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Chicken Hawk Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak

by shergald Fri Jul 16th, 2010 at 03:40:31 PM EST

....Democratic candidate for the Senate from Pennsylvania, USA (Specter's seat). Europeans need to appreciate what the American public has to deal with in its elections: the lobbies.

Whether you call it the Israel Lobby or AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) or the Neocons, there's no question that as a result of Sestak's past criticisms of Israel, they are now an albatross around his neck. Check out this political ad paid for by a new (old) group of Washington pro-Israel Neocons just resurrected as the The Emergency Committee for Israel. If you ask whether Sestak is in the process of being AIPAC'ed just as Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) was several years ago, this time with the Neocons leading the way, it turns out to be a silly question. Of course. Watch the attack video just released by this Neocon group:

Chicken Hawk Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak was MJ Rosenberg's title for this story, but substitute AIPAC or the Israel Lobby and the result would be the same, and it would go on below the radar. The story, for example, was featured in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, but not at all by the mainstream American press. Thank heaven for the alternative press that comes to us by way of computer screens.

Joe Sestak, the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in Pennsylvania, is a former three-star Vice Admiral and the highest-ranking former military officer currently serving in Congress. But that does not make him a good enough patriot for the chicken hawk neocons. Nope. A new organization called The Emergency Committee has been established by Bill Kristol, Michael Goldfarb, Rachel (Mrs. Elliot) Abrams and other famous war heroes who think that Sestak is insufficiently loyal to...Bibi Netanyahu. (The Emergency Committee no doubt lists Rachel and not Elliot Abrams because he was convicted of lying to Congress on a national security issue. Even the neocons don't like invoking that guy's name!)

Bill Kristol says the new "organization" is the "pro-Israel wing of the pro-Israel community." In other words, we aren't just Israel-firsters. We are Israel firsters on steroids, not like those mealy mouths at AIPAC who actually cite US security needs (even if they get them wrong). The Emergency Committee For Israel could be headquartered in Romania or the Phillipines. Although its heart is in a West Bank settlement.

Anyway, check out the anti-Sestak ad (above) and spend a minute wondering how these neocons -- whose only experience with war is lobbying to get other Americans to fight them -- have the audacity to imply that a career spent in the US military is less American that careers successfully dedicated to getting US policy to conform to the concept of Great Israel. Unbelievable.

As noted, the ad also criticizes Sestak for signing a letter against Israel's siege of Gaza while at the same time refusing to add his name to a defense of Israel petition circulated by powerful pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. The group also attacked Sestak for appearing at a fund raiser for the Council on American Islamic Relations, which it said was an "anti-Israel organization the FBI called a `front group for Hamas". (What anti-Israel organization hasn't the FBI, CIA, or the US State Department not listed as a 'terrorist' group?)

Wasn't it Stephen Walt (The Israel Lobby co-author) who recently identified the Neocons as Israel-centric, with all of its past saber rattling against Iraq, and now Iran, as primarily focused on carrying out right wing Zionist goals?

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Chicken Hawk Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak | 40 comments (40 topical, 0 editorial, 3 hidden)
Re: Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak (none / 0)
As it turns out Walt's claim may be old hat. Ca 2003.

White man's burden

The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them, journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible. But another journalist, Thomas Friedman (not part of the group), is skeptical

Ari Shavit/Haaretz

In the course of the past year, a new belief has emerged in the town: the belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was disseminated by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), people who are mutual friends and cultivate one another and are convinced that political ideas are a major driving force of history. They believe that the right political idea entails a fusion of morality and force, human rights and grit. The philosophical underpinnings of the Washington neoconservatives are the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Edmund Burke. They also admire Winston Churchill and the policy pursued by Ronald Reagan. They tend to read reality in terms of the failure of the 1930s (Munich) versus the success of the 1980s (the fall of the Berlin Wall).

Are they wrong? Have they committed an act of folly in leading Washington to Baghdad? They don't think so. They continue to cling to their belief. They are still pretending that everything is more or less fine. That things will work out. Occasionally, though, they seem to break out in a cold sweat. This is no longer an academic exercise, one of them says, we are responsible for what is happening. The ideas we put forward are now affecting the lives of millions of people. So there are moments when you're scared. You say, Hell, we came to help, but maybe we made a mistake.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/white-man-s-burden-1.14110



by shergald on Fri Jul 16th, 2010 at 03:59:56 PM EST
Re: Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak (none / 0)
You can always count on Phil Weiss (Mondoweiss, USA) to get into the inside of things and pull them together:

`Emergency Committee for Israel' is housed in `Liberation of Iraq' offices

Philip Weiss
July 16, 2010  

Remember all the folks who denied that there was any meaningful Israel agenda in the push for war with Iraq? Well here are Jim Lobe and Eli Clifton at lobelog covering the rollout of the neoconservative Emergency Committee for Israel, which has been getting so much mainstream media attention:

Some things are just too good to be true.

It seems that the new Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) is based out of the same office as the old Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), suggesting that, Yes, Virginia, the same people who led the march to war in Iraq are behind the new Emergency Committee, which, in its very brief existence to date, has attracted a lot of mostly critical attention in the blogosphere.

The link, Clifton shows, is to Randy Scheunemann, the man who schooled Sarah Palin in pro-Israel foreign policy as she was being rolled out two years ago. When will this network be exposed by the mainstream media? Before an attack on Iran, I pray.

http://mondoweiss.net/2010/07/emergency-committee-for-israel-is-housed-in-liberation-of-iraq-offices .html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+feedburner%2FWDBc+%28Mondo weiss%29


by shergald on Fri Jul 16th, 2010 at 05:19:55 PM EST
Re: Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak (none / 0)
And what happened to the comments on this diary?

by shergald on Sun Jul 18th, 2010 at 07:23:06 AM EST
Re: Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak (none / 0)
I suspect that one of the seed comments got enough low ratings to be auto-hidden and it took the attached thread of comments with it.
by det on Sun Jul 18th, 2010 at 07:48:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak (none / 0)
Who in the world would have wanted to hide any of the comments on this diary? From the top, that would have been Lynch's first comment, but why hide it? It was myopic but not worthy of using it to take out 25+ comments made by others including Lynch.

by shergald on Sun Jul 18th, 2010 at 08:11:56 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak (none / 0)
This may be new to you, but this is a basic feature of ratings in SCOOP (the software ET and some other community blogs operate with), meant to weed out trolls. It's called community self-policing. You can read about it in ET's own FAQ and NUG:

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This is a SCOOP site, and many of the questions are common to all SCOOP sites.

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What's a trusted user? How do I become one?

A Trusted User is a user that has been around long enough and has posted enough comments deemed worthwhile by other members of the community, as determined by the ratings such comments have garnered.

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What this means is that Trusted Users have a special responsibility to the site, by having more power to make some comments disappear from the view of the general viewing public. Such responsibility should not be abused, and it also means that you will be expected to have a look at comments that have become hidden to make sure that this was legitimate (if not, you can rate them up to make them visible again).

The main use of the system is to hide comments from trolls, i.e. needlessly provocative, insulting or personal, and NOT to go into silly ego wars when commenters downrate each other. Remember, ratings should not be used to express disagreement with a comment, but only to flag aggressivity or provocative words.

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1 is used to rate a comment "trollish", i.e. disruptive of dialogue, or grossly insulting, or really inappropriate. Such ratings should never be used to indicate that you disagree with the comment. If in doubt, wait until another member uses this thankfully seldom used warning.

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There is a very practical use of the ratings, which is to get rid of trolls. Comments with an average below a certain value and enough comments will be hidden and only visible thereafter to Trusted Users. This is a very effective way for the community to self-police and avoid disruptions and thread hijackings caused by trolls. However, in the case of more serious misbehavior, or abuse of the rating system, the frontpagers will intervene (see Frontpager Duties)...

In the current system on dKos, with its simpler comment rating system, this function is even more explicit:

Troll rating - dKosopedia

Troll rating on Dailykos means marking a Dailykos comment as a troll comment. This is done by clicking in the "troll" button that appears next to the comment. The "troll" button only appears for trusted users. Other users see only the "recommend" button, which is similar in function, but it rates the article upward instead of downward. If a comment receives more than three times as many troll ratings as recommends, it is automatically sent to Hidden Comments, where only Trusted Users can see it.


*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Sun Jul 18th, 2010 at 09:14:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak (none / 1)
I see those comments disappearing along with the troll-rated comment include a number of long replies from you. I note these remain visible in unthreaded comment views or comment direct links, interested readers can follow this link.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Sun Jul 18th, 2010 at 09:23:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak (none / 0)
Correct, 5 Troll and one Mega Troll ratings giving an average of 0.83.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Sun Jul 18th, 2010 at 08:54:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak (none / 0)
Lynch is not a troll; his views are just one-sided, misinformed, or perhaps just reflective of a decade of post-9/11 Israeli propaganda.

by shergald on Sun Jul 18th, 2010 at 09:14:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak (none / 0)
You are entitled to that view, but so is everyone else. It is up to every rater to decide whether a comment is trollish.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Sun Jul 18th, 2010 at 09:28:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak (none / 1)
Lynch did not present views. S/he tried old ad hominem troll tricks like the two questions s/he put to you without any other form of argument or an attempt at discussion (Do you support Hamas? Do you support Hezbollah?).

When you replied with an attempt at discussion, Lynch's reply was immediately: "OK. So you are a supporter of Hezbollah and Hamas. No point in discussing with you further."

This is absolutely classic lowbrow trollery.

These tactics seemed to be trollish, in any case, to enough users here for the troll rating on her/is initial comment to make it hidden. That was not an editorial decision or the decision of any single person.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sun Jul 18th, 2010 at 09:30:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak (none / 1)
Although I did not get to read Lynch's last comment, it is unfortunate that all of the discussion was hidden. So be it. Lynch will be back no doubt attempting to "slay the messenger" instead of providing an understanding and justification for his contrary view, if he has one. Reality has been particularly tough on supporters of Israeli colonialism under this right wing extremist Likud government.

by shergald on Sun Jul 18th, 2010 at 10:02:55 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak (4.00 / 3)
Check this thing out and you'll find common things on all forums.

How to argue and debate properly.

Overall ET is better than usual forums, newspapers forums (where it's possible to learn a lot from readers' reactions) largely anonymous because bloggers are not allowed to post diaries and personal photodiaries.

Some specialized forums I am taking part are also more conducive for anonymous, which is breeding ground for occasional rudeness.

There are forums (or groups) of Facebook-style, where everybody know each other pretty well (from tons of fotos, videos and personal information), but it's rarely you can find there interesting debates, especially political-economic discussions, more likely there celebrity-weather-mundane things are talked about.

by FarEasterner on Sun Jul 18th, 2010 at 10:28:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak (none / 1)
Thanks for the link to proper debate. While I did suggest that Lynch was operating from restricted knowledge, his mind perhaps having been propagandized, I don't think I insulted him. I rather asked that he demonstrate his understanding of this conflict, its sources, and what he understood by Hamas and Hezbollah historically, their origins and purposes, and what they stood for.

For course, as someone noted, these organizations are quite different. and while one cannot possibly support terrorist tactics, not inquiring about Israel's state terrorism and asking if you support that too, is quite biased.

All in all, Lynch's purpose was a naive attempt to slay the messenger of this diary, and several members saw that for what it was.

Thanks for your comment.


by shergald on Sun Jul 18th, 2010 at 10:41:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Chicken Hawk Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak | 40 comments (40 topical, 0 editorial, 3 hidden)


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