The Commentariat -- February 8, 2015
Internal links removed.
** Jim Fallows of the Atlantic: "A nation can't possibly come up with rules to outlaw every form of misbehavior. It relies on norms to guide behavior -- which is why some current violations of those norms deserve attention." ...
... Steve Coll, in a New York Review of Books review of James Risen's book Pay any Price, provides a good example of what happens when government officials -- in this case Eric Holder -- break the norm.
Anthony Faiola & Carol Morello of the Washington Post: "Diplomats and politicians raced Saturday to devise a strategy for halting the fierce combat and mounting civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine, with the focus on how best to get Russia to pull back its troops and heavy weaponry. The crisis in eastern Ukraine, where government forces are under siege from separatists supported and equipped by Moscow, is dominating the Munich Security Conference, an annual event drawing national security officials, analysts and policymakers from around the world." ...
... UPDATE: "A peace proposal for Ukraine edged toward a possible breakthrough as the leaders of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine agreed Sunday to a joint summit alongside representatives of the pro-Moscow separatists who have waged a bloody campaign in the Ukrainian east."
Michael Shear & Carl Hulse of the New York Times: President "Obama has so far found little traction with Congress on major domestic policy proposals related to child care, paid sick leave, tax policy and higher education. His legislative aides have struggled to find Republicans willing to endorse the legislation. Few Republicans say they have even been approached.... The president's team has made some headway with the opposition on a handful of issues, including efforts to improve cybersecurity, invest in infrastructure and advance trade deals. On Thursday, the White House announced a Republican sponsor for a bill to safeguard data collected from children in schools."
Mike Lillis of the Hill: "A growing number of top Democrats plan to skip next month's Capitol Hill speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Reps. James Clyburn (S.C.), the third-ranking House Democrat, and Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.), chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), are just the latest lawmakers to indicate they won't attend the March 3 address before a rare joint session of Congress." (See also Jim Fallows' piece on breaking norms, linked above.)
Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist, in a Washington Post op-ed: "Doctors who purvey views based on anecdote, myth, hearsay, rumor, ideology, fraud or some combination of all of these, particularly during an epidemic, should have their medical licenses revoked.... A doctor is not just another person with First Amendment rights to free speech.... Because lives hang in the balance, medical speech is held to a higher standard.... Counseling against vaccination is ... misconduct." AND, yes, Caplan zeroes in on Dr. Rand Paul. Caplan helpfully includes chapter & verse of the Kentucky law that he believes Paul has violated. ...
... CW: Ironically, Paul seems too damned dumb to understand the not-especially-nuanced argument Caplan presents to explain why doctors don't have the freeeeedom to spout medical mumbojumbo in the same way a layperson does. I can just seem Li'l Randy jumping up & down waving the Bill of Rights at his Kentucky medical board ethics hearing. ...
... Mark Silk, in Religion News Service: America's fear of vaccination predates the nation. New England Puritan minister Cotton Mather promoted the smallpox vaccine, but among his detractors was Ben Franklin. Years later, Franklin had a conversion after his own son died of smallpox: "'I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation,' Franklin wrote in his Autobiography.
Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg slammed the legalization of pot during a trip to Colorado this weekend, calling it 'one of the stupider things' happening in the United States. The socially liberal former mayor, who has admitted to consuming marijuana decades ago, argued that states that move to legalize the plant for recreational and medical purposes are risking children's intelligence." CW: Evidently if you're financially comfortable & white, there are no mental inhibitory consequences to smoking pot, & you can still be smart enough to become a self-made billionaire. Also, you can definitely avoid prosecution & incarceration for illegal possession, which is something of a career-buster. Tough luck, little people!
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
Slow-Jammin' the Newsman
Emily Steel of the New York Times: "Brian Williams said on Saturday that he was stepping aside from the daily broadcast of NBC's 'Nightly News' for the next several days, after admitting that he had misled the public about being on a helicopter that was forced down in Iraq. In a memo to the NBC News staff, Mr. Williams said that Lester Holt, the anchor for 'Dateline,' would step in as the network dealt with the issue." Here's Williams' memo. ...
... Maureen Dowd: "THIS was a bomb that had been ticking for a while. NBC executives were warned a year ago that Brian Williams was constantly inflating his biography. They were flummoxed over why the leading network anchor felt that he needed Hemingwayesque, bullets-whizzing-by flourishes to puff himself up, sometimes to the point where it was a joke in the news division." ...
... Paul Farhi of the Washington Post: "In an interview with a campus television station before a speaking engagement at Fairfield University in Connecticut [in 2007], Williams said he 'looked down the tube' of a rocket launcher after the weapon had been fired at another helicopter during his 2003 trip to Iraq. 'I've been very lucky to have survived a few things that I've been involved in,' he said in the video, posted on the Web site Ace of Spades HQ. In the same interview, he said that in the war between Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah, 'there were Katuyshka rockets passing just beneath the helicopter I was riding in.'...* A military helicopter that preceded Williams's helicopter to a landing spot in the Iraqi desert did sustain damage from an RPG, but it was at least a half-hour ahead of Williams's flight, making it unlikely that he could have 'looked down the tube' of the weapon." ...
... *NEW. CW: That's funny, because in his original reporting, about a year before the 2007 interview, which included video of Williams' ' "riding in the helicopter," Williams neither mentioned nor showed any "Katuyshka rockets passing just beneath the helicopter." Rather, he pointed out the window to "trails of smoke and dust visible out the window [which] are where Katyusha rockets have landed" & "from a distance of six miles," he saw a couple of rocket launches. Apparently, those rockets weren't aimed in his direction. Or he didn't, you know, report them as "passing just beneath" his chopper. It looks as if it doesn't take long for Williams to "misremember" things. Maybe he conflated his own experiences with scenes from the film "Six Days in June," a film about the 1967 Six Day War, which Williams may have watched in preparation for his reporting in Israel.
... Jim Fallows: "... I still find it just about incomprehensible that someone: (a) whose professional background involves observing and reporting events, (b) who holds one of the handful of jobs in the world most reliant on trustworthiness, and (c) who knew he was talking to an audience of millions of people that would (d) include others with first-hand knowledge of the incident, would nonetheless (e) 'misremember' what must have been one of the most dramatic and traumatic moments of his life, after (f) accurately reporting the event for the first few years after it took place, and (g) when the whole thing is only a dozen years in the past, not somewhere in the fog of distant childhood memory." ...
... CW: With an assist from Andrew Tyndall, Fallows expand on a point I tried to make in yesterday's Comments, but they do a much better job. Tyndall: "Jim Fallows of The Atlantic recently observed that such 'reverent' solidarity with our troops acts as a ring-fence that protects the entire military-industrial complex from the scrutiny it deserves. So the editorial importance of the fib Williams told is not only that it displays a reflexive desire toward identification with the military; it also represents his own newscast's self-disqualification as a dispassionate journalistic observer of the Pentagon's role in the domestic body politic and the nation's foreign policy." (Emphasis original.)
Kareem Fahim of the New York Times: In Iraq, Shiite militias are having some success at pushing back ISIS, but are almost guaranteed to continue to Shiite-Sunni divisive environment that has plagued Iraq since the Brits created the country. ...
... MEANWHILE, here in the USA, we face our own problems with militant extremists. FreakOut Nation: "National NRA Board member Charles Cotton posted on the Texas CHL Forum, writing, 'Perhaps a good paddling in school may keep me from having to put a bullet in [a student] later.'... " His full statement reads:
Once again Rep. Alma Allen [a Democratic Texas legislator] has filed a bill to prohibit the use of corporal punishment in public primary and secondary schools. I'm sure some folks are going to wonder why this bill would be tracked since it doesn't deal directly with guns or self-defense. Rather than type the explanation again this session, I've copied it below. I'm sick of this woman and her 'don't touch my kid regardless what he/she did or will do again' attitude. Perhaps a good paddling in school may keep me from having to put a bullet in him later. ...
... Update: Rep. Allen is black.
God News, Ctd.
We've dealt for several days this week with comments the infidel Barack Obama's made at the National Prayer Breakfast. Here, Jay Michaelson of Religion News Service patiently explains history to wingnuts.
As luck would have it, that particular spate of wingnuttery is not all the God News that's unfit to print this week.
Lester Feder of BuzzFeed: "Pope Francis gave his blessing on Wednesday to a referendum that would ban marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples in Slovakia, which will be voted on this Saturday." Via Steve Benen. ...
... David Gibson of Religion News Service: "Pope Francis ... on Saturday (Feb. 7) ... argu[ed] that the Catholic Church should help 'guarantee the freedom of choice' for women to take up leading posts in the church and in public life while also maintaining their 'irreplaceable role' as mothers at home.... He said Western societies have left behind the old model of the 'subordination' of women to men, though he said the 'negative effects' of that tradition continue. At the same time, he said, the world has moved beyond a model of 'pure and simple parity, applied mechanically, of absolute equivalence' between men and women." ...
... For some background on Francis, Eamon Duffy reviews three books about him, suggesting Francis is a priest who has learned from his mistakes, but he is not about to change church doctrine. CW: Ergo, his anti-gay-marriage stance & his enigmatic remarks on women's "place."
"Intimations of the Apocalypse." Joe Barton Is Still Nutty. Laura Barron-Lopez of the Hill: "Rep. Joe Barton (Texas) isn't about to have his prized legislation get tagged with a 666 -- the number of the beast. Barton on Wednesday successfully changed the bill number for his legislation repealing a decades-old ban on crude oil exports from 666, a figure frequently tied to the antichrist and Satanism, to the more anodyne 702." Also via Benen. ...
... Steve M.: "Some of you may recall that when Ronald Reagan left the presidency, a group of friends bought him and Nancy a house in Bel-Air, California, located at 666 St. Cloud Road. The Reagans accepted the gift, but had the address changed to 668 St. Cloud Road, to avoid intimations of the apocalypse. Yes, really."
Kevin Eckstrom of Religion News Service: "The Episcopal Church lost a major court battle on Tuesday (Feb. 3) when a South Carolina judge ruled that the Diocese of South Carolina legally seceded from the denomination, and can retain control of $500 million in church property and assets.... The parishes that remain loyal to the national denomination, known as The Episcopal Church in South Carolina, plan to appeal...."
Presidential Race
Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "With advice from more than 200 policy experts, is trying to answer what has emerged as a central question of her early presidential campaign strategy: how to address the anger about income inequality without overly vilifying the wealthy. Mrs. Clinton has not had to wade into domestic policy since before she became secretary of state in 2009, and she has spent the past few months engaged in policy discussions with economists on the left and closer to the Democratic Party's center.... Sorting through the often divergent advice to develop an economic plan could affect the timing and planning of the official announcement of her campaign." ...
... CW: If Larry Summers' recent sudden shift to a more populist message is any indication -- something Akhilleus & I discussed a few weeks back -- I do believe we know just about where Hillary is going with the little income inequality conundrum. She is talking, BTW, to some of the right people -- and to some of the very wrong people. It is, of course, the very wrong people who will be financing her campaign.
Ben Kamisar of the Hill: "The U.S. Attorney's office in New Jersey dismissed media reports that it has launched a new criminal investigation into Gov. Chris Christie (R) as 'a tremendous leap forward' in a statement provided Friday to MSNBC's 'The Rachel Maddow Show.' At issue is an allegation that Christie's office helped scuttle indictments against the governor's allies and that a former county prosecutor who tried to blow the whistle was fired. An International Business Times report from Thursday claimed that prosecutors launched a formal investigation into the matter."
Beyond the Beltway
Today in Responsible Gun Ownership. AP: "Neighbors along a quiet, suburban street outside Atlanta were left horrified after police say a man shot six people -- killing four of them, including his ex-wife and several children -- before ending the rampage by fatally turning the gun on himself." CW: This "family dispute resolution" methodology seems to be becoming increasingly common, especially in NRA-friendly states.
Albuquerque Journal: Albuquerque law enforcement have brought charges of felony child abuse against the parents of a two-year-old who shot them both. A police spokesman said "the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also is investigating whether the child's father -- 24-year-old Justin Reynolds, a convicted felon -- will be charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm."
News Ledes
Washington Post: "Dean Smith, the legendary former coach at North Carolina and one of the greatest coaches of all time in college basketball, has died at the age of 83." The Raleigh News & Observer obituary is here.
Los Angeles Times: "Former Olympian Bruce Jenner was a driver in a multivehicle crash Saturday on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu that left one person dead and five injured, authorities said.... Jenner, whose apparent transition from male to female has drawn intense media coverage in recent days, was being followed by paparazzi when the collision occurred, but it's doubtful he was trying to outrun them, said L.A. County Sheriff's Sgt. Philip Brooks."
Guardian: "The woman who alleges that she was made to have sex with Prince Andrew when she was 17 has told a court she believes US authorities hold video footage of her having underage sex with powerful associates of Andrew's friend Jeffrey Epstein. Virginia Roberts also alleged in a new affidavit filed on Friday that she was so badly assaulted by Epstein's friends that she thought she might die."
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Reader Comments (16)
@cowichan:
This is in response to your last comment in yesterday's thread. From the L.A. Times, Nov. 2001:
"With its use of 15,000-pound 'daisy cutter' bombs in Afghanistan, the United States has unleashed one of its most powerful weapons--billed as the world's largest conventional bomb.
"The BLU-82 combines a watery mixture of ammonium nitrate and aluminum with air, then ignites the mist for an explosion that incinerates everything up to 600 yards away. [Emphasis added.]
"The BLU-82 uses about six times the amount of ammonium nitrate that Timothy McVeigh used in the bomb that blew up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.
"It was created during the Vietnam War to clear jungle landing zones. Reports from the ground in Afghanistan indicate that the huge bombs have been used against front-line Taliban positions."
Heres' more from an NYU source. I have no idea if the description is accurate & I don't know who the author is, but it is consistent -- and suspiciously word-for-word similar in places -- to the LA Times report.
Here's a Guardian story that says virtually the same thing.
I think where Cole errs is in distinguishing the BLU-82B from a "daisy cutter." In my unfortunately extensive research, I came to the tentative conclusion that they were one-and-the-same. However, Cole himself writes in his post that the BLU-82B is NOT a fuel-air bomb. Your criticized him for writing that it WAS a fuel-air bomb, when he specifically wrote the opposite. I have written to Cole to ask him to clarify his comment vis-a-vis the BLU-82B vs. the daisy cutter. I'll let you know if I hear back from him.
In the meantime, I hope this is the end of this. As to your larger questions, I do not have time to get into a philosophical discussion with you, & I don't think it would be productive anyway. You seem to just want to be argumentative, IMHO, & that posture seldom leads to illuminating discussion. If others wish to discuss the ethical questions you raised -- which are certainly worthy of discussion -- of course that is fine with me.
Marie
Brian forgot the important lede: "This is no shit, but there I was..."
Patrick alluded to it the other day. Didn't Baron Munchausen perfect the art of the War Story many years ago?
Why anyone would wish themselves into combat is beyond me. A person could get hurt or killed in such a situation. Indeed many real journalists have been. Ernie Pyle paid the price as did journalists captured by ISIS.
There's always been something smarmy about Brian Williams to me. He could join Richard Engel if he wants to see what its like to be a real war correspondent.
Several days ago when the Williams story erupted I said that my Senator, Richard Blumenthal, lied about serving in Vietnam. Here is the scoop on that situation which is eerily similar to Williams' ––both needed to be part of the war effort––the badge of honor, the proof that you're not some wuss standing on the sidelines, that you were involved in the thick of things for country and freedom. Fallows' piece along with Tyndall's hit it out of the park, I think. That military "ring fence" is strong and impenetrable.
Remember back in the forties there was a poster portraying a man sitting in a chair and a little boy at his knees with the caption: "What did YOU do in the War, Daddy?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/nyregion/18blumenthal.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Re: bombs bursting in air, rockets red glare, no newscasters there... Once you're on the bus or helicopter as the matter maybe you no longer can be a non-passionate observer. Regardless of how the military handlers felt about Mr. Williams report they must have thought, "he's our boy now.". Embedded news gathers "in bed news"; strange fellows indeed.
@Patrick, thanks for post, it was educational. I've been on a heli ride once to go powder skiing. Even with headset on I could not understand a word the pilot was saying. I was riding shotgun and he said something to me and the others in the back seats and looked at me, I answer everything I can't understand in the affirmative just I case I miss 'the piece of pie offer' so I looked back and gave the thumbs up response. The pilot then threw the copter in a sideways dive which I thought was going to kill us all and gave me a close up look at a elk in a glen. I did not think a helicopter could do that with out everybody dying, including the elk.Later the pilot told me the maneuver was not even close to the crafts outside envelope. I don't recommend sking with soiled underwear.
@JJG: Oh, don't be so modest. I was there. The way I remember it, you had an actual shotgun & shot an elk from your perch in the fast-moving bird, then climbed down that rope-ladder thingee as the pilot hovered overhead. On the ground, you strapped the carcass to the ladder, then climbed back up the ladder & into the bird.
Later, as we sat around the huge dining table at the lodge, we all remarked that elk steak was delicious & not nearly as tough as we'd thought.*
Marie
* I may be mistaken about the commentary, as my ears were still ringing from the ride. Also, I was still a bit shook up from being buried alive in an avalanche. Thanks for single-handedly digging me out! (I could never understand why the others wouldn't help.)
@CW Your misremembrances put Brian Williams to shame!
Bob Dylan made a moving and very forthright speech at the Emmys. The transcript is here: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-grammys-2015-transcript-of-bob-dylans-musicares-person-of-year-speech-20150207-story.html#page=1
During the buildup to the second Iraq War I, as a Jew, felt self-conscious and embarrassed at the number and high profile of Jews within the Bush Administration and advising from without who were so strongly promoting a war with Iraq. Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby are just four of at least 25 I can now name on demand. Perhaps I was self-conscious and embarrassed because, as a Viet Nam Era Marine (I kept California safe from the VC) I was made embarrassingly aware of how few Jews ever served. “So, Feldman, your a Jew. Jews can’t swim, can’t shoot and can’t fight,” my Drill Instructor told as he packed me off to a Hanukkah party at Paris Island in 1965.. There were about a dozen Jewish recruits at the party out of the thousands of recruits training on the base. (The party was not elective. If you were Jewish you went,)
Now Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has accepted an inappropriate invitation to snub, insult and embarrass a sitting President of the United States. Netanyahu readily admits that his intention in addressing Congress is to influence US foreign policy by sabotaging ongoing talks with Iran aimed at ending Iran’s nuclear program peacefully.
And they’re back —- the same Jewish Neocons who brought you Iraq would like to bring you the sequel in Iran. This time I am not self-conscious or embarrassed. Just mad as Hell. Twelve years and 5,289 (or 5,291 or 5775 depending of whose counting whom where) dead Americans later and who knows how many tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, the bottom line is that the only military force in the Middle East that could threaten Israel has been destroyed. Five thousand two hundred and eighty nine Americans brought home in body bags. Thirty seven of them were Jews, 37. Seven tenths (.007) of one percent of the American death toll in Iraq were Jews. Admittedly there could be a lot of reasons for this but the fact remains. Influential Jews promoted the war in Iraq but overwhelmingly and disproportionately the ultimate sacrifices were made by non-Jews.
According to an old WSJ article, (11/9/09) Of a total of 1,359,948 active duty members of the military, just 4,515 are Jewish. That is 1/3 of 1%, leading only the Muslim service members, which total 3,409. Voz Iz Neias (What Is News) which bills itself as “The Voice of the Orthodox Jewish Community”, wrot shortly after the WSJ article :
In the United States, Jews number between 5,128,000 and 6,444,000, and therefore make up between 1.7 and 2.2 % of our total population of 301,621,000 (U.S. Census Bureau). If Jews served in the military in proportion to their numbers in the general population, there should be between 23,119 and 29,919 Jews in the armed services today. The truth is there is less than 25% of that.
These facts should disturb all Jews and lead to some introspection about what we get from, and what we give to, this country. In the United States we are respected, free and safe. We rely on the United States Constitution and the rule of law to keep us that way, and it has worked well for us, and for many other small minorities. That cannot be said of most other places around the world.
I contend that American Jews have a special responsibility to defend this country, perhaps beyond that of other ethnic groups. It is in our self-interest as Americans, of course, but it is also the right thing to do. We expect, demand and insist on sharing in all that this country has to offer, however, when it is time for our children to serve in defense of it, indeed perhaps in harm’s way, we often discourage participation, or at least we do not encourage it. We let others do it for us.
Apparently the WSJ circle graph struck a nerve. I don’t think it is unfair to say that the Jews made the last war in the interest of Israel and they are now working diligently to make the next one in the interest of Israel. Some tiny little part of me is very proud of how cleverly we Jews can get you Gentiles, even Muslims, to fight and even die for us not to mention bankrupting our nation.
On norms:
Both the Fallows and Coll articles remind me of the old joke (the comedian was, I think, Mort Sahl) about the bank robber who instructed the teller he was attempting to rob not to say or do anything unusual, to just act normal. The teller, obviously suffering from an acute attack of late fifties neuroses, blurted the anguished question, "What's normal?" That was the end of the joke.
But the perpetual question of what is, or should be, normal cannot resolved so neatly, which is why thoughtful variations of that question keep popping up on RC...
This time around Fallows questions Boehner's and the Supremes' behavior, suggesting both are troublesome because they lie outside the established extralegal, societal "norm." True enough.
But norms do change over time, and it is usually the outliers who initiate that movement. If the outliers are on my side, I tend to admire them; if they are not, excoriation is my more likely response.
In the cases of both Boehner and Risen, while my responses are negative and positive, in that order, my feeling are not what counts. What matters is how little the mass of voters know or care about arcane Senate rules and their associated customs or even about matters of press freedom. These are simply not norms that most people think about, no matter that they are surely affected by them.
Fallows says correctly we rely on norms because it's not possible to craft enough laws to enforce all the behaviors we desire. It's also true that law often follows the informal establishment of social norms. Witness large movements, like women's suffrage, civil- and lately gay-rights legislation and legal opinions. But it's also true that there is constant feedback between the formal and informal spheres of rule-making. Laws do change behavior....and behavior does change laws.
It's not as if the "abnormal" Supremes or the wacky Congress don't make any difference and from my POV that's too bad.
Over time, outliers can change the mainstream's course.
Maybe what both Fallows and Coll are writing about is the effect of living in unsettled times on established norms.
When things are changing rapidly, norms also change so rapidly the moral and social ground does seem always to be shifting under our feet.
The teller's question may be even more relevant today than it was in the late fifties, when we only thought we were confused.
@The Constant Weader: I am more than willing to drop this subject. Not because I can't think of a reply but that I am such a totally, abysmally incompetent communicator that even now you think that my argument is about some bomb.
@cowinchan: Here's is the entirety of your first comment:
"According to Wikipedia the BLU-82B was designed to create helicopter landing pads in dense forest not by creating a forest fire but by blast effect. The explosive charge is a slurry which might cause some confusion. Whether your wedding party is ruined by a BLU-82B or a Hellfire missile is irrelevant to the attendees. Sorry, I'm a pedant among other failings."
So, yeah, I thought your "argument [was] about some bomb."
As I said earlier, I don't have time to address your "meaning of war" comments. I took some of your comments to be rhetorical: "Is it better to be killed by a drone or a manned missile?" I know, that's not exactly what you said, but that seemed to be the gist of it. I did invite others to address these philosophical/ethical questions.
Marie
@David Feldman: Thanks for writing. You sure packed a lot into your comment. I'll address one or two things.
I don't see any reason for you to feel guilty because of what other Jews do. I am ashamed of what other Americans -- like George Bush & Dick Cheney -- do, but I don't feel any responsibility for their actions, & I don't feel personally "guilty" when their actions are atrocious.
As far as Jews not serving in the U.S. military, that's a matter of demographics more than anything else. If more Jews lived in inner-city neighbors & had no other good career options, they might have signed up with the Army recruiter who had set up shop in their neighborhood. We have an army of poor people. It's one reason Charlie Rangel & others have suggested reinstituting the draft.
I suppose the National Guard -- which has done a lot of our fighting for us in the past ten years -- has a broader demographic base, but those who sign up for military service, even if they think they're upping for nothing more than weekend duty, probably tend to be less pacifist than Jews are, on the whole. There's some kind of a bell curve for every group, skewed or standard, so it's not all that surprising that a few Wolfowitzes pop up at one end of the curve. And of course most of those hawks are personal pacifists -- they didn't perform any more military service than Dick Cheney did. If Jews are over-represented among chickhawks, it's likely only because Jews are over-represented among those with advanced degrees. (I think.)
As for our Middle East adventures, weren't they actually as much -- or more -- about oil as about Israel? Sure, we pretended we went in to Iraq (the 2nd time) to protect freeeedom & Israel, but a good bit of that story was posturing.
As for Jews having a special duty to the U.S., we all enjoy freedoms that most of our ancestors didn't enjoy in their homelands. My Irish ancestors got out of Ireland just before being conscripted into the English army & prior to the potato famines. I expect many European Jews were living under better conditions.
Whatever our family histories or ethnicities, I figure we're all in the same boat now. My responsibility is no greater or less than yours. As a result, I think we should all serve our country or our community in some way. It need not be in the military, IMHO, or even directly in government service. I think medical professionals, for instance, who "give back" are doing just as much as soldiers.
As for Bibi, I have looked at him for some years the same way I look at American Republicans. He's of a mind that causes him to make bad choices, just as Republicans are. If I were an Israeli citizen, I wouldn't have voted for him, just as I didn't support Bush & Cheney (and in fact worked against them). I'm sorry the majority of Israeli voters have supported Netanyahu, just as I'm sorry that somewhere around half of Americans usually vote for Republicans.
I could go on. But I won't. I have to wash the laundry room floor.
Marie
@ Ken Winkes:
Wikipedia, defining norm in terms of society, states norms create conformity that allows for people to become socialized to the culture in which they live. What if you have no desire to recognize the people on the other side of the aisle as part of the culture in which you live? If the norms you follow are designed to differentiate your group from the others? 50 years ago the visceral response of a conservative American to trigger words such as black or Kennedy struck me dumb. Today I would expect it. Think of Appomattox not as a surrender but as a 100 year truce which expired 50 years ago and the battle is now rejoined with words and laws instead of guns. Norms be damned.
Just read in the NYT the Working Families Party is making a big whoop-whoop about urging Senator Warren to run for prez. These are the same nitwits who endorsed Cuomo for governor last cycle. Breathtaking.
@James,
The Cuomo/Working Families Party relationship is not exactly flowers and butterflies. The WFP made it clear they were considering endorsing Zephyr Teachout rather than Cuomo in the 2014 gubernatorial election.
Cuomo got the endorsement with a certain amount of groveling and because of that, he or his people set up the Women's Equality Party as a vote-grabbing diversion. The hope was that the WFP would not get enough votes to get a voting line in the next election.
WFP cleared the 50,000 vote hurdle so they will get their line again next election. I have some teacher friends who couldn't stomach voting for Cuomo even on the WFP line. They went straight Green.
I take these parties with vaguely populist names with a significant grain of salt, but I though the WFP did a reasonable job of letting Cuomo know that he wasn't adored by the Left.
Re the demographics of military service -- a proposal:
All 18 year old residents register for the draft, no exemptions, no deferrals. Each year, let the DOD determine the number of recruits needed. Call them up in order of their parent's net wealth, the richest going first. One exception: mandatory service, at the front, for children and grandchildren of members of congress.