Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (National Review Edition)

Send your New Republic subsription fees to Spencer Ackerman! You can watch as he picks up the pathetic dorks at National Review and throws them against the wall, just to show the world that he means business:

toohotfortnr: how will you know your enemy? by their colour or your fear?: Oh, Jonah. Today [Jonah Goldberg writes]:

In the dumbed-down debate we're having, there are only two sides: Pro-war and antiwar. This is silly. First, very few folks who favored the Iraq invasion are abstractly pro-war.

Jonah, April 23, 2002:

I've long been an admirer of, if not a full-fledged subscriber to, what I call the "Ledeen Doctrine." I'm not sure my friend Michael Ledeen will thank me for ascribing authorship to him and he may have only been semi-serious when he crafted it, but here is the bedrock tenet of the Ledeen Doctrine in more or less his own words:

Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.

Comments

[RKKA]

That's pretty much it, neoconservatism in a nutshell. These guys got bullied in Junior High School, and having never gotten over it, feel the need to take it out on "...some small crappy little country...".

"Dost thou not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?"

[P O'Neill]

Remember that Tom Friedman is also a subscriber to what Jonah calls the Ledeen doctrine, or at least became one after 9/11.

[Ian Whitchurch]

Of course, the difficulty of doing this is that you may throw some small crappy country up against a wall, and lose.

cf the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006.

Ian Whitchurch

[Paul Reber]

Maybe I'm not reading around enough lately, but I'm surprised I haven't run into more people connecting the dots between this type of Ledeen "madman theory" of foreign policy -- e.g., if we act crazy and invade some random non-terror related country like Iraq, the rest of 'em will be afraid of us and behave -- and the recent nuclear test by North Korea.

The point being that an even vaguely rational country like the US (current admin) cannot possibly hope to compete with a career "madman" like Kim Jong Il.

We're relentlessly told that the leaders of N. Korea & Iran are "madmen" and they are regularly insulted and denigrated in our media. However, it appears to me that they have pretty thoroughly kicked the administration's ass on any reasonable diplomatic scorecard.

It's transparently obvious that as soon as the U.S. acts irrational, it's absolutely necessary for Iran & N. Korea to get nuclear weapons, isn't it? Unless you are lucky, like Iran, and get to observe the U.S. fubaring the situation in Iraq to the point that (a) the U.S. couldn't invade you and (b) the outcome of the last madness is going to eventually provide you with a best buddy new close-neighbor oil-rich ally. At that point, I'd issue some fatwah's against nuclear development too.

And I can't help notice that maybe it's not a coincidence that the fizzled nuclear test is just about the best possible outcome for N. Korea. They get international attention and create a need to be treated with, without quite pushing the panic buttons that a real, successful plutonium bomb test would.

So I'm somewhat dumbstuck when Dennis Miller (who I once thought had 2 brain cells to rub together) comes on John Stewart and suggests that "they are afraid of Cheney." As if, even at madness these chumps are incompetent and getting routinely pwned by regimes that are simply better at it.

But I suppose if the obvious were obvious to all, we'd have some f---ing grownups in charge.

[Jon Fernquest]

As adults we must keep dangerous things like knives and poison locked up and out of harms way from our children.

So too, Jonah Goldberg, who needs to be kept away from pencils.

I just get angry and lose all faith in democracy when I read idiots like him.

The important thing is not to "recycle ideas" he says.

What about striving to get your ideas right? or at least **consistent*******?

I think he's a thinly disguised regurgitation of some famous writer or theorist, but I just can't place who.

[Michael Turner]

It was the Nixon-Kissinger Doctrine before it was the Ledeen Doctrine. And before that, well, Carthago delendo est, remember?

Every ten years or so, grownups need to pick some small crappy little too-big-for-his-britches right-wing pundit and throw him against the wall, just to show all the others they mean business. Jonah Goldberg seems to be angling for the nomination this time around. Warning: If you need to warm up by pitching rabid chihuahuas, be careful to wear thick gloves. And clean up your mess afterwards.

[Divyang Shah]

Last year I sent a politely worded email to Michael Ledeen at his comfortable AEI office (I believe he is the "Freedom Scholar" there) asking for details of his glittering military career.

His reply was stroppy in the extreme and made no mention whatsoever of his heroics on the field of battle. It was an awful disappointment.

[Lee A. Arnold]

From: "Americans Wanted To Believe in Bush"
by Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucas/americanswantedtobelieve;_ylt=AkC1nUF93gq2T_lJxAS8H4oDW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBhcmljNmVhBHNlYwNtcm5ld3M-

"Just this June, conservative pundit John Derbyshire confessed in a National Review column that he regretted his early enthusiasm for the invasion of Iraq. Quoting a harsh passage he had written earlier, he admitted that his support for that war was hardly based on humanitarian or strategic impulses:

" '[M]y attitude to the war is really just punitive, and Iraq was a target of opportunity. I am not a Wilsonian nation-builder. I don't want to 'bring democracy to Iraq.' I don't, in fact, give a fig about the Iraqis. I am happy to leave barbarians alone to practice their unspeakable folkways, so long as they do not bother civilized peoples. When they do bother us, though, I want them smacked down with great ferocity.' "

--Is this attitude the real root of the Bush Administration's dismal performance?

Waging war for an emotional reason is a fundamental mistake, as any military strategist might tell you. (The troops need to be fired-up, but that is called morale.)

On top of this, Friedman, Ledeen, Derbyshire, Goldberg, et. al., then layered their intellectual reasons, which no longer needed to be coherent -- as has since been amply demonstrated! -- because emotion was carrying their arguments.

And when you need to validate your emotions, you just look around. It has been called the "herd instinct."

These writers do not examine their premises. They must be distrusted.

[Chris]

There is also, of course, the Goldberg Corollary, which is that under all circumstances, said war should be fought by *other* people.

[sglover]

The former USSR wasn't averse to picking fights with neighbors whom it considered pushovers. That approach doesn't seem to have worked out too well.....

[piotr]

Grenada!

I just read that North Korea is using Tuvalu flag for its ships to avoid control. The solution is simple, isn't it?

The country should not only be a "crappy" and "little", but it shoud have decent beaches, good climate, good-natured natives who know English. It helps if the military is under 1000 strong.

What other glorious invasion can we design? Turks and Caicos are notorious of tolerating drug trafficing. There, crappy little countries for hte next 20 years.

[P O'Neill]

Have I an especially weird web browser or is this post always appearing on the top of Brad's page, even after later posts have been made?

[Rich]

Assumption: Current U.S. foreign policy shows relatively low levels of competence, rationality, & ethics. Then, what might policy be under:

1. high competence, rationality; low ethics?
2. high competence, ethics; low rationality?
3. high rationality, ethics; low competence?
4. high competence; low rationality, ethics?
5. high rationality; low competence, ethics?
6. high ethics; low competence, rationality?
7. high rationality, competence, & ethics?

Perhaps #1 --> Successful, subtle, lethal expansion of empire? Quick work of Iran & populist Latin America? Deft containment of elite power in Europe, Russia, China, & Japan? Energy independence?

Perhaps #7 --> Serious pressure on Saudi A. & Israel? Isolationism or Meddling? More UN support?

[Ian Whitchurch]

"You go to war with the intellectuals you have, not the intellectuals you wish you had".

[j. bay]

The only reason we've ever lost a war is because we try to fight wars on the enemies terms! Our technology is so advanced at this point that we've invented this cool stuff called anti-matter. When anti-matter and normal matter touch there is a 100% release of energy. (I.E. no nuclear leftovers). What makes any of you think we can't win a war with Iran, N. Korea, Vietnam etc.? The only reason we won't win is because we try to play by there rules and they no it. If we would start playing by our own rules there would be no N. Korean threat and no terrorist threat. The fact is that it’s all or nothing. We need to either leave Iraq or give everyone there 3 months to get out before we make it into the worlds largest mirror. Excuse me for being brash but we have never lost a war that we've fought on our own terms.

[BroD]

Someone needs to assure Jonah that we could spare his intellect for the brief period he would require to singlehandedly put things right in Iraq.

[Ian Whitchurch]

J.bay,

Excuse me, but do you think the United States actually *won* the War of 1812 ? Or Korea, for that matter.

Ian Whitchurch

PS I hate to break this to you, but antimatter (a) hasnt been weaponised, and (b) does leave rather a lot of radiation.

PPS Yeah, I dont think you can win a war with Vietnam. Regardless of the fact that the US has one army, and it's busy losing in Iraq.