The New York Times editorial board has a blistering piece this morning. Prior to the blogs, I don’t think columns like this would have appeared in major news outlets…at least, the tone would have been more moderated. There is something seriously wrong with our country when the Grey Lady comes out swinging like this.
We can’t think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can’t think of a president who has deserved that trust less.
If part of our problem is that the MSM will not articulate the degree of criminality in the GOP and White House, then seeing Gail Collins and the rest of the NYT editotial staff write stuff like this indicates progress.
Like many other administrations before it, this one sometimes dissembles clumsily to avoid embarrassment. (We now know, for example, that the White House did not tell the truth about when it learned the levees in New Orleans had failed.) Spin-as-usual is one thing. Striking at the civil liberties, due process and balance of powers that are the heart of American democracy is another.
It’s only one step from this rhetoric to just calling Bush/Cheney tyrants. We’ll see whether this column gets picked up by the cable news people.
And its always good to skip the rhetoric and just tell it like it is. Thanks for pointing this out.
I’d feel better about them if they didn’t run columns by idiots like Brooks.
And employ hacks like Nagourney and Judy (now thankfully hitting the conservative talk show circuit).
I agree!
As great as this piece is, it does stil stand in isolation as compared to the broader sweep of NYT content.
If the tone and pointed analysis in this piece were indicative of a general trend, (a general return, perhaps), towards fact based, diligent, thorough reporting, then we’d likely have a chance to get our country back from the authoritarians sooner.
Sadly, I think we still have a long long way to go.
A good editorial.
It appears that the establishment is beginning to shift against Bush.
Centrist Republicans are distancing themselves from Bush because they see November 2006 approaching. I hope that they don’t succeed in blunting what should be a real ass-smacking in the election.
Because if the Dems don’t win huge in November that will be, for me, the last straw. Game over.
The editorial reads like the first three articles of impeachment, in a rational world. How rational this world will be remains to be seen. But a hopeful sign, for sure.
Maybe if it’s in the NYT, the Democrats will decide it’s OK to adopt these ideas as campaign talking points this year.
Or, adopting the Arthur Gilroy theory of American society, this may be how the PermaGov issues its marching orders – or its judgment, like an Oracle of old. Or in a more cynical light, perhaps the sheeple need a bellwether to tell them in which direction to flock, and this is the signal (that will probably be the spin right wing talk radio puts on it tomorrow).
It was the steady drumbeat of stories and editorials that brought Nixon down, and the media seems to be gettin’ that old rhythm again, at least in fits and starts. A good sign…
I love your first sentence.
And isn’t it utterly amusing how the right attacks the NYT when it publishes something like this editorial, but the right conveniently forgets how much the NYT played into the selling of the Iraq war…. and doesn’t even have the decency to kiss Judy Miller or that gray broad (if she exists).
Look, the war on terror is an infinte. There has always been terror in some fashion or the other. The fact that this man, bush, has declared a war on terror is false. No one, no country will never stop it. Any bur ha ha over it is just a farse as ever. So the acts this adm. has taken to determine their actions have been illegal and are illegal. The sheer fact they have pulled the wool over our eyes is the problem over all!
The war on terror is like the war on drugs. It will never be won. We can try to do things to stop the fact that they are doing things to others, but the war on terror is not what this adm. is doing one damn thing on solving it for it will not ever be solved. Of course this is only my opinion.
Your opinion is right on target, in my opinion. That’s exactly their plan – by declaring war on something that cannot be stamped out totally, you always have an excuse to ask for more money, new powers, award contracts to friends, etc.
Of course, the right would accuse us of the same thing with a war on poverty and a war on cancer (the latter was actually declared by Nixon, I think).
Perhaps the thing to keep in mind with wars is that they’re not so much “won” as that after a time both sides have decided they’ve killed enough young people, wasted enough money, and squandered enough resources to accomplish whatever their initial goals were (or changed into over time). Then everybody signs a piece of paper as a fig leaf and goes home, until economic pressures and the number of hotheads that don’t remember the last war are sufficient for the whole process to happen again.
So the whole concept of a “war on xxx” boils down to “We’re going to spend money, energy, and (maybe) lives on xxx until we’re either stopped and/or we’ve made so much money it cannot be swept under the rug anymore.” Hopefully “xxx” is something positive – “war on illiteracy,” “war on pollution,” so that the rest of us get a side benefit from the whole thing – but the main purpose is re-election and pork barrel spending for friends.
Wow, that sounds awfully cynical. Maybe I need to go watch the Olympics or something. 😀
The trouble here is that the above quote is the foundation for the prosecution of the GWoT. That violation has been support in a bipartisan manner by both leaders and average people.
Look at the cases prosecuted since 9/11 and any small sign of success is an illusion. There wouldn’t even be legitimate confessions if the basic principles of due process, civil liberty and equal justice were applied.
Every time a reference is made justifying the GWoT as it’s known is enabling that violation.