Liberal Iraq war cheerleader writes insane screed against other liberals. The liberal New York Times and New Republic fellate him for it.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
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[…] In reality, if you study what’s happening on the ground in the Middle East , you find that not only is violent Islamic fundamentalism a distinctly fringe minority view, it’s getting pushed to extinction by the growth of womens’ rights … Continued here: Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » The story of the liberal media in … […]
rootless-e
you can’t be “serious” unless you are lightweight.
tofubo
what liberal meadea ??
youtube.com/watch?v=ss8LDBNcsWc
Mike Kay
I wouldn’t be so hard on the corporate media for blowing a “Liberal Iraq war cheerleader”. The blogosphere is no different. After all, just a couple of years ago, the blogosphere fell head over heels in love with “Liberal Iraq war cheerleader” john edwards.
JGabriel
NY Times:
Praise him with great praise! Because, in America, it requires great and manly courage to criticize Muslims. Praise him!
.
Svensker
Fucking racist assholes.
What is a “tantric” tone, BTW, when it’s at home? Or an “almost tantric” tone, I should say.
burnspbesq
If all of life is like junior high school, is this the self-styled intellectual left’s equivalent of throwing someone in a locker? Seems about equal on the silly-and-pointless scale.
burnspbesq
@Svensker:
Hold up a sec. It’s possible to dislike Tariq Ramadan without being either racist or an asshole. Hope you have some other evidence to support those charges (I think it would be easier to get a conviction if you charged Berman with conspiracy to distribute stupidity).
Delia
This is all a little group of people who know each other way too well. And yes, it’s like junior high, except they know bigger words. So instead of “fucking lie” they write “tantric tone.” It impresses the teacher more.
Mike Kay
@burnspbesq: are the Mets experiencing their katrina moment?
Linda Featheringill
@Svensker: And how can you be “almost tantric”? I would have thought that either you is or you ain’t.
burnspbesq
@Mike Kay:
I know someone would go there. I didn’t expect it to be you.
JGabriel
Svensker:
If a tantric tone = “Omm”, then I’m guessing an “almost tantric tone” = “Umm?”
.
DougJ
@burnspbesq:
Yes, I agree. My objection is with writing an entire book about one magazine article and mocking the writers of it for not knowing everything that he turned up in three years of research.
JGabriel
burnspbesq:
True. And it’s possible to dislike Ramadan and, like Berman, still be an asshole anyway.
.
Mark S.
That’s for sure. I’ve never heard of any of these people.
valdivia
when the Berman piece appeared in TNR two years ago it launched a fight that went on for months in the pages of the european press. The article itself was already like a book very very very long and very very much in need of an editor. It was all guilt by association. Berman may have had a point about something missing in Buruma’s profile but he never delivered in proving anything concrete about Ramadan. I have heard that in this book he takes the fight to all the people–especially the NYRB–who took Buruma’s side.
Actually it is a pity because his Tale book, before the Terror and Liberalism one was actually quite good.
ETA–and yes this is all about a small group of people who know each other really well arguing with each other in public.
MikeJ
Dwight Garner, the fuckstick who wrote the NYT review.
mclaren
As you’d expect for a lightweight crank like Berman, he received a MacArthur “genius” award for his book “Terror and Liberalism.” The only surprise at this point? Why hasn’t Dubya yet gotten a MacArthur “genius” award?
If you read Berman’s “Terror and Liberalism,” you’ll find that he savagely attacks liberals like Chomsky for their alleged approval of terrorists like the Palestinians. Berman seems to have been so badly traumatized by 9/11 that he is willing to pay any price, bear any burden (in JFK’s words) to get rid of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism worldwide. That price includes invading Iraq, invading Afghanistan, and if he had his way, invading Syria, invading Lebanon, ad infinitum,
The most notable takeaway from Berman’s book is the wildly hysterical tone. Berman describes Islamic fundamentalism as “a pathological mass movement” that’s “drunk on slaughter.”
This is pretty weird stuff. Islamic fundamentalism is not a mass movement — it’s a radical fringe. And if they’re so drunk on slaughter, why have there been so few terrorist attacks, relatively speaking? If you compare the frequency of Islamic fundamentalist terror attacks since 2001 to the rate of Red Brigade terrorist attacks in the 1970s, you’ll discover that there were actually more attacks in Europe in the 70s by Russian-financed Marxist terrorists like Carlos the Jackal than there are in the 2000s by Islamic fundamentalists inspired by Sayiid Qutb.
So Berman seems to be wildly overreacting to 9/11. This puts him in the same class with most of the American population, who have eagerly given up their constitutional rights and hysterically shrieked by the American military to invade middle eastern countries with no discernible connection to 9/11.
It’s also worth noting that Berman makes a category error. Just because Chomsky supports the essential political grievances of the Palestinians doesn’t mean Chomsky supports their use of terrorism, and Chomsky himself has repeatedly said that.
Berman diagnoses Islamic fundamentalism as a pathological reaction of middle eastern societies to their contact with liberal western democratic societies, and he’s probably right about that. Where he’s wrong is in his bizarre solution, a Cheneyesque world domination fantasy where America invades and conquers pretty much every third world Moslem country, aking to Thomas P. M. Barnett’s crazy screed “The Pentagon’s New Map.” Eternal war for eternal security. Aside from being batshit insane, it’s wildly impractical. Even a military budget 10 times what we spend now wouldn’t be enough to support that kind of imperial global campaign of conquest, and in any case America can’t continue to spend anything like the amount of money we’re spending now on our military because the money just isn’t there for it. Even the Pentagon realizes this, by the way, and their latest Quadrennial Defense Review foresees a drastic drop in America’s military spending as the gigantic bills for our crumbling infrastructure and our broken out-of-control health care system come due.
In reality, if you study what’s happening on the ground in the Middle East, you find that not only is violent Islamic fundamentalism a distinctly fringe minority view, it’s getting pushed to extinction by the growth of womens’ rights and the accelerating liberalization of islamic societies.
For example, Saudi Arabian women are increasingly fighting back against the Saudi religious police, in many cases intimidating them and forcing the religious police to flee when women gather in groups. Saudi Arabia has just opened the first university in the middle east that includes female students, and other Moslem countries in the middle east are now following suit. Iranian women openly mock and deride the fundamentalist clerics and wear lipstick in open defiance of various fatwas.
To put it bluntly, Islamic fundamentalism is on the run, and will vanish within our lifetimes as any kind of noticeable political force. This is why Berman’s proposed ‘solution’ is so crazy. All the Western liberal democracies have to do is…nothing — and the inevitable push of womens’ right and advancing technology and liberalization will force middle eastern societies out of the 7th century and into the 21st.
rootless-e
therapeutic violence
is therapeutic – Koans of Richard Cohen
valdivia
@mclaren:
sorry but Berman received the MacArthur *years* before he wrote the Terror book.
rootless-e
just war time,
And the livin’ is easy
intellectuals are jumpin’
And they’re piling it high
Daddy warbucks is rich
And think tanks are lookin’
So hush your conscience
and tell a lie
One of these mornings
the orphans will be weeping
but spread out some funding
and we’ll take to the sky
Warren Terra
To be fair, Cons who criticize Con positions also get MSM attention (eg Frum). The difference is in the treatment of true believers: Cons get respect, Libs are lucky to get scorned instead of ignored.
mclaren
@Validivia: Thanks for that correction. I stand corrected. In any case, my point remains valid — if you read Berman’s “Terror and Liberalism,” you’re not getting any kind of insight into anything, and you’re certainly not encountering the work of a genius. It’s just another hysterical philippic by yet another upper-middle-class white guy who has become panicked out of his mind by some burning buildings on TV.
rootless-e
@mclaren:
hysterical philippic
there’s a phrase to conjure with.
rootless-e
Berman reminds me of Randolph Bourne – or rather of the behavior Bourne described.
valdivia
@mclaren:
on this I agree. 9/11 did something to this man’s brain. Again his work before was something very very different–polemic yes and the style similar but the content had a different kind of urgency (and a different object).
DougJ
@mclaren:
Thanks — good comment.
Comrade Luke
Really? Even the liberal New Republic?
Turbulence
@burnspbesq:
Hold up a sec. It’s possible to dislike Tariq Ramadan without being either racist or an asshole. Hope you have some other evidence to support those charges (I think it would be easier to get a conviction if you charged Berman with conspiracy to distribute stupidity).
Sure, it is possible. But consider the facts. Berman begged and pleaded for a war like spoiled brat ogling the latest McDonalds Happy Meal toy. He got his war. It obliterated a million people. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead…. Now, after this massive and totally predictable frackup, did he express any contrition? Any remorse at all? Any “oh God, I’m sorry, what have I done?”? Any sackcloth and ashes? No. That’s either because Iraqis aren’t people to him OR because his pride is way more important than a million dead people. Instead we get rewarmed third rate incompetence dodge BS. It astonishes me that this man lacks the basic decency to commit suicide.
Look, I’m sure that Hitler hated some people that were actually assholes. But given what I know about Hitler, I’m going to need a lot more evidence than just his say so before I believe him about any given asshole. If Ramadan is actually a bad dude, there should be someone besides this sociopathic waste of flesh willing to say so.
Turbulence
@mclaren: Saudi Arabia has just opened the first university in the middle east that includes female students, and other Moslem countries in the middle east are now following suit.
Um, bullshit. This is a complete frakking lie. For starters, Egypt has may universities that are open to women. Also, my mother did her undergraduate degree in engineering at a university in Egypt. Her graduating class was 40% female. She came to the US and got a master’s degree in the same field. There was only one other woman in her class.
dslak
Due to the persistent allegations by Berman and his ilk, Ramadan has actually written a book detailing his views on many of the issues on which he’s accused of being in league with fundamentalists or engaging in double-speak. You’d think somebody intent on engaging in a book-length character assassination against him would bother to read it.
Or perhaps not.
joe from Lowell
A near-certain sign that one is discussing a steaming pile of crap.
Yutsano
@Turbulence: Not to mention something in the range of 60% of the students in Iranian universities are women. This is not to say there aren’t universities in the Middle East that are exclusive to men, but those tend to be the theological colleges.
Turbulence
@Yutsano: Yeah, I tried to edit my comment with an addition that mentioned that most universities in the middle east admit women, but for some reason the comment editor hated on me.
Turbulence
@mclaren: Berman diagnoses Islamic fundamentalism as a pathological reaction of middle eastern societies to their contact with liberal western democratic societies, and he’s probably right about that.
Sorry to hate on you some more mclaren. Believe it or not, I think your comment was actually pretty insightful. Except for the women at universities bit. And I’m going to have to disagree with the above too.
Islamic fundamentalism isn’t so much a reaction to contact with liberal democratic societies. I mean, Iran had a pretty liberal democracy before we killed their leader and brought the Shah to power. Rather, fundamentalism became the primary outlet for social change because autocratic regimes executed or imprisoned everyone who agitated for democracy except those in mosques. Talk about democracy in public in Egypt and Mubarek’s goons will beat you up or imprison you. Do it in a mosque and you might just make it. So surprise surprise, all real political activity moves to the mosques!
burnspbesq
@Turbulence:
How about if I consider your allegations, and decide for myself (in light of the totality of the available evidence) whether they are facts?
Don’t take it personally. I don’t take anything anyone says here about anything at face value, until they have a track record. That’s just how I am.
El Cid
@Turbulence: No no no no no! We must see the enemy as unchanging, as non-dynamic, as ever and perpetually evil, at one point primitive, brutish, unevolved, barbaric, a simpleton race, and at another point — simultaneously — on the edge of killing us all! There can be no change that we do not bring! No improvement to their societies which do not arrive as notes tied to our spears! How dare you bring history into such debates?
Ron Beasley
Keep in mind the neocons were once Democrats and for the most part socially liberal ones. They only became Republicans after Scoop Jackson died and the dirty fucking hippies drove them out of the Democratic party after Vietnam. In fact I read somewhere that Richard Perle is still a registered Democrat.
Quiddity
Look for the Berman book to be used by conservatives as ammo to fire back at liberals after the recent “epistemic closure on the Right” debate.
Svensker
@burnspbesq:
These boys trade on anti-mooslimism. It’s what they do. If one were to substitute “Jew” or “Judaism” for “Muslim” or “Islam” in their work, one would be drummed out of town as a rabid anti-semite. They don’t get called on it, except by a few deranged lefties, because hating on Muslims, Arabs or Iranians is not really socially unacceptable.