Krauthammer's Tiger Rock

All these years, and Charles Krauthammer is still insisting that the lack of a second AQ attack proved that the War on Terror worked.

Of course, you could just as plausibly argue for the release of Alice Cooper's Dragontown  as the reason why there was no second attack.

What's really funny is that he's pretending that two "hot wars" in the War on Terror didn't cost a truckload of money because it was only a little more than a trillion dollars. Apparently a fair percentage of THE YEARLY DOMESTIC PRODUCT OF THE UNITED STATES isn't a big deal to him.

"Entitlements" are a big deal to him. Of course. They usually are to wealthy apologists for the ultra-rich, especially ones like Krauthammer that haven't the faintest clue how any of this works, and are just mouthing the words they're told to say by their handlers and sponsors. Social Security and Medicare, unlike the botched conflicts that he advocates and apologizes for, actually help people. Krauthammer wouldn't know what "helping people" was like if you gave him diagrams.

It isn't as bad as the spectacle of a Bush-admin neoconservative trying to take credit for the Arab Spring, like Michael Gerson. That goes beyond wrong to simply nauseating. But it still shows us exactly why America is in the fix it is: because people like this are given newspaper columns, fame, and power... instead of people with ideas, insights, track records and a positive outlook.

One of the lessons of the last decade is really simple: never trust neoconservatives. They cannot govern countries, they cannot fight wars, they cannot budget responsibly, and they cannot be trusted to provide advice about anything.   Mock them, deride them, and dismiss them if you want...just never, ever trust them. Their ideas are poison and their doctrines corrupt.

They were wrong. They were ALWAYS wrong. They always will be.

Missile Defense?

Seriously? That's the supposed reason to stop the latest START treaty? Krauthammer, did somebody put your columns in a time capsule from August of 2000 or something?

Never mind that he calls the tax bill "bipartisan", when it was a big Republican victory. That's why they were willing to hand over DADT, which threatens the wealthy 0.1% that Dubya aptly called "his base" not one whit. They traded away the TheoCon's interests to serve the moneymen's interests, just as they have before and will again. It barely matters; Krauthammer is only bringing it up as "punch a hippy" fodder, a paen to the "bipartisanship" that he wouldn't give a shit about if Barry had an "R" beside his name.

But missile defense? You've gotta be kidding. Even if North Korea is a bit more unstable than it used to be, it's been made patently clear that America's conventional war advantage ain't what it used to be either. Maybe if this WERE 2002 or so, it might make sense, but American predominance has kind of had a difficult run since then.

Let's be honest. If Russia wanted to ruin America, they wouldn't need nukes for it. All they'd need to do is completely economically align with China and start really tightening their grasp on Eastern Europe, and there's a whole host of economic consequences that would make the White House sweat.

Why on earth would they need to, though? Putin has to see what's going on. Cold-blooded or no, he's possibly the most clear-sighted state leader the world has right now. There's no way that he's missed that America's wealthiest and their various mouthpieces (like Krauthammer!) are tearing down everything else in their quest to extract whatever cash can be produced by the other 99.9% of Americans. There's no way he's missed just how disastrous Obama's Administration has been so far, DADT or no DADT.

He, and everybody else that may (or may not) wish America harm, can just sit tight and let all the work be done for them. The danger isn't nukes. It's people like Krauthammer himself.

Sully on Krauthammer's "Derangement Syndrome"

So what the hell HAPPENED to Andrew Sullivan, anyway? I still don't get how the arch-Bush-apologist go to this point.

Anyway:

To read Charles Krauthammer today is to enter a twilight zone of an alternate reality. A country permanently occupying and colonizing a neighboring region, and treating its original inhabitants as dangerous interlopers, is the victim. An elite commando unit attacking a ship carrying toys and wheelchairs in the hours before dawn are those we should feel pity for. A country with 150 nuclear warheads and the strongest military in its region, the victor in every conventional war it has always fought, is somehow also always fighting for its very existence. A country backed by the sole superpower, supplied with aid by huge majorities in the US Congress, is facing extinction. Self-defense requires not civilly disabling and inspecting the cargo of an unarmed ship but raiding it at dawn and killing nine and injuring dozens. Basic human revulsion at a military that can kill over a thousand people - including scores of women and children in a trapped, impoverished enclave - can only be a function of anti-Semitism. A territory that is being systematically populated with Israelis in illegal settlements in contravention of the Geneva Conventions is merely a "buffer zone". You need to colonize buffer zones?

Invasion and occupation of neighboring countries is "forward defense". And asking that a two-state solution be moved forward by freezing illegal settlement construction and allowing a blockade that, while interdicting arms, doesn't seek to kill civilians and restrict the import of basic necessities is to deprive a country with 150 nuclear warheads of any legitimate form of self-defense.

This is a form of derangement, or of such a passionate commitment to a foreign country that any and all normal moral rules or even basic fairness are jettisoned. And you will notice one thing as well: no regret whatsoever for the loss of human life, just as the hideous murder of so many civilians in the Gaza war had to be the responsibility of the victims, not the attackers. There is no sense of the human here; just the tribe.

Something has been wrong here for a very long time, and now it is inescapable. Until the discourse is rescued from the victims of Israel Derangement Syndrome, Israel and America will slowly be drawn into wars they cannot ultimately win, lose every other ally they ever had, and embolden and fortify the very Islamist forces we are seeking to defuse and defeat.

Nothing to argue with here. Krauthammer's piece really is insane: the sort of "forward defense" he advocates is reminiscent of Stalin crushing Eastern Europe to keep his "buffer" against the West, and his version of "active defense" is near-Orwellian in its avoidance of anything like the words "attack" or "aggression"...despite the fact that it would just as easily justify a carpet-bombing campaign.

And then, naturally, he calls everybody who disagrees with him or criticizes Israel Nazis, who are absolutely panting for another Holocaust. Which is utterly offensive to both the Holocaust's survivors and everybody else. Nothing new there: it's Krauthammer.

Honestly. Krauthammer has been a nutball since the Cold War, but this is really beyond the pale.

Hey Krauthammer: "Go Away"

Oh, now this is marvelous. Enduring America responds to that tool Charles Krauthammer.

Mr Krauthammer,

I never thought I would open an letter to you with a word of thanks. To be honest, I have almost never agreed with your past quarter-century of syndicated polemic in US newspapers and magazines. I respect your right to hold an opinion and your skill in writing. However, I find that your analysis is more often propelled by rigid belief rather than evidence, whether that belief is a specific objective (the unbending advocacy of Israel, whatever the circumstances) or a general aspiration, such as your call for an American “unipolar era” in which all others would bow to the dominance of the United States.

Yet I must note that, in your column on Friday, “2009: The Year of Living Fecklessly”, you ostensibly recognised the post-election demonstrations in Iran as a “new birth of freedom”. I am not sure exactly what a “new birth” is — I have found that most Iranians with whom I communicate have a long-held desire for freedom — but any acknowledgement of the public calls for justice and rights is to be welcomed.

So, thank you. And now a request: Go Away.

Please go away now and do not return to Iran as the setting for your political assaults. For — and let this be acknowledged widely, if not by you than by others — the “Iranian people” whom you supposedly praise are merely pawn for your political games, which have little to do with their aspirations, their fears, and their contests.

Let us recognise that your column begins with an attack on the “feckless” Barack Obama. The Iranian case, and specifically the US negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, is the platform for another front in your continuing assault on the President. So if I agree with you that the nuclear-first approach gives “affirmation” to an embattled Iranian Government — and I do — that agreement starts from a desire not to bolster President Ahmadinead in the current domestic crisis in Iran, rather than your own domestic crisis with an American leader from a political party you do not like.

Let us recognise that your own supposed defence of the Iranian people is propelled by your own nuclear conceptions, bolstered by your emphasis on Israel: “Iran will dominate 2010. Either there will be an Israeli attack or Iran will arrive at — or cross — the nuclear threshold.” For, if this piece was completely honest, you would have informed your readers, and the Iranian people, that you have supported Israeli airstrikes. In the columns offering that support, you made no reference to how “a new birth of freedom” would be affected by missiles fired upon Iran. Your frame of vision was limited, as if this was a journalistic smart bomb, to the target of the Iranian regime.

Let us recognise that, if there is a context for you beyond this nuclear arena, it is a supposed geopolitical struggle in which an “Iran” confronts the American presence in the Middle East and Central Asia and participates in the regional battle with Israel. Thus, your support of a “revolution” is not for what it brings Iran’s people — who, incidentally, may not be protesting for a “revolution” or, more specifically, a “counter-revolution” against all the ideals of 1979 — but for “ripple effects [which] would extend from Afghanistan to Iraq (in both conflicts, Iran actively supports insurgents who have long been killing Americans and their allies) to Lebanon and Gaza where Iran’s proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, are arming for war”.

(Had I the time and patience to dissect your geopolitical construction, I might note that US officials have been quietly talking to Iran about co-operation in the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan — strange behaviour indeed if Iran is allied with the Taliban and the Sunni Al Qa’eda in Mesopotamia —- or that Hezbollah and Hamas cannot be reduced to puppets of Tehran masters. I know, however, that this would be logic falling on your stony ground of politics and ideology.)

Let us recognise, therefore, the slip of the pen in your sentences, when you refer to the apparent silence of Washington to the call of Iranian demonstrators, “Obama, Obama, you are either with us or with them”: “Such cool indifference is more than a betrayal of our values. It’s a strategic blunder of the first order.” The slip is not your implicit confession that it’s the “strategic” that really concerns you — if these protesters were far removed from your strategy for American power, you wouldn’t hear a word they were saying — but in “our values”.

Assertion of “our” values does not mean acceptance of “their” values; it ignores them or, at most, wedges them into the framework of power that you find acceptable. Simply putting out the word “freedom” as if it were a universal umbrella for any proposal that follows does nothing to acknowledge, let alone, consider the complex negotiation of religious, social, economic, and political beliefs that has propelled movement inside Iran not just for the last six months but for decades.

Let us recognise, therefore, that you can throw out supposed solutions for “them”, not because they are considered measures but because they fit a model of “regime change” which is yours, not necessarily “theirs”. You advocate, “Cutting off gasoline supplies”, even though that cut-off might do far more harm to the “Iranian people” than to the regime you are condemning. You merrily think of “covert support to assist dissident communication and circumvent censorship”, even though overt calls of covert support play into the hands of an Iranian Government invoking the spectre of “foreign intervention”. (Far better to be open, in the name of the values of freedom and communication, in proposing overt funding of anti-censorship and anti-filtering programmes, as well as the encouragement of unrestricted media.)

Let us recognise, indeed even find common ground on, “robust rhetorical and diplomatic support from the very highest level: full-throated denunciation of the regime’s savagery and persecution”. Let us do so, however, not because that denunciation supports your strategy of regime change for the sake of American power — just as your denunciation of Saddam Hussein merely propped up your campaign for years to extend a US economic, political, and military presence through the “liberation” of Iraq — but because that denunciation fulfils a morality and ethics beyond “your values”.

Let us recognise that I could have written this letter not only to you but to a legion of others who, in recent weeks, have embraced the “Iranian people” as their vehicle for regime change. Outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard put forth former Bush Administration officials and former activists for the Iraq War who now see a new platform for a US power which was not fulfilled in the military ventures of 2001-2009. Let us recognise that, in those calls, the “Iranian people” serve as pawns in a game beyond their own concerns.

After all these recognitions, let me conclude by returning to my thanks to you. For — I am certain unwittingly — you have re-affirmed this central belief:

This is not “our” regime change, “our” revolution; “our” values. This is “their” movement.

Please respect it as such. If you cannot, move on. Thank you.

Neoconservatives think it's all about them. More than that, they think that the clashes in Iran somehow validate them.

They don't. They never have. They never will. Neoconservatism is an outdated, discredited ideology; its only value was in, perhaps, serving as a foil to realism that broke apart the neoliberal/neorealist axis that dominated thought in international relations for so long. But all of its worthy ideas about values and mores in international security have been better expressed by the constructivists, and its views on internal organization were either totally incoherent or simply evil.

The nations of the world is not their playground, Iran least among them. You already screwed up two wars and damned near lost the Cold War; had Gorbachev not been a great man and great peacemaker, your blithering nonsense would have killed us all.

Scott Lucas is absolutely right. For the sake of all of us, GO AWAY.

Krauthammer and Credibility

So, apparently Barack Obama is unfit to be president. Or, at least, that's what people like Charles Krauthammer would have you believe, claiming that "To be on the same stage as the leader of the world's greatest power is, of course, a prize" and is therefore apportioned out according to whether or not the particular prospective meeting partner deserves it.

Sameer Lalwani points out the fallacy of this empirically on Steve Clemons' blog, The Washington Note: Vladimir Putin seems to enjoy more and more access the farther and farther he moves away from any semblance of democracy. I'd like to go a step further, though, and ask a simple question: what reason does anybody have to believe that Charles Krauthammer's opinion is valid?

He has been so unbelievably wrong on so many issues that it almost beggars description. He claimed that the more nuclear powers there were, the greater world security was; clearly, people don't believe that these days in the case of Iran. He claimed that the world would be better off for having a single superpower in a "unipolar moment"; it doesn't appear much stabler, except to the effect that there are no longer as many American and Soviet proxies fighting their masters' battles for them. He claimed that Iraq was both necessary and a success; it was neither, and most reputable scholars think theories of unipolar stability are about as valid as the theory of phlogiston. He continually claims that the Republicans are better suited to the task of defending the United States; even aside from this defying the historical record of the 20th century, the Bush administration put paid to that notion. He is batting zero; unlike Thomas Friedman, doesn't even seem to realize it.

The bizarre part about all this is that I think that Krauthammer's position reflects that of American foreign policy elites, but their track record hasn't been all that wonderful either. They have not succeeded with North Korea, they have not succeeded with Iran, they have not succeeded with the Palestinians, and they sure as hell have not succeeded with Iraq. If Krauthammer is simply parroting the conventional wisdom in Washington, then that only raises the question of whether to take that seriously either. Certainly "'Jaw, jaw' instead of 'war, war'", Churchill's old dictum, is a pretty good rule of thumb, and he rather famously won the war that he was involved with. The only thing that Krauthammer and his ilk can boast is the Cold War, and the only reason they "won" that was because Mikhail Gorbachev was idealistic enough to place the needs of his country over "the national interest".

I'm not an Obama backer, at least not yet, but I do think that he had an important point to make, and I support it. Provided that it is handled properly on all levels, diplomacy is better than isolation. Even in cases of quiet or open belligerency, there should be dialogue, because at some point you're going to want the belligerency to end or, God forbid, prevent it from happening in the first place. To hell with failed "analysts" like Krauthammer. Obama demonstrated that he has a better grasp on diplomacy than many of his detractors, and I think their disagreement says more about them than it does about him.

(It also says a lot about Hillary, but that's a tale for another time.)