Jews Who Need a Time Out

a rant, by Simon

Look, we'd rather be talking about hotness. We'd rather talk about the 50 or so amazing women, many of the Hebraic variety, who recently attended the home of Simon (though he was sent into local exile while the all-girl party transpired) at the invitation of the lovely Julia. Or the incredibly hot style of Jewish-British chanteuse Amy Winehouse. We'd rather go on about drinking red wine in the hot tub under the twinkling stars.

But instead we need to talk about some Jews who are not only not hot, but who are truly pissing us off.

One is a politician and the other a pundit. They have both publicly called for the U.S. to start dropping bombs on Iran. One of them has done so very much in the context of what's "good for the Jews."

They are Sen. Joe Lieberman, that weasel-tongued toady of the Bush regime and delusional cheerleader of the Iraq war, and ultraconservative columnist — and candidate for a rainbow assortment of psychiatric Jujubees — Norman Podhoretz.

Here's what Lieberman said on the risibly titled TV show Face the Nation:

If they don't play by the rules, we've got to use our force, and to me, that would include taking military action to stop them from doing what they're doing.

Well, that's bad for all kinds of reasons, though typical of Lieberman's fealty to the bellicose bullshit of the Neocon elite. The "play by the rules" part is especially hi-larious, given Lieberman's smug defense of Bush's rule-flattening Iraq War and, much more recently, his de facto protection of Attorney General Gonzales, who gives lying worms a bad name.

Joe says the Iranians are "training Iraqis to kill Americans" in Iraq, which may or may not be true, but, um, there's a simpler and far less bloody way to address that problem (hint: it involves getting U.S. troops the hell out) — on which the Senator helped the Prez put the kibosh. Even worse, he's said that backing down from a confrontation would be a "sign of weakness."

In the past, though, he's emphasized a nuclear Iran's dire threat to Israel (Lieberman had just returned from a trip to the Middle East, including Israel, when he issued his call for airstrikes). But a threatening situation doesn't mean there can't be dialogue. And heightened tensions don't always necessitate the dropping of ordnance on human beings. Also, note the shifting rationales for the same preemptive military action. Sound familiar? No? Anyone? OK, OK, here's a little clue: switch the "n" in "Iran" to a "q."

So, yeah, bad. Neocon destructo-robot bad. But just check out Podhoretz's words, from an editorial splashed, not long ago, on the pages of The Washington Post (and,of course, in Podhoretz's own diseased organ, Commentary). After making a preposterous case for Ahmadeinejad as a geopolitical juggernaut of evil (bolstered by such clearly-lashed-to-the-moorings-of-reality authorities as John Bolton), he calls for — spoiler alert! — massive U.S. airstrikes on the nation of Iran. He then concludes, at the ass end of an alarmingly tender panegyric for Bush:

It now remains to be seen whether this President, battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory, and weakened politically by the enemies of his policy in the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular, will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both toward us and toward Israel. As an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart that he will.

As we've tried to explain in the past, it's a horrible thing to advocate dropping bombs on anyone. And only a crack-addled pinhead could seriously believe that bombing Iran would improve conditions in the Middle East for anyone — let alone the people on whom said bombs would rain.

But it's the "as a Jew" part that makes steam come out of my ears. The idea that these two barnacles on the hull of the U.S.S. Dubya can blithely call for fiery death to rain down on human beings on the grounds that it would be good for the Jews is so fuckingly wrong that it almost makes me believe in metaphysical retribution, just so I can visualize Joe and Norm roasting in the Devil's sauna next to another "friend of Israel" who routinely expressed the need for various people to be incinerated, Jerry fucking Falwell.

Let me tell you something: You don't need to be a foreign-policy scholar to see that Ahmadinejad's latest crackdown, wherein various marginally free forms of expression are being peremptorily trampled and various forces of liberalization further marginalized, has been helped along by saber-rattling American shitheads. After all, the Iranian President is at pains to remind his long-suffering population, this is a security emergency. The Americans could blow us up at any moment, and this Jew in the Wall Street Journal is freakin' praying for it! And this other Jew in the Senate is calling for it!

What is a liberal Iranian to say to this? Well, most Americans don't feel that way. It's just the crazies in power. It blows my mind how much I sound like a liberal Iranian sometimes, and how much my government can sound like theirs.

And does anyone seriously believe that more explosions will solve the current crises? Can anyone honestly entertain the idea that blowing more men, women and children away with tax-supported firepower will be helpful for Israel?

No, it'll make it much worse. And it'll provide the impetus for yet more terrorist explosions, which will in turn justify more bombing missions, and on and on and on.

We're unlikely to have much impact on the actions of authoritarian assholes like the Iranian president. But we can sure as hell speak up when people in our own country and ostensibly our own community try to gin up mass death in our names. It is time for the Hot Jews to stand up and tell these cold-blooded Jews to step the fuck off.