Andrew Sullivan used to be one of the more articulate pro Israel anti-Islamofascist pundits out there. Now he is a paranoid nutter who peddles bizarre, anti-Semitic conspiracies that only a Pat Buchanan and Justin Raimundo could love. His obsession with torture can only be described as bizarre and we can only speculate as to why Tina Brown’s Newsweek and The Daily Beast does not fire him.
by Ron Radosh
In today’s Daily Beast, Andrew Sullivan has posted a blog post that is so delusional and so over the line that it goes far beyond anything he has yet written in the many tirades he has posted against Israel. In the course of the post, he argues the following:
First, “a Third World War based on religion” is most likely “inevitable.” The cause of that war will most likely not be the mullahs and theocrats of Iran, which might indeed be the case if its leaders succeed in obtaining nuclear weapons, but rather the Jewish state of Israel!
Second, he actually says — putting himself in the shadow of dozens of notorious anti-Semites from Father Coughlin to Gerald L.K.Smith in the 1930s, to Pat Buchanan and his supporters in present day America — that the media in the United States is controlled by Jewish interests, and hence is friendly to Israel. He writes that the Israeli government can rally “its media outlets (like Fox, and the Washington Post),” as well as “a key part of the Democratic fundraising machinery to side entirely with Israel against the US president.” I bet you did not realize that Fox, the Washington Post, and the Democratic National Committee were all controlled by Israel and its lobby!
Third, and most serious of all, he concludes his article with the truly bizarre charge that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu (who, he earlier writes, is beholden to his “neo-fascist base”) is “in league with Romney, Santorum and Gingrich,[and] will make his move to get rid of Obama soon. [my emphasis] And he will be more lethal to this president than any of his domestic foes.”Let us parse that paragraph for a brief moment. He does not write they will try to get Obama removed from office by a presidential campaign, in which the citizenry might heed their call and elect one of them our president if successful, but that they will try to “get rid of” him in a “lethal” way. Is this just bad writing, or is Sullivan suggesting in some underhanded manner that Netanyahu and his controlled Republican candidates are trying somehow to assassinate or shoot him?
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He argues that Pakistan would most likely tip “into even more outright hostility to any cooperation with the West.” One might say that it could hardly in fact get worse. The country’s military or intelligence agencies harbored Bin Laden, broke with NATO, and shut down American supply routes in protest of its actions. He argues as well that jihad “would boom” if Israel strikes Iran, galvanizing Islamist parties and preventing a rapprochement between our country and Muslim nations.
He says Iran would also use car bombs throughout the world, might block the Strait of Hormuz, and smuggle “high-powered explosives across its border into Afghanistan, where they could be planted along roadways…to kill and maim American and NATO troops.” Of course, Iran is already threatening to block the Strait, and is already targeting and killing our troops in Iraq, which is awash with Iranian bombs.
Sullivan writes that “global recruitment for Jihad would boom as well — reversing all the gains of the last three years.” What gains is he talking about? The Arab Spring and rise of Islamist parties to power? The shift of once progressive Turkey into a neo-Islamist state? Did the tides of jihad come to an end three years ago, the moment Obama took step into the executive office, only to threaten to come to life again because Israel is trying to defend itself?
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Sullivan’s presence at both Newsweek and the Daily Beast, I would think, are becoming somewhat of an embarrassment to its other editors and staff, at least I would hope so. Sullivan wonders why people have accused him of anti-Semitism, and then he writes stuff like this column which provide ample evidence for that charge. There was a time when distinguished columnists would not be allowed to produce such drivel and have it published, at least not since the 1940s and the columns of Westbrook Pegler.
Decades ago, William F. Buckley Jr. isolated Pat Buchanan from the conservative movement, as he did the John Birch Society earlier, for saying similar things to what Sullivan now writes. What liberal or “progressive” will now demand the isolation of Andrew Sullivan and demand that Tina Brown look at what he writes more closely, as Buckley did to those in his own circle? I anxiously wait to see if anyone steps to the plate.
Read the rest – Andrew Sullivan goes over the line in a delusional blog post.
Tags: Andrew Sullivan, Newt Gingrich, Ron Radosh
