Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Must be a Theme
Forget the hard drive break-in scandal in the Senate--it's the NY Times that seems to have a problem with shared data.
Today David Brooks is channeling Thomas Friedman--or at least has come up with another stupid device for insisting that John Kerry keep up George Bush's war in Iraq.
How weird is it that conservative Brooks and "liberal" Friedman would both be stretching their imaginations (and reader's credulity) towards the same end: maintaining the war in Iraq?
Freidman's tactic was to concoct the notion that Iraq was at a "tipping point"--which was pure nonsense--to explain why Kerry had to carry on with Bush's crusade, WMD or no WMD (see 201k February 15). And to do it he employed Times columnist William Safire's favorite rhetorical device: the imaginary conversation.
Safire likes to tell his readers what to think by telling them what Richard Nixon thinks down in hell.
Brooks, who, coincidentally, a week ago used the Safire/Friedman imagination technique to "imagine" what president George Bush should have said to Tim Russert (as opposed to what he did say), came up with his own reason for why John Kerry needs to keep swinging the big hammer that George Bush dropped on Iraq: he has to be more like Truman and Kennedy and less like Carter.
Oh, and the smart people in the Democratic party have "recovered from Vietnam".
Never mind the humor of any Democrat, let alone John Kerry, taking advice from David Brooks, who in the same column concludes that Kerry's having fought the Vietnam war then protested it suggests "expediency". No word from Brooks what George Bush's having supported it but not fought it suggests. Honor and dignity, presumably.
Forget that it was listening to hawks that led John Kennedy to make the second biggest mistake of his presidency--the Bay of Pigs invasion--a mistake borne of being new to the job and not realizing just how misguided by ideology were those who advocated it.
Never mind that the "lessons of Vietnam" were never more relevant than today, a world in which the very people who didn't learn them ended up in charge, and--what do you know--led us into a foreign war under questionable circumstances, and now are straining mightily to cover their tracks.
Most of all ignore the fact that Brooks invents this silly political diorama with no reference to the somewhat relevant fact that Iraq had no WMD or ties to Al-Qaeda, and wasn't actually an imminent threat to the US--which should probably figure into any discussion of whether we should have fought a war there at all, let alone why John Kerry will best be served by continuing to wage it.
No, the thing to really marvel at is that in one week both David Brooks and Thomas Friedman have cooked up stupid rationalizations in the NY Times for insisting that John Kerry get in touch with his inner hawk. Presumably later this week Safire will report from Hades that Nixon thinks Kerry should invade Syria.
Is this theme week at the NY Times? Or should someone there check the hard drive security, to see if these guys are looking in each other's files?
Today David Brooks is channeling Thomas Friedman--or at least has come up with another stupid device for insisting that John Kerry keep up George Bush's war in Iraq.
How weird is it that conservative Brooks and "liberal" Friedman would both be stretching their imaginations (and reader's credulity) towards the same end: maintaining the war in Iraq?
Freidman's tactic was to concoct the notion that Iraq was at a "tipping point"--which was pure nonsense--to explain why Kerry had to carry on with Bush's crusade, WMD or no WMD (see 201k February 15). And to do it he employed Times columnist William Safire's favorite rhetorical device: the imaginary conversation.
Safire likes to tell his readers what to think by telling them what Richard Nixon thinks down in hell.
Brooks, who, coincidentally, a week ago used the Safire/Friedman imagination technique to "imagine" what president George Bush should have said to Tim Russert (as opposed to what he did say), came up with his own reason for why John Kerry needs to keep swinging the big hammer that George Bush dropped on Iraq: he has to be more like Truman and Kennedy and less like Carter.
Oh, and the smart people in the Democratic party have "recovered from Vietnam".
Never mind the humor of any Democrat, let alone John Kerry, taking advice from David Brooks, who in the same column concludes that Kerry's having fought the Vietnam war then protested it suggests "expediency". No word from Brooks what George Bush's having supported it but not fought it suggests. Honor and dignity, presumably.
Forget that it was listening to hawks that led John Kennedy to make the second biggest mistake of his presidency--the Bay of Pigs invasion--a mistake borne of being new to the job and not realizing just how misguided by ideology were those who advocated it.
Never mind that the "lessons of Vietnam" were never more relevant than today, a world in which the very people who didn't learn them ended up in charge, and--what do you know--led us into a foreign war under questionable circumstances, and now are straining mightily to cover their tracks.
Most of all ignore the fact that Brooks invents this silly political diorama with no reference to the somewhat relevant fact that Iraq had no WMD or ties to Al-Qaeda, and wasn't actually an imminent threat to the US--which should probably figure into any discussion of whether we should have fought a war there at all, let alone why John Kerry will best be served by continuing to wage it.
No, the thing to really marvel at is that in one week both David Brooks and Thomas Friedman have cooked up stupid rationalizations in the NY Times for insisting that John Kerry get in touch with his inner hawk. Presumably later this week Safire will report from Hades that Nixon thinks Kerry should invade Syria.
Is this theme week at the NY Times? Or should someone there check the hard drive security, to see if these guys are looking in each other's files?
