If you think the news from the Middle East couldn’t get any worse, well, wait ten minutes. This once inconceivable sequence of horrifying events seems destined to rumble on until, well, until it stops. I am generally a fan of finger pointing, but this constant barrage of disasters is, naturally, spawning an orgy of outrage…
Tag: Peter Beinart
The Coalition of the Swilling
Here are two questions that few today can answer, to wit: “During the Vietnam War, what could you buy in a Filipino PX that you couldn’t buy in an American PX?” “Johnnie Walker Black Label and Chivas Regal.” “What else could you buy in a Filipino PX?” “Nothing.” After Lyndon Johnson sent American ground troops…
Memo to Peter Beinart: Physician, heal thyself!
AV fave rave Daniel Larison has a post up1 quoting Peter Beinart from an interview Pete did with John Glaser of the Cato Institute as follows: We also don’t have…we don’t really have a learning process that I think then shapes the public debate. So one of the things that’s really frustrating to me, and…
Biden’s foreign policy is sliding into a Blobby bog
Sad, but unsurprising, not to mention scary as shit: Uncle Joe is letting the military intellectual complex put both hands on the wheel when it comes to the U.S. and the outside world. Consider the following: – In a recent meeting with Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi in Alaska, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony…
Peter Beinart tries harder. Much harder.
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…
Please, Mr. Beinart, try harder
Over at the New York Times, Peter Beinart has a column, “Why Are There So Few Courageous Senators?”, which takes as its text—well, in its first half, anyway—John F. Kennedy’s “famous” book, Profiles in Courage, citing two profiles, “two legendary Southerners, Thomas Hart Benton and Sam Houston, who a century earlier had become pariahs for…
Peter Beinart: Cogent, with a caveat
Actually, more than cogent. Beinart, a chastened former liberal hawk who supported George’s W. Bush’s massively flawed and fraudulent invasion of Iraq, has learned his lesson pretty well, setting forth his conviction that “America Needs an Entirely New Foreign Policy for the Trump Age”, though I would much prefer another term for “the present” than…
Trump chic and other assorted crimes
Over at Slate, Scots-Irish hillbilly for a day Reihan Salam thumps his chest with pride at his sly affection for Donald Trump, who is speaking up for the common man, or at least the common white man: “he is speaking for millions of Americans who’ve lost faith in the political process.” Well, yes. He is…
I guess no Muslims were available
The Atlantic has printed a symposium/sitdown discussing the Obama Administration’s proposed nuclear agreement with Iran, featuring, well, featuring three Jews—Peter Beinart, David Frum, and Jeffrey Goldberg. Pete and Jeff are both in favor of the deal, leaving poor Dave as the odd man out, but I couldn’t help thinking that the Atlantic might have picked…
What Daniel Larison gets wrong about what Iran hawks get wrong
I find The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison to be indispensable reading. Dan never wearies in his pursuit of interventionist nonsense from both the right and left. His only problem, shockingly, is his overabundance of innocence. All too often, he really believes that the neo-cons, and their liberal interventionist counterparts, really believe what they say. A…