Jeffrey Simpson Was Under the Weather Today

Or something else was responsible for today's lame-ass column: "Cracks in the bedrock of U.S. - Israel relations?" (Note: He recently wrote something with the title "When the penny drops, denial over health care stops" that must have also been written while he had the sniffles, it's such a brain-dead self-parody of his usual Chicken Little routine on public health care.)

Here's the thing about the U.S.-Israel column: Besides being weeks overdue commenting on some pretty clear signs of stresses between an increasingly belligerent and arrogant Israel and the United States which prompted General Petraeus to publicly state that Israel's behaviour was endangering the lives of US troops, Simpson's column manages to deal with the subject in a completely pointless way:

The United States carries the can, fairly or otherwise, for this stalemate in many corners of the Muslim world, because the United States is deemed to be a protector that could, if it so desired, push the Israelis toward a deal.

That the Israelis can’t be pushed is obvious to objective observers, but not to those who think grave injustices have systematically been done to Palestinians, including building settlements in the West Bank and expanding them in contested parts of Jerusalem.

Apparently, the Obama administration, exasperated by the lack of negotiations and angry at the obduracy of the Netanyahu government, is considered publishing its own blueprint for a peaceful settlement.

Good luck. Blueprints have come and gone many times before.

I mean, what is the point of a newspaper printing something like that? Does anyone able to read actually believe that the U.S. doesn't subsidize Israel to the tune of billions of dollars annually? Is there anyone really so clueless as to think that the U.S. is genuinely frustrated at the failure of one "peace plan" after another?

If Simpson genuinely believes this crapola, then he's a dimmer bulb than I thought. But if he doesn't believe this drivel, what practical use is it to write such a useless piece of sludge? I honestly think this was e-mailed as an attachment and the original e-mail said "Sorry for such a weak effort but I do need the money ... Yours, Jeffrey."