Aggression, International Law, and Hypocrisy

A while back our in-house anti-Zionist, faux-Ibrahim, claimed that Israelis and their supporters determine their political positions by the single criteria of affinity to Israel: if the holders of a position support Israel, all their positions will be perceived to be correct; if a position is stated by people who otherwise don't like Israel, the position in question must be wrong. He even wrote a small algorithm to demonstrate how this works.

At first glance this is hardly more serious than most statements made by faux-Ibrahim, but it has stuck with me, and I've been thinking about it and it seems that he may be on to something, though as usual he's got the dynamic all wrong.

If you assume that Weltanschauungen are made of clusters of positions and beliefs - and that's certainly a reasonable, perhaps unassailable assumption - then it's not unreasonable that people who feel strongly about Israel, one way or the other, may carry this over into other fields, too. Why shouldn't unthinking animosity to Israel, impervious to any rational analysis, not express itself elsewhere, also, as unthinking animosities to other things? I mean, once you've got the habit, why limit it to a single subject? Indeed, once one has the propensity for wrongheadedness, why limit its application?

As I've shown from time to time, the world really does work this way, and the foolishness of idea expounders such as Juan Cole and the Guardian expresses itself in many areas. I must say, however, that the present outburst at the Guardian has caught me just a wee bit by surprise. I'm referring to that nasty little war that erupted this week in Georgia.

No matter which narrative you choose to follow, Georgia didn't attack Russia, and the entire drama is taking place within the internationally recognized borders of Georgia. You would think, therefore, that the reportage of the violence would make use of the usual, well-worn vocabulary of International Law, Naked Aggression, Brutal Killings of Innocent Bystanders, and so on and on. You've heard it all before, after all, ad nauseum.

Well, I've just spent some time at the Guardian's website. To their credit, at least they are in an uproar, unlike, say, when millions of Africans in the Congo get murdered. But so far as I could tell, not a single one of the relevant terms has been used, not even once. No-one at the Guardian has made any use of the vocabulary they so routinely use against Israel. At least this opinion piece, by a guest writer, has the essentials right. But look at James Poulus' piece:

Treating the Georgia we see on the map as if it were as sovereign and whole as the state of Israel, or Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, sets us down a path of danger and confusion. But the pro-democracy ideologues confusing big hearts for big brains make this mistake by design.

And then, if you're really into understanding the depravity of the Guardian as expressed by one of their top columnists, go read Jonathan Steele on the matter: It's America's fault.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is only a minor element in a much larger strategic equation: an attempt, sponsored largely by the United States but eagerly subscribed to by several of its new ex-Soviet allies, to reduce every aspect of Russian influence throughout the region, whether it be economic, political, diplomatic or military.