Bibi's impact

Congress declares war

Dana Milbank.

“I was near tears throughout the prime minister’s speech,” she [Nancy Pelosi] said in a statement later, “saddened by the insult to the intelligence of the United States . . . and saddened by the condescension toward our knowledge of the threat posed by Iran.”

Her agitation was not difficult to comprehend. 

It’s a rare thing for Congress to declare war — and rarer still to do it at the request of a foreign leader.

It wasn’t literally a war declaration, of course, just symbolic applause from Republicans, and several Democrats, for Netanyahu’s bid to scuttle U.S. negotiations with Iran. 

But if Netanyahu were to succeed in ending talks, and if Iran weren’t to return to the negotiating table as Netanyahu predicts it will, the actions will have obligated the United States to go to war.

That is exactly what the pro-war faction will say, and of course it will be bullshit.

So why is DM saying it?

When the nation's first black president, Bill Clinton, refused to engage militarily to stop genocide in Rwanda no one called him a racist, even though he did engage militarily to stop considerably lesser "crimes against humanity" like "ethnic cleansing" of whites in the Balkans.

All the same, for decades anyone criticizing Israeli policy has been smeared as an anti-Semite and we already know by example what happens, anyway what happens to a gentile, when a pundit or someone with a high profile in the media comes close to saying outright Israel is an albatross around our necks and America ought to cut that country loose.

Think of the Pauls.

Think of William Buckley leading a gang of mainstream conservative conspirators to assassinate their erstwhile friend and ally, Pat Buchanan.