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Z, I know that there are lots of other issues, over which you and I will cut each other's hearts out.
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...you're ...uh, speaking figuratively--right?
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But do we have agreement that to emasculate Al Queda and solve the current war with Islam we must find justice for Palestinians? Whom better than Leiberman for that task?
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...Al Qaeda will be rendered irrelevant when justice is brought to the Middle East--yes. U.S. hegemony is not the righteously appropriate vehicle for promoting justice. The U.S. is not a fair and even-handed broker in the Middle East (or elsewhere). The U.S. government needs to deal with the Palestinian question by taking on its 'allies' the Israelis and the Saudis, while dealing with the Palestinian people in a way that isn't condescending and self-defeating.
I wish I could agree with you on this point Botnst, but I firmly believe Lieberman is a neo-con imperialist, and no, I'm not being glib. He's signed off on their agenda, so that makes him part of the problem, not the solution in my book. This problem is going to be best resolved through butter, not guns (thought guns do serve a purpose).
I agree with your Nixon analogy, that a Jew would be the best political figure to change U.S./Israel policy, but the official strategy of the AIPAC and ADL is to label anyone criticizing Israel as either a self-loathing Jew or an anti-Semite--that's a pretty steep hurdle to overcome. I don't think Joe Censorship is the guy to mount a challenge to this orthodoxy.
I think it would be the in our longterm strategic interest to divest ourselves from our related addictions to both oil and Israel. I don't see any candidate (currently) running that would do that, except maybe the ultra-longshot Kucinich.
So Botnst, we agree on the key points you raised, but differ on how to achieve a suitabale resolution to the problems inherent to those points. No real surprises there...