Charles Krauthammer is a dangerous lunatic. He is also one of Cheney’s minions. He has been so consistenly wrong about the Middle East that it amazes me that he still is gainfully employed. But, his latest column is the worst I’ve ever seen. That being said, it kind of funny. You see, he sees Iran about the same way I see the right-wing in this country. And we both share some concern about the apocalyptic potential of nuclear armed wingnuts filled with hate.
We have difficulty understanding the mentality of Iran’s newest rulers. Then again, we don’t understand the mentality of the men who flew into the World Trade Center or the mobs in Damascus and Tehran who chant “Death to America”–and Denmark(!)–and embrace the glory and romance of martyrdom.
This atavistic love of blood and death and, indeed, self-immolation in the name of God may not be new–medieval Europe had an abundance of millennial Christian sects–but until now it has never had the means to carry out its apocalyptic ends.
That is why Iran’s arriving at the threshold of nuclear weaponry is such a signal historical moment. It is not just that its President says crazy things about the Holocaust. It is that he is a fervent believer in the imminent reappearance of the 12th Imam, Shi’ism’s version of the Messiah.
It’s almost as if Charles Krauthammer has never looked around and asked what his Republican cocktail colleagues think about martyrdom, a ritual of blood, and the return of the Messiah.
And talk about the scare-mongering…
If nothing is done [about Iran], we face not proliferation but hyperproliferation. Not just one but many radical states will get weapons of mass extinction, and then so will the fanatical and suicidal terrorists who are their brothers and clients.
That will present the world with two futures. The first is [Manhattan Project scientist, Richard] Feynman’s vision of human destruction on a scale never seen. The second, perhaps after one or two cities are lost with millions killed in a single day, is a radical abolition of liberal democracy as the species tries to maintain itself by reverting to strict authoritarianism–a self-imposed expulsion from the Eden of post-Enlightenment freedom.
This is Cheney’s dark vision displayed for all America to see in the pages of this week’s Time magazine. WE MUST DESTROY IRAN OR ALL IS LOST.
I can’t think of a more contemptible pundit than Charles Krauthammer. He’s at the forefront of the cabal that wishes to set this country on a permanent war footing. It would never occur to him to seek alternative solutions to the dangers we face. He’s nothing more than a vampire whose thirst for Muslim blood can never be quenched.
Cheney, on the other hand, likes Muslims. He hunts with them, fishes with them, signs lucrative multi-billion dollar contracts with them. He just doesn’t like people that interfere with American business interests.
Krauthammer is Cheney’s pit bull.
Yes. It’s the same plan that occurred with Iraq.
In an election year, drum of the reason why you have to go to war with a country in the middle east that just happens to have large reserves of crude oil. Use fear to pull the voters to your side, and tar the Dems as either cowardly appeasers or terrorist sympathizers.
Then, after the attack, when the shit hits the fan, blame the media for reporting on the disasters.
yeah, but, as bad as Iraq is, it is nothing compared to a screwup in Iran.
The everything-is-the-media’s-fault mentality is disgusting. Just another way for a spoiled brat to justify his incompetence–everyone’s picking on me!!
Bullshit!
Just like it is that more people have coverage that doesn’t do anything for them. That will also be the media’s fault, as opposed to the idiots who voted for Medicare D(isaster)!
. . . you know it’s time to run for the hills. It is truly frightening that Krauthammer has quite obviously learned absolutely nothing from our fiasco in Iraq. At least most other neo-cons are now willing to concede that even if our strategy with regard to Iraq was correct, the execution was flawed. Krauthammer, on the other hand, is convinced that any perception that matters are less than ideal over there is the fault of an intractably biased media which has taken a pledge to try to destroy America and American values. In his mind, to set things right now compels us to march onward to Tehran and beyond.
I suspect that the frothings of such neo-con columnists are as much responsible as the Bush Administration’s rank incompetence in causing intellectual godfathers of the neo-con movement (such as Francis Fukuyama, et al.) to disavow their successors. Too bad they couldn’t have foreseen 20-25 years ago the damage they would do.
BooMan,
This is rich: He’s at the forefront of the cabal that wishes to set this country on a permanent war footing.
When have we not been on a war footing in the last 100 years, or more. That’s how we got all the stuff we have. How do you tell people to NOT be on a war footing when it is all we know. It’s all that we have.
I should’ve added that (American) Capitalism is war. It always was and it will not change with a change of parties in DC.
“War is business – the business of death.”
— BostonJoe
Krauthammer’s peer group is comprised of creatures like Michael Ledeen, Daniel Pipes, David Addington, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle.
Full blown, fully weapopnized psychopaths, every one of them!
Creatures from the Neocon Lagoon, perhaps?
That’s a good title for the group.
in the open thread, it’s interesting that folks like Krauthammer (I could probably make some jokes about the name, but will decline respectfully) are so up in arms over Muslim extremists, but have no problem with our own religious extremists who suggest assassinating foreign leaders, pray for the death of liberal judges, bomb health clinics, kill doctors, etc….
He’s just another, particularly repulsive, one of the green acid bile spewing reptilian pseudo-underlords of the Reptiblican gasbag machine, who, for some reason unknown to us mere rationalists, has been elevated to the status of pontificator. Never liked him, never will, and would love to see him get transported back to the mother ship, along with the rest of his cohorts in deception and crime.
I’ve already printed out one way tickets for him, Novakula, O’Slimely and the rest of the gang.too numerous to list … round up the usual suspects, and let’s please send them out the door, with a resounding slam behind them.
–end of abstractification–
Krauthammer uses the standard neocon commentator bag of tricks: glittering generalities, straw man stuffing, faulty assumptions, false anologies, made up facts, and on and on and on.
As to America not being on a war footing for over 100 years, well, I’d say that due to the rise of the “unwarranted power and influence” of the military industrial complex, we’ve been on a war footing since the beginning of World War II.
Krauthammer should really start writing in ink instead of his own bile. His mean-spiritedness flows through his every sentence.
Nevertheless, there are three points he makes that to me seem not only true but of vital importance.
It’s not exactly profound to say that nuclear weapons threaten human survival. But we’ve grown so used to living with them that they have become so much background noise. We should be disturbed by the proliferation of these awful weapons. We should be particularly disturbed by their proliferation in the world’s most volatile region.
Second, the open society is a fragile construct, and we have seen since 2001 just how vulnerable it is when it comes into conflict with the state security apparatus. Krauthammer is correct in saying that a nuclear terrorist attack would doom the open society.
Finally, Krauthammer is again correct in realizing that nuclear arms and religious fanaticism are a particularly dangerous combination. We have survived this far because as long as there have been at least two nuclear powers, the prospect of nuclear Armageddon has prevented us from going over the brink. But the calculus of risk only succeeds when the actors regard Armageddon as a bad thing.