Monday, March 18, 2013

Check your fly, Peter Beinart, your insincerity's showing


Is Peter Beinhart really trying to pose as the voice of reason today?

Yes, Peter Beinhart has recanted his pro-war stance -- many years too late to make a difference, some would argue.  But while he was in charge of The New Republic, no one was bitchier, more dishonest and more us-versus-them.  Has he really learned enough to now be the voice of reason?

Clearly not.  At The Daily Beast this morning, like the ultimate I-didn't-learn-a-damn-thing whore of the mainstream media, he plugs Rachel Maddows xenophobic TV special.  That's not a small part.  Streaming made Rachel's crap available in the Middle East.  Sometimes e-mails just send a link to a social media discussion on that special in Arabic, sometimes e-mails to this site have the writer going into it at length all on their own.  As if the illegal war wasn't bad enough, a piece of crap special is produced by the same cable channel that lied about the Iraqi people back then and now it's lying about them today.  If you think this is a minor detail, you bettter keep your head buried in the sand because the shock of reality may be too much for your heart.

Beinhart's column for The Daily Beast presents Neocon Robert Kagan as the vocie of the pro-war set.  He's the husband of the State Dept's Victoria Nuland, don't forget.  And he's an adviser to the administration, don't forget.  If Beinhart had disclosed either, I wouldn't have to offer the reminders here, would I?

Kagan is a scholar, one who's quoted by and sought out by Barack Obama, and he's pro-Iraq War.  The pro-side could do a lot worse than have Beinart presenting Kagan as the voice of their argument.  He could have, for example, offered some lightweight like Michael Savage who's known less for thought and reason and more because he gets media.

Oh, by the way, who did Benihart present as the voice for our side?

Joan Didion?  No, not Joan or Ahrundati Roy or any other woman because Peter Beinart doesn't respect women.  (It must kill him to have a woman for a boss.)  No, he offers a man.  Of course.  He offers Michael Moore.  Moore who, as the Iraq War was looming, offered a chapter in one of his many large print style books declaring that Oprah should be president.  (Moore apparently missed Oprah's show where she attacked the audience member opposed to war on Iraq and insisted that her panel -- including the New York Times' Judith Miller -- were the experts.)

Moore's not known for intellectual heft or even common sense.  He's known for embarrassing publicly stunts like dropping to his knees on bad TV shows to beg Ralph Nader not to run for president.

So Beinart gives the pro-war side a scholar and we get the blubbering Michael Moore?

Talk about stacking the deck.

It could be pointed out that Beinart lacks the knowledge basis to make Kagan's argument.  We reject the argument Beinart passes off and we rejected it many times here over the years.  Most recently, you can can refer to the March 1st snapshot and focus on this section:


By contrast, the Iraq War is completely understandable.  September 11, 2001 was an attack on the United States.  We could have dealt with it as we had other attacks.  We could have followed the law.  We could have been grown ups and had honest discussions.  We didn't follow the law and we demonized those who wanted to speak honestly (such as Susan Sontag).  By refusing to address what happened, the events that follow are completely understandable.

We put aside thinking, logic, processing and everything else and were left with nothing but injury and hurt and we looked for someone in a weaker position to lash out at to feel better.  Strip the tired colloquialisms from Thomas Friedman's bad writing and TV appearances and what your left with is a tiny, impotent and angry man raging with violence.

Where in the world did you think that rage would go?  Because it had to go somewhere.




If Peter was sincerly sorry about his support for the illegal war, if he truly regretted it, his 10th anniversary column would be a column apologizing for the attacks he, the magazine he was then the editor of (The New Republic) and his staff launched on those who were against the war.  (We're talking vicious, nasty attacks -- like saying that a bomb should be dropped on Ahrundati Roy.  Despite being an opinion journal, they did everything they could to shut down public discourse.)  Those people do exist and just because Peter wants to say "I was wrong to support the war" does not mean he's taken accountability for his non-stop attacks on various voices against the war or, for that matter, the entire movement to stop the war.

If he was ever genuine in his words, he would have made a point to use this opportunity to right his wrongs.  He didn't do that.

Which means he was never sincere.  It means that when the war went straight to hell -- as so many of us knew it would -- he was smart enough to realize what was happening and was among the first to turn on it in order to save his own ass.

There is nothing genuine about him.  People who genuinely regret what they did make a point to make ammends, Beinart's had how many years to do something and has refused to do so.


Today, Andrew Dugan (Gallup) notes, "Fifty-three percent of Americans believe their country "made a mistake sending troops to fight in Iraq" and 42% say it was not a mistake."

With the majority of the Americans against the illegal war, why are we hearing from the voices of wrong?  Or we get James Fallows patting himself on the back and lying that he was anti-war.  As proof he offers that he wrote pieces about how hard the war would be.

That's not anti-war.  That's asking that a war be fought your way.

At what point do the Fallows and Beinarts sit their tired asses down and stop lecturing the country?  Don't they have enough servings of the shame pie to keep their mouths occupied? 

Haven't they done enough and isn't it past time that the people who were right get to be the ones to discuss what took place?

To the victors go the spoils?  Quit kidding yourself.

Bonnie notes Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Marital Aid" went up yesterday as did
Kat's "Kat's Korner: Devendra's back, if you want him" and "Kat's Korner: Kate wants to talk" went up earlier today.   On this week's Law and Disorder Radio,  an hour long program that airs Monday mornings at 9:00 a.m. EST on WBAI and around the country throughout the week, hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Michael S. Smith and Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights) topics addressed include Bradley Manning, Hugo Chavez, political prisoner Lynn Stewart, Iraq and the guest is Patrick Farrelly who addresses the topics explored in  BBC Arabic and the Guardian newspaper's recent documentary entitled James Steele: America's Mystery Man In Iraq.




The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.


 
 
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