Letters to the Editor
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Thomas Friedman. Michael Ledeen. Jonah Goldberg.
What do these three people have in common? Could it be a specific religious/ethnic identity, one that gives them a knee-jerk readiness to view Arabs and/or Muslims as malevolent subhumans who need to be repeatedly "taught a lesson" by the West, lest they forget their place in the world is to be hewers of wood and carriers of water (or, nowadays, petroleum) for their Judeo-Christian betters?
Of course, it isn't politically-correct to mention such a religious/ethnic factor -- but isn't it really the "elephant in the living room" when it comes to the neo-con domination of what are "acceptable" approaches to foreign relations (both among this administration and the chattering-class representatives like Friedman) when it comes to the Middle East?
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@ GG
Hey Glenn, are you going to have anything to say about this?
Thank A.L. for the link.
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/99D0C2963ED15AB288257394007C1F36/$file/0636083.pdf?openelement
Tiny url didn't work, sorry.
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sugarman, baldie. Re: BDSM/slavery subtext
Sugarman: Rove has been flogging the same horse (which is what I meant). The tactic employed in Dowd's column really doesn't differ from his framing techniques since Texas days. Whether it hurts Obama is less a concern than whether the sexualizing/impotency meme takes further root. It's a puerile and uninformative perspective. The column may as well have been written by a republican operative.
Baldie McEagle: Thanks. Let's hope Dowd was unintentionally signaling to the country's racists. Either way it was a terrible column.
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By God, madam, I believe you have it.
Cocktailhag, I think you must be right; who else could manage such a pitch-perfect imitation of Friedman except the man himself. No one else alive, not even a close relative, could possibly have any real interest in recreating such pompous mendacity simply to defend its best-known practitioner.
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About those 50, shall we say, "U.S. military advisors" in Pakistan...
There to train up a legion of native tribal fighters to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda, based on the success of the Anbar Province deals during the surge:
http://tinyurl.com/26ko89
Yup, we're in Pakistan, and we're training the locals there. Sounds like a plan. The same plan as several other countries we did this in. Pray, if that's what you know how to do, or just hope, or burn incense, or whatever, that we are supporting the right guys, since we have a nasty history of not doing so in that part of the world -- the guys we are gearing up to train, arm, and pay are accused by U.S. troops and NATO of aiding the Taliban and al Qaeda, always an encouraging sign. If any of them's named Hekmatyar, RUN!!! Can you say Charlie Wilson's War? We've had years of knowledge that the best solution to a country that in many ways is the mother of all cross-border and state-sponsored terror would be to strengthen the human rights and legal crowd and build public schools that offer secular education, but it just doesn't have that macho oomph. Or that Christian Missionary schooling. So here is a country that simultaneously manages the biggest narcotics operations on the face of the earth, trains jihadis by the thousands, and proliferates nuclear weapons technologies, and all we can do is call them our greatest ally in the war on terror, sponsor a dictator, hand them money, and now send in the advisors and creep into a guerilla war? Criminy! Even Donald Rumsfeld knew we needed to build schools there!
I liked the Juan Cole piece sysprog, but he got one thing very wrong: Reagan didn't teach the ISI to do the jihadi insurgents thing leading to the creation of the Taliban. The ISI and Pakistani Army were doing this in Kashmir before Reagan ever showed up. They taught him. (and Zawahri recruited bin Laden not the other way around, all the doctors in the refugee camps were Muslim Brotherhood, Zawahri among them, they radicalized the refugee camp Pashtuns). But it doesn't change the essential truth -- 9/11 was the direct outgrowth of Reagan's doctrine of low intensity conflicts and his botched foreign policy on Iran and Central Asia.
Thank heavens for Carlotta Gall and thank heavens she's okay.
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Friedman calls Cheney a hawk but forgets he is a "chicken hawk". Only brave enough to send others
To those of us who are still rational these people like Friedman and Dowd are as far out there on insanity's mantle as is possible without losing all connection to reality. They strive so very hard to be creative and cute that they leave the plains of rationality and float right off to Sgt. Pepper land.
These are not people that Friedman's heroes depict but assholes that the world would be better off without. They attract enemies of the same class and while they are busy showing each other their knifes and trophies decent people are joining together to solve their common problems. Friedman lives in comic books and Dowd is just a bitter, condescending egotist who traded compassion, integrity and good judgment just to get attention. Not only would they not be missed but it would be a blessing if they disappeared from public discourse.
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@William Timberman
That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it. Did you notice how this suspicious commenter fell suspiciously silent, admittedly under a hail of brickbats, after his magnum opus? I'm sure he's now repaired to his little fort at the NYT, surrounded by a sturdy fortress of royalty checks.
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Figures you'd post anonymously
Given this tripe:
Thomas Friedman. Michael Ledeen. Jonah Goldberg.
What do these three people have in common? Could it be a specific religious/ethnic identity, one that gives them a knee-jerk readiness to view Arabs and/or Muslims as malevolent subhumans who need to be repeatedly "taught a lesson" by the West, lest they forget their place in the world is to be hewers of wood and carriers of water (or, nowadays, petroleum) for their Judeo-Christian betters?
Of course, it isn't politically-correct to mention such a religious/ethnic factor -- but isn't it really the "elephant in the living room" when it comes to the neo-con domination of what are "acceptable" approaches to foreign relations (both among this administration and the chattering-class representatives like Friedman) when it comes to the Middle East?
Damn. I've been nailed. As someone who's repeatedly said that he's a Jew--born in the land of Zion no less!--on this blog, my many comments clearly show me to be a "knee-jerk readiness to view Arabs and/or Muslims as malevolent subhumans who need to be repeatedly "taught a lesson" by the West, lest they forget their place in the world is to be hewers of wood and carriers of water (or, nowadays, petroleum)". I mean, has there ever been any doubt about this.
Hats off to you for your brilliant analysis. You must have stayed up all night coming up with this. Now please excuse me as I have to go rub my hook nose in preparation for abducting some gentile children for a, um, ceremony that we Jews like to engage in from time to time. Because, as you well know, we ALL think alike and act in concert, in our fiendish ways.
Also, I had NO idea that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Hadley, Tenet, Negroponte, Bremer, Petreaus and Miller were all fellow sons and daughters of Israel. What a revelation!