In a recent post, Try harder, Mr. Beinart,1 I subjected Peter Beinart to brief ridicule for perpetuating now ancient myths from John F. Kennedy’s half-forgotten “New Frontier” when he expressed the wish, in a column for the New York Times, that more Republican senators would present “profiles in courage”, so to speak, and vote the…
Tag: Daniel Larison
Neocons suffering withdrawal symptoms in Afghanistan
There are about 13,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Now that number is coming down to about 8,600. Yet from the growls n’ howls emitted by unrepentant neocons like Thomas Joscelyn of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, writing in the anti-Trump Dispatch—“No Deal Is Better Than a Bad Deal”—and Iranian-born Shay Khatiri, writing in…
Bernie versus the Media: An Update
Yesterday I wrote a little piece making fun of Ben Smith, the New York Times’ newly installed in-house media critic, for uncritically endorsing Bernie Sanders’ sweeping (and, in my opinion, banal) denunciation of the “capitalist” media. In my brief beatdown of both Ben and Bernie, I neglected to remark that if Ben wanted to point…
When is a coup not a coup? When the neocons say so.
Neocon Central is battered but not beaten these days. The rise of Trump has split the rock in half, but only when it comes to Trump himself. On other issues, the rock remains firm. A useful example has just presented itself, the claim made by both the Trump-hating Washington Post and the Trump-friendly Eli Lake,…
Can trade wars today lead to shooting wars tomorrow? With Donald Trump in charge, we may not have to wait!
It’s true: Donald Trump is getting awfully bored. The whole Mueller thing, which looked like it was going to be so much fun, has gone flatter than that liter bottle of malt liquor you opened last night and forgot to finish. Where’s the sparkle? Where’s the punch? I got up this morning planning to start…
David Ignatius is NOT a vampire. He CAN see himself in a mirror. He just doesn’t WANT to.
You can’t blame the guy, can you? If I lied like Dave, I wouldn’t want to look at myself in the mirror either. Dave’s latest gaze blocker, delivered in the course of his mandatory suck-up to newly arrived enabler in chief John Bolton, runs as follows: “Bolton’s hawkishness toward North Korea now looks prescient. He…
Trump on Qatar: Let the ass-kicking begin!
The quasi-civil war within the Cooperation Council of the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC), pitting Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against tiny but wealthy Qatar, has alarmed just about everyone in the “West”, with the single exception of President Donald Trump. The Donald has been tweeting enthusiatically that the collision between the…
Who cares about policy, when we can watch really cool explosions on TV!
That seems to be the take of a much too large portion of America’s pundits, not to mention Congress, the one group of folks who could actually do something about it. Over at Reason, Ed Krayewski counts the banalities of both congressional and pundit reaction to Donald Trump’s big bang: “Such militaristic president-worship, last seen…
Vanneman praises Friedman; Heavens sway, just a little
Yes, it’s true. Thomas Friedman—the guy who said we should invade Iraq “because we can”—has written a brilliant column, “Bibi Netanyahu Makes Trump His Chump”, whose first two paragraphs read as follows: “For those of you confused over the latest fight between President Obama and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, let me make it…
A Canny Old Rug Peddler From Queens
Well there probably is one, but his name isn’t Donald Trump. But over at The National Interest, Leon Hadar assures us that the Donald is indeed Bismarck with a conk1. Here’s how Leon spins his vision of “TrumPolitik”: “TrumpPolitik would certainly place more emphasis on strengthening U.S. relationship with the big powers of the world,…