Video at Real Clear Politics: TIME Editor Stengel: "Sad" That Israeli Wall Is "Functioning"

Via Gateway: TIME Mag Editor: It's Too Bad That Israeli Wall Worked

It's not that Stengel is saying it's sad that Palestinian terrorists haven't been able to murder more Israelis, it's just that the security fence is a point of ideological litmus. Only rightwingers (in the Stengelian view) could support its existence, so he has trouble getting it out of his mouth, and to assuage his cognitive dissonance over what he must know and what he wishes to believe, he blathers. Note that he can't admit out loud that the fence has saved lives. What comes out of him is lefty-speak. Instead he says it's had the "desired effect" of separating the people.

Think about that for a moment. Was that the reason for the fence? To separate people? Well...kinda. It was to separate blood thirsty murderers from their victims. In that matter, it has been successful. Singularly successful. That's what its proponents always said they wanted, not a sociology experiment on a mass scale. But Stengel can't admit it. He begins noting the obvious good it has wrought, and has to, needs to, twist it into something it's not.

Fence proponents have always said that the fence would help in peacemaking because it would stop the, at times daily, terrorist murders against Israelis, allowing Israelis to go about their lives, and saving Arabs from the inevitable and disruptive Israeli follow-ups and invasive security measures, also allowing them to go about their business.

It's working. Stengel needs to get over it.