truth about him is finally beginning to penetrate your skulls. But why, for the love of god, couldn’t you see it at the beginning, when it was no less obvious, but your understanding of it might have done some good?

Though, as he points out, useful idiots like them did prevent a McCain presidency, which would have been a disaster for small-government libertarianism. I wish that I were as optimistic as Bill, though, that Obama has wrecked the socialist project for decades.