Having Cake and Eating Too!

Oh...my...Lord!

First the WSJ on the Boston Globe on Hamas' Palestinian blitzkrieg:

The Boston Globe editorial board looks at the Gaza civil war, and finds it's the fault of the Jews:

The people of Gaza are the true victims of the civil war most of all because the fighting is destroying their future. With the military wing of Hamas poised to seize complete control of Gaza in what Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has rightly called a "coup attempt," Gaza's residents stand to lose whatever hope remained of achieving independence and a decent life in a viable Palestinian state.

The Hamas campaign to eradicate Fatah from Gaza is certainly not the sole cause of Gazans' misery. They long suffered from Israel's suffocating occupation, and then from Ariel Sharon's foolishly unilateral withdrawal in 2005, a move that allowed Hamas to bid for power with the misleading claim that its rockets and suicide bombings had driven Israeli soldiers and settlers out of Gaza.

According to the Globe, Israel is to blame both for its "occupation" and for having ended it--the latter of which "allowed Hamas to bid for power." But "the people of Gaza" are innocent victims. It somehow escapes the Globe's notice that Hamas came to power because Palestinians voted for it. The Globe denies that Palestinians are responsible for their own actions, and thereby dehumanizes them under a pretense of compassion.

Good Lord...you'd be hardpressed to find a good fiction writer that could come up with a storyline that ridiculous. In an effort to try though, we get this:

"A leading Democratic lawmaker lashed out at the former leaders of Germany and France, calling former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder a 'political prostitute,' " the Associated Press reports from Washington:

"I am so glad that the era of Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder in Germany is now gone," [California's Rep. Tom] Lantos said to applause.

He said when the United States asked Schroeder to support its decision to go to war in Iraq "he told us where to go."

"I referred to him as a political prostitute, now that he's taking big checks from (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. But the sex workers in my district objected, so I will no longer use that phrase," Lantos said. . . .

Lantos said Chirac "should go down to the Normandy beaches. He should see those endless rows of white marble crosses and stars of David representing young Americans who gave their lives for the freedom of France."

He said under the successors of Schroeder and Chirac, Angela Merkel in Germany and Nicolas Sarkozy in France, relations with the United States "will take a very positive turn"

A few years ago Donald Rumsfeld was disparaging "old Europe" while Lantos's fellow Democrats were accusing the Bush administration of alienating America's allies, most notably Germany and France. It looks as though Rumsfeld was right, and the allies have come around, to the extent that they are capable of doing so. Once again, reports of the Bush administration's failure were greatly exaggerated.

It makes my head hurt.