This is a guest post by David Adler.
I take no pleasure from the fact that right-wing pundits are lashing Helen Thomas, the veteran White House correspondent, over her two-part question to President Barack Obama last night. And yet Thomas deserves to be upbraided. The fact that she’s held up by liberals as a paragon of courage is an embarrassment. Drifting further toward the fringe every day, she certainly doesn’t speak for me.
“Mr. President, do you think that Pakistanis are maintaining the safe haven in Afghanistan for these so-called terrorists, and also do you know of any place in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?” she asked.
Most lefty commentators seem delighted with the Israel-baiting of question two. M. J. Rosenberg of TPM Cafe hails “the great Helen Thomas” (please) and takes Obama to task for “dissing” her (ditto). John Santore of HuffPo applauds Thomas as well. Both ignore Thomas’s reference to “so-called terrorists” in the Pakistan-Afghanistan corridor, a category that would include people like Baithullah Mehsud and Maulana Fazlullah, among the world’s most bloodthirsty fanatics, who routinely attack girls’ schools and punish all who commit the crime of enjoying music. But let’s not come down too hard on them with the “t” word. No, instead, let’s bait Israel, and better yet, let’s do it in code rather than say what we mean. And Thomas is celebrated for cutting through the beltway bullshit and speaking the truth. In fact she’s as much a double-talker as anyone.
Obama would have been a chowderhead to handle the question any differently than he did. Mentioning Israel, in this context, would hand a propaganda victory to the mullahs in Tehran, who would seize on it to shore up their supposed right to nuclear weapons. Objecting to Thomas’s remark on “so-called” terrorists would have created more of a stir than the situation merited. Once again, Obama came out looking whip-smart and big-picture-focused. I’m not surprised.
The left in America has I’m afraid, at least in the blogosphere left sense and reason far behind. Today I got in an argument, if one could call it that, with a famous blogger at salon.com who decided to interview Barghouti, the man who lost the Palestinian election to Abbas, about his views of the Israeli election e.g. will it be an apocalypse with Lieberman, or merely a race war with everyone else. When I pointed out that Barghouti ran and lost against Abbas, a man trained by the KGB who earned his bones with a ‘doctorate’ from Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow on a treatise of how the holocaust was a hoax and that everyone for the most part agrees that the PA elections we by most measures as fair and open as they could be signifying that Abbas probably represents the will of the Palestinians more than Barghouti ever did and that the probability of a viable nonviolent movement arising from the Palestinians was low, given that most of the middle class there had emigrated during Arafat’s al Aqsa intifada…..well that was simply not going to fly. The interns were flogged and fed Red Bull to delete nearly one hundred of my accrued posts and then this famous blogger instructed his audience to ignore me as I was, and I quote, ‘filth’.
It doesn’t shock me that the left, or as I call it, the MacBook Marxists, left sanity a long time ago. They are 20 minutes away from declaring that Jews should be kicked out America, stripped of civil rights and that Israel should be invaded and cleansed of ‘zionists’.
erm, what did Obama say then?
it is covered here, in a transcript:
“All right. Helen? This is my inaugural moment here.
(LAUGHTER)
I’m really excited.
Question: Mr. President, do you think that Pakistan and — are maintaining the safe havens in Afghanistan for these so-called terrorists? And, also, do you know of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?
Obama: Well, I think that Pakistan — there is no doubt that, in the FATA region of Pakistan, in the mountainous regions along the border of Afghanistan, that there are safe havens where terrorists are operating.
And one of the goals of Ambassador Holbrooke, as he is traveling throughout the region, is to deliver a message to Pakistan that they are endangered as much as we are by the continuation of those operations and that we’ve got to work in a regional fashion to root out those safe havens.
It’s not acceptable for Pakistan or for us to have folks who, with impunity, will kill innocent men, women and children. And, you know, I — I believe that the new government of Pakistan and — and Mr. Zardari cares deeply about getting control of the situation. We want to be effective partners with them on that issue.
Question: (off mic)
Obama: Well, Mr. Holbrooke is there, and that’s exactly why he’s being sent there, because I think that we have to make sure that Pakistan is a stalwart ally with us in battling this terrorist threat.
With respect to nuclear weapons, you know, I don’t want to speculate. What I know is this: that if we see a nuclear arms race in a region as volatile as the Middle East, everybody will be in danger.
And one of my goals is to prevent nuclear proliferation generally. I think that it’s important for the United States, in concert with Russia, to lead the way on this.
And, you know, I’ve mentioned this in conversations with the Russian president, Mr. Medvedev, to let him know that it is important for us to restart the — the conversations about how we can start reducing our nuclear arsenals in an effective way so that…
(CROSSTALK)
Obama: … so that we then have the standing to go to other countries and start stitching back together the nonproliferation treaties that, frankly, have been weakened over the last several years. OK.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/09/obamas-opening-remarks-at_n_165440.html
Hah! I read Empress Trudy’s comment, and then Bialik’s immediately after: erm, what did Obama say then? — and thought for a moment he was pulling her leg, suggesting that her famous and frothing blogger was non other than hizzoner. I’m not sure why, but I was very entertained, until I realised my mistake.