THIS MODERN WORLD

Howie Klein:

In 1999 I was still president of Reprise when a quartet of college faves of mine, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunited to record, release and tour behind LOOKING FORWARD. So long ago… remember what it was like in the world before George Bush? The new CSN&Y tour, Freedom of Speech Your ’06, is very different from the LOOKING FORWARD Tour.

Ben Werner of the Orange County Register doesn’t want to mince words. “The quartet of 60-somethings has rallied around a decidedly strident work, Young’s LIVING WITH WAR, easily the most bluntly outspoken response to the president and the Iraq war yet recorded. Slammed out in a six-day rage, the disc’s nine straightforward anthems (and choir rendition of “America the Beautiful”) scream for CS&N’s harmonies and willingness to take a similar stand… Trust me, these won’t be your grandfather’s CSN&Y shows. Yeah, across 30-plus songs in two sets, they typically toss in ‘Our House’ and ‘Helplessly Hoping’ to temper the attack. But with the majority of Young’s fed-up firebombs alternating with Vietnam-era staples like ‘Ohio’ and ‘Chicago’ and ‘For What It’s Worth,’ this throwback to change-the-world rock will surely be the most protest-heavy series of shows since 2004’s Vote for Change.

More here, along with a nine-minute documentary about the current tour.

I’m going to do these things for a few weeks, but I’m not sure how long they’ll last after that. Some publishers are more cooperative than others, and since I don’t exactly get a lot out of this other than the ability to highlight work I’m interested in, I’m not really interested in fighting battles with them. Sample aggravation: I wanted to devote a week to John Dean’s new book, but his publicist (who sent me a review copy of the book a few weeks back) says that since the release date was a whole three weeks ago, they’re not interested. Having just been on book tour myself, I’m astonished that a publicist would blow off a site with an average of 15,000 readers a day (equivalent advertising on this site would cost a lot more than five free books), but in an odd way it’s reassuring — the various indignities I have suffered over the years at the hands of clue-deprived publicists were nothing personal, this is just apparently how the publishing industry works.

Fortunately, some people do understand that every little bit helps, like Paul Reickhoff (who gave me the idea in the first place), and Bill Bentley at Lookout Management, who was immediately enthusiastic about the idea, and provided the CDs for this week’s giveaway. (My thanks go out to both.)

I have a few more fun things lined up for the next few weeks, but after that, it’s really up to the publicists. I’m not going to be in the position of begging them to let me do them a favor …

I see this recent column by John “I Give Nepotism A Bad Name” Podhoretz has been widely celebrated:

What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn’t kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn’t the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?

Among those finding this noteworthy were Tristero, Matthew Yglesias, Mark Kleinman, and Gregory Djerejian. But what I don’t think many people remember is that in 2004 John Podhoretz’s mother, conservative luminary Midge Decter, frankly explained the real reason we attacked Iraq:

“We’re not in the Middle East to bring sweetness and light to the world. We’re there to get something we and our friends in Europe depend on. Namely, oil.”

So there you have it, straight from the world’s most appealing family: we invaded Iraq for the oil, but we may have made a mistake by not killing millions when we got there.

BONUS: Decter’s daughter is married to Elliot Abrams, making him John Podhoretz’s brother-in-law. Abrams, now on the National Security Council, pleaded guilty to misleading Congress over Iran-Contra. He also tried to cover-up the 1981 El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, in which 900 men, women and children were slaughtered.

I imagine big family occasions with this merry clan are really something.

“Has the caterer gotten here yet?”

“No. Let’s drop napalm on his town and then move house to house, shooting any survivors.”

“Sounds good! What about the band? Are they going to play standards, or more contemporary stuff?”

“I don’t know. Let’s pay a proxy army to rape and murder all the women and then go on a bloody rampage, killing thousands more.”

Via Greenwald, here’s what unhinged loonie leftist Howard Dean was saying in February of 2003:

To this day, the President has not made a case that war against Iraq, now, is necessary to defend American territory, our citizens, our allies, or our essential interests.

The Administration has not explained how a lasting peace, and lasting security, will be achieved in Iraq once Saddam Hussein is toppled.

I, for one, am not ready to abandon the search for better answers.

As a doctor, I was trained to treat illness, and to examine a variety of options before deciding which to prescribe. I worried about side effects and took the time to see what else might work before proceeding to high-risk measures. . . .

We have been told over and over again what the risks will be if we do not go to war.

We have been told little about what the risks will be if we do go to war.

If we go to war, I certainly hope the Administration’s assumptions are realized, and the conflict is swift, successful and clean. I certainly hope our armed forces will be welcomed like heroes and liberators in the streets of Baghdad. I certainly hope Iraq emerges from the war stable, united and democratic. I certainly hope terrorists around the world conclude it is a mistake to defy America and cease, thereafter, to be terrorists.

It is possible, however, that events could go differently, and that the Iraqi Republican Guard will not sit out in the desert where they can be destroyed easily from the air.

It is possible that Iraq will try to force our troops to fight house to house in the middle of cities – on its turf, not ours – where precision-guided missiles are of little use. . . .

There are other risks. Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.

Iran and Turkey each have interests in Iraq they will be tempted to protect with or without our approval. . . .

Some people simply brush aside these concerns, saying there were also a lot of dire predictions before the first Gulf War, and that those didn’t come true.

We have learned through experience to have confidence in our armed forces – and that confidence is very well deserved.

But if you talk to military leaders, they will tell you there is a big difference between pushing back the Iraqi armed forces in Kuwait and trying to defeat them on their home ground.

There are limits to what even our military can do. Technology is not the solution to every problem.

And here’s a description of what the very serious thinker Paul Wolfowitz was saying at the same moment in time:

In his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz ticked off several reasons why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq. He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo. He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that “stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible,” but would oppose a long-term occupation force. And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it. “I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction,” Mr. Wolfowitz said.

How long must we sing this song?

(I didn’t know George did covers…)