Sunday, March 20, 2011

HOW CRAZY IS THIS WAR GOING TO MAKE GLENN BECK?

We were told yesterday that the president shifted to a pro-war stance in Libya under the influence of Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice ... and Samantha Power. At the blog of Glenn Beck's site The Blaze, Power's involvement has created a synapse overload in the brain of Beck flunky Jonathon Seidl, in part because -- wait for it -- Power is married to the hated Cass Sunstein.

There are a staggering number of baseless smears floating around the right-o-sphere regarding Sunstein, most easily debunked, even (at times) by fellow right-wingers. This isn't just a Beck thing -- Sean Hannity listed Power and Sunstein as the third- and second-most "dangerous" Obamaites. So if Power is married to Sunstein and she's a prime mover behind this war, the conspiracy theories in Beck Land are going to fly thick and fast.

(The main charges against Sunstein involve alleged coercive do-goodism -- he wants to force people to donate organs! He wants animals to be able to sue humans! These are distortions, but they fit the Beckite Grand Unified Theory of liberal evil. And so, I guess, does the Libyan intervention.)

Elsewhere on The Blaze, Seidl quotes a John Podhoretz column on Hillary Clinton's involvement in the decision to go to war. Key passage:

...Hillary Clinton is, in the final analysis, primarily motivated by what the late Michael Kelly called, in 1993, the politics of "do-goodism."

That philosophy combines, in [Michael] Kelly's words, "a generally 'progressive' social agenda with a strong dose of moralism."


Seidl then turns to the subject of Samantha Power:

Let's put aside the concerns about America becoming (or solidifying its position as) the world's "Casey the Punisher" and think for a moment about the prominent position an interventionist such as Power is poised to take. That's right, I think that in Power you're looking at either the next secretary of state or defense, or at least someone who will take a larger role in one of those offices. Remember, Gates and Clinton are both on their way out, and before calling Clinton a "monster" in 2008, Power was poised for such a role.

Should that happen, we could long for the "early days" of the Obama administration. You know, when we were only involved in two wars. That's scary.


I didn't think a military campaign against Libya would be attacked by the right, but this could be the way it'll be done: this war is liberal social engineering! So it's not really war at all!

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