Sullivan has an excerpt of a piece John Mearsheimer wrote in 2001 saying that the U.S. shouldn't invade Afghanistan. Sullivan: "And this is another reminder of the strategic brilliance of Mearsheimer, a man subjected to a vicious smear campaign because of his resistance to the Greater Israel Lobby."
This is courage. Sullivan has a mainstream perch. He is spending political capital on an important issue. As Mearsheimer himself says, Tenure means that you are supposed to speak out on important issues. And being a columnist is supposed to mean the same thing...
Phil, I love you, man.
Somewhat along the same lines, Max Blumenthal just tweeted “I am drawing a blank on names of liberal columnists/pundits who stood up to tide of jingoism immediately after #911 & who opposed invasion.”
Good question. I stood up, but as an artist. Amy Goodman was there, but she’s not considered a columnist/pundit.
SEE: Susan Sontag Was Right – link to original.antiwar.com
“…the Susan Sontag-Noam Chomsky-Michael Moore Axis of Evil was the object of near-universal opprobrium.”
Robert Fisk of course!
link to matrixmasters.com
Maybe he didn’t quite say “no invasion” but he meant it!
“Either way, we are being asked to support a war whose aims appear to be as misleading as they are secretive. We are told by the Americans that this war will be different to all others. But one of the differences appears to be that we don’t know who we are going to fight and how long we are going to fight for. Certainly, no new political initiative, no real political engagement in the Middle East, no neutral justice is likely to attend this open-ended conflict. The despair and humiliation and suffering of the Middle East peoples do not figure in our war aims – only American and European despair and humiliation and suffering.”
“names of liberal columnists/pundits who stood up to tide …”
The only mainstream voices I can think of are Paul Krugman and Frank Rich. I don’t remember Krugman pushing it very hard, perhaps because his beat is more economics. Frank Rich was only the NYT’s TV critic at the time. Maybe Roger Cohen too?
(It’s important to remember that the critical period was 2002 and early 2003, when the big PR campaign was coming out of the White House Iraq Group. By the time the bombing had started, the war party had already achieved 99% of its aim.)
note how sullivan praises obama for following mearsheimers wisdom by staying in afghanistan and perpetuating a state of belligerent war even though the original mandate has long been satisfied.
in other words, i know of SEALs who question why they are still fighting in afghanistan. and yet sullivan is still the warmongering cheerleader he was in 2003. i bet if obama personally asked him to, in that smooth, r&b player style of his, he probably even do a tour of duty in iraq.
Yep. It is Obama’s war now. Obama got it right? Right!
Still, good to read the defense of Mearsheimer.
Thanks Phil and SkepticalH
“i know of SEALs who question why they are still fighting in afghanistan.”
It’s not enough that people use canines to do their dirtywork, now they use marine mammals as well? What a hideous cruel world this is.
>> It’s not enough that people use canines to do their dirtywork, now they use marine mammals as well?
What the phoque?! Dude, that was too cheap a laugh for a man of your considerable talent. ;-)
Sullivan has the courage to write this stuff on his own blog/website, but when he is interviewed on …..say…. Bill Maher’s propaganda show, Sullivan suddenly develops amnesia.
Tom Friedman does the opposite. He uses racist language and harsh adjectives in writing about Arabs and Palestinians. But, when he goes on TV, he uses softer language and curtails his peddling of anti-Semitic (i.e. anti-Arab) bigotry.
This is impressive. Sullivan accused many of us who opposed the war against Iraq as being traitors. He also advocated using nuclear bombs against the Arabs after 911. But he has since apologized. As painful as it might be, we should accept that Sullivan in now one of the good guys.
Groan.
You’re right, ToivoS. He was lethal to people who didn’t agree with him. I got a nasty dose of it in a private email from him that was remarkable for its hauteur on top of it.
“This is impressive.”
Yup, timing is everything, huh?
A journey of a thousand miles begins. I guess he must wait for fallout from pro-Mearsheimer remark and then, a step at a time, get out the implications.
Meanwhile, most of USDA’s MSM cannot say a word to indicate that there is (especially justified) anti-USA (or anti-Israel) blowback for anything USA or Israel has done, or else there’d possibly be anti-imperial blowback from INSIDE USA.
As there should be.
LOL. What did Mearsheimer “resist?” He’s a tenured professor at the University of Chicago who wrote a book.
Question.
How many here have read W&M’s “The Israel Lobby”?…I highly recommend it to those that haven’t.
The book isn’t bombastic at all…… what made it deadly for Israel and the Lobby and sent the zionist frothing at the mouth is that it is so factual and well sourced and documented.
It did not attack Jews and there is nothing anti semitic about it as the usual slurers tried to accuse W&M of being. In fact they bent over backwards not to condemn the Jews ‘collectively’ for the Lobby influence.
You will find a lot of what the most informed on Israel and the Lobby already know or have ‘heard’, actually confirmed, and a lot of what you perhaps didn’t know about how Israel and it’s supporters directly and knowingly and deliberately undermine US interest abroad for their own benefit.
Response to MRW and Straightline:
I wrote to Sullivan that he owes Robert Fisk a real apology. Sullivan coined the verb “to fisk” on his blog to be a point-by-point refutation of writing that is egregiously inaccurate.
Now Sullivan and the rest of us are coming around to see how valuable Robert Fisk is.
A word in support of Sullivan: He understand the *non-negotiable nature* of equal rights and freedom, and actually wrote very early on (22 yrs ago) about the need for gay marriage. Once he cottoned on to the apartheid situation in Palestine, he is supplying the same eloquence to the Palestine issue.
I have read Sullivan since 1999 (the beginning), and it was his blog posting that began my own conversion to the Palestine side.
the funny thing about “fisking”, is that i have never seen any of Fisk’s work be “fisked” (ad hom hasbara excepting). so i never understood how it caught on, albeit only amongst neocon hangers-on. but then again, i never understood how “pwned” became trendy online vernacular, either.
I thinked the origin of “pwned” is this. Online mispellings abound, especially in tirades. You’ll see people mocking anti-gay posters pretending to be worried about getting “teh gay” (the is transposed). What you see is “owned” and P & O are next to each other on the keyboard. (I still wonder could it be pronounced as “pound” as in you got pounded) Additional origin links could be some gamer Engrish — “All your base is ours. We are in there killing UR dudz” – or however abbreviated speak they say that. Check the UrbanDictionary.com. I have an entry for “bronski” (teach what you know) xD