The Square Quotes of a Hack

Yglesias has cherry-picked the best bit from this lunatic-even-by-
Victor-Davis-Hanson-standards post at the Corner (“we were lectured daily about the intricacies of Vietnamese, Russian, and Chinese Communists — their rivalries, hatreds, and quite separate aims-as they combined to defeat the United States, and trumped their own tensions with an all-encompassing hatred of Western democratic capitalism.” Damn that airtight Sino/Soviet alliance–no wonder we’re all speaking a strange Russian/Chinese hybrid today!”) But I also like this part:

I was lectured by some that there was nothing such as jihadism in the comprehensive sense. That is, that Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. simply have entirely separate agendas, understandable (i.e., Israel, “occupation” of Arab lands) and particularist grievances, etc.

Leaving aside the fact that these “lectures” are of course entirely correct, it’s possible to exploit tensions between groups who share some interests and diverge in other ways, etc., is the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza supposed to be controversial? I guess we can argue about whether Israel was justified, what the borders of a two-state solution would look like, etc., but Israel’s occupation of these territories is a simple empirical fact. (I guess this an echo of Zell Miller’s insane rants about how it’s immoral to call American soldiers in Iraq “occupiers” unless George Bush is doing it, because military domination of a country for multiple years doesn’t count as an “occupation” if you’re doing it to make apple pies grow on trees or something.)