re: My earlier entry, "The not so Cold War"
Solly Ezekiel, gedankenvoll as always, reminds us of some more of the reasons why people should and do care about Israel.

Sadly though, many otherwise progressive and humanitarian souls react only to the unpleasant things that Israel must do to protect itself. They end up trashing a noble nation, while sympathizing with the Palestinians, who seem to aspire only to eliminate Israel and then become another Syria.

Mike Sanders asks some good questions: "Do [Muslims] really want to destroy our way of life?" "Is their general populace oppressed? And by Whom?" "If the US leaves the Middle East, will they be appeased?". "Is appeasement a logical policy?"

Mike has been conducting an ongoing blog-discussion about the Middle East with Prof. Joseph Duemer. Duemer, a poet at Clarkson University, is apparently the Chair of the Department of Specious Rhetoric where he teaches Fatuous Moral Equivalence. Duemer says:

[Don't assume that I have the] slightest shred of agreement with the article by Stefan Sharkansky Mike quotes this morning. I just don't want to have anything to do with the idea that Islam is inherently totalitarian whereas (the implied but unstated corollary) the secular West is inherently democratic. When Sharkansky begins to talk about Christian authoritarianism . . .

Well, Joe, I'm less interested in what is inherent in Islam (whatever that means) than how the dominant centers of Islamic civilization behave today. If and when Christian authoritarians start to blow themselves up on public transportation, then we should do something about it. In the meantime, let's focus on the real threats to our security that exist today, and it's not too hard to figure out what those are.