Wanker of the Day: David Brooks

I’ve really been pressed for time this week but I will hopefully return to a normal schedule tomorrow, at least for a little while.

I have about five minutes of spare time to write this post, which is why I will resort to quoting someone else saying what I’d rather say myself.

Scott Lemieux:

David Brooks starts off his apologia with some stoned-dorm-room stuff about how if Hitler had been strangled in the crib we wouldn’t have the GI Bill or as many women in the workforce, which means that nobody can really held responsible for Iraq. It does not improve from there.

Things turn out the way they turn out, so we can never complain about the past, as a different past would give us a different future, maybe one in which we don’t even exist.

There’s some wisdom in there, to be honest. But it isn’t consistent at all with personal responsibility or the importance of strong families or even second-guessing the choices you made at the Applebee’s salad bar.

If you wanted to invade Iraq, you should shut up now, and forever.

9 Comments

Cervants on May 20, 2015 at 9:47 am

It seems to me that we should just automate a Wanker of the Day award for Bobo and let it honor him every 24 hours to perpetuity. There should be no need for human intervention.

Andrew Longman on May 20, 2015 at 10:04 am

I started to read Brooks yesterday and failed again to get past the first few paragraphs.

I contrast that with some thoughtful quotes from Gary Hart who said something like the real and better question is, “How would you have approached addressing terrorism in a post 9/11 world or how would you approached the intelligence you got regarding Iraqs WMDs, or how would you have prepared differently for war and after the war?”

And I am not a big fan of Hart

mainsailset on May 20, 2015 at 11:05 am

Lemieux’s post reminds me of the value of links, and as always, bloggers. Thanks. That Brooks’ readers will show up at their water coolers today and yet again prove themselves duped fools demonstrates their comfort with following rather than thinking.

ricktaylor on May 20, 2015 at 12:07 pm

“If you wanted to invade Iraq, you should shut up now, and forever.”

John Cole can still speak. His mea culpa was the only one I read that was worth a damn.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2008/03/21/my-iraq-war-retrospective/

Andrew Longman on May 20, 2015 at 12:21 pm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/18/iraq-war-2016_n_7310006.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/19/jeb-bush-iraq-war_n_7336864.html

[“I’m trying to avoid being categorical about a whole family,” Hart said. “But the Bushes do not demonstrate analytical minds. They demonstrate visceral minds. The father I knew and liked a lot. The sons respond to events and respond to stimuli, and they are not analytical thinkers. And that comes out in their rhetoric or lack thereof and their thought process and how they look at complex issues. Governor Bush, half his mind is how to protect his brother. The other half is, How do I answer without alienating two-thirds of the Republican Party?”

Hart, who publicly opposed the Iraq War when it was being launched, was making a larger case that the current debate over that decision has been fairly trivial. Rather than wondering what presidential candidates now think of the war 13 years after it began, he argued, it would be more valuable to know what they would have done in the moment.

Other critics of the Iraq War have made points similar to Hart’s broader commentary. Former Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) told HuffPost that some of the revisionism being peddled today — that most everyone agreed at the time that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and represented a threat to the United States — doesn’t “pass muster.”

“Frankly,” Conrad added, “knowing what we knew then, we shouldn’t have gone to war.”

Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who served as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, took that argument further, telling HuffPost that the George W. Bush administration essentially misled Congress by withholding evidence that cast doubts on the case for war.

“After 9/11,” said Graham, “I think we moved into a period of more deception than cover-up, where information was withheld from people and in some instances public statements were made which the people who made those statements knew or should have known they were not consistent with the actual evidence, which has and continues to be classified.”]

yastreblyansky on May 20, 2015 at 12:34 pm

Brooks is almost always bad in some interesting fashion, but this particular column is unspeakably vile, backing up the Jeb and Marco refusal to answer the question and his willed amnesia about how he spent the war himself. More comment worth checking out from No More Mister Nice Blog and Driftglass, both of whom generously mention me.

Parallax on May 20, 2015 at 4:35 pm

Spot on, Martin. There’s no point in regretting the past because, if we could change anything, everything would change and who knows where we’d be today. At the same time, this philosophical truth should not be a shield for those who lead us astray at the cost of an enormous toll of lost lives to say nothing of trauma, physical destruction and economic cost. The people who led us to war on clearly false evidence who now refuse to admit their mistake deserve ridicule.

Jordan Orlando on May 21, 2015 at 1:34 am

In a perfect world, nobody would be left alone for five seconds after invoking this blatant “Too bad about the faulty intelligence” lie. (It’s not like the facts are hidden; the timetable is right there in plain sight, in the pages of Time and Newsweek.)

It wouldn’t even take a “perfect” world. It would take a world only incrementally better than this one. Why aren’t we living in that world? Why isn’t everyone on TV screaming about this nonsense of “the faulty intelligence that led us to war”?

Snarki child of Loki on May 21, 2015 at 7:52 am

“Why aren’t we living in that world?”

Because there have been few, and mild, negative consequences for enabling the Iraq war lies. At least for politicians and media pundits. For the soldiers and the Iraqi civilians the consequences have been severe, but they are not the ones setting the narrative and making the decisions.

In fact, pro-war pundits have been promoted, what few anti-war pundits there were were demonized and had their careers stunted.

Want to make sure that something like Iraq doesn’t repeat? Figure a way to deliver some real, painful, consequences to the pro-Iraq politicians and pundits. Formal or informal, it doesn’t matter at this point.

Cervants on May 20, 2015 at 9:47 am

It seems to me that we should just automate a Wanker of the Day award for Bobo and let it honor him every 24 hours to perpetuity. There should be no need for human intervention.
Andrew Longman on May 20, 2015 at 10:04 am

I started to read Brooks yesterday and failed again to get past the first few paragraphs.

I contrast that with some thoughtful quotes from Gary Hart who said something like the real and better question is, “How would you have approached addressing terrorism in a post 9/11 world or how would you approached the intelligence you got regarding Iraqs WMDs, or how would you have prepared differently for war and after the war?”

And I am not a big fan of Hart
mainsailset on May 20, 2015 at 11:05 am

Lemieux’s post reminds me of the value of links, and as always, bloggers. Thanks. That Brooks’ readers will show up at their water coolers today and yet again prove themselves duped fools demonstrates their comfort with following rather than thinking.
ricktaylor on May 20, 2015 at 12:07 pm

“If you wanted to invade Iraq, you should shut up now, and forever.”

John Cole can still speak. His mea culpa was the only one I read that was worth a damn.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2008/03/21/my-iraq-war-retrospective/
Andrew Longman on May 20, 2015 at 12:21 pm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/18/iraq-war-2016_n_7310006.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/19/jeb-bush-iraq-war_n_7336864.html

[“I’m trying to avoid being categorical about a whole family,” Hart said. “But the Bushes do not demonstrate analytical minds. They demonstrate visceral minds. The father I knew and liked a lot. The sons respond to events and respond to stimuli, and they are not analytical thinkers. And that comes out in their rhetoric or lack thereof and their thought process and how they look at complex issues. Governor Bush, half his mind is how to protect his brother. The other half is, How do I answer without alienating two-thirds of the Republican Party?”

Hart, who publicly opposed the Iraq War when it was being launched, was making a larger case that the current debate over that decision has been fairly trivial. Rather than wondering what presidential candidates now think of the war 13 years after it began, he argued, it would be more valuable to know what they would have done in the moment.

Other critics of the Iraq War have made points similar to Hart’s broader commentary. Former Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) told HuffPost that some of the revisionism being peddled today — that most everyone agreed at the time that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and represented a threat to the United States — doesn’t “pass muster.”

“Frankly,” Conrad added, “knowing what we knew then, we shouldn’t have gone to war.”

Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who served as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, took that argument further, telling HuffPost that the George W. Bush administration essentially misled Congress by withholding evidence that cast doubts on the case for war.

“After 9/11,” said Graham, “I think we moved into a period of more deception than cover-up, where information was withheld from people and in some instances public statements were made which the people who made those statements knew or should have known they were not consistent with the actual evidence, which has and continues to be classified.”]
yastreblyansky on May 20, 2015 at 12:34 pm

Brooks is almost always bad in some interesting fashion, but this particular column is unspeakably vile, backing up the Jeb and Marco refusal to answer the question and his willed amnesia about how he spent the war himself. More comment worth checking out from No More Mister Nice Blog and Driftglass, both of whom generously mention me.
Parallax on May 20, 2015 at 4:35 pm

Spot on, Martin. There’s no point in regretting the past because, if we could change anything, everything would change and who knows where we’d be today. At the same time, this philosophical truth should not be a shield for those who lead us astray at the cost of an enormous toll of lost lives to say nothing of trauma, physical destruction and economic cost. The people who led us to war on clearly false evidence who now refuse to admit their mistake deserve ridicule.
Jordan Orlando on May 21, 2015 at 1:34 am

In a perfect world, nobody would be left alone for five seconds after invoking this blatant “Too bad about the faulty intelligence” lie. (It’s not like the facts are hidden; the timetable is right there in plain sight, in the pages of Time and Newsweek.)

It wouldn’t even take a “perfect” world. It would take a world only incrementally better than this one. Why aren’t we living in that world? Why isn’t everyone on TV screaming about this nonsense of “the faulty intelligence that led us to war”?
- Snarki child of Loki on May 21, 2015 at 7:52 am
  
  “Why aren’t we living in that world?”
  
  Because there have been few, and mild, negative consequences for enabling the Iraq war lies. At least for politicians and media pundits. For the soldiers and the Iraqi civilians the consequences have been severe, but they are not the ones setting the narrative and making the decisions.
  
  In fact, pro-war pundits have been promoted, what few anti-war pundits there were were demonized and had their careers stunted.
  
  Want to make sure that something like Iraq doesn’t repeat? Figure a way to deliver some real, painful, consequences to the pro-Iraq politicians and pundits. Formal or informal, it doesn’t matter at this point.

Wanker of the Day: David Brooks

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