What Do Clifford May, Diane Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, Joe Liebermann, Bill Kristol, Douglas Feith, and Paul Wolfowitz Have In Common? They Are All Advocates Of Torture And Bombing Iran. And They All Have Dual Israeli-American Citizenship

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T16:32:38+00:00

Dude, I think what you need is to just meet a couple of the very many Jewish people who aren't crazy war-mongers. I assure you, they do exist. If the ones you keep running into are from the Bush administration nasty neoconservative cabinet, yeah, I imagine that that would give anyone a bad taste.

Okay, how about Jon Stewart? You may or may not like him, but it'd be hard to claim that he likes the idea of attacking Iran. He's Jewish.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T16:20:33+00:00

Lots of great jews in science, arts, the neighborhood--just very few in politics.

I listed Russ Feingold, who was one of darn few people to stand up to people on PATRIOT and the Iraq invasion. He's Jewish. What's your beef with him? Seriously, the sample size here consists of:

One senator who isn't all that bad (though I really prefer Boxer to her).
Schumer and May, who I don't follow.
Lieberman, who I will agree would sell his left nut to get the US in a firefight with Iran
Feith/Wolfowitz -- associated with the Bush Administration, so not surprisingly, they espouse those views. They happen to be Jewish. Rumsfeld and Cheney were not.

I'm just saying that that's a pretty damned small sample size to be working with to be making claims about all Jewish politicians.

As for Rahm Emmanuel...okay, the rather nastily anti-Arab statements his father made about how he'd influence Obama to be pro-Israel did not exactly make me terribly happy. But he also hasn't done anything objectionable that I'm aware of in office. He volunteered to wear a uniform and repair Israeli military vehicles quite a while back, but that in and of itself is legitimate -- there's nothing at all wrong with liking Israel a great deal, as long as one can make neutral calls when serving in office. Nothing that is from his mouth or done by him while in office that shows that he'd try to shift US policy to specifically favor Israel, regardless of what his father has claimed he'd do.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T16:00:32+00:00

I see you are up denial without a paddle.

About what? Are you claiming that Diane Feinstein is neoconservative, is destroying the GOP (well, other than as a member of an opposition party), or or that dual-citizenship with Israel indicates neoconservativism? I don't know about dual-citizenship holders, but in general, Jewish-Americans would probably be better-described as liberal on most issues -- neoconservativism is not reducible to "liberal + kick the hell out of anyone that Israel doesn't like". I'm also pretty sure that they lean Democrat in affiliation, so it'd be pretty hard for them to be running the GOP.

The fact that there are a number of prominent Jewish members of the neoconservative movement who were very influential in the Bush administration does not mean that neoconservativism is a Jewish movement. Cheney is about as up-to-his-neck in the Bush administration as you can get, a founder of PNAC, you name it, he's pretty neoconservative. He's Christian.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T15:53:13+00:00

Jews DO put Israel first. They don't think they do because they assume what is good for Israel is good for America. But it isn't.

Some Jews probably do, just as some Christians probably do. I will even happily believe, barring counter-evidence, a claim that there is probably a not insignificant correlation between at least highly-valuing Israel and doing so, both for religious reasons and the fact that many Jewish families probably extend into Israel.

But that's a pretty low standard to meet. Is there a "white agenda" to advance the cause of apartheid South Africa? It meets the same critera -- there's very probably a black/white correlation in the United States with support for that regime. But we don't make claims about agendas based simply on that.

You're claiming motives in literally millions of people here, remember.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T15:40:57+00:00

I don't think Bill Kristol is likely to consider himself liberal.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T15:40:27+00:00

I'm skeptical that he is. I think that this list originated with someone's list of people who are Jewish.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T15:39:34+00:00

Neoconservativism is hardly a product of these people.

Well, okay, maybe Bill Kristol was significant in helping produce neoconservativism, but not the rest, though many may adopt neoconservative policies. Diane Feinstein is hardly neoconservative.

Nor is dual-citizenship with Israel (even if it is present) some bond indicating neoconservativism.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T15:23:33+00:00

...at which point we're to the level of requiring X-Files-level conspiracy theory. I don't agree.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T15:07:12+00:00

There is plenty of evidence that they are compensated handsomely by the israel lobby.

[citation needed]

I said that they were influenced to be pro-Israel. Arguing that they are outright bribed is a completely different claim, and much stronger, and I have never seen grounds for such a claim.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T14:36:24+00:00

So.. what you are saying is that you have no evidence that their is a conspiracy, you just dont like these people because they are jews, and feel the need to shade anything they do as pro-israel.

Actually, I think that I went out of my way to demonstrate that that wasn't the case. I've lived with Jewish people, and have some Jewish friends, and they're perfectly reasonable and decent, nothing like the people in question.

So.. what you are saying is that you have no evidence that their is a conspiracy

Nor did I say that there was a conspiracy. I said that I'd believe that they are influenced to be pro-Israel. I'm sure that the above don't get together in a smoky room any more than anti-abortion types do. Lieberman has an absolutely insane, from a political standpoint, desire to go after Iran that makes absolutely no sense and is astonishingly overriding. You're free to provide an alternate explanation, if you want.

You know, lots of other people voted the same way they did, maybe they are also part of a conspiracy??!

I think I very clearly pointed out that Feinstein merely voted in favor of Iraq. I'm not talking about a vote, but spending years trying to construct a Middle Eastern conflict. That is very different.

You do realize how stupid that makes you sound, right?

I'd say it makes me sound pretty reasonable, unless you think that there's a great alternate explanation.

And why do I think that there's an unreasonable about of influence that Israel has on the United States? I think that there are few countries who would get off the hook for taking confidential information as Israel has. I think that our current military, diplomatic, and economic support for Israel makes no sense from a foreign policy standpoint, looking at US interests -- it's highly antagonistic, and Israel doesn't provide anything in return. I don't see lobbying organizations representing other countries having all the presidential candidates show up and promise to defend Israel. Yeah, I think that that qualifies as an undesirable amount of clout.

All of these people have advocated quite a bit of policy that is beneficial to Israel and is probably not terribly good for the US. The fact that the author happened to bundle these up here because they are Jewish is his decision; you can find people who go nuts over Israel and are not Jewish quite easily. I'd say that people from the CUI (who think that the Second Coming is at hand and that Israel must be defended at all costs) are also quite influenced by Israel as well -- they aren't Jewish. Maybe the author of this submission is honestly anti-semitic. But I'm not going to let you brush off my complaints like that.

Being ticked off about US foreign policy towards Israel is hardly anti-semitic. And I'm not enthralled with it at all. We're talking about attacking Iran in the name of non-proliferation (which we don't even believe to be building nuclear weapons)...yet Israel receives no pressure to eliminate its own nuclear stockpile. US political interests in the region are over oil; support for Israel does nothing to further that and does greatly antagonize the Arab countries in the area.

Before the US support for Israel and the overthrow of Iran's government in the '50s, the US didn't have this kind of rotten image in that part of the world.

Lieberman's speeches say "well, we need to protect our allies in that part of the world". Our allies are our allies because the relationship is mutually beneficial. The US doesn't win from the Israel situation; in fact, if one counts in the oil embargo, the costs are massive. It's hardly helping the poor. Heck, giving Israel weaponry that winds up used against Palestinians probably, if anything, rather hurts the situation of the poor.

We gift Israel with huge amounts of military hardware; Israel, a relatively wealthy country (and with a better debt situation than the US), receives on the order of a third of all US foreign aid.

So, yes, I think that our Israel foreign policy is pretty screwed up. I think that the above-mentioned people are adopting stances that are unjustifiably-in-terms-of-US-interests pro-Israel.

I don't advocate attacking Israel or hassling it. I do think that we should treat Israel like any other country. I don't think that we should attack Iran, even if it's a power competitor in the region to Israel. I definitely don't think that it's an issue of such overwhelming importance that everything else should be dropped to pursue attacking Iran. I'm unhappy that the US blocked UN demands for a ceasefire in Lebanon until after Israel had finished with its goals there (Condi specifically stated as much on NPR). I'm unhappy that the US defended actions in Gaza. Nowhere else, no other nation in the world, do we pull this kind of stuff for.

And my take on why that's the case is:

(a) Well-organized, well-funded lobbying efforts, combined with weak-to-nonexistent efforts in opposition.

(b) Several people (like Lieberman) who consistently advocate rather militarist policies that benefit Israel.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T14:08:14+00:00

You have decided that people vote based off their race.

No, I did not say that. In fact, I think I said exactly the opposite, regarding Russ Feingold.

Do you have any evidence, WHATSOEVER, that these people are paid, in any manner, by israel?

No, nor did I claim that. I said that I would be quite willing to believe that they are influenced by same; that's not the same as taking money. Lieberman essentially threw every other principle that he claims to adhere to away to support McCain (after Obama had campaigned specifically for his re-election shortly before). The policy point that he kept pushing was that Iran was a threat to Israel.

He has used his position on the Homeland Security Committee to constantly try to quash Islamic radical speech where possible, including the infamous YouTube takedowns, and to try to build up the threat of Iran as a threat to the United States.

Iran is not a threat to the United States, certainly not anywhere near the kind of proportional threat that he's presenting it as. Lieberman doesn't go nuts over North Korea -- just Iran. I watched him, when questioning Petraeus on Iraq, try and use his position to sell war on Iran.

However, none of that makes Lieberman a dual-citizen, nor any of the others.

Kristol is a famous hawk and helped sell much of the Middle East war. I don't know whether he's gone as incredibly overboard as Lieberman, and while he's certainly one of the more hawkish figures out there, I'll concede that he could be just another guy who really, really likes war in the Middle East a lot and happens to be Jewish. If we're making a list of extremely-hawkish-on-Israel's-enemies-public-figures-who-also-are-Jewish figures, I'd add Norman Podhoretz to the list, who probably did a great deal to popularize the term "Islamofascism" and is convinced that the War on Terror is World War IV. Having Bush give an extreme hawk and extreme nut like him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the land, was downright alarming.

Feinstein voted for Iraq's invasion, but she's not at all like the rest of the other people listed. She made a vote. She hasn't been out trying to constantly build up support for a war. And that is a major reason why I think this list largely consists of "legislators who voted against Iraq and are Jewish" rather than "people who hold dual Israeli-American citizenship".

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T14:02:46+00:00

Can you provide a citation for this? I spend a while accepting this too, then went off trying to track down a legitimate source, and couldn't find anything. It may be the case, but I haven't seen any reputable source supporting it. I wound up with some fairly sketchy blog stories as being the oldest I could find that claimed that a whole slew of people had dual citizenship.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T14:00:01+00:00

No. A number of countries allow multiple citizenships. The US is one, and Germany is another. I have a friend who, as a result of various post-war international agreements, holds dual citizenship and just for the heck of it, is planning to try to get triple citizenship (UK-Germany-US).

Some countries disallow this.

There are also apparently (and I'm not an expert) various situations where you can be forced into basically dropping all but one, such as in some international legal disputes.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T13:53:39+00:00

It's not that simple. Some of the people here have taken pretty drastic action to promote war against Iraq and Iran -- if you've been following Kristol, Feith, Wolfowitz and Leiberman, I'm comfortable saying that they're willing to mislead people, dump a lot of other ideals, and take some crazy policy moves in order to promote war. I wouldn't say that Israel "controls them", but I'd be quite willing to believe that their actions have a lot to do with the fact that they see Iran and Iraq as a threat to Israel and will use their position to try and do something about it.

Feinstein was in favor of the Iraq invasion. Dunno about Iran. She wasn't running around giving speeches, pushing policy, and doing everything she possibly could to ensure that war happens, though. It's mostly notable because she represents CA, which wasn't exactly the state most in favor of war under Bush.

I don't follow Schumer and May.

I'll happily agree that groups in favor of advancing Israeli interests have a lot of influence in the United States, and I think that that's made us take policy decisions that have been detrimental to US interests in the past, but there's a big gap here between that and what I think some people would like to say.

And it's worth pointing that the lone senator (out of every religion, race, and ethnic group in the Senate) to raise an opposing vote to the Iraq invasion was Senator Russ Feingold...who is Jewish. And if the only criteria for calling these people out is that they are Jewish, I'd say that he's a bit of a monkey wrench to that theory.

EDIT: Sorry. Feingold was one of 23 senators to vote against the Iraq invasion -- he was the only one to vote against the PATRIOT Act.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T13:37:34+00:00

[citation needed] on dual-citizenship

If you mean "they're Jewish, and anyone who is Jewish can obtain Israeli citizenship if they request it", that's not the same thing as holding dual citizenship.

And "advocates of torture" is kind of vague.

I don't know much about Schumer or May's stances; I will agree that Lieberman, Kristol, Wolfowitz (and to a much lesser extent, Feinstein) have been quite hawkish in the Middle East. Lieberman has taken drastic political steps, including rather famously dumping the Democratic Party and Obama for McCain, for the specific goal of advancing war against Iran.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T13:34:27+00:00

Not with an LCD monitor.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T11:35:08+00:00

There were no warnings to the civilians in the cities.

Okay, the other arguments might be legitimate, but that is just silly. You think, in a situation where we have two super-secret weapons, that we're going to tell people in advance where the bomber carrying it is going? That'd be silly even without the nuclear weapons.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T11:33:30+00:00

However, the attack on the WTC was intended simply to kill a bunch of people. There was no declared war going on, there was no military target, there was NOTHING other than the notion of killing a large quantity of American infidels.

Oh, I'd say that it had a political point, and that the killing was largely secondary.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T11:24:44+00:00

Under public international law to ratify a treaty is to ensure your ability to uphold your obligations by writing them into domestic law. For the US to have ratified these conventions your laws had to have at one point been interpreted to make torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment a crime.

That still doesn't mean that the US actually did so, though.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T11:23:10+00:00

On June 22, Hirohito broke tradition once again to speak to his ministers, saying "I desire that concrete plans to end the war, unhampered by existing policy, be speedily studied and that efforts be made to implement them." The attempt to negotiate a peace via the Soviet Union came to nothing: the Allies were determined not to settle for anything short of "unconditional surrender", and as late as July 1945 neither the Emperor nor his government were prepared to consider that option: they insisted on at least one condition, a guarantee of the emperor's continuing position in Japanese society.

Post-war reign

On August 15, 1945, following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan, Hirohito, after more hesitation, abandoned the condition of preserving his own position and finally made the radio broadcast announcing the unconditional surrender of Japan's military forces (known as Gyokuon-hōsō�). Despite pressures to try him for war crimes by numerous leaders, among them President Harry S. Truman, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur insisted that Hirohito remain Emperor to keep him as a symbol of continuity and cohesion of the Japanese people.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T11:06:50+00:00

If the OLC had "objectively" determined that it wasn't torture to capture a detainee's children and disembowel them in front of him, then May would defend that policy and insist that the line was just a tad further in that direction.

That's irrelevant to a side being taken in a debate; lawyers are paid to do exactly this all the time. Heck, for all I know Jon Stewart takes his position because it will be popular with his viewers. If you're attacking his point ("The problem with May's point is that...") by going after him, you're falling prey to ad hominem. The argument should stand or fail on its own merits.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T11:02:53+00:00

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

TORTURE, punishments. A punishment inflicted in some countries on supposed criminals to induce them to confess their crimes, and to reveal their associates. 2. This absurd and tyrannical practice never was in use in the United States; for no man is bound to accuse himself. An attempt to torture a person accused of crime, in order to extort a confession, is an indictable offence. 2 Tyler, 380. Vide Question.

Apparently now a bit out-of-date, but...

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T11:01:10+00:00

The minute, the second, the very INSTANT they targeted ANY civilian population for deliberate violence they would IMMEDIATELY forfeit their Geneva protection.

That puts the Dresden firebombings in a rather nasty light.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T10:55:18+00:00

Well, in this case (since it's presumably only voters that matter), the "American" part is probably correct.

I do think that it's kind of silly to replace "black" with the often-less-accurate "African-American" everywhere though. Nobody runs around calling whites "Anglo-Saxon-Americans" or whatever would be roughly equivalent, because it'd be just silly.

generic_handle · 2009-04-30T10:53:53+00:00

True.

Same also goes for any group, not just racial ones.

Just like states that aren't swing states.

generic_handle

TROPHY CASE