Jeet? Nodju?
Years ago, I had a mathematics professor who was a truly great teacher He made math interesting. I think that almost everyone who came out of his classes went on to complete their course work. He just had a way of getting the subject across. I saw fellow veterans from his courses on campus for years, still working on finishing their degrees. He was an adjunct professor, who actually had a real-world full time job and taught only because he loved teaching. (He sure didn't do it for the money - he told me what the job paid once - it was pathetic).
One class he wrote the words: "Jeet? Nodju?" on the board in the front of the class. Then he asked if anyone knew what they meant. Guesses ranged from some obscure math formula to completely clueless shoulder shrugs. He hinted that he had overheard the words in the student union. Still nobody could decipher them.
He then told us that he'd been sitting in the student union when he overheard the words, spoken by two people in conversation. He was mystified, too. The words made no apparent sense. Then the first speaker said, "Ok, let's go to the cafeteria". All became clear. He'd heard verbal shorthand and had not been able to understand it out of context. (He used that example to teach a shorthand concept used in math - damned if I can recall which one though). But the point, that you had to have context to understand some things was vital.
Ah, but Eugene Robinson from the Washington Post knows exactly what everyone thinks, believes and understands from a few overheard words from the President. And he showers his contempt down on the President because he is so clear about what he understands:
Just my luck. I go away on vacation and it happens to be the week when George W. Bush's strategic view of the current world situation is revealed: Russia big. China big, too. World leaders boring. Lady world leaders need neck rub. Terrorism bad. Elections good (when the right people get elected). Israel good. Time to go home yet?
I felt better when I thought the Decider didn't have a worldview, just a set of instincts about freedom and democracy. But even if you set aside the president's embarrassing open-mike performance at the Group of Eight summit, which is hard to do, events of the past week show that this administration actually thinks it knows what it's doing. Bush and his folks haven't just blundered around and created this dangerous mess, they've done it on purpose. And they intend to make it worse.
That is the way Robinson sets the opinion up. If anything that is the high point of his regard for Bush, America and Israel.
Bush's endorsement of the violence that Israel is inflicting on Lebanon — a sustained bombing campaign that has killed hundreds of civilians and can only be seen as collective punishment — is truly astonishing. Of course Israel has the right to defend itself against Hezbollah's rocket attacks. But how can this utterly disproportionate, seemingly indiscriminate carnage be anything but counterproductive?
Destroying the Beirut airport, blasting communications towers into oblivion and cleansing southern Lebanon of its civilian population are not measures the world will see as an attack on Hezbollah terrorists. The Israeli campaign is so intense and widespread that it is creating more terrorists than it kills. Proportionate military action might have enhanced Israel's security, but video footage of grandmothers weeping amid the rubble of their homes and bloodied children lying in hospital beds won't make Israel more secure. Hezbollah's stature in the Arab world is growing, and its patrons in Damascus and Tehran must be smugly satisfied.
Of course, Mr. Robinson gives the terrorists who hold human shields in front of themselves a free pass. Not one, nary a single mention of Hezbollah's using human shields. Which even the UN is admitting is happening. Nope - all Bush's fault in Robinson's view. Doesn't even matter that the communication towers in question belonged to a self-declared organization with the agenda of destroying Israel.
But this administration doesn't want to be an honest broker in the Middle East. Bush and Rice have staked their Middle East policy on a single incontrovertible idea — that terrorism is bad — and it has led them to the mistaken notion that Israel can achieve long-term security by creating a kind of scorched-earth buffer zone in southern Lebanon.
Ah, the last bastion of the left. The "Honest Broker" meme. Which has worked so stunningly well in all the past years. The US has "honestly brokered" ceasefire after ceasefire after ceasefire. And the terrorists have broken every, single one. Good plan, Robinson. Let's do it again.
Robinson is wrong. In the most epic sense of the word. And his parting words are important:
The next time you hear someone praise the simplicity of George W. Bush's worldview, keep in mind that what you don't know can indeed hurt you.
Because Robinson doesn't know anything at all, apparently.
Jeet? Nodju? Jerk.
