Washington notes: Clark, Iraq, Iran, Clinton

January 10, 2007
Clark

I was wrong: Clark didn't use his Jewish family roots as he clarified his position. "My position on Iran should not be misinterpreted," he said, "Or used to create conspiracy theories?. There is no place in these critical policy debates for anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that blame the Jewish community for the war in Iraq and for action against Iran."

Zev Chafets, my last week's dialog partner, wrote about Clark for the L.A. Times that his words represent "a variation on the increasingly brazen charge that disloyal neocon Jews tricked the U.S. into Iraq on orders from Jerusalem - a theory propounded not only by Arab propagandists and academic Zionist-lobby-spotters such as professor Stephen Walt of Harvard, professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and David Duke of the Ukrainian Interregional Academy of Personnel Management, but by many "progressive" Democrats and Buchananite Republicans."

Iraq

Even after this grimly delivered speech, I'm standing by the article I wrote yesterday: "Bush is an incurable optimist - yet another link in the long and glorious chain of optimistic and sometimes baseless presidential thinking. By contrast, Bush's realistic - or shall we say pessimistic - critics are looking at the events engulfing Iraq and looking for an elegant way out? Like another statesman whom he admires, Winston Churchill, Bush is choosing not to be infected by the bleak atmosphere. "The optimist sees opportunity in every danger; the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity," said Churchill."

In the last 48 hours I keep hearing the same phrase about Bush, but in different ways: "Double or nothing". Tim Russert was just using it on my TV set, matter of fact. But yesterday, in an elaborated way, Former counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke was saying the same thing in a derogatory way. Bush is a gambler borrowing from the bank in this last attempt to leave the casino with some money in his pocket.

Iran

The promise was made again: "We will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region." The threat was made again: "I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region." I was surprised to learn this week that a surprising number of legislators and policy makers do understand that Iran is the big challenge, and not Iraq.

Clinton

Our fifth Israel Factor survey is on the air. Many readers are still furious that we are doing it (the "meddling in American politics" argument). For those, let me suggest this old blog, as I'm not going to write again about these complains.

For the rest of you, I'll recommend the survey itself. This week I'm trying to explain how is it possible for our panel to give John McCain better marks but still prefer Hillary Clinton as the U.S. next President.