Originally Posted by NEM

I never said that he renounced his American citizenship, more that he holds DUAL citizenship from the USA and Israel.

http://hartfordimc.org/blog/2007/07/...l-citizenship/


Senator Joseph Lieberman, pride of Connecticut Republicrats, has, by virtue of his maternal lineage, a legal right to Israeli citizenship. He celebrates this at every opportunity, leaving many of us wondering about his credentials as an American. In a nation that was established on the principle that the state would eschew religious preference, he always seems to be there when the Senate is called on to favor the Jewish state. All in the interest of peace, of course.

Originally Posted by PatsFanInVa

So you're saying that because he could, if he chose, live in Israel by the law of Return, we need to question his loyalty (the same of course applies to Yours Truly.)

I do not think that Jews' loyalty to the US is in question "by virtue of maternal lineage," whether they're famous or not.

I'd like to know what exactly Lieberman has done besides accident of birth to make him a target for such attacks.

DId he serve in the Israeli army? Did he run for Israeli office? Does he live in Israeli 3 months out of the year or something?

NEM, I've got no love for Lieberman, but the hyperbole is over the top.

PFnV

Originally Posted by PatsFanInVa

Turk, as I've found here, he who remembers history is condemned to recite it. Well recited. Whatever its faults, the Ottoman Empire wasn't much of an Islamic republic; in fact, the Ottomans were responsible for the many cosmopolitan pockets in the Middle East, some of which survived more or less (such as Beirut,) and others of which sank in the majoritarian tide (the hodgepot of Alexandria, for example.) Ironically, it was not until the British ruled Palestine that the local population demanded that Jews stoppd settling there (they had begun under the Ottomans.) And it was the British who created Jordan as a Judenrein Arab state -- something the Ottomans, to my knowledge, never had any desire to do.

It's transparent to anybody over, say, 30, that this silly "worldwide Islamic Caliphate threat" is a rehash of the cold war rhetoric we applied to communism.

The question isn't whether some segment of a population wants to take over th' whole wide world. Everybody does - or more precisely, some fraction of each people does. It's jingoism pure and simple. No appreciable fraction of Islam has been unified since the time of the Ottomans. And with the U.S. outspending the rest of the entire world combined on "defense," I scarcely think it would matter if all the Muslim world were unified. It's like trying to scare me by telling me Cleveland "wants" to win the Super Bowl.

Scott, as you work out "which side of the aisle" you're on, I'd put in my two cents worth for knowing the numbers all around. Look at the budget, look at war-fighting expenses and defense expenses. Look at how huge medicare is (medical care for the old. By the way, that's more the "other guy's" issue than mine. I'm just saying look where the money goes.)

Look at America compared to the world. Look at Americans compared with others in the world. Look at population figures - 1 person in 20 is American. There are maybe 4-5 times as many Americans as Brits. There are maybe 3-4 Chinese per American. Very rough order-of-magnitude figures here.

All I am saying is get to know our country, get to know our world. Anecdotes are fine and the numbers are nothing without an idea of human behavior, if you're dealing with evaluating which action to take. But get the broad outlines, and see who is and is not speaking to those outlines.

Then go out and vote in your enlightened self-interest, realizing that tyrannies are brittle propositions, and that even for the empire ruling its non-citizen possessions, government is ultimately by consent of the governed. That's the enlightened approach that has driven our own world Empire to be one without occupations and global political boundaries... we're moving back toward that model, with territorial possessions -- the one the Brits favored during their ascendency. Is this wise? You decide.

I think it was Woody Allen who said something like, Democrats believe people to be goodness, sweetness and light, who need to be heavily regulated. Republicans believe people are basically self-interested and greedy, and left to themselves they should pretty much be okay.

NEM, I'm not going down that road about the bloody Clean Break paper again... read it, don't read Walt and Mearsheimer quoting it. The whole premise of that report is that Israel should be weaning itself from American aid and influence.

As for Joe Leiberman, please provide the date that he renounced his American citizenship, and a link to the news story. I would think I would have heard about this, especially since he's a senator and all.

Thanks,

PFnV