Don't let 'em tell you it's gonna be a fair fight

Greenwald has an excellent post on even-handedness in America's approach to the Middle East.

Separately, Jonathan Chait argues in TNR that even-handedness assumes that parties are equally at fault. Chait, like Foxman, is wrong on that count.

Evenhandedness, like bipartisanship, means you start of with a scale that is balanced, but it does not decide where that scale ends up when items are stacked on to each side. We don't have to accept every argument from either side, and split every issue down the middle, to give opposing viewpoints the dignity of being heard. An honest, evenhanded approach will reward stronger and better arguments.

Politics continues to get this all wrong, too, insisting that President Obama's call for bipartisanship means that he must adopt positions that contradict with what he believes in (presently, on the stimulus bill). That's not bipartisanship, it's capitulation. It's not what Barack Obama means by bipartisanship, and it's not what a policy of evenhandedness means in foreign policy.

It's about time we all recognize this.