Letters to the Editor
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@William Timberman
As for the third-party advocates, or plague-on-both-their-houses, I-refuse-to-support-either-party folks, I have some sympathy for them, but I continue to think that they're paying an awfully high price to retain their moral purity.
-- William Timberman
I continue to think that the price for moral purity in this instance is far more worth it than the price eventually to be paid by those who enable the enablers.
Besides, what price are we paying, exactly, when we abandon the Democratic Party? Getting called "purists" by *serious* pundits and pragmatic-to-the-point-of-immorality finger waggers is akin to having your name on Nixons enemies list back in the day-a badge of honor.
This is not a criticism of you, dear Mr. Timberman, I'm just sayin'.
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Life Imitates Billmon
That's almost as good as Billmon's What a Tangled Web we Weave post/ You really know how to humiliate these guys. Victory is right around the corner. By 2015 at the latest.
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Such a simple truth,
It's the self-determination, stupid! -- Paul Rosenberg
so many complicated dunces (or liars, as the case may be) who make careers out of denying it. As long as the idea persists in America that all it takes to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse is a good marketing campaign, we'll remain as clueless -- and as a much a danger to the rest of the world -- as we've been for the last forty years.
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Brookings was always a conservative think-tank.
But I guess that was before the right-wing started claiming that their spin-tanks were "think-tanks".
I pointed this out a few months ago at
http://sideshow.me.uk/smay07.htm#05021625
Think-tanks like Rand and Brookings do actual research, so I guess that makes them "liberal" compared to the dedicated right-wing spin-tanks, which are all about making up any lie they can think of to sell destructive right-wing policies.
But 20 years ago, no one thought Brookings was a "liberal" organization.
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@ WT, Moral Purity
As for the third-party advocates, or plague-on-both-their-houses, I-refuse-to-support-either-party folks, I have some sympathy for them, but I continue to think that they're paying an awfully high price to retain their moral purity.
-- William Timberman
I know you miss Billmon, too.
I agree with you, which is why I worked my libertarian boonkie off for Kerry, a wishy washy liberal, rather than voting for Nader, with whom I agreed much more, at least on foreign policy. But I don't think EITHER side can go for the moral purity at this point. For me, the most crucial two issues are: 1) the war (whether in Iraq or against Iran/Syria) and 2) the Constitution. It really is time to lay down the other issues -- abortion, immigration, health care, poverty, tax policy, gay marriage, etc.* -- and work together on these two things. Once the emergency is over, we can all get back to bickering over other important issues.
(* Obviously we can't and shouldn't lay these issues down completely. But if you're a liberal organizing an anti-war march and a conservative organization wants to join in, it's time to welcome them with open arms. We allied with Stalin in WWII, didn't we? It's time to look at the big picture.)
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@ sunny miller
I wasn't trying to hurt anyone's feelings. The truth is that it takes votes to change things, which means persuading people, which means compromises, which means making hard choices about what is or isn't negotiable.
The moral problem is always present, whether you opt to try and form a third party, or retire to a cave on a hilltop. If your conscience isn't confronted, it's generally because you succumb to the pretense that you aren't involved.
That was one of the two points I was making. The other is that although I realize that a third-party strategy may not be any less prone to failure than reform of the Democratic Party, I personally think that the latter offers a better chance of success. The burden of proof, at any rate, isn't mine alone.
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EDL
I take him at his word that "Even as O'Hanlon began expressing increasing concerns about instability in Iraq, it was almost always tempered with rosy overall assessments." Still, I'm agitating over why this material is relegated to "Update II," and is not a central part of the column. When writing (and, it would seem, researching and structuring) the *main piece*, Mr. Greenwald used quotes that are more than four years old to discredit O'Hanlon's assesment of what's happened *within the last four years.* The question remains open: Mr. Greenwald employ less than strictly honest criteria to find the most damning evidence?
You seem to think that in order for someone to have "over four years lost essentially all credibility," they need to renew the evidence of their ineptitude and dishonety every three months - or every six months or so - otherwise the loss of credibility expires, their credibilty restores itself and it starts anew.
The reason I quoted mostly from 2002-2004 is because that is when everyone's true colors showed. If you don't think that two straight years of moronic and misleading claims about the most important political matter of the last decade is sufficient to diminish someone's credibility, then we just disagree.
There are people who, in my view, have restored their own crediblity at least somewhat by admitting how wrong they were and really digging deep to find out what happened and expressing what went wrong. That, in a sense, is a key step towards cleansing onself of these grave sins. O'Hanlon has done nothing of the kind. He reeks arrogance and hubris and thinks he's every bit as much of the Leading Expert as every before, going to the NYT to lecture war opponents about what morons they are because they don't understand the Reality on the Ground.
I went through O'Hanlon's writing chronologically, so it's to be expected that there is more from the beginning. But I stopped only becuase it was more of the same, and it was dead-horse-beating. I did, however, link to Greg Sargent, who uses more updated material for those who want to claim that they have undergone some kind of magical transformation in the last two years, even though they haven't.