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Old 11-12-2009, 07:32 AM
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Sauron Sauron is offline
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Default David Brooks, the nations' premier warrior

Skip this post if you're not a foreign policy aficionado.

One of my favorite shows is the Friday edition of the PBS News Hour. Watching Mark Shields & David Brooks dice the events of the week is a real treat.

But it pays to remember who we're dealing with here. David Brooks currently writes for the New York Times. He came to the NYT from the Weekly Standard. While there, he was one of teh biggest advocates for war against Iraq and a first-string cheerleader for the Bush administration - lies, deceptions and mistruths.

Glenn Greenwald serves it all up here. Here is a representative example of Brooks from 2003:

Quote:
I MADE THE MISTAKE of watching French news the night of Colin Powell's presentation before the Security Council. . . . Then they brought on a single "expert" to analyze Powell's presentation. This fellow, who looked to be about 25 and quite pleased with himself, was completely dismissive. The Powell presentation was a mere TV show, he sniffed. It's impossible to trust any of the intelligence data Powell presented because the CIA is notorious for lying and manipulation. The presenter showed a photograph of a weapons plant, and then the same site after it had been sanitized and the soil scraped. The expert was unimpressed: The Americans could simply have lied about the dates when the pictures were taken. Maybe the clean site is actually the earlier picture, he said.

That was depressing enough. Then there were a series of interviews with French politicians of the left and right. They were worse. At least the TV expert had acknowledged that Powell did present some evidence, even if he thought it was fabricated. The politicians responded to Powell's address as if it had never taken place. They simply ignored what Powell said and repeated that there is no evidence that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and that, in any case, the inspection system is effective.

This was not a response. It was simple obliviousness, a powerful unwillingness to confront the question honestly. This made the politicians seem impervious to argument, reason, evidence, or anything else. Maybe in the bowels of the French elite there are people rethinking their nation's position, but there was no hint of it on the evening news.

Which made me think that maybe we are being ethnocentric. As good, naive Americans, we think that if only we can show the world the seriousness of the threat Saddam poses, then they will embrace our response. In our good, innocent way, we assume that in persuading our allies we are confronted with a problem of understanding.

But suppose we are confronted with a problem of courage? Perhaps the French and the Germans are simply not brave enough to confront Saddam. . . . Or suppose we are confronted with a problem of character? Perhaps the French and the Germans understand the risk Saddam poses to the world order. Perhaps they know that they are in danger as much as anybody. They simply would rather see American men and women--rather than French and German men and women--dying to preserve their safety. . . . Far better, from this cynical perspective, to signal that you will not take on the terrorists--so as to earn their good will amidst the uncertain times ahead.
There are probably 15 or 20 such examples of David Brooks fawning militarism and Bush fetishism that Greenwald documents. Worth the reading, if for no other reason than to enjoy the delicious schadenfreude at how a scion of the far right could have been so utterly, categorically mistaken.
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Old 11-12-2009, 07:39 AM
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erimir erimir is offline
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Default Re: David Brooks, the nations' premier warrior

Yeah but the fact that the French happened to have been correct about the WMDs is irrelevant, because we all know, their only reason for saying that in the first place was their financial interests in the region.

Everyone, everyone, thought that he had weapons! All the foreign intelligence agencies.

Or that's what my parents' conservative friend told me anyway.
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Old 11-14-2009, 01:40 AM
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godfry n. glad godfry n. glad is offline
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Default Re: David Brooks, the nations' premier warrior

So...Has anybody had the wherewithal to push this in Brooks' face on camera?
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