I’m sure I’ve mischaracterized Steve Walt somewhat in earlier posts. The other night at Columbia, I noticed that he’s a leftwinger at heart. When Mearsheimer said that we would not have invaded Iraq if Al Gore had been elected president, Walt corrected him puckishly: "If he had become president." I.e., he was elected.
Later Walt said perhaps the smartest thing that was said all night. Look at some of the reporters in the English and Israeli press. Bradley Burston, Akiva Eldar, Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, Patrick Seale, Robert Fiske. All have been employed by mainstream media. Here we have a "much narrower range of views expressed." Something is terribly wrong with America.
This is a leftist critique, and completely damning at a time when our country has so lost its way in the Middle East. Our press has been instrumentalized; it’s very hard to make a living if you’re on the left. (I speak here from my own experience. I am a highly-experienced journalist, I used to make lots of money working for mainstream outfits. Those editors all still like me, but I’m not allowed to go near these issues, I’m simply off the reservation.) Of course it speaks to the political realignment that is afoot: leftwingers and realists, merging camp against the revolutionary neocons, evangelists, and global interventionists…
