Thursday, October 9, 2003
Bush and Israel (updated)
Although Yahoo takes the NY Times story and makes its own editorial comment by adding quotation marks:
Bush Reaffirms That Israel Has Right to Defend "Homeland"
They can't subvert the idea:
President Bush said again today that he recognized Israel's right to defend itself, and he pointedly declined to criticize it for the retaliatory strikes into Syria after a deadly suicide bombing.
Can you imagine any of the current Democrat candidates saying the above with such simple moral clarity?
Some want us to abandon Israel because it is "too much trouble" - they buy into the claim that illegitimate Arab states "care" about Palestinians and wouldn't be "angry" at the United States if we abandoned Israel; even though the cynical manipulations of these same Arab states is a principal reason there is currently no Palestinian state.
But Bush gets it: that there is a bond that should be honored between democratic societies and longtime friends. That breaking that bond and shared democratic experience would diminish our own country, even if it is difficult at this moment. A Mickey Mouse attempt at realpolitik would lead not to our being "liked", rather it would be a trigger in the tribal mind of many Arab leaders, that the United States is weak and easily manipulated.
Updated:
I'm not so sure anymore that the NYT article posted at Yahoo was indeed headlined by Yahoo. Checking the print edition against the Yahoo posted story seemed to indicate a different writer...
The Times, in Bill Keller's new regime, seemed to be, in subtle and positive ways, making itself less an advocacy newspaper and beginning to tend more towards the "newspaper of record" to which it aspires. It is a brilliant newspaper, no question. Left leaning - that's their flavor - but still aspiring to objectivity. But this headline shows signs of slippage. No slippage Bill Keller! I'd sure rather believe the headline is a Yahoo slant rather than a Times distortion. But who knows...