Letters to the Editor
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Once you start compromising your values...
IT IS A VERY SLIPPERY SLOPE.
Money and fame have done in a lot of people. Unfortunately, they take a lot of casualties with them. The corruption and damage done by money or power can never match the devistation done to the soul.
Some people live a very "rich" because they have not compromised and they have family and friends who love them for who they are, not for claiming to be better than others, controlling others, or providing things.
Glenn and many commenters on his threads have the wealth of the soul and I am so glad that I have met and got to know them.
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Make that
"rich" life
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@Baldie McEagle et al. re: sugarman
Glenn has to sleep sometime, and the Sugarman creature knows that his posts don't get deleted when Glenn slumbers on Brazilian time.
IGNORE HIM until Glenn can figure out what to do about this issue.
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Cliches are what make Friedman money
He throws them out like any good copywriter does, one after another. Like so much wet spaghetti--he sees what sticks.
His only talent is logorrhea.
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Kovie
"And yet so many "serious" people (i.e. the whole Charlie Rose, CFR and Brookings crowd, as well as many regular people) continue to take him and his ilk seriously, even though they're not just nuts, but stupid and consistently wrong about almost everything. I don't get it. When did we become such a stupid, crazy and foolish people, willing if not eager to be led by such lunatics, and not getting that they clearly ARE lunatics?"
What you say is true. Friedman and Brooks are many times on the "most emailed articles" in the New York Times list. And they are the quintessence of neo-con propagandists. Many people are buying their pitch. Millions also watch Fox.
Over the past 6 years I always thought that once the American people understood that they were being played for fools by this administration they would revolt as they did in the Vietnam debacle. But I was completely wrong. I find torture abhorrent. Yet McCain loses votes in the Republican base because he doesn't support the administration's position on torture.
Most people don't care as long as they are not affected. Alas, it is a sad state of affairs. Add the people who don't care to the republicans who love torture and dominant foreign policy with a big stick, then in total they make up a very powerful group who will control this country.
I did have some hope after the 2006 elections. I must be so naive as to be stupid! It's all about money, power and domination!
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The thing about "Charlie Wilson's War"
is that it was actually Ronnie Reagan's war.
Here's the history lesson, in one of the all time best blog posts:
http://juancole.com/2005/08/fisking-war-on-terror-once-upon-time.html
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P!ssing In The Punchbowl Again
Poor ol' Dave just can't help hisself. I really do think he enjoys coming here just so that he can get b!tchslapped. Sad, really. And I wish he'd get over that e.e. cumming thing. Most have a lot of respect to refer to himself as 'i'. As noted before, more and more folks will be dropping out as he starts off on a rant.
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tominwindsor: your theory is a little off
Republican men want to be whipped by other MEN.
Hil doesn't scratch that itch...
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Greenwald's Analysis: Simplistic and Inaccurate
I find Mr. Greenwald's analysis of Thomas Friedman to be simplistic and reductionist, while totally missing the mark (he tries his best to make sense of Maureen Dowd's truly bizarre piece). There is as much groupthink expressed in his comments and the letters responding to them as there supposedly is in the monolithic "Washington Establishment." For him and many other people on this board, everything wrong about America's foreign policy boils down, without question, to "neoconservatives" and "mainstream pundits," whatever these terms mean. There does not seem to be room for the kind of nuanced, critical analysis that many on the left and the right so vigorously, and rightly, criticize the Bush Administration for lacking.
Anyone who consistently reads Friedman knows that his support of the Iraq invasion was firmly based on the same kind of liberal interventionist strategic and moral thinking that led many on the left to support intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo. One can certainly question whether he should have put his faith in the Bush Administration to carry out the invasion accordingly (indeed it has tragically given a bad name to humanitarian intervention), but Friedman is no more a warmonger than those who supported these interventions and called for similar actions in Darfur and Rwanda. Cynically, I sometimes wonder if the same people who called for such humanitarian interventions would have reversed course if a Republican or "neocon" were seeking to take these actions.
Friedman's worldview is also shaped by his time covering the civil war in Lebanon in the 1980s and its tangential events. He relays these quite well, I believe, in his book "From Beirut to Jerusalem." Friedman has no illusions about the kind of realpolitik that dominates in the region. While some of his pronouncements, especially between 9/11 and the Iraq War, seem filled with excessive bluster, they should be understood in this context. He believes that the use and threat of force are central to the politics of the states of the modern Middle East, and I think history has shown these premises to be correct on countless occasions.
The point of the editorial is not to seriously propose that Dick Cheney be retained as Obama's vice president should he win in 2008. Yes, Friedman is a pundit and can fall victim to the kind of cutesy phraseology that all pundits tend to lapse into from time to time; it comes with the territory. Mr. Greenwald himself tries to throw a few out there. But, Friedman is trying to make a real point about deterring Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapons program because he very much wants to avoid a war. He and every other sensible American want negotiations to succeed; however, we cannot expect to get an acceptable settlement without being able to leverage credible threats over Iran, both economic and military. Negotiations cannot simply mean that we sit around a table and give in to all of Iran's demands. But this is all that such negotiations will amount to if someone like Obama approaches the Iranian government with only his good will. Yes, we've wasted opportunities to engage Iran before now, but that does not mean we should now capitulate to the threat of nuclear proliferation in the region.
I'm sure this perspective will be unpopular with the readers here, but I think it’s important to remember that one does not need to be a crazed "neocon" to believe in the efficacy and occasional necessity of force in foreign affairs. Rather, at times, the judicious application of force has been important to furthering a liberal international agenda. If you believe such a foreign policy is not only in our national interest but also moral, I think you must be willing to inquire as to the role force should play in bringing it to fruition, along with all that logically follows from the use of that force. I very much doubt that kind words and economic incentives are always enough to sway regimes like those in Sudan and Burma (or in Iraq before the war for that matter) from brutalizing innocent civilians or threatening international peace and stability. At the same time, for deterrence and negotiation to work, when it is preferable to and more effective than force, we must be able to bring a credible threat against such intransigent opponents. This is Friedman's point, and it makes perfect sense to anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of the politics of the Cold War.