Yes, I'm back from a few weeks of very relaxing vacation, and ready to start bloggin' again. Let's start with a fun and easy topic, and yet also a scary one: the increasingly unhinged madness of neoconservative pundit William Kristol.
(Wow, my spellchecker just flagged both "neoconservative" and "spellchecker". Get with the times, blogger.com!!)
In his most recent column in his own magazine, The Weekly Standard, entitled "Keep on Surgin',"Kristol pretty much loses it. I'll let some excerpts from the piece speak for themselves:
[Let's] just call [Democrats] Defeatists, who are willing to ensure a U.S. defeat for the sake of destroying the Bush administration...In analyzing where this piece displays all the signs of paranoid schizophrenia, I barely know where to begin. Let's point out a few of the craziest elements:
The Defeatist Democrats have lots of support from the mainstream media, most of whom have simply given up on reporting the war or analyzing arguments about the war...[The media are] simply committed to discrediting the war and humiliating the Bush administration...
The [foreign policy] establishment, like the media and the Democrats, wants to discredit and humiliate an administration that too often (though not often enough!) dared to think for itself, and to act without their permission. They're out to destroy Bush, his ideas, and his supporters, no matter the consequences for the country...
[W]hat if this week is a harbinger of things to come? What if the Defeatists have overplayed their hand? What if they continue to sound the tocsin of defeat--and the president, and the commanders, and the soldiers, don't snap to and obey? What if the surge continues to show better and better results, and the Bush administration does a more effective job of communicating them? If so, this past week could turn out to have been a pivotal moment in the Iraq war...
Over the last few months, the United States (finally) surged in Iraq. Al Qaeda in Iraq has now surged against the surge. Iran is surging against the surge. We're pushing them back. Now the Democrats in Congress, the mainstream media, and the foreign policy establishment have mounted their own surges against the surge. So far, Bush is beating them back.
1. In order for this column to be right, both the media and the "foreign-policy establishment" (who is part of this establishment, exactly?) would have to be involved in a joint conspiracy to destroy Bush at the expense of bringing about the downfall of the entire United States. Never mind that Kristol names no names when discussing these conspirators. Never mind that such a conspiracy, if successful, would destroy the livelihoods of both the media and the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and thus appear to be self-defeating. And never mind that Kristol provides no motive for these conspirators, other than the foreign policy establishment's supposed pique at being slighted by the administration.
Actually, do mind all these things. Kristol is a loony.
2. If the Democrats are "defeatists," what does that make the Republicans who have come out against the war and against Bush's policies? What interest could any Republican possibly have in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq?
3. If we really are winning in Iraq (and note the lack of evidence or examples to back up this claim), then why would Bush need to do a better job of "communicating" the fact that we're winning? Is victory a subtle, nuanced thing that you can't see unless you look very carefully and closely?
Thus, we must conclude that either William Kristol has finally, utterly lost it, or that he knows full well that we've lost the Iraq war and is himself a one-man conspiracy dedicated to preserving the Bush administration even at the cost of the entire United States of America. Or, as Arianna Huffington puts it: "The charitable view is that he's lost his mind. The less charitable view is that he's now officially surpassed Dick Cheney as the most intellectually dishonest member of the neocon establishment."
Whichever of these is the case, it confirms my suspicion that having the owner/editor of a magazine write regular columns in that magazine is just a bad idea (also see: Marty Peretz in TNR). It just seems to be a recipe for unhinged ranting.
(Update: Foreign Policy's blog agrees with me about Kristol, though they are kind enough to substitute "fantasy forest" for "fat sack of meth"...)
Anyway, Noahpinion's back, so check back for more very hinged ranting in the weeks to come. :-)
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