I remember seeing some moonbat lefty on DailyKos argue that President Bush was trying to orchestrate another 9/11 so he could solidify his power. That takes wilful blindness to type, much less believe. Or maybe just a really weak sense of humor.

That all said, I agree with James’ point. There might be legitimate grievances. And in a perfect world, they might’ve been given a viable homeland around the same time as the Israelis. But they’ve forfeited most of their moral authority through despicable acts of terrorism over the last 30 years.

The worst thing about Oslo was that it empowered the worst elements of Palestinian leadership as its leaders, Arafat and his gang, instead of some of the more realistic and moderate folks that had ushered in the first intefadah and dealt with practical issues of government coextensively with the Israelis from ’67 to ’96.

I understand where the Jews are coming from — centuries of brutal oppression capped off by a naked attempt at extermination entitles them more than any others to a place of their own to be safe. But turning around and disenfranchising another group in the process is certainly not the best way to do that. I don’t blame the Palestineans for being pissed. But that doesn’t turn the Israelis into “terrorists” against whom any available violent tactic, no matter how despicable, is fair game. Once the Palestineans embraced terrorism, they lost the moral high ground. I sympathize with their situation, but I don’t see that as a reason to be strapping bombs on your body and heading after civilians. If they want to know why their pleas fall on deaf ears, they need to look at how their strategy has poisoned their own moral standing.

As an aside, I’ve been reading “American Sphinx,” the book on Thomas Jefferson, and there’s a passage about the difficulties in dealing with the Barbary pirates, who were Muslim raiders from Northern Africa. Jefferson noted how the pirate’s ambassador was of the opinion that under the Koran, everyone not a Muslim was a heathen sinner, deserving of death. Therefore, the pirates saw no problems in forcibly taking merchant ships hostage and stealing their cargos.

Sound familiar?

An “Arab land” does not mean an Arab state per se. In this context, it denotes the fact that various Arabs lived there a long time and were indigenous.

Texas used to be part of Mexico. Does that mean anything important today? What was right in ’48 and what’s the right solution today are very different issues. The former question may inform the latter, but we must deal with reality.

Brilliant.

Oh yeah, we also gave $29 million to help feed the over 17 million starviong people in Ethiopia and Kenya this year. Wow, that’s almost 2 bucks per person. I hope they have a McDonald’s close by. You people crack me up.