Letters to the Editor
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What should have been the lead story yesterday...
Robert Novak's column:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=21734
I'm no fan of Novak, but this article about assisting the Turks fight the Kurdish minority in return for a promise not to invade Iraq, if true, at least counts as NEWS.
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At Pollack's door
I cannot tell you how many people I knew, prewar, were persuaded by Pollack's book--especially because he was regarded as a left of center scholar. People normally suspicious of waging wars were persuaded that eliminating Saddam was worth going to war, because of the case made by Pollack.
His work was among the most important and influential pre-war material.
And I still want to know why we do not ever see the prescient people on the teevee.
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The RW Noise Machine Hums
The RW meme of these two being bitter anti-war analysts turned completely around by the tremedous success of the surge was repeated on the local ABC 10 p.m. last night news here in Chicago.
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Sustain until 2008
Here's a coincidence to note - maybe:
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Pentagon_to_announce_massive_continuation_of_0731.html
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I hope
Everyone is writing the Times to express disgust and dismay at the way they gave Pollack/O'Hanlon a platform for their shameless self-serving propoganda. It's easy: letters@nytimes.com
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The only solace
The only solace I take from this whole episode is that somewhere in their Mass. Ave office these two buffoons are gathered around a computer screen, reading your article, and gnashing their pearly whites. Cowardly privileged tools who’ll say anything to keep their name on the party lists – keep giving them hell!
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I got as far as * you no spell perfectly.
* "War Genius Kagan"
~*~War Heinous Kagan~*~
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Hush. I'm not here.
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The diminishing marginal utility of lies
Well, if nothing else, it's costing them more and more to generate fewer and fewer believers. Perhaps in the end, their investors will look at the descending ROI curve, and pull the plug.
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The Court of modern-day kings
As I said yesterday, Glenn wisely does not discuss the motivations of these men -- no one is, after all, a mind reader -- but sooner or later, we will have to come to terms with what I would dub the venality ("conflict of interest" seems way too tame) of these "journalists".
The tangled web of interests, the six-figure salaries, the fringe benefits, the opportunities from think tanks to speeches and books, all that calls for a giant board with photos and arrows that would expose the network of chumminess and backscratching of this swamp of reptiles.
What we're looking at is not so different, I suspect, from the nest of vipers that the Court of courtesans, ex-, present and future mistresses, wannabe noblemen and favor-seekers, adventurers, quacks and charlatans, servile old men and incompetent generals, diplomats and spies, surrounding the Monarchs of the 18th century where everyone was for sale.
Some of it, of course, is self-induced blindness; no doubt, their ego cannot allow them to face their delusions. But I have no doubt that the root of it all is the sheer venality.
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This is becoming infuriating
All this time I was led to believe by our Faux News pundits and AM Conservative radio boys at how librul our media truly is. All this time I was led to believe at how the Brookings institution was just another uber-lefty Soros wing of the Democratic party. What is the world coming to when I see such a librul institution like our Mainstream Media be hoodwinked by these pro-Bush supporters dressed up as librul clowns?
Terrible. Just terrible. What's next - Joe Lieberman is actually a neocon Bush supporter?
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I'll give you your national media...
I worked at a renowned broadcast news organization in the mid-80s.
Every Monday at the big editorial meeting, the Executive Producer would drop copies of The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal onto the conference table, and ask: "What do we want to do this week?"
In case anybody was wondering exactly how these kinds of things are propagated so mindlessly...
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Why don't they send Cindy Sheehan?
Why don't they send Cindy Sheehan or some genuine critic of the war to Iraq?
Okay, Sheehan is no military expert, but John Murtha is.
But they only want people who have an a priori view that we are winning the war to visit Iraq or interview the top brass.
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Maybe Another Reason...
Glenn opined on motivations: 'It is exactly like reading through the writings of Bill Kristol, Tom Friedman and every other individual who flamboyantly supported this disaster and -- motivated solely by salvaging their own reputations -- are desperate to find some method to argue that they were right.'
Personally, I think at least with the ones you mentioned above, there is another reason why they 'supported this disaster'.
Have you ever thought that deep down, maybe they don't think it has been a disaster? Sen. Lieberman (as you have so excellently shown) doesn't think it's a disaster either. He has his reasons, you know.
P.S. They're all still getting a paycheck, savaged reputations or not, correct?
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Motivations and coordination
Glenn wrote: motivated solely by salvaging their own reputations
Really? Have you thought that out, or are you ceding that point and giving them the benefit of the doubt?
Personally, I can't believe that these packs of relentlessly pro-war pundits and analysts that engage in coordinated PR campaigns like this are solely motivated by the desire to salvage their reputations, prove themselves right, etc.
The logistics of rolling out a successful coordinated propaganda campaign are too complex for it to happen based on two guys trying to salvage their reputation. And after all, when was the last time that being right was considered an important asset on a pundit or analyst's resume?
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The opposition is just too massive and diverse
I think one reason that real opposition doesn't get represented (unlike these clowns) is that the opposition to the war has always been broad and diverse, even when it didn't represent the majority. You have what's left of the pacifist movement--assorted Quakers, anti-nuke people, Mennonites, etc., which isn't all that organized, represents rather marginal groups, and doesn't really have a public face. Then there are the predictable "spokesmen" for "the Left": Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky who have useful things to say, buta lso are gasbags of sorts. Chomsky likes playing the provocative college professor, something that many of us (esp. PhD ex-academics like me) find tiresome and self-serving. Then you have people like Cindy Sheehan who has, unfortunately, morphed into a caricuture of herself. There are plenty of other critics like Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, but they are outsiders to the pundit class (which, if anything makes them more incisive observers), but they aren't necessarrily identified with the war to the same degree as the Kagans, et al. And, of course, there are a few right wing critics, although they tend to be folks on the margins, anyway.
Part of the problem is the willingness of the Post, in particular, to keep supporting the war regardless of what is on its news pages. And because the opposition to the war has long been diverse, the media is too lazy to move beyond the usual suspects, or they simply capitalize on the ones who seem like celebs (Sheehan in her heyday) or the most tiresome but quotable (like Vidal or Chomsky). This isn't that much different than what heppend during the Vietnam war. SDSers and people like Dr. Spock were more colorful and accessible than the increasingly diverse range of people who came to question the war.