Israel’s crisis and the Leftist blogs

With Israel at the epicenter of World War IV today, I thought I’d troll around to the top liberal blogs to see what they have to say on the subject.

Crooks and Liars had only one post about what I believe to be the greatest geopolitical crisis of our time. And that post doesn’t really demonstrate any depth of knowledge about the forces driving the current conflagration. To wit: John Gibson, of Fox, has written that the current war is a proxy for Iran’s attack on the U.S. Those of us who follow events and players closely know that this is probably an accurate assessment, since Hezbollah is nothing more than an agent for Iran (with some help from Syria, too). John Amato’s in-depth analysis? “These people are nuts.” Yup, that clearly sums up a situation that sees Israel staving off nuclear annihilation. And just so you know who is reading this stellar analysis, I should add that C&L is the 21st top ranked blog on Technorati.

Wonkette doesn’t do much better. She tsks at a wounded Fox newsman and tuts at the Bush administration’s noting that Iran is behind much of this. And that’s it. At Wonkette, Dennis Hastert’s cellulitis gets more press. She may be shallow, but she’s popular, coming in at 39 on Technorati.

You won’t find any deeper analysis at Eschaton (number 67 in the Technorati hit parade). Atrios is as fascinated as Amato was about Gibson’s finger-pointing to Iran, and has pretty much the same deep thought on the subject: “Maybe these people are nuts.” I mean, how can the facts (a) that Israel has had war declared upon her by her neighbors (I consider the soldier kidnappings a classic casus belli), and (b) that Israel has responded with all flags flying matter when you have something exciting to think about. You know, something really important like Valerie Plame’s lawsuit against everyone of note in the Administration. (That post, by the way, garnered 813 comments last I looked.) Let’s keep things in perspective, folks, right?

John, at AMERICAblog at least realizes something big is going on, although he’s open about his gross ignorance of the subject. This ignorance, of course, doesn’t stop him from placing blame where it really belongs — on George Bush. It’s nice to have a fallback opinion and scapegoat, regardless of topic.

And then there’s the Kos, the top political blog in America.  As I noted in my previous post, he allowed his blog to be used for a cheerful imagination exercise that erased Israel from the map.  Other than that little exercise in anti-Semitism, Kos ignores the subject.

I think what we’re seeing here is the fact that the loudest Leftists can’t credibly attack Israel’s position.  Israel withdrew from Gaza, which is what the shriekers demanded.  Israel put up with 1,000s of rocket strikes against her sovereign territory.  And Israel finally said “no more” her citizens were snatched by people even the Lefties know enjoy the worst forms of torture.  These same Lefties also know that, despite civilian casualties in Lebanon, Israel has been rigorous about confining her strikes to militarily strategic targets.  There’s just nothing to criticize.  And as Alice Roosevelt Longworth knew, when you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything at all.  (Long ago, I read that she had that embroidered on a pillow.)