Given the rather shabby sendoff I received after deciding to pack it in at the American Prospect last year, I can’t say I’m terribly pleased to open my mailbox and find that they are still featuring my work prominently in their subscription solicitations. (I gave them permission to do this a few years ago, but didn’t intend for it to be open-ended.) It’s still a fine magazine, but anyone who subscribes hoping to see more of my work will be sorely disappointed.
That darned liberal media
As you’ve certainly noticed, the Plame investigation has renewed interest in Judy Miller’s Iraq reporting. I’m not entirely sure how right-wingers reconcile their conception of the Bush-hating media with the undeniable fact that Miller’s terrible reporting helped substantially in whipping up support for the war, especially among the so-called liberal hawks of the intellectual/managerial class. (Something I previously discussed in this cartoon from 2004.)
The eternal question
MICHELLE MALKIN WADES INTO THE GUTTER: The blog world is certainly not for the political faint of heart. Personal attacks, harsh language, and hyperbole are routine. But in this post, Michelle Malkin sheds every last vestige of decency: “THE GHOULS OF THE LEFT – They support the troops…by partying over their deaths.” Her post links to a Little Green Footballs entry that makes the same odious argument, namely that this group is throwing “parties” on the day that we cross 2000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq.
Here’s how the actual events are described: “Events to mark the 2,000th reported U.S. military death will range from candlelight vigils to public actions that illustrate the size of the death toll.” Surely, these aren’t “parties.” I spent years in Beirut, I lived and breathed war, I watched friends get blown to pieces, I’ve seen horrors I hope Malkin never has to see. Those who are fighting to stop this war deserve the utmost respect, whether or not you agree with their politics. Prominent bloggers like Malkin should know better than to soil our public discourse with this kind of garbage….. Rant over.
The eternal question with Malkin and her ilk is, of course, whether they are stupid or lying. Is Malkin really unable to comprehend the distinction between somber reflection and gleeful celebration? (In which case, she must really get confused each year on dates like September 11 and December 7.) Or is she–perish the thought–deliberately misrepresenting the truth in order to score cheap rhetorical points? Actually in this case, there’s probably a third alternative to “stupid” or “lying”: “both of the above.”
Tom Tomorrow:
The center cannot hold
Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government’s foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.
In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.
“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”
* * *
Mr Wilkerson said his decision to go public had led to a personal falling out with Mr Powell, whom he served for 16 years at the Pentagon and the State Department.
“He’s not happy with my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world’s most loyal soldier.”
Among his other charges:
–The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You don’t have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you’ve condoned it.”
–Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was “part of the problem”. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, “she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president.”
–The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, “start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel.”
Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush, “one of the finest presidents we have ever had,” understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either.”
The center cannot hold
Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government’s foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.
In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.
“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”
* * *
Mr Wilkerson said his decision to go public had led to a personal falling out with Mr Powell, whom he served for 16 years at the Pentagon and the State Department.
“He’s not happy with my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world’s most loyal soldier.”
Among his other charges:
–The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You don’t have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you’ve condoned it.”
–Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was “part of the problem”. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, “she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president.”
–The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, “start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel.”
Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush, “one of the finest presidents we have ever had,” understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either.”