Posted on 11/01/2005 6:56:28 PM PST by Senator Goldwater
Mr. Stability The wrongness of Brent Scowcroft's realism. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2005, at 1:47 PM ET
Scowcroft longs for the "peace" of Saddam's regime The sole point of the non-findings of the Fitzgerald non-investigation, into the non-commission of non-crimes and the non-outing of a non-covert CIA bureaucrat, is (as Messrs. Kerry, Krugman, Rich, and others keep reminding us) that it might even yet trigger the long-awaited inquest into the Iraq intervention. I very strongly hope that there is a full-dress postmortem into this country's Iraq policy, though I am not ready to assume that "inquest" or "postmortem" are the correct terms for it. Let's just say a serious blue-ribbon, bipartisan, full-out inquiry. This inquiry, however, could hardly be confined—as Kerry, Krugman, and Rich so obviously hope—to the years 2001-05.
At the very minimum, the starting point of such a retrospective should be the decision, in 1991, to confirm Saddam Hussein in power after his expulsion from Kuwait and to keep his population under international sanctions. Another place to begin might be the apparent "green light," given by the Carter administration, for Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran. Real specialists and buffs might wish to start with the role of the CIA in the 1960s military coup—or coups—that brought the Baath Party to power in Baghdad in the first place.
Jeffrey Goldberg's widely discussed essay on Brent Scowcroft's politics, published in New Yorker of Oct. 31, makes an ideal starting point. It reminds us, for one thing, that the root-and-branch opposition to regime change in 2003 came not from the left, but from the right. There were many vocal leftists on the streets at that moment, as we all remember, but their slogans were so puerile (a war for Halliburton and all that) as to make them ignorable...
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Hitchens continues to be my favorite lefty.
Hitchens' is biased because his dislike for mass killers colors his judgment.
Too bad this Hitchens-ism can't fit onto a bumper sticker.
Ogden Ping
He's my favorite lefty, too, one of the few that really gets it. Thanks for posting this, great read!
Motivation? Scowcroft has been ignored by W's administration, is miffed at having his policy advice overtures rebuffed, and so it appears he is willing to stir trouble even between father and son, if necessary, to get noticed again. He and Jummah ought to go have a nice game of checkers and leave war policy to the innovative, paradigm-shifting W.
Well, so would I be, if I were a former partner in the firm of Kissinger Associates who now runs his own consultancy, introducing unpleasant regimes to the corporations that love them."
God, this guy can write.
Shameless Plug
A Realist No Longer
Tech Central Station ^ | 10/31/05 | Pejman Yousefzadeh
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1513278/posts
The punditry world is abuzz with talk of a recent New Yorker article (no link available) by writer Jeffrey Goldberg, who has interviewed Brent Scowcroft, the former national security advisor for the Ford Administration and the Administration of George H.W. Bush. In a number of passages in the piece, Scowcroft takes on the current Bush Administration over the issue of Iraq, something for which he has earned applause from many Democrats and other Bush critics.
But when one reads the entire New Yorker piece, one finds that Scowcroft's critique is directed at foreign policy idealism in general. And it's a critique that should make Democrats jubilant over his attacks on the Bush Administration's foreign policy more nervous than they appear to be right now. Scowcroft's brand of foreign policy realism is shot through with contradictions and weak attempts at self-justification that should cause many realists to take issue with his arguments......
/Shameless Plug
Nat Hentoff?
Ouch! Hitchens just ticked off the entire church of LDS.
I'll have to sit down with Mr. Scowcroft next time I see him. Nice catch.
That's it in a nutshell.
Scowcroft doesn't want his paradigms shifted.
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