Scheuer brings to mind the image of Spiderman trying to stop that runaway train, his hands wrapped around tethers pulling him in opposite directions. Unlike Spidey, he's not strong enough to keep from being torn asunder.
On one side, the tether leads toward neoconservative anti-Arab thuggishness. Scheuer, sympatico to Pipes and Emerson, is a man who understands the primal appeal of that infamous cry: "Exterminate the Brutes!"
On the other side, the tether leads in this surprising direction:
And Scheuer is extraordinarily harsh on the Jewish state, America's unqualified support for it, and the enormous pressure commentators are under not to criticize it.There are, it seems, two Michael Scheuers. Both deserve reading. But we can't applaud both.
"The American political and social landscape is littered with the battered individuals who dared to criticize Israel ... Surely there can be no other historical example of a faraway, theocracy-in-all-but-name of only about six million people that ultimately controls the extent and even the occurrence of an important portion of political discourse and national security debate in a country of 270-plus million people ... Washington yearly pumps more than three billion taxpayer dollars into a nation that defiantly proclaims itself 'the Jewish State' and a democracy -- claims hard to reconcile with its treatment of Muslims in Israel, its limitations on political choice for those in the occupied territories, and the eternal exile it has enforced on those camped in the refugee diaspora across the Levant."
No comments:
Post a Comment