NYT: The Neoconservatives’ Best Friend
I recently attended a Washington event where a New York Times columnist proposed that the Old Gray Lady gives the Right a fairer shake than the right-leaning WSJ gives Lefties. He is certainly correct, at least when it comes to the Neoconservatives. Witness today’s op-ed page top headlines:
First we have a mishmash of quantitative evidence from David Brooks arguing for why we ought to see Iraq as a success (America fought in part to bring cellular telephones to millions of Iraqis). He argues that $57 billion and over 4,000 American soldiers was worth the result in Iraq, a precarious state where even Brooks admits there is low social trust and little professional human capital. Then Paul Wolfowitz recommends that America follow the Korea model, and keep tens of thousands of troops on the ground for many decades to come.
A few weeks ago, The Weekly Standard ran a piece by Joseph Epstein announcing that he was canceling his subscription to the NYT. While wittier than the average attack on the NYT from the Right, today’s op-ed page indicates that perhaps he and the other Standard folks should reconsider.
(It’s possible that the NYT‘s op-ed illustrator had the last laugh here, though. His image, ostensibly designed to convey the idea of “boots on the ground” looks more Orwellian to me: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”)
I cancelled my subscription to the Times a year or so ago. A bad habit. I had acquired it about 40 years ago, give or take. The reason: one ordinary Tuesday or Wednesday morning, I settled down with my coffee and the morning paper. What do you know, above the fold coverage of some priest from Missouri, since decamped from the show me state, in a money dispute over the dollar amounts he was tendering to a former lover for a love child. She wanted more. There were no evasions. She simply wanted more dough. Moving on in the paper through the usual boring stories of Long Island Geriatric Aids patients with a yen to serve as life guards in the Hamptons but were being discriminated against because they couldn’t pull the 10lb dumbell from the bottom of the pool to safety, on page 16 I stumble on a story about the South African Jurist, a Jew (read self hating Jew) who found Israel answerable for war crimes in the Gaza. Editorial judgment like this will convince even a dolt like me that the NY Times is poison. People with brains get it after about 2/3 of a column by Maureen Dowd on any topic.
It never takes these Israel first neocons and neolibs long to rewrite history in their favor, using the pages of The New York Times as the first draft.
C’mon. On the day Obama basically declares a fake victory in Iraq in a “stirring, patriotic” phony America feel-good speech, these insatiable opportunists are declaring victory for themselves and their ideology, and already laying the groundwork for another invasion?
The New York Times, which had this all timed out perfectly, is obviously an Israel-first propaganda rag staffed by Zionist apparatchiks just laying in wait for American suckers.
Of course Brooks wants us in Iraq for another few decades. Like all neoconservatives he wants brave but easily duped Americans from Southern and rural areas standing between Israel and its enemies. (Check out the Global War on Terror body count from Manhattan or DC sometime).
And Brooks also wants us to keep paying the Israelis for the privilege of spilling our blood and emptying our treasury in their defense.
I look forward to the upcoming peace talks, during which the Israelis will use their stateside agents to force the American taxpayer to fork over another few billion dollars for dismantling a few West Bank settlements. Which Israel will promptly rebuild as soon as they’ve cashed the check.
In its dealings with the US, Israel has conformed to the classic definition of a parasitic organism. But just at the point that it believes that it can completely control the behavior of its host, that host has begun to sicken and falter.
I about gagged on my coffee when that headline loaded:
David Brooks
“Nation Building Works”
Umm…what?!