Gaza Night on CNN

Hillary is off to visit the "good" Palestinian tomorrow, the pathetic President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas has totally squandered whatever credibility he inherited from Arafat with his fruitless concessions to Israel over the last eight years. He is completely irrelevant to what is going on in Gaza today.

So why the Hillary visit? Because US policy is bound to an "anybody-but-Hamas" course by AIPAC. That policy as much as anything else has served to enhance the credibility of the very Hamas they are trying to undermine.

It's telling to see who CNN brings in as objective observers who can shed light on the current situation. Fouad Ajami. Dianne Feinstein. Allan Dershowitz.

Oddly enough, each of them were able to recite the current talking points about Hamas' "double war crime" of targeting civilians while also hiding behind them.

Frankly, it's too little and too late. The rest of the world would dismiss out of hand the choice of Ajami, Feinstein, and Dershowitz as objective commentators about anything to do with Israel and Palestine.

In fact, the rest of the world immediately recognizes the trio as long-time pro-Israel propagandists.

And whether we like it or not, the era of America not having to consider the rest of the world is rapidly winding down

Why does CNN present this war cheer-leader as an expert?

Fouad Ajami has long been the favorite token Arab of the Project for a New American Century, that right-wing crowd of war-mongers who devised George W's brilliant Iraq strategy.

He is a close collaborator of Daniel Pipes, a pal of Paul Wolfowitz, a former adviser to Condoleeza Rice and Dick Cheney, none of whom would be regarded as credible objective observers of events in the Arab world. But, because of his ostensible insider status, even though he moved to the US while still a teenager, Ajami gets away with it.

These days Ajami appears on CNN several times a day as an expert on the Syrian uprising. He's hitting all the same notes as he was during the nine months that he made daily appearances as a Libya expert; the evil dictator is looting his country and killing his people, and only benevolent western intervention can save those people from imminent slaughter.

Ajami continues to see the Iraq fiasco as a glorious triumph. In fact, he believes that the invasion of Iraq serves as the template for successful interventions. This is not a view shared by the vast majority of observers and has much more to do with his political agenda than with the reality in Iraq today.

Taking an absurdly revisionist turn, Ajami claims without any evidence whatsoever that our invasion of Iraq in 2003 is what inspired the Egyptian demonstrators in Tahrir Square in 2010.

None of this background is made known when he is trotted out as an expert by CNN or other networks. In the interest of truthful journalism, CNN needs to provide a little more on-screen info.

How about Professor Fouad Ajami, Hoover Institute Fellow, neocon hack with axe to grind.