JustASC

Mike Huckabee is in Israel, criticizing Obama’s Mideast policy, just as NJ Rep. Leonard Lance and other Republican lawmakers did a few weeks ago. Glenn Greenwald points out that when Democrats have gone abroad and criticized their government, they usually come under a hailstorm of criticism from their GOP critics. Greenwald remembers when Al Gore traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2006 and criticized American policies in the wake of 9/11, and conservative bloggers accused him of “disloyalty” and worse.

Writes Greenwald:

When “liberals” like Al Gore criticize U.S. foreign policy in Muslim countries, that is an act of virtual treason that spawns intense controversy. When leading members of the American Right do the same in and on behalf of Israel, the silence is deafening.

It’s an interesting point. Greewald doesn’t endorse the principle that a politican can’t speak ill of his country’s leaders on foreign soil, he says — but rather objects to the selective application of that “principle.”

But he loses me here by adding:

Rules governing what one can and cannot do with regard to “foreign countries” tend to be waived very quickly when it comes to Israel — and America’s Right…. Within that disparity lies many of the explanations for why America’s foreign policy in the Middle East has wrought so much destruction.

What-what WAH? I thought the target here was hypocrisy? No, it turns out it’s about Israel — and the way support for it distorts everything. It’s the grand unifying theory for America’s “destructive” Mideast policy.