Never expected to see this much good sense in the Washington Post Kaplan Daily. No doubt Kaplan’s latest ombudsperson has already drafted a tear-stained apology to Andrew Breitbart.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.
Fuck these fucking interesting times.
Come on, man.
If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.
Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.
How stupid are these people?
Accountability, motherfuckers.
There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.
Technically true, but collectively nonsense
An almost top 10,000 blog!
Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.
These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.
DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.
When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.
The words do not have to be perfect.
Damn right I heard that as a threat.
I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.
The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.
Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.
Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.
Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.
“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.
I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.
Only Democrats have agency, apparently.
Corner Stone
Curious. You’d think that as a newsman and journalist during that time he would have known a little more about the opposition to that decision.
Face
Cue Eric Son of Eric’s Strike Farce sending hairpieces and small rugs to Koppel’s home address, published in a blog post.
Linda Featheringill
Koppel is right, of course.
This country has had that problem for a long time. During much of the 20th Century, US response to the threat of communism in the form of USSR caused us more damage than the actual USSR ever did.
I don’t know what the cure for all of that is.
DanF
@Corner Stone: “Impotent” would have been a better word choice. Although much of the world was against the war, we were impotent to stop it. And the Democrats in congress – at least the ones not cheering the war on – were indeed flaccid.
Violet
Wow. Who knew Koppel was a liberal blogger? He can’t be a respected journalist because respected journalists focus on things like crazy pastors threatening to burn Korans or Sarah Palin’s latest twats.
It’s all arriving very late, but I’m still glad to see some heavy hitters say things like this. Perhaps enough people will join to create a chorus and America will get its collective head out of the fear sand.
kwAwk
Its too bad that when Koppel had the reins of one of the most powerful news shows in the country that he wasn’t more dedicated to making this point.
Sadly, it took Keith Olberman on Countdown to start the wheels turning in getting people to look intelligently at the Bush administration.
Fergus Wooster
Critical error – he still feels the need to attribute good faith to the Bush White House, despite all evidence that WMD’s were seized upon as a “convenient, bureaucratic” excuse per Wolfowitz. Also:
Head meets desk.
Corner Stone
@DanF: It was a decent op-ed overall, even though it did contain quite a few tropes, and I am no fan of Koppel.
I guess impotent or ineffective would have been a better choice even though he got his point across.
Just makes it seem like you had 6 people outside a couple City Halls in California holding signs or something, instead of the millions around the world vocally opposing it.
edited a little
JAHILL10
@Linda Featheringill: Stop selling our souls and our children’s futures to the military industrial complex might be a start. As soon as Bush declared a “war on terror” I knew we were in for it, an endless war against nebulous enemies that could be used to justify all manner of ridiculous weapons programs, etc. Just like the Cold War. Eisenhower knew what he was talking about.
@Corner Stone: I remember being part of the opposition to that war, but I don’t recall feeling flaccid at the time. I do recall getting spit on and called unAmerican for marching though Philadelphia in protest though.
Hugin & Munin
Like all VSPs, I’m going to have to wait until the Krauthammer tells me what to think about this.
bkny
@Corner Stone: ted was too busy gearing up for his tank ride across the desert as he accompanied the invading u.s. army into iraq.
Face
I see whacha did there. I like your writing style.
Hugin & Munin
Corner Stone: Hush now child, the adults are
talkingfucking rats.Frank
@Fergus Wooster:
Bush’s own Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, stated that at the very first cabinet meeting 8 months before 911 that Cheney, bush et al were taking about Iraq as if it was a foregone conclusion that they were going to be attacked. Koppel is just ignoring facts here.
Fergus Wooster
@Frank: Yup. How he can pretend not to know that at this point is beyond me. Made that editorial frustrating as hell to read.
Plus that added “The Iraqis tricked us into invading!” aside.
I suppose I should give him some credit for somewhat seeing the light (seven years later), but color me unimpressed.
DanF
@Corner Stone: True enough. “Flaccid” is a poor frame – and maybe even “impotent” is a poor word choice – “irrelevant” may have been better. We were ignored and there was nothing that was going to stop the bastards.
Corner Stone
@Hugin & Munin: I always wonder what blog he thinks he’s on when he says that.
Donald G
Am I the only one who remembers Koppel repeatedly invoking the line that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” in the weeks following 9/11, especially during the Nightline special on biological warfare during the Anthrax crisis?
The Republic of Stupidity
@Linda Featheringill:
Sadly enough… there is no known, readily available cure for teh Stupid at this time… but teams of scientists are laboring away as we debate the issue…
13th Generation
I’ve forgotten who was originally “shrill”, i.e., where this frequent moniker comes from.
Can anyone remind me, it’s driving me crazy.
kay
Screw him with this “we” stuff. I didn’t inflate anything, and either did the vast majority of the public.
Koppel’s friends in media did, because they are incapable of dismissing the nonsense that Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich spew, and because they need to invent two “legitimate” sides on each and every issue to create the conflict that brings them dollars.
Frank
@kay:
Amen to that. And why does every fricking main stream media outlet find it necessary to stop everything every time the idiot from Alaska posts something on Facebook? Would do they do same for Michael Moore or somebody else on the left? Of course not.
TooManyJens
@Corner Stone:
Oh, those millions of people in the streets were just “focus groups”. Our King said so, so it must be true.
singfoom
Wow, that pisses me off. Almost every single person I knew at the time was against the Iraq War. I marched several times in crowds of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands against the war.
I love how the opposition is ascribed the attribute of flaccid when the real problem was that the media coverage was slanted and ignored anyone who opposed the idea or had anything to say that involved critical thinking skills instead of the “Yeah, we really need to invade those guys, they’re just begging us to come and invade them so they can give us candy and flowers.”
Kudos to Koppel for making some sense about the stupid of now, but shame on him for not recognizing the media’s absolute and complete failure to actually report the facts and educate the populace during the run up to the invasion.
kay
@Frank:
Sits for interviews, and answers questions. He makes himself available to media, when he’s promoting a film, and there’s risk in that, and everyone watching understands the deal.
Unlike Sarah Palin, who they relentlessly promote completely free of charge, and risk-free, to her, under the fraudulent auspices of “public interest”.
They’ve donated millions of dollars in advertising for the exclusive benefit of the Palin family, and they’ve made themselves look like clueless dupes in the process. She’s got some racket going. Maybe they wouldn’t have to cut newsroom budgets if they charged for advertising.
PurpleGirl
Re inflate. No, I think he means conflate. Sloppy language does not help matters.
Larry Signor
@kay: You get my vote for accuracy. The shit for brains sycophants of the Press would like to believe they are participating in The Wave at a high school football game. Just for amusement, here is a copy of an email I received from Intrade:
Derivative wingnuttery.
El Cid
@singfoom: Maybe all the Iraq war protesters should have dressed up in Revolutionary War / George Washington outfits and carried signs that Democrats = Hitler, then you could have gotten coverage.
Corner Stone
@PurpleGirl:
I’ve re-read the entire thing again and I actually think the op-ed is an allegory for his failing/failed sex life.
“flaccid”, “inflate”, “fill the void”, “relatively tiny”
Jay B.
@13th Generation:
“Shrill” comes from descriptions of Krugman and other people who were right about Bush. I think it started with Krugman’s blasting of Bush’s lies about “fuzzy math” and tax cuts. The flaccid response to a correct, forceful argument against Bush policy often was that [people like Krugman] was right on the merits, but too shrill to be taken seriously.
There was even this.
TooManyJens
@Jay B.: Good catch. If you go back to the third post on Shrillblog (which I can’t link to because of Blogger’s notoriously broken permalinks — did they ever fix that?), Krugman is referred to as the “founding member” of the Order of the Shrill.
catclub
Did anyone else notive that this makes no sense:
“Pakistan has an arsenal of 60 to 100 nuclear warheads. Were any of those to fall into the hands of al-Qaeda’s fundamentalist allies in Pakistan, there is no telling what the consequences might be.
Again, this dilemma is partly of our own making. America’s war on terrorism is widely perceived throughout Pakistan as a war on Islam. A muscular Islamic fundamentalism is gaining ground there and threatening the stability of the government, upon which we depend to guarantee the security of those nuclear weapons. Since a robust U.S. military presence in Pakistan is untenable for the government in Islamabad, however, tens of thousands of U.S. troops are likely to remain parked next door in Afghanistan for some time. ”
We have stationed a fire truck on this of a lake in case the city on the other side bursts into flames.
We are also pumping gasoline through underground pipes into that city.
Wish us luck!
catclub
@Larry Signor:
He is backing down in the way designed to maximize publicity.
He also appears to think we will be fooled that he is saving face by claiming a deal on the NY YMMA.
Tsulagi
Koppel has it right. I’m guessing bin Laden has also happily used the “No one could ever have predicted” line when hanging with other jihadis referring to Bush and Cheney. Never dreamed he’d have such willing and eager buttboys in his stable along with lesser asses like Rummy, Feith, Wolfie, et al.
Franks had it right about Feith. What he didn’t add in a fit of diplomacy was how many in the civilian defense leadership in the Bush admin was in constant, fierce competition for the coveted “stupidest fucker on Earth” trophy.
Mark S.
@El Cid:
The media is only interested in protests that further the interests of the plutocracy.
Well, they also like racism. They would never show a Koran being burned, but they’ll devote hundreds of hours of coverage to the idiot proposing to do so. That’s the journalistic equivalent to the black bar across the tits.
gene108
The tough talk in 2002 could’ve been the greatest single foreign policy accomplishment of Bush, Jr.
After the authorization of force was signed, Iraq agreed to get weapons inspectors back in.
If Bush & Co. had stopped there and not invaded, the saber rattling would’ve proven how tough America can be, when we threaten military force.
That’s truly the sad, sad part about the invasion of Iraq. There was actually a relatively positive outcome to the saber rattling during the summer of 2002, by getting the inspectors back into Iraq.
If Bush & Co. weren’t lying bastards about their intentions, so much bloodshed could’ve been avoided and America would’ve come out looking better for getting Saddam to back down regarding the weapon’s inspectors.
Hell, maybe North Korea would’ve gotten the message and would’ve put a halt to their nuclear programs and not have nuclear weapons now.
mclaren
No one quite knows how to describe the worldwide mass opposition to the Iraq invasion because that event ripped the mask off American oligarchical plutokakistocracy and revealed it for what it is, something with no connection to democracy.
Once the wealthy elites decide on a course of action in America nowadays, every human being in the country can rise up and surge into the streets to protest en masse and it won’t make a bit of difference. If necessary, the entire U.S. population will get firehosed and gunned down and in extreme circumstances, bombs will be dropped on the American population and the U.S. army called out to gun down unarmed civilians in order to clear the rabble out of the streets and allow the elites to continue whatever policy they’ve decided on.
Of course, this is just wild talk. The police have never dropped bombs on other Americans in a populated neighborhood. And of course the U.S. army has never attacked striking worker with rifles, shooting unarmed men and women down like dogs.
I guess I’m just mentally ill. This really is a democracy after all. Those mass demonstrations against the Iraq invasion in 2002 were just “flaccid” and that’s why the Iraq invasion continued undeterred.
Pangloss
This just proves the far-left liberal liberalness of the ultra-liberal liberal media.
licensed to kill time
Kudos to Koppel for finally seeing what us rational folks have been seeing all along. Little tiny microscopic nanokudos, way after the fact. >.< ARGGH.
timb
On memeorandum, Koppel’s piece links to a Fallows piece (always a good idea) and from there to an Australian academic who paints the clearest picture of our times, as we emulate the Brtis at the end of the of 19th Century and find ourself financing porduction and making nothing
At 41 I doubt I will live to see the end of American hegemony, but my children have a good chance to live in a second rate society, neo-feudal society where 60+% of the wealth is in a few people’s hands and everything else is made and used in China. Thanks short-sighted morons in the media and political class
tomvox1
@Corner Stone:
I think he is referring to Congress…
Final vote to authorize Bush war powers in Iraq AKA Iraq Resolution:
House of Reps: 297-133
Senate: 77-23
Those are (greater than?) constitutional amendment-type supermajorities in favor of invasion, so I’d classify the Congressional opposition as less than a hard-on at least, if not completely flaccid.
Koppel’s column should be taught in schools from here on out (in tandem with “1984”)–this is a classic of clear-eyed policy analysis and big brass kudos to Ted for writing it.
Corner Stone
@tomvox1:
What do you think it teaches?
tomvox1
@Corner Stone:
It teaches the diametric opposite of the prevailing narrative that we must chase terrorists to every corner of the earth (as well as surrender many of our individual domestic rights) in a war without end in order to insure our national security. It teaches that fear is a dreadful compass to steer by and reminds us that we are the strong ones, not Al Qaeda; to respond to the threats of a small group of guerilla/asymmetric fighters with overwhelming force projected to far away alien lands in search of them is a fool’s errand and plain bad policy. And we should know better by now.
As far as I have seen, this point of view is sadly underrepresented in our foreign/domestic policy discourse. And whether or not it was written by someone in the much-maligned MSM, it is still one of the more cogent and easily-digestible essays I have read on this important alternative (and correct) take on recent American history. Not that others haven’t written similar or better or more detailed versions of the same thesis, just that this piece is extremely well argued and, considering the source, will have the benefit of Cronkite-like “respectability” behind it.
Why it should be taught in tandem with 1984 is because Koppel completely glosses over the venality of Bush/Cheney’s desire to start a war without end to further their political aims.
dopey-o
@The Republic of Stupidity:
scientists are indeed working on a cure for stupidity. they are laboring in long white coats, thru long dark nights, in laboratories far and near.
and about 15 minutes after they release their vaccine, it will be declared a dangerous mind-altering drug and outlawed. probably by a democratic president and senate.
sigh.