For those of you who didn’t think that Katherine Harris’ Senate candidacy could yield any more surprises…

Why is CNN’s John King still repeating the Republican bamboozle (for a detailed forensic debamboozlement see this post) that Joe Wilson ‘said Dick Cheney sent him to Niger’.

I guess the work of debamboozlement is not over.

“It’s just like the good ol’ days.”

Justin Rood on the media’s ecstatic reception of Valerie Plame Wilson.

Boy is this a stupid article. From the AP: Lieberman’s in trouble with Lamont and Hillary’s having no trouble with Tasini. Why? All because of money apparently. Lamont’s a millionaire. Hillary’s got a big war chest. Wicked stupid.

Walter Pincus on journalistic courage: “Journalistic courage should include the refusal to publish in a newspaper or carry on a TV or radio news show any statements made by the President or any other government official that are designed solely as a public relations tool, offering no new or valuable information to the public.”

In the last week I’ve heard a number of people ask why bloggers, or I guess spefically progressive bloggers, have devoted so little column space to the events in Israel-Palestine and Lebanon. And I’ve joked, as I’ve ventured onto this terrain, about how nothing is more likely to heighten the temperature of your in box like stating any opinions on this vexed subject.

But none of these lighthearted words can do justice to the sorts of email you get.

It’s funny, if that’s the word for it, because I’m much more accustomed to getting critical emails from hypernationalist and/or hypersensitive Jews taking me to task over this or that viewpoint I’ve expressed about the Middle East. (Of course, nothing compares to sublime ridiculousness of having a gentile right-winger warn me that my views on the Middle East verge on anti-semitism. For some, it seems, Bush-loyalty is the new sign of the covenant.) Just a week ago I was foolish enough to exchange a series of emails with a reader who was offended that I hadn’t booted my guest blogger TPM Reader DK for having the temerity to print an email hostile to Israel as an example of the range of opinions he’d received on the subject.

For some of my Jewish friends and, it seems, more and more non-Jews of a certain political persuasion, there is just an inability to recognize that the dispossession of Arabs was an essential element to the fulfillment of the Jewish people’s national aspirations in Palestine. (That was a blindness that a ben Gurion or a Dayan never made. Read their writings, their speeches, especially their letters. They understood this.) There is too often an inability or I suppose simply a willfull refusal to recognize the roots of Palestinian militant violence and terrorism (and I don’t equate the two) in the fact that the population of the West Bank and Gaza have been living under military occupation for some forty years.

As some of you know, before I became a journalist I was studying to be an historian. And the topic of my doctoral dissertation was the nexus of economic relations and organized violence between Indians and English settlers in mid-17th century New England. And over several years as I researched and wrote and pulled together my ideas on the subject there were troubling and disconcerting moments because I could see the echoes and patterns of what happened there in the 17th Century in what happened between Jews and Palestinians in the 20th. There continues to be this dangerous obtuseness among the political classes in this country that ‘terrorism’ is just terrorism whether it’s bin Laden’s buddies trying to figure out how to blow up the world or Palestinian militants trying to drive settlers off the West Bank.

But on a day like today I see a different picture, though magified perhaps by the febrile intensity of email. It comes when I’m again exposed to the other side of the coin. American politics leans heavily in Israel’s direction; and so does the American media. But there is out there a broad constituency of ignorant and malevolent hatred of Israel and, really, Israelis, that, I think, masks its malevolence even to itself through being awash its own self-righteousness. I think I understand the Palestinians’ rage. In any case, I respect it. For this trash from Americans who only seem able to see Jewish evil in the midst of this protracted conflict I can’t have anything but contempt. And it puts me on my guard.

Hmmm.

WP: “The House Government Reform Committee has subpoenaed the former law firm of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff for records of any contacts he or members of his lobbying team had with the Bush White House.”

Ah, serendipity. Reading Spencer Ackerman’s much linked to TNR piece on House Intel Chair Pete Hoekstra’s outlandish claim that al Qaeda fellow travelers have infiltrated the U.S. intelligence community, I was reminded of an intriguing essay titled “Stabbed in the Back,” from the June issue of Harper’s.

I went looking for the piece online to re-read it, but it wasn’t up yet. Then, as if on cue, Harper’s posted it Friday. If you haven’t read Ackerman’s piece, read it first, then go take a look at “Stabbed in the Back”:

Every state must have its enemies. Great powers must have especially monstrous foes. Above all, these foes must arise from within, for national pride does not admit that a great nation can be defeated by any outside force. That is why, though its origins are elsewhere, the stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders. Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat, always making sure to increase the number of internal enemies.

In the final analysis, I’m skeptical of unified theories of anything, perhaps especially of history, but they can be useful tools to explain some phenomenon. If you fish, you know polarized sunglasses cut the glare on the water and let you see the fish. Similarly, the “Stabbed in the Back” hypothesis is a useful lens to filter 20th and early 21st century events and distill modern American nationalism. Especially now.

From Reuters:

The head of Italy’s military intelligence agency was questioned by prosecutors for the first time on Saturday on suspicion of helping the CIA kidnap a terrorism suspect in Milan, judicial sources said.

The development makes Nicolo Pollari the highest ranking official connected to the Italian investigation — which has already led to the arrests of his No. 2 and another leader of his Sismi intelligence agency earlier this month.

If Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep under a cedar tree in Lebanon in 1982 and awoke today, you could hardly blame him for thinking he had snoozed for only a few minutes.

Israel is still in Lebanon. Iran is America’s great nemesis. Russia-U.S. relations remain tense. An imperial power (Britain/U.S.) is conducting a military campaign in a farflung locale (Falkland Islands/Iraq) in what is maybe its last gasp of imperialism. There is a gathering threat in the East (Japanese economy/North Korea). The news even includes mention of the death of a popular princess (Grace Kelly/Diana) in a car accident.

The only things missing are Survivor, Toto, and Air Supply.

When critics of the Iraq War suggested it would set back progress in the Middle East for a generation, I didn’t take it to mean we would revert to a generation ago.