Billmon has yanked his endorsement of Dean because he didn't like Dean's answer on CNN about Israel bombing Syria.

So I'm un-endorsing him. I could spend a lot of time and effort trying to explain why this one, single issue is so important to me it would cause me to do a political 180 on a presidential candidate, but I'm not really in the mood. Suffice it to say that whatever else I like or admire about Dean -- and there are some things -- they weren't enough to persuade me to endorse him before the Israel issue came up, and they're not enough to keep me endorsing him now.

I suppose America's strange and unhealthy relationship with Israel is just one of those disasters-waiting-to-happen that won't change until the disaster really does happen. Maybe the Iraq War will be that disaster and maybe it won't. But it's obvious the Democratic Party isn't going to change until it has to, and right now it doesn't have to. In fact the incentives are all on the other side.

The Middle East is not something I'm very informed about. I have run into some of the attitudes described in the comments thread to Billmon's post.

Night before last I was at my Aunt's house and my uncle (an Israeli) offered me some Israeli wine. Upon examining the bottle I discovered it was from the Golan Heights and cracked a good natured joke about it actually being Syrian wine. It shouldn't have surprised me much but it ruined the evening. I was called a facist, murderer and many more things. My Uncle openly advocates ethnic cleansing in the territories as the only solution. And, oddly, I am considered the radical in the family. But I digress; The majority of the people in the house were intelligent educated liberal moderates but any critique of Israel quickly becomes equated to supporting blowing up women and children (I guess the men aren't that important). What is the implication of this story? How does it relate to Dean's statment? I'll let the reader decide what to take from my story.

I tend to believe that on this issue, as on the issue of gay marriage, what's going on here is as described in the following comments:

there are lots of times when you can take a stand and draw the debate towards your position, and there are lots of times when taking a stand prematurely just casts you into the wilderness.

Since we don't have crystal balls, one must guess which situation is which. Most politicians side too much on the side of caution and don't lead when they could. I think Dean strikes the right balance far more than any of the others.

Courage is different from foolhardiness. - jd in nyc

I may be giving him too much credit, but I think that Dean's previous 'even-handed' comment may have been a calculated signal. It would go along with his latest comment being the mildest/most qualified of the [electable] candidates statements of support for Israel's action (something I haven't checked myself but am trusting previous posters about).

Of course he can't come out with a ground-breaking, peace-movement-approved mideast policy in the middle of the campaign and expect to win. But consider: Dean's wife is Jewish, and he has some [other] ties to relatively moderate elements of the American Jewish community. Given the Likud-Neocon alliance and its ugly results, smart folks in that set may recognize that, if events continue to deteriorate in the mideast, eventually the Special Relationship will come under fire. I know this particular topic gets polarized REAL fast, but we need to think here about that old 'art of the possible' stuff. Moral purity will not help us change the realities on the ground. - stevelu

In this crazy, competitive, adversarial country where the media automatically stomps of any new ideas with both feet, we are reduced to listening for tiny hints of what our candidate may do if elected. It could be that the liberals are not as intelligent as the conservatives at playing this game. I mean the supergreens deserted Gore, who would undoubtedly have been the greenest president ever (Ralph Nader never wrote a passionate book on the subject.) because he didn't talk green enough for them, while the Republican right all gathered around their (wink, wink) centrist candidate. I'm still for Dean and hoping he (wink, wink) will do better than the others once he has a chance. - James in DC