nacl, on Noah Pollak:

Andrew Sullivan has in the past shown that he can think. He is no dummy. That previous, demonstrated capacity to see through malarkey and smoke and being hard headed is now his undoing.

He understands very well that Israel is not challenging Iran, but Iran is challenging Israel. He knows that a nuclear standoff between Israel and Iran is not a possibility. Iran is seventy million and the size of France, Germany, UK and Spain combined. Israel with its six million Jews on a pimple half the size of Switzerland is not comparable to the continental US squaring off against the USSR. Iranian leaders have discussed their ability to absorb Israeli blows, even as they can obliterate Israel completely.

Iran with a nuclear arsenal will not have to use it. The regime will just have to periodically make furious noises. Israeli fathers and mothers won’t raise their families in the shadow of mullahs with a red button in their feverish palms. Whoever can will emigrate will, and the country will depopulate. That is the existential threat facing Israel at its most benign. Andrew has the stuff to figure that out. If he retains the smallest sense of justice he knows that a country that crawled out of the ashes of Hitler’s ovens, should not have to accept that fate, and won’t.

That he now cannot understand that tells us where Andrew Sullivan is coming from.