LOL the NYT morning report thing was “Biden’s dilemma: look weak or start WW3” and that is not real nor is it a dilemma.
— Austin Gilkeson (@osutein) March 21, 2022
It is right and just to sympathize with the Ukrainian people. To offer them aid and asylum. It is evil to advocate war when you think you'll pay no price for it.
— Austin Gilkeson (@osutein) March 21, 2022
If you're framing the escalation question as "Don't be afraid of Putin, he doesn't have the stones to use nukes," you're already burning the wrong straw man.
The question is whether we want to him to take nuclear risks that can cascade toward disaster. /1— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 21, 2022
I'm tired of this argument being put as some sort of test of bravery or decency. People arguing for restraint and caution aren't arguing for surrender. They're arguing for restraint and caution, especially now that strategic victory is already out of Putin's reach. /2
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 21, 2022
I understand the urge to saddle up NATO and blast the Russia invaders to hell. But if the argument is "don't be afraid of Putin," it's a stupid argument. There are plenty of risks involved here that have nothing to do with Putin and everything to do with risks in wartime. /4x
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 21, 2022
One problem with leaving nuclear planning in the hands of the venerated nuclear priesthood is sometimes the priests have indulged in too much sacramental wine. pic.twitter.com/1G4TI0CvUs
— Christopher Clary (@clary_co) March 22, 2022
Is it a coincidence that American Old White Guys In Foreign Policy keep describing war in terms of "impotence" and "muscularity"?
— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) March 21, 2022
People seem to be engaging with this seriously when in fact it’s a piece of mental masturbation that epitomizes how for so much of the never-leave-your-desk commentariat, war is just a game, rather than pure horror https://t.co/wl7CrcqJ8q
— Miriam Elder (@MiriamElder) March 18, 2022
Ackshually… Jack Shafer has been a proud sh*tposter since long before the term was invented, which means he’s an expert on this particular media failing:
… Accusing journalists of loving war is a little like accusing windshield wipers of loving rain. War, like rain, is inevitable. Journalists exist to report on bloody conflict just as wiper blades were invented to protect our vision from inclement precipitation. This isn’t to imply that the profession’s love of combat causes war. There were wars, you’ll note, long before there were reporters. All those claims that a war-mongering William Randolph Hearst and his New York Journal promised to “furnish” the Spanish-American War if his photographer would only provide the pictures are pure myth.
Still, that love of war is back in full bloom now thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as the press fills its front pages and newscasts with the latest from Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv and Mariupol. But what drives that love? A few thumbnail explanations on that question.
War Sells. The news business has learned from experience that when war arrives, news interest spikes. Because it deals with life and death, war finds a pre-sold audience, and as long as combat lasts, the audience sticks around…
War Reporting Is Easy. Don’t get me wrong. Rushing to the front lines and reporting takes immense courage… But war rewards these daring men and women for their valor. Like the miracle of the loaves and fishes, war supplies reporters with an endless bounty of can’t-look-away stories, and that story is always changing. War offers scenes of raw human emotion, battlefield cliffhangers, tales about warring technologies and unbelievable visuals. (There’s a reason so many Hollywood blockbusters depict large, orange explosions.) The reporter who files eyewitness reports of tank battles or sniper exchanges can expect his copy to be painted Day-Glo orange by his editor and printed in prime space…
War Advances Careers. After surviving a tour of duty with honor, especially TV duty, a reporter can expect the career boost of a promotion or job dangles from competing outlets. Newspapers that previously declined to return your emails will now discover new interest in you. This is not to suggest reckless careerism on the part of war reporters, only to state the obvious…
But journalists aren’t war’s only lovers. As prefigured here a couple of times, there’s a demand side to the love equation that requires balancing. Readers and viewers covet “good news” stories about generosity and forgiveness. But few topics outside of war can attract a large, loyal audience for long, especially if the lines between good and evil have been drawn. Part of the appeal of the Ukraine war for both journalists and the news audience is that those lines are stark, allowing the audience to respond emotionally to the depiction of heroes and villains the clash creates. Journalists may love war, but so does the audience.
War for Ukraine Update 28: The International Humanitarian Aid System Seems To Have Completely Broken Down For Ukraine
Splitting Image
Shafer’s arguments are all true, as far as they go, but they overlook the fact that very few of the pundits and TV bobbleheads beating the drums for war are journalists.
They are courtiers. And courtiers have been as eager to go to war as long or longer than journalists have, and almost always for the sake of career advancement. Courtiers don’t advance themselves by reporting the news. They do it through advancing the interests of their patrons and sabotaging those of their rivals.
NotMax
Wartime neither suspends nor revokes the Peter Principle, also too.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
People are being too hard on the Times. They ‘re not saying we won’t get our hair mussed, they say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, depended on the breaks.
Think of the ratings
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
The Dump loving Times isn’t liberal (eg Judith Miller)
Asparagus Aspersions
While these people take Dr. Strangelove as a how-to manual, I think more about the Stephen Crane poem I had to read in high school.
Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom—
A field where a thousand corpses lie.
Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Swift, blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.
Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Martin
And the 24 hour news cycle really doesn’t help. It was born in war. And war gives it a constant stream of things to report and talk about, rather than the daily forensic analysis of the shit that comes out of Ted Cruz’s mouth, and the constant need for Ted Cruz to produce it.
NotMax
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
If it bleeds it leads; if it’s maimed it’s framed; if it glows it shows.
Baud
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Yeah, the only people who describe the NYT as liberal are conservatives.
p.a.
NYT:
NATO, Russia Exchange Tactical Nuke Attacks!
sign in or create account to view
JWR
Did anyone else catch Kremlin spokesbot Dmitry Peskov on tonight’s Amanpour & Co? It was chilling, to say the least. Here he is talking about Putin’s nuclear “policy”. (2:37 Youtube clip)
Boy, if the world gets through this in one damn piece… well, I’ll be very, very pleasantly surprised.
Geminid
@JWR: Cheryl Rofer includes in her Twitter timeline a lot of informed commentary on this war, especially regarding the potential for use of nuclear weapons. One commentator noted that, at least if taken at face value, Peskov’s comments reflect the doctrine common to all nuclear powers: that these weapons would be used only in the face of an existential threat.
daveNYC
@Geminid: Existential to who though? If Putin thinks his political survival requires a win in Ukraine, then I think there’s a disturbingly high chance that he might go nuclear on Kyiv.
He’s already committed himself to the destruction of Russia’s conventional forces and the ruination of their economy. The only calculation he needs to run is balancing ‘will this win the war’ vs. ‘will NATO risk MAD over Kyiv’.
Matt McIrvin
I find Adam’s Ukraine threads extremely hard to read because while his information is correct, and his strategic analysis is also correct, the emotional tone in those threads tends toward the feeling that NATO needs to find some way to jump in, and that some kind of escalation is going to happen either way so we shouldn’t get too hung up on that… and it’s hard not to get entrained.
After Iraq and Afghanistan I decided not to tinker with this particular machinery of death. And the stakes are so much higher–it is literally the survival of human civilization. Of course Zelenskyy wants a no-fly zone; wouldn’t you? I’d do the same in his situation. But if the ICBMs go flying, Ukraine will still burn along with Russia, the United States and everyone else.
JWR
@Geminid: Yeah, I kinda get that, but in the full interview, (here it is from CNN), he goes on about the “very dangerous”, secret bioweapons labs, and that the Ukrainians are the ones refusing escape to the citizens of Mariupol (WTF?!) and the fact that Ukrainians are fighting in Donbas all prove they were about to invade and reduce Russia to cinders. It was just all paranoid cray-cray, and hence my fear that he, and Putin, see everything as an existential threat to the Motherland.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m morally certain that if it were someone like a George H.W. Bush pursuing the exact same policy that Biden is now, everyone would be praising both his manliness and his thoughtful deliberateness.
Geminid
@daveNYC: The commentator qualified his assertion with “if taken at face value.” There is no certainty as to what Putin will or will not do. But he has not “already committed himself to the destruction of his conventional forces,” which the Pentagon says are still largely intact at this point.
Geminid
@Geminid: I think that the potential for his army to mutiny is bigger risk to Putin than it’s outright destruction right now.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Right.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
You and me both. The media has never let go of the GOP as the Daddy Party and the Dems as the Mommy Party.
Hell with that. We’re both the Daddy Party and the Mommy Party. They’re the Drunken Uncle Who’s Been Watching Too Much Fox News Party. And that’s been plainly obvious for years now, yet the media are somehow wired to not see it.
zhena gogolia
@p.a.: But they’ll still be running Hunter Biden articles as we burn.
lowtechcyclist
Yeah, the risk of everything going BOOM is all too real right now.
Cheryl Rofer says there’s really no way to keep an exchange of tactical nukes confined to that level. And if Putin realizes that he’s going to lose in Ukraine with strictly conventional weapons, he’s all too likely to use tactical nukes.
So what do we do about that?
That we’re even having to think about this is scary AF.
Betty Cracker
One of the things I worried most about with Biden was foreign policy. As a senator and ranking member of the foreign relations committee in the early aughts, his foreign policy instincts were often terrible, IMO. But his handling of the current situation has been incredibly deft so far. There were/are so many ways it could go wrong, so many players to manage, so many competing priorities to balance.
I wish the “Russia invades a European neighbor” curse had not come to pass at all, but thank dog it did while a competent Democratic president was in office. Trump would have been an unmitigated disaster, obviously, but even a conventional Republican pol like Rubio, Jeb, Christie, etc., would have made things worse. IMO, Biden has done about as well as anyone possibly could so far.
debbie
@Martin:
They’re all jonesing to be Arthur Kent in the first Iraq invasion. So cute in his helmet and flak jacket! //
debbie
@Geminid:
Except Putin sees Ukraine as an existential threat just because it’s there.
Geminid
@debbie: I guess it comes down to whether Putin will act irrationally, and whether officers he needs to launch a nuclear weapon would go along.
This would an irrational act. Obliterating Kyiv with a nuclear weapon will not win this war. And it would likely make China and India, his biggest allies, pull in the lifelines they offer him. The Russian economy has not collapsed yet, but without help from India and China it definitely will.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Now that the Chickenhawks are out to strut thier stuff you know the threat of a nuclear war is low.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The USAF blowing down the Russian air-defense and bombing were it wants in Russia in just one day would convince those generals that Putin isn’t crazy claiming that the West is out to kill them all.
Geminid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I think it would require more than a day for the U.S Air Force to “blow down” Russian air defenses so we could bomb Russia at will. But we’re not going to even try, at least not before a nuclear exchange.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: During the Obama administration, the stories that filtered out of the White House generally portrayed Biden as one of the most dovish members of the inner circle, less interventionist than Obama or Hillary Clinton. I think he felt burned by Bush’s foreign policy.
Anonymous At Work
@Splitting Image: I think the underlying point is that almost none of them are veterans. It’s too far out of their lived experiences for them to imagine the consequences with anything but academic detachment.
I think as well that the proper clapback to calls for a “No Fly Zone” should be, “Are you comfortable with where your house/apartment is on the Russian list for nuclear retaliation?” I.e. if we establish a no fly zone, are you comfortable with declaring war on Russia and risking them sending nukes our way, starting with DC and NYC (odds are, where these guys live)?
Uncle Cosmo
@Asparagus Aspersions:
Wilfred Owen, “Greater Love” (1918). Read the rest here.
(Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918 – a week before the Armistice.)
VOR
TFG weighed in with his wisdom (???) about handling Putin’s nuclear threat:
Where to start? Parading our submarines off Russia’s coast. First, we have posted ballistic missile subs off Russia’s coast since we’ve had ballistic missile submarines. Of course Putin knows this, but now I wonder if Trump did. Second, they are submarines which means they are under water, not visible. And our ballistic missile subs are designed to be extremely hard to detect. Third, our subs are largely in the Artic. They aren’t in St. Petersburg harbor whete the Russian people can see them. Next, we should risk killing millions of people in a nuclear war to save thousands in Ukraine?
Every day I thank god Joe Biden is in the White House and not TFG during this crisis.
Gravenstone
That tweet suggesting a single ICBM launched onto the middle of nowhere, Russia damn near set my hair on fire. Sure, imagine what the response to even a single inbound missile pointed anywhere into Russia proper might be. Even WOPR was smarter than that idjit.