Newshoggers.com

A Duh! Moment

By Steve Hynd

A report today states the bleeding obvious (h/t Kat):

If it were in a position to do so, Al Qaeda would use Pakistan's nuclear weapons in its fight against the United States, a top leader of the group said in remarks aired Sunday.

Duh! Did anyone not know this already? What's far less obvious is the chances of that ever happening.

The Pakistani Taliban, for reasons of demography, comparative firepower and ethnic antipathy, have next to no chance of ever taking over Pakistan from the massive Pakistani military. The AQ network of mainly non-Pakistanis, therefore, have even less chance. Nil. The chances of AQ seizing those heavily-guarded nukes, possibly with their component parts widely disperssed, as well as the codes created with US help needed to unlock their destructive potential are likewise vanishingly small.

The only viable path to AQ's dream would be if Pakistan's military secretly handed them those components and codes, something that's also unlikely in the extreme unless the West backs Pakistan into a corner first. The hawkish penchant for bombing civilians, while not at all helpful, isn't sufficient for that. I'm having difficulties imagining a scenario that could lead to such help for AQ, especially given post-bomb forensic identification methods and the inevitable consequences for Pakistan.

It's a fantasy, a pipe-dream, a scary story intended to get Western pantswetting hawks all in a flutter, psyops terrorism by press release.

Petraeus: "No Concerns At All" About Miranda Rights For Detainees Of FBI

By Steve Hynd

Spencer Ackerman was there to hear Gen. David Petraeus speak to the CNAS annual conference today, and liveblogged the speech. In amongst some very interesting COIN-related stuff, Petraeus took a moment to puncture the Republican outrage de jour.

Spencer quotes the man who the Right have made into a modern early-career Caesar:

A Fox News reporter asks about a Weekly Standard report that detainees were getting read Miranda rights. Petraeus says he has “No concerns at all. This is the FBI doing what the FBI does. … The real rumor yesterday is whether our forces were reading Miranda rights to detainees and the answer to that is no.” Sorry, Steve Hayes.

Meanwhile, the Anonymous Liberal notes that the Bush administration had FBI teams "read rights similar to a standard U.S. Miranda warning" to detainees too, and, via A.L., Greg Sargent has a statement from the Obama D.O.J. to the effect that there's been no overall change in policy and Miranda warnings are simply used to "preserve the quality of evidence obtained". As A.L. writes:

This makes complete sense. If you know you may want to prosecute someone eventually, it's malpractice not to mirandize them. It's a very simple measure that helps preserve evidence. I'm sure its standard FBI practice and has been for decades, including during the Bush years.

So to summarize: just another p.o.s. scary story created out of whole cloth for political gamesmanship.

Domestic Terrorists - The Christian Taliban

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The assassin who killed Dr. George Tiller at his church, murdered Tiller in order to keep him from performing therapeutic abortions for women. The murderer is one of a long line of religiously inspired radicals who have tried to shut down abortion providers through bombings and murders. They are not the mainstream of the pro-life movement; they are a fringe sect who are not content to protest abortion or even to engage in non-violent civil disobedience. Instead, they believe that they are justified in bombings and killings to prevent great evils that they regard as contrary to God's fundamental law.

Using violence-- like bombings and murders-- to intimidate people in this way is terrorism. It is so in common language, it is so defined in U.S. law. The terrorist in this case and the terrorists in previous abortion clinic bombings and murders are, as far as I am aware, not foreigners. They do not have Arabic or Islamic names. They are American and they live in the United States. However, just like Islamist terrorism, this terrorism is driven by fanatical religious belief. Many religiously inspired terrorists live in other countries; some, however, (who include both Christians and Muslims among their number) live in the United States and are U.S. citizens or resident aliens.

~Jack Balkin

 

Colleagues say Tiller knew something was coming

Two weeks before Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller was gunned down in his church, he called colleague Susan Hill in North Carolina.

Tiller wanted her to send pictures of activists who'd recently been threatening Hill and her staff. He said he was seeing new anti-abortion protesters outside his clinic and wondered if they were traveling around.

"I said, 'I don't know, George. I think there's something coming.'," recalled Hill, who operates clinics in four states. "He said, 'I do, too.'

“We knew it. You smell it. Strange things were happening in our Mississippi clinic and in North Carolina. Strange people were coming around. And he admitted that for the first time, he really believed that something was going to go down.”

In the days since Tiller's death, abortion rights activists across the country say they sensed an uptick in incidents and threats before the shooting. That included more people at protests, more clinic vandalism and more protesters singling out certain clinic employees or physicians with threats.

Violence at abortion clinics declined during the eight years of the Bush administration because the Christian Taliban had one of their own in the White House.  When a pro-choice president was elected in November it was inevitable that the violence, domestic terrorism, would increase.  And make no mistake these religious zealots are terrorists and even more dangerous than the ones residing in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

Jack Balkin wonders if they should be treated like terrorists.

(1) Should the United States be able to hold Roeder without trial in order to prevent him from returning to society to kill more abortion providers? If we believe that Roeder and other domestic terrorists will plan further attacks on abortion providers and abortion clinics if we let them free, can we subject them to indefinite detention?

(2) The Obama Administration is currently considering a national security court to make decisions about the detention of suspected terrorists, with the power to order continued preventive detention. Should this court be able to hear cases involving U.S. citizens, whether they are Muslim or Christian?

(3) The U.S. government has argued that at least some terrorists should not be tried through the criminal process with its various Bill of Rights protections but instead can and should be tried through military commissions, where the standards of proof and various procedural protections are lowered. If Roeder is a domestic terrorist, can the U.S. government subject him to trial by a military commission instead of a criminal prosecution? Although the current version of the 2006 Military Commission Act does not bestow jurisdiction to try citizens, could we or should we amend it to include citizens who we believe are likely to commit or have committed terrorist acts?

(4) One of the most important reasons for detaining terrorists (suspected or otherwise) is to obtain information about future terrorist attacks that may save lives and prevent future bombings. To procure this information, can the government dispense with the usual constitutional and legal safeguards against coercive interrogation? Should it be able to subject Roeder to enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding and other methods, to determine whether Roeder knows of any other persons who are likely to commit violence against abortion clinics or against abortion providers in the future? Would your answer change if you believed that an attack on an abortion provider or a bombing of an abortion clinic was imminent?

(5) Terrorists and terrorist organizations need money and resources to operate effectively. Often the only way to stop them is to dry up their sources of financial and logistical support. Can the U.S. government freeze the assets of pro-life organizations and make it illegal to contribute money to a pro-life charity that it believes might funnel money or provide material support to persons like Roeder or to organizations that practice violence against abortion providers? Can the government arrest, detain, and seize the property of anti-abortion activists who helped Roeder in any way in the months leading up to his crime, for example by giving him rides or allowing him to stay in their homes?

Of course they shouldn't be treated this way.  It would be against everything this country stands for but the same can be said for the individuals who have already been so treated.

More on the Tiller Murder

By BJ Bjornson

Police have arrested a man, believed to be Scott Roeder, for the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Roeder is apparently connected to the group Operation Rescue, whose founder came out today to call Tiller, "a mass murderer".

Justin Gardiner has a couple of pieces of information about Roeder up on his blog, the second concerning his criminal record over having bomb components and tax protests. Bastard.logic also found this little gem from the man.

It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the "lawlessness" which is spoken of in the Bible. Tiller is the concentration camp "Mengele" of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgement upon our nation.

Earlier today, Dr. Slammy offered a bet:

Here’s the wager: the murderer will turn out to be a right-wing Christian terrorist. I’ll also offer a side bet: his media consumption includes the like of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly and/or Glenn Beck.

If I’m wrong, check this space. I’ll gladly post an update noting my mistake. But as of this moment, would you bet against me?

I wouldn't have bet against him, and it is fairly clear he would have won against all takers.

In the comments to my earlier post, Steve pointed to this post on The Brad Blog, pointing out much of the same sentiment.

Tiller was better known to Fox "News" viewers as "Tiller the Baby Killer", as he's long been described by Bill O'Reilly who has spent years targeting Tiller on the most-watched show in cable news. O'Reilly has long demonized him with allegations of performing illegal late-term abortions, characterized as murder by O'Reilly and his guests.

Of course, it's no more O'Reilly's fault when a lunatic takes action to murder someone the Fox host has targeted for years on his popular television show, than it was when another lunatic gunned down church-goers in Tennessee last year claiming in his pre-murder "manifesto" that it was "a symbolic killing", and that he had "wanted to kill...every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book." Goldberg is a regular featured guest on O'Reilly's show, and the author of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is #37).

Jim David Adkisson, the Knoxville, TN murderer, also advocated the murder of "liberals" in his manifesto, echoing comments frequently made by O'Reilly that "The Major News outlets have become the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. Liberals are evil, they embrace the tenets of Karl Marx, they're Marxist, socialist, communists."

Those are all merely coincidences, of course. Nobody, other than the murderers themselves, should feel it necessary to take any personal responsibility whatsoever when such events occur.

Personal responsibility isn't something the right-wing excels at. Any time one of their more extreme elements takes it upon themselves to follow through on their hate-mongering, they wash their hands of it and offer half-hearted condolences while going right back to the rhetoric that inspired the violence in the first place. And from browsing the right-wing blog headlines at memeorandum, there is not a little bit of subtle celebration going on.

RIH: Baby Murderer George Tiller Shot Dead - Macsmind

Abortionist George “Baby Killer” Tiller Shot Dead In Kansas - theblogprof

George Tiller (Child Murderer) shot to death at Wichita church - freerepublic

Report: George Tiller Shot To Death [Child Murderer Killed At Wichita Church] - also freerepublic

Child Killer George Tiller Killed - La Shawn Barber

Many of the rest include "partial-birth" or "late-term abortionist" in their title, and no, I'm not linking to any of them. Go forth and find the filth yourself if you're of mind to.

It all reminds me nothing so much as their response when it was disclosed that Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheik Muhammad where waterboarded a couple of hundred times. As in, sure it was illegal and everything, but they're really evil and therefore deserved it.

They won't come out and defend Roeder, probably. They don't want to be that closely linked to him. But they are making it quite clear that they aren't too distressed about his assassination of the "child murderer" Tiller. Or, as deBeauxOs puts it:

Pity the poor abortion criminalizers for they cannot rejoice out loud.

Shed a tear for their plight; Bill Donohue and Jill Stanek stewing in their venom, silenced because their noisy jubilation could attract unwanted FBI attention.

Consider their dilemma: for years they've directed murderous hatred towards health care practitioners who provide abortion and now they're not able to claim the glory.

So sad for the members of the Vulture Culture who want to embrace the man who shot Dr George Tiller dead in the lobby of his church.

Life is unfair, they cannot trumpet that this is a MASSIVE victory for their side, lest they be charged as co-conspirators in this public assassination.

I'll point you to this post as well. Go down to where she's got the Twitter round-up. It's f**king unbelievable.

Abortion Doctor Murdered

By BJ Bjornson

Via McClatchy:

George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death Sunday morning as he walked into church services. Tiller, 67, was shot just after 10 a.m. at Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation. Witnesses and a police source confirmed Tiller was the victim.

. . .

Tiller has long been a focal point of protest by abortion opponents because his clinic, Women's Health Care Services at 5701 E. Kellogg, is one of the few in the country where late-term abortions are performed.

Protesters blockaded Tiller's clinic during Operation Rescue's "Summer of Mercy" protests during the summer of 1991, and Tiller was shot by Rachelle Shannon at his clinic in 1993.

Tiller was wounded in both arms, and Shannon remains in prison for the shooting.

Tiller's clinic was severely vandalized earlier this month. According to the Associated Press, his lawyer said wires to security cameras and outdoor lights were cut and that the vandals also cut through the roof and plugged the buildings' downspouts. Rain poured through the roof and caused thousands of dollars of damage in the clinic. Tiller reportedly asked the FBI to investigate the incident.

More information here, including the fact that the clinic was bombed in 1986.

UPDATE:  I'm not going to get into the whys and wherefores behind the murder at this point, but the Freepers comments to the death are informative in their own right.  DougJ has the permanent record should they be deleted.

"Our Common Foes"

By Steve Hynd

A massive car bomb, placed by suicide attackers right between a police station and an office of the ISI intelligence agency, has killed at least 30 in Lahore, Pakistan, and wounded over 250. The attack is being blamed on the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is probably a safe bet although no-one has claimed responsibility as yet.

Both the Pakistani authorities and the Obama administration are declaring solidarity in the fight against extremism in the aftermath of this horrific attack. But those declarations hide the truth about the multi-faceted nature of the extremist movement in the region.

[Interior Minister Rehman] Malik blamed the attack on militants that government forces are fighting in the northeastern Swat Valley and the border region where U.S. and other officials believe al-Qaida and Taliban militants are hiding and planning attacks against Western forces in Afghanistan.

"They are anti-state elements, and after being defeated in Swat they have moved to our big cities," Malik told the Express news channel.

U.S. officials and others in the past have accused the Inter-Services Intelligence agency of having links to militant groups, including the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the secretive agency has also been responsible for capturing and interrogating al-Qaida terrorist suspects and collecting intelligence that helps the military's campaign against militants in the border region.

President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the attack in a statement and said his government remained committed to rooting out terrorism.

U.S. Ambassador Anne W. Patterson expressed sympathy for the victims of Wednesday's attack and praise for the security forces for battling "our common foes."

"These attacks show the lengths extremist elements are willing to go to as they attempt to force their agenda onto a people who only wish to go about their daily lives in peace," she said in a statement.

Despite these declarations, the two nations have few foes in common. When the Pakistani government says it is devoted to the fight against terrorists, it should be understood as adding sotto voce "except those under our infuence" - which includes the Afghan Taliban the US is fighting as well as Kashmiri separatist fighters and groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba responsible for atrocities in Mumbai. Muddying that distinction is in the best interests of the Pakistani elite, since if it were clearer there would be far more resistance in the West to sending military aid which is the be-all-and-end-all of Pakistan's co-operation, such as it is, in the "War on Terror".

But the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, benefits from depicting extremists in the region as homogenous too. From the U.S. point of view, that military aid ensures a supply line to Afghanistan, one the occupation there still couldn't be sustained without. Spinning Pakistan as being wholeheartedly "in it with us" is essential to that occupation - and leaving Afghanistan is seen as losing by the political right, Dem interventionists and the preponderance of Village talking heads. There's simply too much invested in staying to admit the truth about Pakistan's meddling in Afghanistan too loud and too often.

Then there's the domestic value of an appearance of a united front, a truly gobal war rather than a War On Some Terror. Gates himself admits that the American people have maybe a year of patience for the Af/Pak conflict as domestic opinion currently stands. How much shorter would that patience be if America was seen as in bed with a duplicitous ally, and committing billions in resources to fighting Pakistan's own indigenous war against what has become in effect a Pashtun insurgency for them?

Recidivism and Gitmo

By Fester:

Recidism is the big news today as the Pentagon is claiming roughly 1 in 7 Gitmo releasees have been engaged in violent terrorism after they were released. That is about a 15% recidivism rate.
That is actually an exceptionally low recidivism rate for individuals released from US prisons. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has looked at recidivism numerous times, and usually at least half of all individuals released from a US prison will be convicted of another crime within a few years of release. Here is some data from 2004:

Of the 272,111 persons released from prisons in 15 States in 1994, an estimated 67.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.9% were reconvicted, and 25.4% resentenced to prison for a new crime.

So a 15% recidivism rate in almost any other context would be a near best of class program. Mark Kleiman's advocacy of the HOPE intensive monitoring probation program produce's a lower recidivism rate, as well as some mental health court programs but those are the exceptions. So either Gitmo releasees received amazing rehabilitation services in Gitmo OR most of them really were not involved in much besides trying to get by with their lives.

Again, America, grow a pair.

Good News for Obama

By BJ Bjornson

The big news this morning is about the four men arrested in New York for plotting to blow up a couple of Synagogues and shoot down some military aircraft.  The only thing I find somewhat puzzling is the charge for conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.  Last I checked, C4 and Stinger missiles don't count as WMD's unless they've massively altered the definition recently.

In any case, the timing of such, just before Obama, (and former VP Cheney), gives a big speech tonight regarding the terror suspects locked up in Guantanamo Bay, couldn't be better.  I mean sure, the right is all abuzz about how this proves we're still in a dangerous war with Muslim extremists who hate us for the freedoms we must deny them, and all US citizens in the bargain, to keep us safe.

However, if one looks at the facts, (something many on the right seem to try and avoid), these guys were for the most part American citizens, not trained or connected to al Qaeda in its "safe havens" elsewhere on the globe.  They were captured due to information obtained from an informant and solid law enforcement work without having to resort to "enhanced interrogation techniques" at any stage.  And, as noted at The Washington Monthly:

. . . the terrorist suspects are being held on U.S. soil, will face charges in U.S. courts, and if convicted, will be locked up in U.S. prisons. I look forward to lawmakers -- apparently from both parties -- explaining to us why this is a bad thing.

Basically, this offers a current and noteworthy example of how the "War on Terror" can be won without selling out every single principle our "enlightened" civilization supposedly stands for.

Cross-border raids

By Fester:

Earlier this week, a sharp series of air strikes were carried out against suspected base camps and high value targets of internationally recognized and designated terrorist groups that had recently ambushed a police column in their target nation.  The terrorist group is a militant wing of a transnational ethnic group that is split between multiple nations but is seeking to assert their own local hegemony on their turf.  The base camps are near the border of the two nations.  The national government that theoretically controls the land on which the base camps rest is either incapable or unwilling to crack down on the designated terrorist group and effectively allows the group's fighters to use their national soil as a deep rear area to rest, re-supply and plan attacks across a mountainous, porous and poorly patrolled border region.

What's the big deal?  The US has been launching air strikes into Pakistan for years now.

Wait, I was not talking about those air strikes or circumstances.  Iran recently followed up an artillery barrage with airstrikes against Kurdish seperatist groups that had retreated to base camps in northern Iraq.  The operation happened after an Iranian police unit was ambushed resulting in at least ten government forces deaths.  US or Iraqi government forces have been sheltering PJAK or at least not acting against their base camps. 

Turkish ground units, special forces groups, and air strikes have been a rite of spring for the past five years against the PKK, a group that is closely related to PJAK.  Turkish strikes have been in response to Kurdish terrorist/seperatist groups attacking Turkish targets in Turkey. Iran has used artillery raids as retribution in the past with no negative international repurcussions.  In the Middle East and Central Asia, the de-facto state centric behavioral norm has been that it is permissible for state actors to launch limited retribution and hot pursuit raids into minimally governed territory of another nation that is being used as a support area for internationally recognized terrorist groups.  That is the behavioral norm in northern Pakistan, northern Iraq and eastern Iraq. 

No big deal, except for the usual suspects who are trying to argue for a Platt Amendment to the SOFA:

Now they're launching airstrikes in Iraq. Will this be just another agenda item for the coming summit?

And the airstrikes expose another problem for the Obama administration: how can all U.S. combat troops leave Iraq when the country cannot protect its own airspace. The U.S. Air Force will need to remain in Iraq long past the 2011 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Besides the Iraqi government making it very clear that they want US combat forces out fast (as that is the only guarantee the Maliki coalition has in sidelining more strident nationalist groups) and regional norms on non-governed zones being followed by Iran, this is a great reason for the US to break an agreement and the perception that we don't want to occupy Iraq for new century. 

If there is a regional norm problem about non-governed zone management then the US either needs to begin changing its behaviors in conjunction with other interested parties, as well as provide at a fairly low cost a non-satrapy air defense capacity for Iraq.  Otherwise, this is regional norm being executed in practice. 

A shot across the bow?

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Some of us have been wondering if the Obama administration would continue to let the tail, Israel, continue to wag the dog, the US.  The NYT's Helene Cooper gives us some reason to believe maybe not so much.

Watchers of Middle East politics were quick to take note of a line in President Obama’s address before the Turkish Parliament on Monday in Ankara, in which he mentioned “Annapolis.”

By bringing up the word, Mr. Obama was sending a warning to the government of new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that reneging on the goals outlined during the Annapolis Middle East peace conference in 2007 would put Mr. Netanyahu on the wrong foot with the Obama administration.

The issue sprouted last week when Israel’s hawkish new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said that agreements reached at the American-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Md., have “no validity.” Mr. Lieberman said that the Israeli government “never ratified Annapolis, nor did Parliament.”

Cooper thinks that Obama is trying to force Netanyahu's hand before the two meet.

By forcefully rebutting Mr. Lieberman’s repudiation of Annapolis, and in such a public fashion, Mr. Obama is issuing a warning to Mr. Netanyahu that the United States will push for a two-state solution, and will expect him to publicly articulate his own support for such an initiative, many experts said.

“At a minimum, Bibi will need to disown these statements and come out explicitly in support of the two-state solution before his meeting with President Obama,” said Ghaith Al-Omari, a former Palestinian negotiator who now works with the American Task Force on Palestine. “If not,” Mr. Al-Omari said, “the issue will become the focus of the meeting.”

Also in the Times today Roger Cohen once again takes on Israel.  He reminds us that Israel has been telling the world that Iran will have a nuclear weapon within months for over 15 years.

“Iran is the center of terrorism, fundamentalism and subversion and is in my view more dangerous than Nazism, because Hitler did not possess a nuclear bomb, whereas the Iranians are trying to perfect a nuclear option.”

Benjamin Netanyahu 2009? Try again. These words were in fact uttered by another Israeli prime minister (and now Israeli president), Shimon Peres, in 1996. Four years earlier, in 1992, he’d predicted that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999.

You can’t accuse the Israelis of not crying wolf. Ehud Barak, now defense minister, said in 1996 that Iran would be producing nuclear weapons by 2004.

Now here comes Netanyahu, in an interview with his faithful stenographer Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, spinning the latest iteration of Israel’s attempt to frame Iran as some Nazi-like incarnation of evil:

“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

Cohen rightly observes that this is nonsense and that Netanyahu  is simply trying to intimidate Obama fearing a policy shift on the part of Israel's only remaining ally.

This “messianic apocalyptic cult” in Tehran is, of course, the very same one with which Israel did business during the 1980’s, when its interest was in weakening Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. That business — including sales of weapons and technology — was an extension of Israeli policy toward Iran under the shah.

It’s also the same “messianic apocalyptic cult” that has survived 30 years, ushered the country from the penury of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, shrewdly extended its power and influence, cooperated with America on Afghanistan before being consigned to “the axis of evil,” and kept its country at peace in the 21st century while bloody mayhem engulfed neighbors to east and west and Israel fought two wars.

I don’t buy the view that, as Netanyahu told Goldberg, Iran is “a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest.” Every scrap of evidence suggests that, on the contrary, self-interest and survival drive the mullahs.

Yet Netanyahu insists (too much) that Iran is “a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation.” Huh?

On that ocular theme again, Netanyahu says Iran’s “composite leadership” has “elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist in any other would-be nuclear power in the world.” No, they exist in an actual nuclear power, Pakistan.

Israel’s nuclear warheads, whose function is presumably deterrence of precisely powers like Iran, go unmentioned, of course.

[....]

What’s going on here? Israel, as it has for nearly two decades, is trying to lock in American support and avoid any disadvantageous change in the Middle Eastern balance of power, now overwhelmingly tilted in Jerusalem’s favor, by portraying Iran as a monstrous pariah state bent on imminent nuclear war.

A semblance of power balance is often the precondition for peace. Iran was left out of the Madrid and Oslo processes, with disastrous results. But that’s a discussion for another day.

What’s critical right now is that Obama view Netanyahu’s fear-mongering with an appropriate skepticism, rein him in, and pursue his regime-recognizing opening toward Tehran, as he did Wednesday by saying America would join nuclear talks for the first time.

Michael Goldfarb of course disagrees. The AIPAC/necon crowd must be terrified that their lock on us policy may be coming to an end.