Gibson: What if Israel decided it felt threatened and needed to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?

Palin: Well first, we are friends of Israel and I don't think that we should second guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves and for their security.

Gibson: And so if we didn't second guess it and they decided they needed to do it, because Iran was an existential threat, we would be cooperative or agree with that?

Palin: I don't think we can second guess what Israel has to do to secure its nation.

Gibson: So if it felt necessary-- if it felt the need to defend itself by taking out Iranian nuclear facilities, that would be alright?

Palin: We cannot second guess the steps that Israel has to take to defend itself.

Palin's comments about not blinking when decisions are necessary made me ill. Talking like that, she sounds like a fundie, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why it sounded so bad. A writer of another article at Slate expressed it plainly.

"Congratulations to Malcolm Gladwell for contributing another phrase to the popular lexicon, but the thesis of his best-selling book Blink was not that snap decisions are superior to decisions based on careful deliberation. It was that people who have a deep understanding of what they do—for instance, really good surgeons, military commanders, air-traffic controllers, and so forth—often make their best decisions quickly and instinctively.

But if you don't know what you're dealing with, snap decisions can be fatal. And it's very clear, on foreign policy and national security (in addition to much else), Sarah Palin doesn't know what she's dealing with. Worse, she doesn't know how much she doesn't know. She thinks that being "committed to the mission" exempts her from the need to think and that, therefore, firmness alone will yield righteous policy. In the wrong hands, this is a very dangerous trait."

http://www.slate.com/id/2199937/pagenum/2/

So to commemorate September 11 the owner of this blog site thinks appropriate content is linking to other bloggers criticizing the US' role in Afghanistan and dredging up past, isolated instances of prisoner abuse?

Could the 'signs' be any more clear as to what it is you're trying to accomplish?

Disregarding the fact that Afghanistan has always been the liberal pet war, do you not think it important to mention the rising death toll of American soldiers who are only there to try to help the people of Afghanistan? No, you'd prefer to make hay over alleged civilian deaths in a combat zone.

And Abu-Ghraib - a scandal uncovered by our media and military, and punished by our justice system - you just can't wait to bring that up over and over, right? Aid and comfort to the enemy? This is roughly the same level of treason as that practiced by the hack Bob Woodward, publicizing completely unproven (and unprovable) allegations to boost his own fame at the cost of a resolution in Iraq.

What is your end goal? What do you hope to achieve by attacking your own country? I'm anxious to know.

We should never attack the policy of our own country. Come on everyone! Just practice your goose steps! Okay, ready? One, two, three, four.. every comrade should salute and march patriotically behind the decisions of our most illustrious leader.

If you attack the policies of your leader, George W Bush, you are a traitor.

Yglesias has a post up about the second-guessing line, so I'm not saying anything original. It's absurd. If Israel decided that our invasion of Iraq would cause serious harm to them, would they be required to refrain from "second-guessing" us? If Israel makes moves that could lead to a massive war that could spread across the Middle East and South Asia, we wouldn't be able to second guess them? Israel now has an absolute trump over the positions we take internationally? It's simply stupid. The U.S. has taken positions, correct or incorrect on just about every major foreign policy move Israel has made since its inception, and only a moron--more of a moron than Bush--would do otherwise. The fact that Bush disaterously encouraged Israel to get into the Lebanon War and lose doesn't change the fact that they probably the right to disagree with things Israel did that they didn't like.

Of course if a left candidate is elected in Israel and tries very hard to cut a deal with Abbas and move to final status talks, I'm sure that Palin and her hard-line Likudite friends in the U.S. will feel quite free to second guess that, as the latter have done with many other peace initiatives coming from the Israeli side.

Are any of the comments serious? There are a few people on here who need to learn the difference between patriotism and nationalism.

calligraph, it saddens me that you are frozen in your fear and hatred, and cannot seem to move forward. You are truly a wretched human being. Would you consider seeing a therapist? Or maybe volunteering at a soup line?

You may not like to hear this (and neither will many of the people here, because I'm going to commit a rationalist's taboo), but it is nevertheless true: you are deeply, spiritually unhealthy. Because of this, you contribute nothing but disease to these conversations. It even seems to give you pleasure to do so. We have held a mirror up to your disfigured intellect and to your twisted emotionalism, hoping that something would click, that you would recognize yourself in the way that you appear to others. But you do not seem to comprehend the significance of your reflection. So to put it plainly: The creature you are behind your warped mask is clenched with anger and gripped with fear. And so you see only enemies, and sow your hate among those who are honest with you. Fortunately, that weed doesn't seem to find these grounds particularly fertile. But as long as you choose to fear and to hate, you will remain an enemy, alone, among would-be friends and allies.

If you would try to connect with your innate compassion, and feed that instead of your anger, you might find that the world immediately becomes a warmer place, and that those who stiffen with anger at your presence immediately begin to soften their attitudes toward you.

Namasté.