Wednesday punditry, the best kind.
Thomas Friedman:
Watching events unfolding in Tehran raises three intriguing questions for me: Is Facebook to Iran’s Moderate Revolution what the mosque was to Iran’s Islamic Revolution? Is Twitter to Iranian moderates what muezzins were to Iranian mullahs? And, finally, is any of this good for the Jews — particularly Israel’s prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu?
Harold Meyerson:
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has at last acknowledged, with caveats, the need to establish a Palestinian state. Actually, Netanyahu's Palestine is primarily caveats, with a dash of state thrown in for appearances' sake.
Michael Hirsh:
All the clerics can do is crush the protests, then introduce reforms. But it may be too late.
Jane Mayer:
Can Leon Panetta move the C.I.A. forward without confronting its past?
Robert Kagan: How warmongers like me see neutrality in Iran as siding with Ahmadinejad. It's twisted, but I can do it. After getting Iraq so completely wrong and never admitting it, I can do everything.
William Kristol: How warmongers like me see neutrality in Iran as siding with Ahmadinejad. It's twisted, but I can do it. After getting Iraq so completely wrong and never admitting it, I can do everything. Also. [added]
Ross Douthat: Look, I'm staking out the middle:
In the West, especially, there’s been more hysteria about the specter of extremism than actual radical activity. If you listen to certain conservative media personalities, you’d think Obama is channeling Leon Trotsky. If you listen to certain liberal pundits, you’d think that talk radio was fomenting a wave of right-wing violence.
But nothing of the sort is happening.
So there.
Maureen Dowd:
Even as he grows arugula in the White House vegetable garden, Barack Obama never again wants to be seen as the hoity-toity guy fretting over the price of arugula at Whole Foods.
That is why the president ends up sending mixed signals on food.