Attacks on Rosa Brooks
Former LA Times columnist Rosa Brooks is going to work for Michele Flournoy in the defense department and now is being subject to attacks via some kind of right-wing email campaign being hyped up by The Weekly Standard. Taken out of the oppo writeup form, the basic case against Brooks seems to be that:
ONE: She thinks the Vietnam War was a mistake with tragic consequences for civilians across Southeast Asia.
TWO: She thinks the Bush administration’s pre-war statements about Iraq intelligence were misleading.
THREE: She thought the “surge” would not produce an enduring solution to Iraq’s political problems.
FOUR: She favors prosecuting terrorists in normal courts rather than kangaroo courts.
FIVE: She thinks George W. Bush was a generally crappy president.
With the exception of point four, I honestly don’t understand how anyone could even begin to disagree with any of this. On point four, the complaint amounts to something like “she supports the policy of the Obama administration, rather than the policy of the Republican Party.” But of course she does! To be honest, given that she was a pretty regular newspaper columnist and occasional blogger, I find it a bit shocking that they don’t have anything better on her. It’s hard to write on current affairs without occasionally saying something that’s totally wrong or incredibly dumb. But the right’s oppo team has come up with . . . nothing . . . other than that she’s not a conservative. Which is what happens when the conservative candidate loses an election and the new team comes in.
Beyond pettiness and sour grapes, one thing that comes through here is the extent to which the conservative movement just can’t quit George W. Bush. Nominally, the right’s new view is that Bush really was a bad president, but he was bad because he wasn’t conservative enough or something. But show a conservative a liberal who’s subjected Bush to the strongly-worded criticism he so richly deserves, and it’s like waving a cape in the face of a bull. Out comes the whole message operation, the smear machine, the whole deal to defend the sterling record of Bush, Bush’s policies, and the view that anyone who criticized them is borderline treasonous.
30 Responses to “Attacks on Rosa Brooks”
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April 17th, 2009 at 10:14 am
If she fails to see that THE SURGE ™ made Iraq perfect and set us on a course to spread democracy and the free and unregulated market throughout the Middle East, she clearly is unfit and we need to get John Bolton to chase her down the hall screaming and throw a stapler at her.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:14 am
This woman is too namby pamby. That’s why they’re going for her. The thing with the right, is that if you give them even a tiny concession, they’re all over you.
ONE: She thinks the Vietnam War was a mistake with tragic consequences for civilians across Southeast Asia.
It was a misguided fiasco, a blunder, a war crime. The wrong war at the wrong time and the wrong place.
TWO: She thinks the Bush administration’s pre-war statements about Iraq intelligence were misleading.
Whereas they were actually outright lies.
THREE: She thought the “surge” would not produce an enduring solution to Iraq’s political problems.
It actually made them worse.
FOUR: She favors prosecuting terrorists in normal courts rather than kangaroo courts.
Nothing to disagree with here.
FIVE: She thinks George W. Bush was a generally crappy president.
Absolute worst President in American history.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Nominally, the right’s new view is that Bush really was a bad president, …
when a person loudly defends two seemingly opposing viewpoints, i always assume that what they are really defending is something, perhaps unstated, from which those two viewpoints are each derived. in this case it’s simple : Obama is bad because he’s a liberal and liberals are bad and everything they do is bad and must be challenged.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Yep, they don’t understand that to really put Bush’s unpopularity behind them, it isn’t enough to criticize Bush on occasion from their own perspective. Rather, they have to apologize, at least implicitly, for what Bush did wrong from the perspective of the American people.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:28 am
After 9/11, the Republicans very deliberately remade themselves as the George W. Bush Party. It’s who they are, deep down inside, and it’s going to take a long time to work that out of their system.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:46 am
“Beyond pettiness and sour grapes, one thing that comes through here is the extent to which the conservative movement just can’t quit George W. Bush.”
When your entire self-image and worldview is based on spite, admitting you were wrong about anything becomes a threat to your very being.
Mike
April 17th, 2009 at 10:53 am
I think it’s cruel of Republicans to beat up on an old lady whose only crime was refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Oh yeah, more word twisting from the Yglesias keyboard. Honestly, don’t you people resent misrepresentation thrown in your face? Apparently not. Perhaps you should notice that when Inglesias doesn’t use actual quotes there’s a good reason for it. It’s easier to misrepresent what someone says. You know, lie.
ONE – “Many innocent civilians suffered in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam — but it’s more accurate to attribute their suffering to the prolongation of the war itself, rather than to the U.S. withdrawal as such.”
Shes talking about withdrawal here and how genocide wasn’t the result of leaving. The surviving Vietnamese and Cambodians would likely disagree.
TWO – “the Bush Administration’s cooking of the intelligence books.”
Whether or not you agree publicly accusing the President of lying is bad form, particularly if you resent the same standard applied to Obama and the Treasury.
THREE – Called the surge in Iraq a “feckless plan” which had “no realistic likelihood that it will lead to an enduring solution in Iraq.”
Seems to be working after all doesn’t it? And it’s way early to judge “enduring.” I wonder what her plan might have been.
FOUR – “tried and true federal court system”
How exactly is this going to work, while keeping intelligence agencies undercover, and using the rules of evidence?
FIVE – “George W. Bush and Dick Cheney . . . should be treated like psychotics who need treatment. “
Ah yes the measured musings of someone to be involved with defense policy.
So Inglesias, if you don’t have the brass to use actual quotes, maybe you should pass on the topic.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:33 am
And shooter gives us yet another demonstration of why Republicans are going to be wandering in the wilderness for a long, long time.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:40 am
You know, this pile-on over Rosa Brooks reminds me:
Why haven’t I heard any neo-conservatives talking about human rights in China in the past couple of weeks?
It seems to me that the were all wound up about that subject for some reason in the recent past, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of it from them in quite some time.
Why is that?
April 17th, 2009 at 11:44 am
shooter242,
You’ve never spoken to a Cambodian in your life, have you?
You’re only reference to anything remotely connected to Cambodians consists of reading fantasy tracts on blogs. You have no actual knowledge of anything that took place in Cambodia, or how the people who survived about the Khmer Rouge feel about our actions in the Vietnam War, do you?
April 17th, 2009 at 11:47 am
shooter242: What, did you get bored at Greenwald’s? Or did you think you were needed here?
April 17th, 2009 at 11:56 am
God, that link is even worse than you described. I know these are conservatives we’re dealing with but does it not occur to them that this:
does not in any way contradict this:
It’s a little hard to even know how to respond to people when they are being this stupid. Amazingly enough, Al Qaeda can be BOTH an obscure bunch of extremist thugs who got lucky on 9/11 AND profess as their goal that America is the font of all evil that must be converted or destroyed. In fact, by calling them “extremist thugs”, Brooks is more or less demonstrating that she understands they believe America is the font of all evil. It’s your basic stupid assumption that because a group says a lot of extreme rhetoric, they must be powerful.
April 17th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Don’t forget that Rosa Brooks’s mom is Barbara Ehrenreich, who likes unions and poor people, and therefore hates America. I think that enters somewhere into the equation.
April 17th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
shooter242 doesn’t seem quite to have grasped that we supported the Khmer Rouge against the N. Vietnamese . . .
April 17th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Please see my discussion of Rosa Brooks. In case anyone goes to one of her public appearances, walk her through the last point, get her response on video, and upload it to Youtube.
April 17th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Shut the fuck up, Lonewacko.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
24aheaddotcom, I have now seen your discussion of Rosa Brooks. Please give me the 30 seconds of my life wasted on that stupid tripe.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
satya: a robot could have written your comment, and for all I know you might in fact be a bot.
I want to assure my human visitors that I take them very seriously, and if there’s something that they can object to in one of my posts I’ll provide an update, answer their concerns, and so on. Of course, they have to make a logical argument when so doing. If anyone has a logical argument against my post, let’s hear it.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Re: You have no actual knowledge of anything that took place in Cambodia, or how the people who survived about the Khmer Rouge feel about our actions in the Vietnam War, do you?
One thing I don’t get about the Cambodians, and I mean this in perfect honesty, is why they had a resentment towards the Vietnamese throughout the 1980s, and why the Vietnamese occupation forces were so hated. The Vietnamese, after all, were the ones who saved them from the Khmer Rouge; should they not have been the best of friends, and ever grateful to the Vietnamese?
April 17th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Oh man her mom IS Barbara Ehrenreich! I had no idea. What a great family!
April 17th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Hector,
Cambodian/Vietnamese hostility goes back centuries, and nobody likes an occupying army.
You know, if the necons had the slightest bit of interest in the experience in Cambodia beyond this idiotic assertion that the American withdrawal, as opposed to bombing, allowed the Khmer Rouge to come to power, they might have picked up on that point.
People don’t even like a foreign army when it liberates you from the people who put 3/4 of your family in the skull mound.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Hector,
Hundreds of years ago, the Vietnamese only controlled the north of that country, and the southern half was under the control of the Khmer people. Gradually, over the centuries, the Vietnamese moved ever southward, eventually taking the Mekong delta. It was not an entirely peaceful process.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Where on earth did the wingnuts get the idea that the American withdrawal from Vietnam facilitated the rise of the Khmer Rouge, anyway?
Do they imagine that we were fighting the Khmer Rouge and propping up the government before we left?
That our actions fighting the NVA and VC served to check the Cambodian rebels?
That the NVA helped the Khmer Rouge come to power?
Because all of those things are 180 degrees from reality. We were undermining the Cambodian government. We never fought the Khmer Rouge in the entire period of our involvement there. The bombing of Cambodia – which killed 500,000 people – helped bring the Khmer Rouge to power. The NVA (Russian-backed) were hostile to the Khmer Rouge (Chinese-backed), and eventually overthrew them.
The whole thing is completely illogical.
April 17th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
I love it when a wingnut whines about the Vietnam war. Here’s some fun facts.
* “We didn’t try hard enough!” Actually, approximately 10% of the entire population of Vietnam died in the Vietnam war and injury and long term effects mean the casualty rate was even greater. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we did in WWII, approximately a thousand pounds of high explosive for every man woman and child. Our effort in Vietnam lasted 10 years, at its peak over 500,000 troops were engaged, over the course of the war something like five million armed forces personnel were in Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia or stationed in the East Asian theater, combatting a country the size of a small American state with a population of merely 11 million. Seriously, what was left? Were we going to win dropping 1100 pounds of bomb per person? 1150? We extended the war to two other countries, and were in process of extending it to Thailand, and we still lost.
* “We didn’t lose the Vietnam War, we won on points!” Yeah, yeah, we killed more, did more damage, decisively defeated the Vietcong, won every battle, expended more ammunition, blah blah blah. Tell it to the referee.
* “The War was lost by Dirty Stinking Hippies/the Media/etc.” The old ’stab in the back’ argument. Truth is that the military never had a clue how to win. We now know that even in the early days under Kennedy and Johnson, and with McNamara, that the metrics were screwed, the local government was corrupt and incompetent, there was no plan, no strategy and no future. The only idea anyone ever had was continually escalating, and all that meant was that a losing war was being lost on a bigger and faster scale. The public didn’t turn against the war until late and by that time, the incompetence and failure of the effort was obvious. Nope, this war was lost by the boys that fought it, and the officers that lead them. End of story.
* “We could have won if we stayed the course!” This is based in the theory that… well, things would have somehow gotten better. Basically, nonsense. There’s been a pernicious revival of the theory that goes ‘The Vietcong were wiped out, and the SVA were capable of holding their own against the NVA, all they needed was American air support.’ Ahem – no on all counts, evidence is that the Vietcong were regenerating handily, the SV government remained corrupt and incompetent, the SVA was no match for the NVA. There was no happy prognosis.
* “Well, its all the fault of Democrats for pulling out!” Actually, the big pull out was by Richard Nixon. In fact, if anyone sold out the South Vietnamese, it was Nixon and Kissinger. Go back to the Paris Peace Talks transcripts, and its very clear that Kissingers giving the NV carte blanche to take over, with the only stipulation that they wait a reasonable time, so the Americans can save face. Really, you want to blame someone for losing? Nixon, Nixon, Nixon. Maybe he didn’t have better options. But he was the guy who cut South Vietnam loose and turned his back on the whole thing.
* And finally: “Liberals are responsible for the Cambodian Genocide and Vietnamese Boat People cause somehow if Republicans had been running things (they were), or if we freed up the military do do its job (we did), and supported the troops to the max (we did), then we would have won (we didn’t) and everything would have been fine (it wasnt)!!!” This bit of schizophrenic nonsense happily ignores the fact that it was the United States that destabilized the Cambodian government, overthrew the monarchy and installed a series of incompetent puppet rulers. The United States then undertook secret and illegal bombings and invasions which further destabilized the country and created massive refugee movements which fell into the Khmer Rouge’s hands. After the North Vietnamese took over the whole of Vietnam, the United States supported the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese until such time as the Vietnamese took them out and ended the genocide.
Ah, but Shooter’s got his own theory. His theory is that if he and his buddies lie, lie long, lie often, lie big and never stop lying about it all, reality will adjust itself.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Can someone explain to me why Rosa Brooks is qualified to be an advisor in the Pentagon to the Undersecretary of Defense? Apparently her latest advise is that the governement should bail out the ailing Newspapers. Are these the same Newspapers that are abdicate their duty to report facts, conveniently leave out information or just don’t report on certian valid news stories because it does not support their point of view. Thomas Jefferson must be rolling in his grave.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Joe from Lowell,
Good point. I’m glad I’m not the first to notice analogies between the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the Iraq war. Although to be fair the analogies aren’t great. Unlike Saddam, the Khmer Rouge were committing the height of their atrocities right up to the moment the Vietnamese tanks rolled over the border, and unlike the Americans in Iraq, the Vietnamese invasion did not empower random armed gangs to start roaming and terrorizing the countryside.
I kind of _understand_ why the Cambodians didn’t like to be ruled by the Vietnamese, but it still isnt particularly reasonable. In point of fact, the Vietnamese invasion saved millions of Cambodian lives.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Good point. I’m glad I’m not the first to notice analogies between the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the Iraq war.
How could anyone miss them. The analogies are on the same order as the analogy between Igneous Rock and a rousing game of backgammon.
April 18th, 2009 at 10:24 am
…except for the one specific point Hector was responding to. Do you recall what it was? Hint: occupation.
April 18th, 2009 at 11:01 am
If so, it is a bot which has gained more sentience that 24MillimeterHeadDotMop.