So Who Is Pre-Empting Who?

And the New York Times has published an op-ed that asserts, nefariously -

few people in the Muslim world have missed the Israeli prime minister’s blatant manipulation of American politics for the sake of a pre-emptive assault on Iran.

"Blatant"?  "Manipulation"?

Why not "overt attempt to persuade..."?  After all, the guy is an English studies major.

But now there's this that sort of makes his dig worthless:

Iran could launch a pre-emptive strike on Israel if it was sure the Jewish state was preparing to attack it, a senior commander of its elite Revolutionary Guards was quoted as saying yesterday.
Brig Gen Amir Ali Hajizadeh made the comments to state-run al-Alam television. “Iran will not start any war but it could launch a pre-emptive attack if it was sure that the enemies are putting the final touches to attack it,” al-Alam said, paraphrasing the commander.
Brig Gen Hajizadeh said any attack on Iranian soil could trigger “World War Three”.
“We can not imagine the Zionist regime starting a war without America’s support. Therefore, in case of a war, we will get into a war with both of them and we will certainly get into a conflict with American bases,” he said.

Who, then, should be pre-empting who?

But of course, making statements of destruction and eradication while proceeding to development weapons of mass destruction while Israel has never made any threat against Iran is ignored by this Buddhist returnee, Pankaj Mishra, who had coined the term modern spiritual tourists to describe Americans and Europeans who jet off to India.  He was interviewed and said

...I think I was most hard on them before I visited the West. Coming to America and Western Europe, I began to see what they were trying to escape: the hyperorganized, hypermodern society where the pressure to have a professional career and dress in a certain way is intense. The ’60s was the last time when large groups of people in the West searched for alternative modes of being. In a society like India’s, which is still not fully modern or totally organized, and has a great deal of tolerance for otherness in general, they find the cultural license to try other things, to be whatever they want to be. I see this most recently with the large number of Israelis flocking to India, which is an extraordinary phenomenon. In India, Buddhism, Hinduism, drugs, sex is for them a way of escaping what is essentially an extremely harsh life as a conscripted young man or woman in Israel. I find it’s hard not to be sympathetic to them, however outlandish their behavior might be—they can be very aggressive with the locals.

His sympathy is quite limited to those conscripted with a harsh liefe-experience like protecting their fellow citizens from Islamic terror, et al.