Friday, June 26, 2009

Dejected

As my trillions of Twitter followers already know:

@DovBear is dejected.
@DovBear Posted asking why RWers are *certain* #obama wishes to *destroy* settlements. Received no good answer.
@DovBear will admit that Obama believes settlement building and growth must end. But so did W and Clinton and GWHB and Reagen and Carter!

At this point @MarkSoFla averred: "No answer will satisfy you!"

To which @DovBear replied: The answer that would satisfy me is a direct quote. None exists. Ergo RWers are wrong.

I'm not a dishonest guy. Had the president stated plainly and clearly that he wants the settlements dismantled and their residents relocated I wouldn't deny it. But he hasn't said that. He hasn't said anything like that. No unambiguous criticism of the Israeli presence in the West Bank exists. The only objection is to "continued settlements" and "construction." He has not said one word about current settlements or buildings that have already been constructed.

And this gets to the root of my dejection about the whole Obama's-war-on-the-settlement thing. Everywhere I look, I see RWers saying they are certain the president wants Israel to withdraw all civilian populations from the West Bank, including Jerusalem and its suburbs. Again and again I've asked for the source of this certainty, but no one seems able to provide it in the form of a clear and unambiguous presidential statement. Instead, they talk subjectively about tone and style or point to statements that hardly differ at all from the anti-settlement statements made by every president since Carter, including both Bushes and Reagen.

So I'm left with two possibilities: either the RWs are predisposed against Obama and entirely unable to judge him failrly and objectively because of [something], or there's something very wrong with my own ability to gather and process information.

Either way, I'm dejected.

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