Daniel Larison gives them each a good spanking over at the American Conservative—William “Bill the Shill” Kristol, Peggy “Peggy the Shrill” Noonan, and George “George the Pill” Will, all hawkin’ and squawkin’ about the failure of President Obama to 1) make all the world’s problems go away with a wave of his hand (in the case of Mr. Kristol), 2) stoutly and loudly declare his sympathy with the oppressed masses in Ukraine (in the case of Ms. Noonan), and 3) having stupidly involved the U.S. in the Libyan civil war, compound that folly by doing to the same in Ukraine (in the case of Mr. Will).
The motives of Mr. Obama’s critics are various. Mr. Kristol observes the apocalypse already upon us:
Why is this happening? Because the United States is in retreat. What is the Obama administration’s response to these events? Further retreat.
Bill’s only real concern, of course, is with Israel. The Iranian mullahs are monstrous, not because they have nuclear weapons, or because they desire to have nuclear weapons, but rather because they might sometime acquire the capability of acquiring nuclear weapons if they did desire them. It is this acquiring the capability of acquiring that so upsets him, or so he would have us believe.
In Peggy’s case,* the president is faulted for not making some meaningless and fatuous statements about how much he wishes that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych would behave more appropriately—statements that, if Obama did make them, would immediately inspire “astonished” ridicule on the part of Peggy and her cohorts on the right. The president tries to fight tanks with words! OMG! That’s so liberal!
Mr. Will’s column is one long trash-fest, Mr. Will asserting his intellectual superiority over Karl Marx, Western Europe, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Yanukovych, and Barack Obama in one sustained exhalation of vanity.
There has been some talk these days about not enough public intellectuals. A shortage of smart ones, maybe.
Afterwords
The rapidly changing situation in Ukraine have, in all probability, lapped and negated all of the this unholy trio’s criticism of the president, but never mind, never mind. It’s all his fault anyway. If only he would stand tall like Reagan!
