Pat Buchanan’s Catch-22

Pat Buchanan’s Catch-22. The former presidential candidate these days is in a real bind. He can’t decide between his putative love for America or his hatred of Jews and Israel. In his attack on David Frum and Richard Perle’s book An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (“No End to War,” American Conservative, March 1, 2004), Pat asks, what has Hamas, Syria, or Saudi Arabia ever done to us? “Al Qaeda is our enemy, not Syria or Saudi Arabia,” he claims, neither of which “had anything to do with 9/11.” Evidently, any enemy of Israel should, according to Pat, be America’s friend. His hatred of Jews has even caused him to become an ultimate foreign policy squish: “Let us make Syria our ally,” the classic argument of all State Department appeasers. Pat would fit in fine at Foggy Bottom, or in Bambi Zapatero’s new government in Spain. He’s become a champion of Arab-appeasing Euroweenies. It’s more evidence that anti-Semitism can induce a severe case of testicular atrophy.