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 They’re not quite dead, only resting
11/22/06 08:15:55
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Lest you had been lulled into thinking the neocons’ dreams of free-flowing cheap oil and "throwing a crappy little country against a wall"* have abated, along comes this little gem of an op-ed from the otherwise sane Los Angeles Times. As a special added bonus, the piece contains the following shoutout:
Now, according to a report last week in London’s Daily Telegraph, Iran is trying to take over Al Qaeda by positioning its own man, Saif Adel, to become the successor to the ailing Osama bin Laden. How could we possibly trust Iran not to slip nuclear material to terrorists?
Could this be the same London Daily Telegraph that employs Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, whose Wikipedia entry is pure entertainment in itself?
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the son of E.E. Evans-Pritchard, is an investigative reporter for the London Daily Telegraph and author of The Secret Life of Bill Clinton released by the conservative Regnery Publishing. He was educated at Malvern College and Cambridge University.[citation needed]
An editorial review noted that The Secret Life of Bill Clinton "connects the president to everything from 1997’s Oklahoma City bombing to Arkansas’s drug underworld to the mysterious death of White House aide and longtime Clinton friend Vince Foster, and, of course, to Paula Jones."[1] Moreover Ambrose claims "Arkansas was a mini-Colombia within the United States, infested by narco-corruption." He wrote that he feared for his life from Clintons "Death Squads."
* courtesy Michael Ledeen, who is blaming the ladies of the Bush Administration for What Went Wrong:
Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Better late than never, or alternatively, now you tell us
11/22/06 07:34:33
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There probably aren’t many New Republic fans out there in Lefty Blogsylvania, but I strongly urge all of you, particularly the Libs, to read the latest issue, in which the editors, writers and contributors alternate between self-flagellation, self-congratulation and wallowing in post-9/11 - pre-2006 mid-term election conventional wisdom. Witness the Cirque de Soleilesque contortions of Iraq war pep squad leader Peter Beinert, whose adjustment to The New Normal is taking its toll:
I can’t even imagine Iraq anymore. It exceeds my capacity to visualize horror. In a recent interview with The Washington Post’s Anthony Shadid, a woman named Fatima put it this way: "One-third of us are dying, one-third of us are fleeing, and one-third of us will be widows." At the Baghdad morgue, they distinguish Shia from Sunnis because the former are beheaded and the latter are killed with power drills. Moqtada Al Sadr has actually grown afraid of his own men. I came of age believing the United States had a mission to stop such evil. And now, not only isn’t the United States stopping it--in some important sense, we are its cause.
In a particularly cruel twist, the events of recent months have demolished the best arguments both for staying and for leaving. Once upon a time, you could have plausibly argued that, by staying, the United States might make things better: We could have improved security on the ground and thus enhanced the Iraqi government’s authority while weakening the insurgents and the militias. That would have allowed Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish leaders to make the tough political compromises that might have pulled Iraq back from the brink. But, since February’s attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra, the violence has grown so shocking--and the sectarian hatred so intense--that asking either the Sunnis or Shia to disarm (no one is even asking the Kurds) is inviting them to commit mass suicide. The Bush administration keeps telling Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki to take on the Shia militias, as if the guy just lacks motivation. But the militias are not a threat to the Iraqi state; they are the Iraqi state. By their grace, Maliki stays in office and remains alive.
Once upon a time, you also could have argued that, if the United States left, Iraqis would have little reason to continue the slaughter. "What the resistance movement has been resisting is the occupation," wrote Nir Rosen last December in The Atlantic, making the case for withdrawal. "Who would the insurgents fight if the enemy left?" The question now answers itself. For most Iraqi Sunnis, the primary enemy is no longer the U.S. military; it’s their Shia countrymen. Amazingly (given how much they hate our occupation), prominent Sunni leaders now actually want the United States to stay--because we’re restraining the government in Baghdad from butchering them wholesale.
Today, the honest arguments for staying or leaving are simply that we can’t do the opposite. We can’t leave because the prospects of a regional civil war (and, perhaps, a jihadist safe haven) are so horrifying. And we can’t stay because our presence can’t prevent those things--so why send young Americans to die trying to stop the inevitable?
I’ll leave it up to you to provide the commentary.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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A dark adapted "I"
11/22/06 07:08:35
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OK, so my return to blogging has been neither consistent, prolific nor terribly exciting. So sue me.
The truth is, being blocked is no party. In truth, it pretty much sucks to go from being a post-o-meter one day to barely being able to drum up the energy to post a damn hyperlink the next.
The only obvious remedy for this problem: Richard Cohen. Not to get too graphic about it or anything, but the man’s output really does serve as a kind of Ex-Lax for the brain, if you will.
Truth be told, I’ve avoided reading Cohen for several months, only because I had enough stress in my life and had no desire to add to it. But yesterday’s magnificent excercise in solipsism has the "I" man outdoing even himself. Behold, if you will, the following few grafs. I dare you to attempt to diagram them, or, better yet, try to untangle his meanings through the thicket of first person pronouns:
There is this: I would have fought neither war (Vietnam or Iraq).
Before you protest "of course, Cohen," let me explain that the "I" in the foregoing sentence is really four people. There is the "I" who originally thought the Vietnam War was morally correct, that the communists were awful people and that the loss of South Vietnam (the North was already gone) would result in a debacle for its people. That’s, in fact, what happened. It was only later, when I myself was in the Army, that I deemed the war not worth killing or dying for. By then I -- the second "I" -- no longer felt it was winnable, and I did not want to lose my life so that somehow defeat could be managed more elegantly.
Things are precisely the same with Iraq, and here, too, I -- No. 3 -- originally had no moral qualms about the war. Saddam Hussein was a beast who had twice invaded his neighbors, had killed his own people with abandon and posed a threat -- and not just a theoretical one -- to Israel. If anything, I was encouraged in my belief by the offensive opposition to the war -- silly arguments about oil or empire or, at bottom, the ineradicable and perpetual rottenness of America.
On the contrary, I thought. We are a good country, attempting to do a good thing. In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic. The United States had the power to change things for the better, and those who would do the changing -- the fighting -- were, after all, volunteers. This mattered to me.
But these volunteers are now fighting a war few envisaged and no one wanted -- not I (No. 4), for sure. If at one time my latter-day minutemen marched off thinking they were bringing democracy to Iraq and the greater Middle East, they now must know better. If they thought they were going to rid the region of weapons of mass destruction and sever the link between al-Qaeda and Hussein, they now are entitled to feel duped by Bush, Vice President Cheney and others. The exaggerations are particularly repellent. To fool someone into sacrificing his life to battle a chimera is a hideous abuse of the public trust.
Does anyone actually look over these pieces before publishing them? If so, did the editor have the courage to call Cohen and issue a stern "WTF Richard, every day you turn into more of a self-parody. Get a grip, man"? Doesn’t look like it to me.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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