The World Desperately Needs More Bill Kristol
When I was a kid, I remember hearing that cockroaches would not only survive the sure-to-happen US-Soviet nuclear holocaust, but actually emerge stronger than ever as they devour our irradiated corpses. Similarly, there’s a new think tank in town, headed by Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and former Coalition Provisional Authority spokesguy Dan Senor. Senor’s inclusion is especially interesting, since neocons of the Kristol/Kagan ilk ostensibly now believe that the early years of the war were catastrophically mismanaged. And yet here they are with the public face of the mismanagement as their partner in warmongering.
On March 31, FPI holds its first public event, Afghanistan: Planning For Success, though, given the heavy representation of Iraq war advocates, I think a far better title would be Afghanistan: Dealing With The Huge Problems Created By Many Of The People On This Very Stage. The broad consensus among national security analysts and aid officials is that the diversion of troops and resources toward Iraq beginning in 2002 was one of the main reasons the Taliban and Al Qaeda were able to to re-establish themselves in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas, facilitating the collapse of the country back into insurgent warfare. Having failed to complete the mission in Afghanistan, Bush and the Iraq hawks handed the Obama administration a war that promises to be as difficult and costly as Iraq has been -– if not more. It’s deeply absurd that some of the people most responsible for the crisis in Afghanistan would now presume to tell us how to deal with it.
Incidentally, this is my most current thinking on the Afghanistan issue.
23 Responses to “The World Desperately Needs More Bill Kristol”
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March 27th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Senor sucked in Iraq, but at least he’s fucking Campbell Brown. For the record, Adam, I’d “do” her too.
March 27th, 2009 at 10:00 am
could we just bring back tom delay to hose them all down with roach-killer?
March 27th, 2009 at 10:21 am
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March 27th, 2009 at 10:39 am
This is entirely consistant with their policy of favoring catastrophic mismanagement.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:07 am
“It’s deeply absurd that some of the people most responsible for the crisis in Afghanistan would now presume to tell us how to deal with it.”
This is becoming a pattern: the people responsible for a disaster are supposed to be the ones to help us out of it!
Great!
Albrecht
March 27th, 2009 at 11:16 am
This is a good time to remind anybody who watches CNN that Campbell Brown has a critical conflict of interest in that after her show is over every day, she goes home to an incompetent warmongering neocon GOP utensil.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:17 am
“Afghanistan: Dealing With The Huge Problems Created By Many Of The People On This Very Stage”
Hey! Did being big losers prevent the Washington Generals from taking on (and losing to) the Harlem Globetrotters time and time again? These people are plucky, by golly!!!
Like the Generals, nobody should take them seriously.
March 27th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
It’s a mystery why these neo-cons are still employed. Seriously, do they have some kind of guarantee of job security for life that the rest of us don’t have? What kind of hold to they have on those dispensing the paychecks? Is it some kind of protection money? Makes me want to get out my tin-foil helmet
March 27th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Occam’s razor.
March 28th, 2009 at 12:11 am
From Commentaru Magazine’s “Contentions” Weblog:
March 27, 2009
Matthew Yglesias’s Hutu Power Rhetoric
By James Kirchick
Courtesy of Mickey Kaus, we now have a view into the infamous “Journolist,” on which over 300 liberal journalists and activists debate — er — gossip all day like a group of high schoolers. Kaus got his hand on one thread, dated March 24, in which Center for American Progress blogger Matthew Yglesias starts off a discussion by exposing the supposed racism of Marty Peretz.
Today, Yglesias writes about the Foreign Policy Initiative, a new think tank/advocacy group founded by Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan. He opines:
When I was a kid, I remember hearing that cockroaches would not only survive the sure-to-happen US-Soviet nuclear holocaust, but actually emerge stronger than ever as they devour our irradiated corpses. Similarly, there’s a new think tank in town, headed by Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and former Coalition Provisional Authority spokesguy Dan Senor.
The use of the word “cockroach” to describe undesirable persons has a long history, but there’s a specific and ugly context that is most pertinent. In the run-up to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 — in which nearly 1 million people were massacred over the course of just 100 days — “Hutu power” radio stations used the word repeatedly to describe members of the minority Tutsi tribe. Historians and political scientists who study Rwanda cite the intensity and pervasiveness of this hate speech as playing a crucial role in mobilizing Hutus to kill so many their fellow countrymen. Such language is used to dehumanize.
As an expert on nearly everything, surely Yglesias is aware of the word’s loaded history. That he would simultaneously act as traffic cop for internet civility is risible.
Copyright © 1997-2009 Commentary Magazine
All Rights Reserved
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/kirchick/60272
March 28th, 2009 at 8:56 am
This is what Yglesias is, and this is what he does.
He defames his betters, calling Marty Peretz a “crazy-ass racist.” (See http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2009/03/26/journolist-revealed-inside-the-liberal-media-email-cabal.aspx )
And he calls those he disagree with his foreign policy views “cockroaches.”
All the while preaching the virtues of civil discussion, no doubt.
March 28th, 2009 at 9:30 am
neo-conservatives like kristol so casually condemn other people’s children to death and lives of misery with their ludicrous op-eds calling for war, war and more war. they are disconnected from reality. like the nazi propagandists who helped push germany to destruction, they should be prosecuted and punished for the destruction they have helped cause, and which they are still intent on causing. they will not be content until the middle east has been turned into a vast desolate wasteland, and they will most definitely will not stop there. like the nazi’s ultimate fate, the neo-conservatives are leading america down the same path of destruction. they are dangerous.
calling them cockroaches is the very least they deserve to be called.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Matt – please give us the signal to unsheath our knives and cut these crazy bastards’ throats. It’s long overdue and I’m damned glad that someone finally has the balls to direct his readers to a grim but apparently necessary task. I completely missed your point until Kirchuk explicated it and thought you were making a much smaller point, but now that I “get it”, I salute you and stand at the ready.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Everyone knows Senor married Brown for her money.
March 29th, 2009 at 11:06 am
You insult me, sir. I never blithely got hundreds of thousands of people killed.
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