The way you can tell that, fundamentally, the right’s Iraq hawk pundits are deeply unserious people is that you’ll see things like Reuel Marc Gerecht making this argument: “I can understand–though not appreciate–Americans who don’t want to see Americans dying in Iraq because they value American lives more highly than they do Iraqi ones. This sentiment, more common on the right than on the left, inevitably leads to a bigoted isolationism that allows nefarious forces to run amok.” The view that American lives are more valuable than Iraqi lives is obviously false. The view that the American government should value American lives more highly than it values Iraqi lives is, I think, quite different, fairly intuitive, and certainly not something that advocates of neoconservative foreign policy deny in anything resembling a consistent manner.

I mean, the consequences of the view that the US government should draw no distinction between its responsibilities to Americans and to non-Americans has far reaching and radical consequences for policy areas far removed from the Iraq withdrawal debate. Immigration, say, or international intellectual property policy. Why not mothball a carrier group and spend the money on mosquito nets? Why not dedicate 3 percent of GDP to direct subsidies to the world’s 25 poorest nations? I mean, who knows. Gerecht obviously hasn’t given any thought to this position whatsoever. He’s a hawk. Since he’s a hawk, he against leaving Iraq. Since hes against leaving Iraq, he needs some arguments. He came to a point in the debate when arguing that the US government should value Iraqi and American lives equally was convenient, so he started espousing this position. Does he espouse it consistently? Has he considered its implications? No, no, of course not. He’s just bullshitting around.

I was going to leave James Traub’s profile of Abraham Foxman on its own, but James Kirchik’s obnoxious Plank post on the subject compels me to write something. Saith Kirchik:

Traub accuses Foxman of frequently (and presumably erroneously) smearing individuals as anti-Semites. Other than Professors John Mearsheimer and Stepehn Walt (who have written of their belief in a Jewish conspiracy reaching into the highest levels of the press and the government), Traub does not once name a supposed victim of Foxman’s descriptive wrath other than Jimmy Carter, whom Foxman never labeled anti-Semitic–just “bigoted.”

Frankly, I thought Traub soft-pedaled this a bit, but suffice it to say that here’s the point. If the head of the ADL refers to a person as “bigoted” that just is an accusation of anti-semitism. And Foxman, as Traub makes clear and as is, frankly, clear to anyone who’s paying attention, has decided to start flinging around accusations of anti-semitism against people he has political disagreements with. Check this passage from Traub’s profile:

I asked if it was really right to call Carter, the president who negotiated the Camp David accords, an anti-Semite.

“I didn’t call him an anti-Semite.”

“But you said he was bigoted. Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No. ‘Bigoted’ is you have preconceived notions about things.”

The argument that the Israel lobby constricted debate was itself bigoted, he said.

“But several Jewish officials I’ve talked to say just that.”

“They’re wrong.”

“Are they bigoted?”

Foxman didn’t want to go there. He said that he had never heard any serious person make that claim.

Foxman, apparently, would like us to believe that he’s some kind of moron. That the head of the Anti-Defamation League doesn’t know what the word “bigot” means. That the head of the ADL is unfamiliar with the existence of Jewish critics of the Israel lobby. That all of these groups exist in order to influence the debate over Israel and yet somehow fail to have any degree of success in constricting the range of respectable options. All of that’s absurd. Foxman would need to be, as I say, a fool for any of that to be true. Obviously, however, he’s no fool. He knows perfectly well what it means to call someone a bigot, knows perfectly well that however wrong Jimmy Carter may be about Israel that he’s not motivated by hatred of Jews, knows perfectly well that this is all basically bogus.

The shame of it is that the ADL does a great deal of genuinely important work. Unfortunately, in recent years Foxman has increasingly chosen to focus attention away from that work in favor of a right-wing political agenda that the overwhelming majority of American Jews abhor. Compromising the ADL’s historical strong stand on church-state relations (obviously crucial for a religious minority group in America) because Christian right “leaders tended to be strongly pro-Israel” so “Foxman was willing to cut them some slack on issues of social justice, and even of church-state relations, in the name of solidarity toward Israel.” He took out a full page ad in The New York Times to support John Bolton’s confirmation as UN Ambassador as if the fate of the Jewish people hinged crucially on whether or not a UN-hating goy got to sit in Turtle Bay. And he’s decided that everyone who thinks AIPAC has too much power is ananti-semite bigot, and he’s engaging in a little national security policy freelancing offering up hawkish thoughts on containing Iran’s nuclear program. At the end of the day, however, I think it’s clear that equating anti-anti-semitism with support for hawkish foreign policy in the Middle East and getting in bed with Christian conservatives in order to do so is not going to serve the interests of American Jews.

Well, I don’t get to do this very often these days, but this Atrios post offers the opportunity:

[I]t’s also true that taking the longer view it’s not clear what the Great and Glorious First Gulf War actually accomplished that was positive. Obviously if you’re a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family you’re a fan. And, obviously, if you think that in the modern world someone should act as a global cop to prevent nations from invading other nations (irony overload causing brain damage here) maybe you’re a fan.

The global cop question strikes me as something it’s odd to raise and not to state an opinion on. It seems to me to be an excellent thing that the world’s major military powers, led by the most major military power of all, supported by the bulk of regional governments and acting under the auspices of the United Nations beat back and punished a clear violation of an extremely basic norm of international law. The “irony overload” factor is real, but much more constitutes a reason for this country to engage in fewer (ideally none whatsoever) ill-motivated invasions in the future, not to become more tolerant of other countries’ ill-motivated invasions. Which is all to say, I think Atrios is wrong about this. One can ironize all one likes, but as far as these things go the first Gulf War was a good idea.

And not just because saying otherwise is a damn, dirty hippie kind of thing to say. Some of the best-dressed people I know are skeptical about that kind of global role for the United States. If you’re interested, the best analytic case against the Gulf War and the presumptions underlying it is Tucker and Hendrickson’s Imperial Temptation: The New World Order and America’s Purpose. I would say that whether or not past views on Gulf War I cast doubt on a person’s credibility is going to come down (to be a bit banal about it) to what they actually said . . . folks who underestimated America’s ability to beat a conventional adversary were obviously wrong, whereas folks who simply think US security could be optimally achieved by reorienting the military to a stricter self-defense mission haven’t really been put to the test.