Honestly I think that Finn can speak for himself there. There are lots of possible vile agendas to choose between. I don’t think of Carter as having a vile agenda myself … just a distorted and one-sided view of the issues. He may have those views with the best of intentions but I believe he is wrong. Moreso (and back to the op) Israel thinks he is very wrong and would be foolish to honor him at this point in time.
Talks, yes. Negotiations-- after preconditions are met.
Hamas isn’t some tiny fringe group. They represent a significant portion of the Palestinians.
I’m not quite sure if he wants Israel to disappear… but he certainly wants to make it as difficult as possible for Israel to protect its citizens from murder while making it as easy as possible for groups like Hamas to act with complete freedom and increased global standing. Although he supports folks who are genocidal, I don’t believe that’s his agenda (although I could be wrong). Heck, even if he was genocidal, that could always mean that he was just a bigoted anti-Israel asshole instead of a racist anti-Jewish asshole.
~shrugs~
Okay… let’s run with that, then. Let’s say that, though back-channel negotiations, Israel starts talking with Hamas. They almost undoubtedly have been, but we can assume that they haven’t. What happens, then, as a result? Let us assume that some sort of understanding, or “understandings” can be worked out. What do they consist of? What changes do they cause?
Will this new level of understanding cause, say, Hamas to stop calling for genocide? How? Will Hamas agree to a two state solution? Why? In short, why will the simple fact of having dialogs mean that Hamas no longer holds its core beliefs?
I’m certainly willing to entertain the notion, what proof can you supply?
My stopwatch has been going for a while now. 
See… I can kind of understand where you’re coming from. But… honestly, at what point do we stop saying “stupid” and start saying “malicious” wrt Carter? I have the feeling that you have the bar set a lot higher than I do. For me, the first “mistake” can be chalked up to human nature. The second to sloppiness and can be forgiven if the person makes a real effort to get their ducks in a row. The third, fourth, fifth, and fifteenth “mistakes?” After you get called on them? When you still continue being “mistaken” even after being shown the facts, and while your “mistakes” just happen to serve your agenda, purely by coincidence of course?
Then, I just don’t buy it.
What explanation do you have for Carter lying, repeatedly, in most of his recent discussions about Israel?
Well, this does all tie together, I think. Without looking at whether or not Carter lied in his recent book, what the reasons might be for those lies, what Hamas wants and what elevating them in terms of power and prominence without having them change their stripes first… how can we come to any accurate assessment of whether or not this might make sense from Israel’s pov?
I will answer you this last time, simply to elaborate on why it’s not worth me continuing this, as your argument’s “facts”, aint.
Pointing out that you are either ignorant, or inventing things that weren’t written, or deliberately twisting what was actually written is not “poisoning the well”, it’s pointing out what you’re doing. And as a poster on this board who actually believes in the mission statement, it’s my job to point out where your claims are, in a word, bullshit.
Ya know… fighting ignorance?
I suppose you blame me for not keeping up with which bogus lines of argument you’ve dropped without bothering to retract them, and which are going to pop up later. By the way, simply to fight your ignorance some more, your bullshit claims included, but were not limited to: everybody knew what was going to happen if the Phalangists went in, the Commission had Sharon removed, or I quoted the Jewish Virtual Library.
And now, of course, that the “IDF knew what was going on.” I had assumed that, instead of just abandoning an argument when I tore it apart and moving on to a totally new one, without even having the good graces to admit you were wrong in the first place, that you were continuing the original argument that “everybody knew what would happen”.
Yet again, either you didn’t read the very report you cited, or you’re distorting what it actually said. Yet again, back to the report:
I could pull all the other quotes from the report where they elaborate on the fog of war, but honestly, if you couldn’t be bothered to clear up your ignorance before making the charge… why would you clear it up now? You still haven’t retracted your false claim that the Commission had Sharon removed, have you?
So you cited it, to back up your claims that Sharon was a murder of civilians… but then as soon as a proven liar like Fisk makes up another story, why, the report is no longer a good cite.
You cite it to claim that Sharon was “unfit” for duty, but then deliberately ignore 100% of the report where it says that not everybody knew what would happen in advance and that, even while it was going on, the fog of war prevented any accurate assesment.
You use it when it benefits you, and then the same evidence, interviews, findings and conclusions get thrown out when a 9/11 Truther makes a claim.
Kay.
As for your little rant, you’re welcome to post it in the Pit where I can at least ignore it.
I haven’t read his book so I have no idea. I simply don’t thin that Finn was alleging anti-Semitism via some sort of “code.”
On preview I see he has addressed this.
Translation: “I’m tired of getting my ass handed to me in Israel threads by someone who knows what he’s talking about instead of just lapping up my Palestinian propaganda, so I’m going to ignore his posts”.
I don’t quite get Carter’s agenda either. the man is a private citizen-he neither represents the US Government, or any agency of the US. So what on earth can he accomplish?
Hamas is an organization which has declared its hatred for the Israeli state. Is there any evidence that talking to a bumbling, slightly senile 84 year old man is going to provide it (Hamas) with any advantage?
Plus, how long has it been since Oslo? I don’t see any change for the better, even with Arafat out of the picture.
If i were the Israeli government, i’d let Carter make his trip-only warn him of what might happen, and stay out of the way. My big fear-some faction will plant a car bomb near one of his stops-and that will be the end of “Jimma” :smack:
I guess he just figures he has such a long post-presidential track record of accomplishing things, why stop now or balk at this?
Jesus, Finn, citing a report is not the same thing as saying it’s the only source of information. Fisk actually climbed to the top of the IDF temporary headquarters building and looked into the camps with a pair of binoculars. If you think everything he says is a lie, fine, but I don’t see a reason to doubt him. In Pity the Nation, he is not Israel-friendly, but he is by no means friendly to Palestinian tactics either–he is harshly critical of many things they do. So I wouldn’t automatically discount what he says.
A couple of other things. First, I am perfectly happy to admit when I make mistakes. For example, I know Sharon resigned after the Kahan report; my understanding was the Commission asked for his resignation. I was wrong. Happy?
But on other issues, I won’t back down. If the IDF, after sealing off Sabra and Shatila, and letting the Phalange work inside for two days, never said to themselves, “Gee, I wonder what all they’re doing in there–you think we should check?” then they are guilty of culpable ignorance. Perhaps you are right–perhaps they didn’t know what was going on there–but the area was under their control and it was their responsibility. They should have known, and if they didn’t make any effort to find out, that tells me the people in charge didn’t care what was going on.
And finally, back to my original point, which has gotten lost in all of this. My point is there are no saints in this conflict. I don’t think you can refuse to talk to someone in power merely because he is an SOB. Most of them are SOBs, which is why I cited the early military and paramilitary careers of Begin and Sharon (the latter of which you never addressed, btw). Unless you just want a stalemate, you have to talk to the badguys.
You have to look at everything in context, global, institutional and media-based. There really is an actual global propaganda war being fought, and its agents are as diverse as France 2, many western universities, British trade unions, etc… The agendas vary from delegitimizing the state of Israel itself to getting the international community to give massive amounts of money to groups like Hamas.
Do not think, for a moment, that there aren’t people out there who consciously and deliberately take part in this ‘media conflict’, or are willing to use Useful Idiots to score points. This stuff is real.
Now, as for what impact Carter could have? He could get American public opinion to change (undoubtedly one of his goals) so that Israel was prohibited from taking any defensive military measures while Palestinian groups like Hamas would be granted total freedom of movement, the ability to set up rocket launchers within range of every single Israeli city, and the ability to get as many weapons as Iran can ship. He may also be playing to a European audience.
Which, ironically, is made much less likely due to Israel’s security fence, as even Hamas has admitted… and which Carter wants torn down.
Death by irony doesn’t bother me all that much, tbh.
But I was serious about that part. If you are less aggressive, people are actually much more likely to concede points to you and listen to what you have to say. When people are being angrily attacked, it makes them defensive and less likely to make concessions.
Not to interrupt the flow here - it’s always a pleasure to see you kick butt and take names - but ISTM that Carter is assuming that his success in promoting the Camp David peace accords means that he can solve all the problems of the Middle East. And Hamas and the other terrorists have sort of worn him down. Hamas ain’t gonna make any real concessions; the situation won’t change without concessions, Carter desperately wants another star on his legacy, and so he is pushing for the other side to make all the concessions.
And he is no less subject to the human frailty of changing the facts to fit his assumptions than anyone else.
It’s rather like his dangerous naïvité with the Soviet Union back when he was Pres. All that was needed was to make nice with the Soviets, and all the long-standing problems would vanish like the morning dew. Then they invaded Afghanistan. Same here, except with Hamas instead of Brezhnev.
He should stick to building houses.
Regards,
Shodan
Good for him. Now are you going to go to Obama and say that Carter is the ex-president that has done this-and-that, shouldn’t that count for something?
Because that’s how you’ve been treating the rest of us in this thread with various criticisms of Carter.
Somehow I doubt you will, even rhetorically.
Finn you ask what sort of understandings. Oh things like: you keep to no attacks and we not only stop our bombings but allow some controlled border crossings, so on. No huge breakthroughs but small arrangements between enemies. Sometimes those can grow into something meaningful over time.
Okay, fair enough. I misunderstood what you meant by understandings. Yes, that could work (possibly) as long as a few parameters were in place. For example, as Hamas has already talked about using any ‘tactical truces’ merely to rearm and attack again, I’d be nervous of any “you stop shooting us for a while, then Iran can ship stuff in” agreements. But that’s minutiae, I suppose.
I still don’t see the scenario you described as working out, but at least you’ve offered a cogent and cohesive plan on how to get from point A to point B.
Well… that view at least has merit. I can understand that he might want to secure his ‘legacy’, such as it is. I can even understand how he might shade/spin certain facts to support his point of view. What I can’t really reconcile is the sheer amount of ‘mistakes’ that he makes.
An old saw goes: ‘once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, three times is enemy action.’
While I could understand if Carter was just a doddering old man who couldn’t get his head together and felt that ‘fudging’ things a little bit here or there was okay… I can’t swallow that, for instance, when anti-Israel sentiment is not only alive and well on many university campuses, but popular and mainstream… Carter goes on to talk about how he had to write his book to cause ‘debate’. Or that, after saying his purpose was to cause debate, why he turned down the opportunity to get into a really robust discussion on his claims. Or how, for that matter, so very many mistakes ended up in his book, many of them glaring, obvious, and easily correctable.
So, perhaps you have a point that Jimmuh’s agenda may simply be the legacy of Jimmuh, but for the reasons stated above, I don’t quite buy that. I can see how it’d be argued though.
Hmm…this thread confounds me. It’s like I’m reading this N.R.O article only worse:
That’s some serious Carter-hating going on on both. And that’s just an appetizer.
Makes you wonder why he is, undoubtedly, if not the most, certainly one of the handful of current US politicians – no matter their rank – that is admired world-wide. No need to name the exclusions, too obvious.
Couldn’t possible be because he is a fair and decent man could it? Nope. Not while he remains such an obvious Israel-hater. What do I mean? Why it’s your choice, my link to that brilliant piece, or further lectures from FriendFinn.
Please, do take notes whichever route you choose. This stuff is included in your subscription. Think of it as a bonus.
Enjoy.
As you might know, I am an overseas Obama backer with no active participation. That said, what else, exactly, did you expect Obama to do? I think this thread provides a good political thermometer with which to answer that question. Don’t you?
Yeah, I know, call me Captain Obvious. 
Sophistry and Illusion, if feel someone has violated a rule, report the post.
Do not resort to deliberate insults in GD.
= = =
OTOH, FinnAgain, your responses, particularly in Post #49, while not directly crossing the line, are way too personal for this Forum. Give a try to discussing issues without resorting to the second person.
(I’m sure you would be a tad upset if someone has responded to some of your tirades, here, that you were “deliberately misrepresenting” a position when you focused on defending Sharon from charges of murdering civilians based on his malign neglect in the case of Sabra and Shatila while carefully ignoring his direct role in the case of Qibyaa (and of El-Bureig), right?)
[ /Moderating ]
I don’t know that Finn’s thunder will be turned on you, but my mad Mod skills might if I find you (or anyone else) hijacking this thread with commentary on the persons instead of the issues.
[ /Moderating ]
With my apologies to you and Finn, I’ll zip it in this thread. But dammit I must be honest. You made me laugh. Does the apology still stand?