There seems to be a lively competition going to see who can write the best smackdown of the neoconservatives who have reemerged on our teevees to discuss the foreign policy “failures” of the president. Stephen Walt’s effort is pretty good.
Here’s a sampling:
The zombie-like ability to maintain influence and status in the face of overwhelming evidence tells you that F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong: There are in fact an infinite number of “second chances” in American life and little or no accountability in the U.S. political system. The neocons’ staying power also reminds us that the United States can get away with irresponsible public discourse because it is very, very secure. Iraq was a disaster, and it helped pave the way to defeat in Afghanistan, but at the end of the day the United States will come home and probably be just fine. True, thousands of our fellow citizens would be alive and well today had we never listened to the neoconservatives’ fantasies, and Americans would be more popular abroad and more prosperous at home if their prescriptions from 1993 forward had been ritually ignored. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be alive too, and the Middle East would probably be in somewhat better condition (it could hardly be worse).
Mr. Walt also points out that the media’s desire for balance and the wealth slopped around to support think-tank fellowships both contribute to our nation’s inability to drive a stake through the hearts of these lunatics and kill their negative influence for good.
There is “little or no accountability in the U.S. [fillintheblank] system.” Fill in the blank with anything you choose. There is letting [who you think are] your friends get away with shit, and there is selective persecution, and there is revenge. These are not things that allow institutions to function. These are things that work in spite of institutions and that, accordingly, proceed by hollowing the institutions out.
Regrettably, this seems to be the kind of thing that people are saying when (as so often recently) they write thinkpieces to the effect of, if you want decent people to come out and vote instead of sitting home, don’t talk over their heads with noble-sounding abstractions like “accountability”.
Accountability is not over the head of any five-year-old. If it’s over any adults’ heads, that’s their lookout. If they are somehow motivated to pretend that it’s over their heads, that’s everybody’s lookout.
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CNN’s Candy Crowley invited Bob Woodward and Carl Berstein. The former apologized for not getting reporting right about the bogus reasons for going to war against Saddam Hussein and the latter whacked Dick Cheney for opening his mouth about the crisis in Iraq and the scourge of terrorism.
CROWLEY: (INAUDIBLE) Carl, a former vice president, Dick Cheney, threw sort of gasoline on the fire this week, wrote an op-ed in the “Wall Street Journal.” Among other things — this was titled “The Collapsing Obama Doctrine.” He and his daughter Liz wrote, “Terrorists take control of more territory and resources than ever before in history, and he goes golfing. He seems blithely unaware or indifferent to the fact, that a resurgent al Qaeda presents a clear and present danger to the United States of America.”
I don’t even have to ask you a question, do I?
BERNSTEIN: Well, actually, there really is something off the wall about what Cheney is doing and saying here given his responsibility for this. I think the psychiatrist would call it projection. Blaming President Obama for this morass that we are in, largely of his and his colleagues’ making but Bob is absolutely right here.
You said about 10 years. What’s it going to look like 10 years from now? We don’t know but we need to start doing real reporting in this town about what the hell is going on and start to come up with a notion of how various institutions are addressing real problems in real time. We’re not doing it. I mean, if you look at everything we’ve seen on this show this morning, it is indicative of that.
Cross-posted from my new diary – Bernstein Whacks Dick Cheney, Neocons and Journalism.
About a Trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) gets slopped around every single year, in every single House district, directing the manufacturing of weapons and the service of millions to use those weapons or support the people who do.
Neoconservatism aka Empire is alive and well, and will continue its attempt to enrich the few using the blood of the many.
Remember, though, that the DemocratTM party is the same as the Republican party, so don’t vote for those bastards.
#Unicorn/Rainbow 2016