Yesterday I saw the neoconservative Robert Kagan on Charlie Rose. It was an astonishing performance, as it suggested the psychic torment that those who pushed the Iraq war are evidently now undergoing and suppressing at the same time.
Kagan’s message re Iraq was, Look Charlie, it’s nothing new for the U.S. to get a bad image in the eyes of the world. Guess what, these things are inevitable when you are powerful. Yes Abu Ghraib and the mishandling of the occupation have made us look bad, but we’ve been there before.
His specific claims: from 1968 to 1974, the U.S. was also hated worldwide, from Vietnam to Kent State to Watergate. We were "far from perfect" then also. The latest cycle of hatred of the U.S. actually began in ’98 and ’99, when Samuel Huntington wrote that we have become the "lonely superpower" and a French minister called us a "hyperpower." I.e., Iraq came along much later and was merely another pretext for disliking the big guy on the block. And let us be clear: by Iraq War, Kagan seems to mean only Abu Ghraib and the "mishandling"
of the occupation. The invasion itself was a brilliant idea. Bush and Rumsfeld screwed it up. (Personal message to Donald Rumsfeld: I hear you have chosen to give away all the money for your book. You have my great admiration for that decision. I hope you tell us all about the geniuses you listened to in the runup to the war).
I found Kagan’s performance astonishing because he was doing his offhanded utmost to market arrogance as a humane trait (hundreds of thousands dead through the abuse of power), and of course to avoid getting tagged for the error he made. But it is Out damn spot time. It seems apparent that like McNamara and Bundy and the other Vietnam thinkers, Iraq is now and forever The only thing the neocons have ever done; and they will be twisting and turning over that mistake for the rest of their lives. Though it is a marvel they still get a platform to do so. Kagan’s intellectual airshow is the exact opposite of the performance by the brave young men who served in Iraq and went to Congress to tell about the nightmares they have experienced.
I believe I heard Kagan call himself a "progressive" too, trying to evade the neocon label. Charlie Rose is a smart guy, he should have confronted Kagan over Iraq. As it is, the commenters on Charlie Rose are raising the usual questions about Kagan’s Israel-views.
"Iraq is now and forever The only thing the neocons have ever done; and they will be twisting and turning over that mistake for the rest of their lives."
…and everyday they help to make life unbearable and a dead end for the palestinians and the lebanese. and they want to add syria and iraq. many memories we will have of the criminalcons.
"twisting and turning". hopefully very soon at the end of a rope.
Charlie Rose is a smart guy, he should have confronted Kagan over Iraq. "
i stopped watching rose years ago. i got tired of his pro israel views. he is a neocon himself.
Yaron Brooks, Strangelove-wannabe and psychopath extraordinaire, framed the question succinctly (although unable to apply it to himself):
"It’s irrelevant what you think you are, the question is what you truly are."
Bingo!
Kagan thinks he's some kind of do-gooder, a right-thinking Wonderwonk, a "progressive," even. But it's irrelevant what he thinks; the world is capable of judging objective reality, just as it judged the nazis at Nurenburg, as it judged Eichmann. Ward Churchill (and Zerzan) are wrong: the bond-traders who died in the Towers were not "little Eichmanns" any more than Churchill is when he fuels his car (thereby participating passively in a destructive and immoral system). Kagan et al. are the true Eichmanns, the actual mechanics of death who, lacking human empathy, industriously engineer the fresh hells that we all must endure.
What you truly are. What Truman truly was, by ordering the atom bombing of civilian populations. What the pilots and bomb crews were by actuating it. What mad little think-tankers and press barons truly are when they foment wars that do nothing to improve the human condition, but everything to degrade and savage it. What the entire nazi hierarchy that brought forth SS Einzatskommandos and concentration camps were. What the "leaders" of Burma are when they refuse humanitarian aid. On and on, the examples multiply.
What they truly are.
Monsters.
Like Yaron Brooks (or Peikoff, or others of that ilk), when he advocates the use of nuclear weapons against civilian populations, taking the Hiroshima fireball as his Shekina glory, guiding him through the Desert of Indecisiveness towards a glorious new bloodletting. What is Yaron Brooks, truly, when noises like that issue from his blowhole?
How is he not a monster, plain and simple?
Thanks Slomo, while you are around for posting the Dutch Finkelstein interview. I just got news that my ordered books are in the mail.
Concerning the two people you don't remember. They are Nadja Abu Haj, who is a tenured prof now at Columbia. That's the New York connection.
And the second lady in DePaul is Mehrene Larudee, who while denied tenure seems to be still teaching at DePaul. So maybe her tenurship might be simply postponed till there waves have given way to a smoother surface (forgive my handling of metaphors "I am here English to learn";-) A never ending love affair):
http://tinyurl.com/6xbkkf
Here she is on video, our misogynist/woman hater – may not agree. But I have to admit, I like what I see, and what I hear:
http://tinyurl.com/626nle
Here's the context for what is being played out before our eyes:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/iraq-israel-iran_b_62995.html
Damn, it's really depressing.
Thinking Americans who care about our nation and our future are really concerned.
Commit a crime disguised as a different crime and debate the latter to death. The Neocons didn't misjudge the Iraqi invasion or it's consequences. Can you even imagine their data on Iraqi tribal dynamics and post-Invasion projections?
The Neocons achieved everything they desired:
Saddam, who had the the temerity to pay the families of suicide bombers, was publicly hanged. A huge permanent US military presence now guards Israel and flanks Iran on the east and west. Lebanon leads the way to a Syria strike, etc.
How many American GIs would have died invading Japan if it were not for the A-Bomb? A small clue gleaned at the time was what happend when the GIS attacked a few islands near Japan.
I just wish Americans would look at what the Bush doctrine (copied from the Israeli doctrine) will do to us, and what it has done so far.
Nothing will change so long as chickenhawks are in charge in the USA.