War: What is it good for? Advocating obliquely
In a post titled "Serious about Syria", Jamie Kirchick notes that "Syria and Iran have effectively declared war on us. Make of that what you will." What I make of it is that Jamie is writing from the school of "ruthless seriousness" that teaches a pundit to dance around support for an idea--in this case war with Iran--he or she knows is insane, and then to suggest that people on the right side of it are unserious without specifying exactly why.
"[I]t's not "warmongering"", Jamie writes, "to simply state the fact that two rogue states are themselves complicit in unwarranted acts of warmongering against the United States and a nascent democracy in the Middle East." And in a technical sense he's right. Warmongering is what people (like Norm Podhoretz) do when the waves of their careers have crested and they have little to lose by giving in to their violent id. What Jamie's doing is everything up to the point of explicitly warmongering so that if a war occurs, and then goes badly, Jamie can say he was never there beating the drums.
Comments
I almost threw up when I saw that Andrew Sullivan who, despite his flaws, is a writer I respect, gave over part of his blog to Jamie Kirchick, a man quickly establishing himself as the worst, most intellectually dishonest writer in the blogosphere. That being said, I can't help but feel that people like you and Matt are feeding his popularity by even attempting to respond to his absurd posts. Isn't it time we simply let his ridiculously narrow-minded rants go ignored as they should be? I don't think the right takes him seriously (yet). Why should we?
On the warmongers (squishy and hard): to resurrect an old adv, where's the beef? What hard facts do they have to prove Syria and Iran have declared war on us by some 'acts'?
The left is letting the right define what passes for facts on Iran, in particular. We've been here already on the lead up to Iraq (The Preemptive War), with rhetoric substituting for analysis, and assertions replacing data that can reviewed and balanced.
We will regret accepting the same old masquerading as the new.
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