John Edwards

Wonkette nails it:

All that hard work, all those years of shaking hands and smiling and writing a picture book about houses or whatever … for nothing! Handsome boy John Edwards blew it by mentioning Israel in a possibly not-100% flattering light at a Hollywood talent agency meet & greet last month. Peter Bart mentioned the incident in a January 19 column on Variety.com, but it took the brave Israel defenders at National Review Online to blog it up today.

Say good-bye to Johny Edwards...

What happened? According to Bart, Edwards was asked to name the greatest threat to world peace at the moment. Instead of the simple answer, wars, Edwards had to be a smarty jones and say the increasing likelihood of an Israeli attack on Iran was the primary current threat. You know, because then Washington would start bombing somebody, and Syria/Lebanon would get involved, and Russia would start threatening everybody, and it would be a nuclear war, etc.

But stating anything so obvious requires taking your lips off Israel’s rear end for a few seconds, and that’s fatal for any American politician with presidential ambitions. This isn’t because Jews get upset or Israel’s feelings will get hurt or anything. It’s because of insane evangelical Americans who have to love and protect Israel so Jesus will come back and destroy it.

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And let's put aside the partisan name-calling for a second, and look at this fairly and honestly: Edwards was right. The world isn't going to go up in flames if Al Queda pulls off another attack. It'll be horrible, of course, and a terrible tragedy and all that, but not a threat to world peace. If Iran gets the bomb, we'll all be very nervous, but we won't start shooting at each other -- at least not right away. But if Israel takes out Iran's nuclear facilities, the dominoes will start to fall at once. Syria and her proxies will go on the war path. Russia and North Korea will step in. And before you blink twice, we'll have a full scale regional war -or worse. Now, as anyone with an ounce of sense understands, this is not a criticism of Israel. The long-term benefits might justify a preemptive strike. Perhaps Istael should hit Iran. People of good faith can disagree. What can't be denied, unfortunately, is that the immediate short term result of such an attack would be war.