RELAX -- IT'S NOT 2002
A lot of folks in the left blogosphere are upset at the appearance of a New York Times op-ed urging the U.S. to bomb North Korea. The op-ed is by Jeremi Suri, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
It's hard not to read this op-ed and think back to 2002, when policy wonks like Kenneth Pollack were making bellicosity safe for liberals. But it's not 2002 anymore. North Korea probably won't be the next Iraq, largely for one reason: the president is a Democrat. That means that if we have a good old-fashioned violent, jingoist rally-'round-the-flag moment, no Republican is going to get the glory. So, for the party that invariably sets the terms of such debates, what would be the point?
I know, I know: sometimes the point is to browbeat the hippie liberal Democrats into supporting a military action, so we can all watch them demonstrate that they hate freedom, and then watch them recant and be shamed. But this president has taken that option off the table: he's a Democrat, but he's shown he's willing to kill certain people of non-European descent in extremely nasty ways. He's beaten Republicans to the hippie-punching punch!
So the war drums aren't going to be beaten in the usual ways. The ultimate aim of all that Republican militarism is always the same: domestic political gain. But they can't take advantage in this presidency, so there's no reason to try.
4 comments:
As an older "hippie", I'm getting real tired of getting punched...the American Dream didn't happen for me, and I didn't sell my soul to the gods of wall street...I will sort out my Karma, and start punching back...
Besides, if Obama even made a hint that he wanted to go into North Korea, the thought of any possible success by him will drive them back into isolationism, like they did when Clinton decided to send troops into Kosovo.
The same isolationist crew, wailing and moaning about foreign military adventures, and Clinton wagging the dog, as we all soonn found out, were the first ones pounding away at the drums, calling forth the dogs of war, when Lil' Boots Bush wanted that middle initial, W, to stand for WAR President.
The Clinton-led expedition had one guy sprain an ankle.
Bush's Folly caused thousands of US deaths, tens of thousands of US physical and mental wounds and injuries, and hundreds of thousands, or, more likely, millions, of dead, wounded, traumatized, and displaced Afghani's and Iraqi's.
And all done on credit, from the National Bank of China.
But, yeah, in their won minds, THEY'RE the National Security party!
And, of course, they're the party of fiscal responsibility!
And having said that, I don't even blame the Republicans.
They're sociopaths - and sociopaths will always do what sociopaths will do, if they're not checked, and check-mated.
I blame their enablers in the cowardly, compliant, and complicit corporate MSM, who don't point out how beyond even absurd their claims of being better at national security and fiscal responsibility.
The "Fourth Estate" is worse than useless. It's complicit.
Our "Fourth Estate" makes me want to down a fifth of the hard stuff every damn day.
I punch back. I know, it's not polite but... fuck 'em.
Maybe those who are upset just don't want to bomb NK and are irked the NYT didn't learn its lesson from the first Korean War.
It's not always just about politics as team competition.
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