Will it work? An interesting thought experiment from Brian Beutler in his newsletter today: President Biden has been buffeted by attacks on his Middle East policy for the past two weeks, but enjoyed a brief reprieve on Thursday in the form of welcome criticism from Ari Fleischer, an immense cynic and warmonger who gained infamy as chief spokesman for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. “When [President Biden] said that Israelis should not be consumed by rage? Who the hell does he think he is?” Fleischer cried bitterly on Fox News. “I sat in on every summit meeting with foreign leaders when they came to the U.S. after 9/11 and met with President [George W.] Bush—not one said to Bush the Americans shouldn’t be consumed with rage. Instead they just came to support us.” It’s worth stipulating a few things before we consider why Fleischer’s input was valuable (though he surely did not intend it to be): -First, Biden’s plea to the Israeli people wasn’t to let go of their rage, but to not let rage shape their response to the Hamas pogrom of October 7. -Second, by attacking Biden in this way, Fleischer adopted an implicit position either that Israel should let rage be its guide, or that ministering to a grieving people not to lash out vengefully and ineffectively is wrong in principle. In other words, his view is self-discrediting no matter its intended meaning. -Third, the idea here isn’t just to devise Middle East policy through negative domestic polarization. “If Ari Fleischer is…