Think. Think. Think. Think. (someone needs to)

Below is an appreciated monologue of Dennis Miller, the Comedian on his take of the "Crisis"

Here are the questions Condi and company should be asking themselves- some of these questions are admittedly plaguarized from Anderson Cooper who is remarkably sanely and calmly reporting round the clock in the line of fire (hats off to Anderson Cooper of CNN)-journalists sometimes have better sense than the people and events they are covering:

1. If Iran and Syria are really State sponsors of Hezbollah why do you expect that they are not going to just keep endlessly replenishing the Hezbollah rockets and recruits-over 2,000 have fallen on Northern Israel/Haifa since this started? They don't appear to be weakened after weeks of the assault?
2. If Iran and Syria are really State sponsors of Hezbollah how do you think you ever are going to get a Peace without engaging them in diplomatic dialogue? (Isn't that a bit like the old debate in Britain about not engaging the IRA or inviting them to the table until they lay down their arms first which proved over eighty years to be completely counter-productive?)
3. If Iran and Syria are really "the problem" how do you think ignoring them diplomatically is going to advance Peace? Isn't that a bit like wishing Hurricaine Katrina won't destroy the levies by ignoring the possibility?
4. Ms. Rice: How does perpetuating a conflict not encourage escalation and where do you think escalation will end?
5. Ms. Rice: You keep alluding to the "New Middle East" as something contrary to Peace and Cease-Fire. Please describe your vision of this "New Middle East" and explain how it requires elimination of whole populations of Shiites and other Arabs through war and massacre. Explain how this is not a genocidal vision of "New."
6. Explain how your open encouragement of confrontation is not going to invite massive unprecedented retaliation on the part of Syria or Iran in a matter of months if not weeks?
7. Please identify the miscreant at Notre Dame who was your faculty advisor and overly-generously awarded you a PHD. (Anderson didn't say that.)


For those who don't know, Dennis Miller is a comedian who has a show called Dennis Miller Live on HBO. Although he is not Jewish, he recently had the following to say about the Middle East situation:"A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to all Americans who still don't get it, I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you really need. Here we go: The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in the 1967 war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians." As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation." So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" any more todescribe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs Who Can't Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death." I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: "Adjacent Jew-Haters." Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country. Oops, just one more thing: No, they don't. They could've had their own country any time in the last thirty years, especially two years ago at Camp David. But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living.That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want:Israel.
They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course -- that's where the real fun is -- but mostly they want Israel. Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel - or "The Zionist Entity" astheir textbooks call it -- for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been around God's Earth, you know that's really saying something. It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mid east. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one. Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five Million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals. Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding. My friend, Kevin Rooney, made a gorgeous point the other day: Just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jewsstrapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course not. Or marshaling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab State into the sea? Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting. Now, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death. Mr. Bush, God bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that with vital operations in Iraq and others,it's in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can't be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of super models who've just had their drugs taken away. However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger of losingmoral weight. We've already lost some. After September 11th our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint. If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan. My friends - Walk in peace! Be Happy! Have a wonderful life!"

Editorial correction; Palestine sounds awefully like Philistine, and is where the name comes from- Philistines were repeatedly defeated, most famously by King David-remember the Giant Golliath who fell with five stones of a slingshot by the upshot young David? Go to the Uffizzi in Florence and you can see Michelangelo's statue of him. The Romans called it Palestine more than two thousand years ago which was as an affront to the Jews as it is today. The British adopted it when it was a British Protectorate- all of which had a decidedly anti-Semetic tilt to it in just the preferential naming of the place.
It was properly titled Israel and Judea biblically. Those of you who have New Testament bibles probably have a map of the area in it at the time that Jesus was around and not one of those maps has the word "Palestine" on it. It has the word Israel and Judea. Go look.
The Romans just called it "mine" or "tax booty to finance exploits and ambitious Roman architecture and aqueducts" or
"land of rebellion" and that sort of thing. Palestine has historic reference that dates at least back to Roman Times which started several hundred years before Christ enters the scene.
The land, if you believe the biblical covenant promise of Abraham in the First Testament if you are Christian and the only Testament if you are Jewish, previously "land of Canaan" or "Cana" was to belong to the Jews and extended from the Euphrates to the Tigres rivers.
The Rivalries, hatreds and hostilities there are Millenia old, historically deeply ingrained, cultural, identity embedded and woefully wholly misunderstood by people currently constructing Foreign Policy who need to cash in their Reality Check that people like Wesley Clark and other generals have been trying to give them concerning the obvious natural repercussions of taking such a militant posture in the middle of this tinder box.