Mere Rhetoric: Mark Steyn Mocks, Laments James Baker

We commented last Thursday (in the understated tone for which we are so famous) that The Baker panel may have recommended the annihilation of Israel. Those charming realists - perhaps on a conference call with Walt and Mearsheimer of "if the ~~Jews~~ Zionists are good for America then why do they have a lobby" fame - managed to insert a passage advocating the Palestinian right of return into their final document (nb. great question by Walt and Mearsheimer, incidentally... we're thinking of applying it to child advocacy groups - if little babies are so self-evidently good for America...) Anyway, the right of return is of course the right of three or four million of the most rabidly anti-Jewish populations on the planet to flood into Israel. Mr. Steyn comments:

Why would anyone -- even a short-sighted incompetent political fixer whose brilliant advice includes telling the first Bush that no one would care if he abandoned the "Read my lips" pledge -- why would even he think it a smart move to mortgage Iraq's future to anything as intractable as the Palestinian "right of return"? And, incidentally, how did that phrase -- "the right of return" -- get so carelessly inserted into a document signed by two former secretaries of state, two former senators, a former attorney general, Supreme Court judge, defense secretary, congressman, etc. These are by far the most prominent Americans ever to legitimize a concept whose very purpose is to render any Zionist entity impossible. I'm not one of those who assumes that just because much of James Baker's post-government career has been so lavishly endowed by the Saudis that he must necessarily be a wholly owned subsidiary of King Abdullah, but it's striking how this document frames all the issues within the pathologies of the enemy.

As always in matters of funding politicians and scientists, direction is a difficult issue to untangle. Does James Baker agrees with the Saudis because they pay his mortgage , or if the Saudis pay James Baker's mortgage because he agrees with them? Who can tell? But either way, James Baker agrees with the Saudis. Who are, you have to admit, kind of evil.

Also, he wants the United States to endorse a de facto invasion of Israel.

Also, he is reputed to be viciously anti-Semitic. Kind of brings us full circle back to the Saudis, huh?

Previously: Ed Lasky on Baker, James Baker and His Realist Friends Are Going To Destroy the Republican Party, Kerry's People Maybe Fibbing About Bush's Relationship To Israel