I think he has an extreme POV, but I'd hardly call it hysterical.
> As though Iran could make a nuclear first-strike attack against
> Israel and not get completely annihilated in retaliation!
I kind of liked the characterization of Israel's nuclear capacity as being useless ("by a wise general" ... anyonw know who he's talking about?). Haven't you ever wondered whether the purported retaliation that "surely" would happen ... would actually happen? Even during the most "hysterical" of events during the cold war, it wasn't clear at all that retaliation would actually happen against a first-strike from the Soviet Union. We have enough evidence from 'false alarms' that didn't result in (unknowingly preemptive) strikes to believe that the trigger isn't as itchy as it has been portrayed. I think this is probably doubly-true for a limited theater use of nukes. Sad, but (probably) true.
> His piece finally rests on the bedrock idea that "all them damn
> Muslims are completely c-r-a-a-a-z-y!"
He doesn't actually say that; he says that there are a few (powerful!) people who could be seen to think/act this way. And he supports it with some (perhaps out of context) quotations. I don't think that's much different than saying "That Nixon is c-r-a-a-a-z-y!" ... it's not at all the same as saying "all them damn 'muricans are c-r-a-a-a-z-y!" ...
I mean, how much does the population of the US personally identify with the actions, decisions, and viewpoint of the Bush administration? Afterall: he's the decider, he's the one actually doing it; the fact that no one else seems to have called him on it (until this past week?) seems to be a footnote of history.
> By criticizing Morris, Joanna is hardly advocating the atomic
> annihilation of Israel ...
Whoa, I didn't say that. All I said was that when she points out that "it's different" because the history of Israel and how they treat the Palestinians is "more complex" and that there were "innocent and helpless" people being killed in the 40s, it came across to me as though it wasn't "complex" in Hitler's case and today there aren't "innocent and helpless" people in Israel.
Michael Smith writes:
> With a nuclear-armed antagonist in the region, nobody would
> worry anymore about the threat of an Israeli first strike ...
I think it's pretty clear that Israel doesn't have enough nukes to get rid of their enemies with a first-strike. But Morris' point is easier to eat: you don't need that many to undo Israel. It's asymmetric. Maybe you'll say that Israel's fear is irrational. <shrug> Maybe it is.
-----
The most interesting thing about the essay to me is that Morris doesn't seem to use his (what some might call twisted) logic to support a plan of action: it's more like "well, here's what's going to happen, and here's why no one is going to stop it ..."
I'm surprised he lives in Israel if he really thinks that's true.
/jordan