Via Laura Rozen, Israel’s Yediot Ahronoth reported yesterday that Vice President Biden had some very strong words for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu behind closed doors:

People who heard what Biden said were stunned. “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden castigated his interlocutors. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”

The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.

In response, Abe Foxman deployed one of the most serious weapons in the Israel-debate-policeman’s arsenal:

While much of this is understandable, there needs to be some stepping back so that there are no long-term deleterious results from this contretemps. The vice president’s comments in his Tel Aviv University address softening the U.S. response was helpful. Less helpful were his comments that Israel’s announcement on building in East Jerusalem was endangering American troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the kind of rhetoric that does exactly what Mr. Biden has studiously avoided doing, linking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to America’s larger Middle East challenges, and it unnecessarily calls into question Israel’s role as an ally and the impact on American interests. The Mearsheimer and Walts of this world will delight in this kind of criticism of Israel.

You’ll notice that Foxman doesn’t offer an actual counter-argument here, he just criticizes Biden’s “rhetoric” by name-checking the dreaded professors Walt and Mearsheimer, which is the equivalent of sticking his fingers in his ears and shouting “LA LA LA LA!”

Foxman is quite incorrect that Biden has “studiously avoided” linking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to America’s larger Middle East challenges. Here’s what Biden said his speech at the 2009 American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference:

The continuation of Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts strengthen Iran’s strategic position. They give Iran a playing field upon which to extend its influence, sponsor extremist elements, inflame public opinion…

There are many reasons to pursue an end to these conflicts. It gives Israelis peace and security they deserve; to help the Palestinians fulfill their aspirations of an independent and better life; to ease tension in the regions — in this region.

The Iraq Study Group came to a similar conclusion, stating in its 2006 report (pdf) that “The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability.”

This is, or should be, unremarkable. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a driver (not the only, but one) of extremism and violence in the region, and thus it’s in the U.S. interest to resolve it. As Israel’s key patron and security guarantor, it also stands to reason that bad behavior by Israel reflects poorly on the U.S., and negatively impacts our ability to achieve our goals.

What is remarkable, though, is how unacceptable this is to Foxman, and how nervous he seems to get over the U.S.-Israel relationship being discussed in such terms. Frankly, I think Foxman should show a bit more confidence in the strength of the U.S.-Israel bond. It can withstand this sort of scrutiny. But there’s no U.S. alliance or relationship — no matter how “special” — that should be above criticism or exempt from rigorous strategic analysis.

A coordinated right-wing effort has been mounted to obstruct Philip Coyle, the President’s nominee to become an Associate Director at the Office of Science and Technology. Coyle’s offense? He had the temerity to accurately point out that ground-based long-range missile defense is scientifically and conceptionally bunk.

However, pointing out the factual inadequacies of missile defense hits the right wing at its emotional core. Its support for such a wasteful and strategically naïve system has almost become theological in nature. The right does not care about the system’s opportunity costs (we spend more on it than the entire Coast Guard), or the program’s effectiveness (there have been no realistic tests), or the implications of its development (a new arms race). Instead, for the right this is purely a faith-based defense program, making anyone who can effectively challenge it the target of a witch-hunt.

Therefore the main complaint the right has with Coyle, is not that he is wrong, it is that well, he is not radically right-wing about missile defense. This has nothing to do with his qualifications, which are immense. He served in the Pentagon for seven years as an Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Test and Evaluation and before that for more than 30 years at the nuclear lab at Lawrence Livermore. He was also selected by George W Bush to serve on the Base Realignment Commission (BRAC) in 2005.

But Coyle over the last ten years has consistently debunked missile defense claims and critiqued the wisdom behind the system. This has prompted a massive right-wing push. According to the Cable’s Josh Rogin, the Heritage Foundation is engaging in an intensely partisan lobbying effort on the Hill to get members to obstruct Coyle’s nomination, as they are circulating a memo that “asks senators to stall the Coyle nomination.” Heritage leads the way in peddling missile defense mythology. Naturally, right-wing obstructionist senators like Jim DeMint, as well as apparently other Senators have leapt to obstruct Coyle’s nomination.

Articles in the Weekly Standard and the National Review have emerged this week to defend this obstructionism. Yet all these pieces do is merely point out that Coyle has opposed missile defense. John Noonan tried, albeit feebly, to refute Coyle’s arguments, but the best he could do was to say that, while some arguments that Coyle made in 2006 were factually true, when he testified last year he didn’t make those same factual points. Instead he shifted and made new factually accurate arguments!

Noonan also protests that Coyle doesn’t acknowledge that the tests of ground based missile defense were successful – we can now not only hit a bullet, but we can hit a spot on a bullet, or so the refrain goes. That is true, but also irrelevant. These are open book tests. To hit a “bullet with a bullet” the tests have been constructed so that we know precisely when and where that bullet will be.

Unable to undercut Coyle’s technical arguments, the right falls back on familiar scary talking points. Jamie Fly of the Foreign Policy Initiative writes:

Given Iran’s recent tests of missiles with increasing ranges and its successful launch of a satellite into orbit, Mr. Coyle’s questioning of the intentions of rogues such as Iran is incredibly naïve.

But as Coyle notes, “Missile defense is the most difficult development the Pentagon has ever attempted and if it (the threat) were real, the proposed missile defense systems couldn’t deal with it anyway,” since if Iran is as craven to attack and is undeterrable as the right suggests it could easily build more missiles to overcome any system. The right’s logic eats itself, as they naively fail to grasp the basic military premise that the “enemy has a vote.”

However, Fly really gave away the plot when he acknowledged that “it is true” Coyle was being nominated to a position that had “not played a key role in major policy decisions” relating to missile defense. But no matter, Coyle through his years of knowledge and expertise may insidiously seek to “influence policy debates about issues, such as missile defense, that he has worked on for years,” says Fly.

In other words, because Coyle has impeccable credibility on this issue, resulting from his decades of experience and expertise, he must be stopped.