Greenwald: Charlie Rose Circle Jerk on the Iraq War's Fifth Anniversary

[BurtWorm]

From salon.com:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/25/war_opponents/index.html


The two alleged "war critics" were the President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Lesley Gelb, and The New Yorker's George Packer. As Rose put it: "To get the other side's perspective, I talked to Richard Perle and Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute." And therein one finds a perfect expression of how limited, distorted and propagandistic the debate over Iraq in the establishment press continues to be.

In no meaningful sense are Gelb and Packer on "the other side" from Perle and Kagan. Both Gelb and Packer were, albeit to different degrees, among the most influential enablers of the invasion of Iraq.

In February, 2003, Gelb went on Fox News with Brit Hume and attacked the French for impeding our invasion, telling Hume (via LEXIS): "But frankly, except for The Cuban Missile Crisis, I don't think more has been at stake than today. Our country really is at risk in a way we've never been at risk before." Three days before the invasion, he told The Associated Press: "I'm in favor of this . . . . It's the best medicine for anti-Americanism around the world I can imagine." To this day, Gelb continues to insist that the invasion was the right thing to do, but that we just should have executed it more effectively. So that's one of Rose's "war critics."

While much more nuanced and cautious than Gelb, Packer was one of the intellectual leaders of the so-called "liberal hawk" movement. He wrote a highly influential December, 2002 New York Times article proclaiming "The Liberal Quandry over Iraq," touting the views of so-called "liberal hawks." The next month, he demanded "a clean break" with what he scorned as "doctrinaire leftists, who know what they think about American foreign policy -- they're against it," and rejected "an antiwar movement with little to say to Americans' fears for their own safety."

Packer never endorsed Bush's specific invasion plan, but he certainly never opposed it, and -- like most "liberal hawks" -- endorsed the concept itself ("the wrong people are doing the right thing for the wrong reasons"). Packer perfectly exemplified the Tom-Friedman-esque "liberal hawk" enabling behavior back then of advocating American interventionism of the type contemplated in Iraq (while wishing it would be better executed) and attacking those who were genuinely opposed to the war ("Until liberals show that they will make the world safe for democracy -- for their fellow citizens, and for citizens around the world -- the American people won't give them the chance").

So when Charlie Rose arranges a five-year anniversary discussion of Iraq purportedly involving American foreign policy experts on "both sides," it completely excludes any Americans who unequivocally opposed the war in the first place -- i.e., it completely excludes those were who right and offers only those who were wrong. As always, unadorned war opposition is mutually exclusive with Foreign Policy Seriousness, and those who are unequivocal in their opposition to the underlying premises of the war (rather than its tactical execution) are almost never heard from in media discussions -- still.

[bryant69]

1. I just read that

Very discouraging.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[wtmusic]

2. I remember George Packer's POV being along the lines of

Thomas Friedman's in 2003. From the New Yorker's perspective Packer was the "other side" from anti-warriors like Hendrik Hertzberg.

[BurtWorm]

3. Hertzberg expressed one of the best and least heard reasons to resist the war

namely that the people pushing so hard for it were in office under a cloud of illegitimacy.

[Winterblues]

4. His was exactly the same as John Edwards was at the time.

Many Democratic Senators were very gung ho to attack to show they were not wimps, just ignorant...

[wtmusic]

5. Absolutely -- and in their zeal they missed the simple truth

that pre-emptive attack is never justified. Beneath all the hyperbolic debate and intelligence estimates was this fundamental ethic which completely escaped many.

[The Stranger]

6. What else would you expect? It's CHARLIE ROSE.

He is the suck.