Wednesday, May 14, 2008

A deadly game of chicken?


If Todd Gitlin (with whom I expect to disagree) is this freaked, perhaps we all should be:

I've been wondering all day whether what's going on between the US and Israel on the one hand, and Iran on the other, is a game of chicken--the drag-strip game where two drivers race toward each other and the first one to turn away loses--or something worse. This wondering comes from Jerusalem, where I'm attending Shimon Peres' President's Conference on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel.

...The sense of threat here is vivid, it is deeply felt ...

...the session moderator, Israel's former ambassador to the US, Itamar Rabinovitch, somehow intimated--I'm sorry I didn't take down his exact words--that Israel's government would put it to Bush that if he didn't take action, Israel would. ...

Who's well informed enough to know what's up? Are we crying wolf again? No one knows. Possibly not even Bush knows what he will do during the seven months that remain in his White House stay. ... possibly this is not just a game of chicken, and Bush's finger is getting itchy--Iraq having gone so well. Then what's the lame duck got to lose in his unending, unreasoning fight against tyranny?

TPM Cafe

Go read it all.

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