This one isn’t ironic. Promise. This mega-meta-posting by Mickey (“‘Free Weintraub’ update, updated:”) strikes me as an early classic of blog lit. It’s funny, on-the-money, locked in a web world of its own, making waves, and endless in a call-waiting, can’t-stop-reading kind of way. When someone does a dissertation on blog-writing, they need to use this as an ur-post. (Of course if Mickey’s post is meta, this post is meta-meta. But not so mega. I should go to bed now, shouldn’t I?))
CONTRA MARSHALL: I’m with Glenn Reynolds in his recent and unusual spanking of Josh Marshall. It’s not illegitimate to cite a Democratic Congressman’s view that the relentlessly negative media spin on Iraq is making our job over there far harder than it might otherwise be. That’s the truth. The only hope the Baathists have is that we will give up and do a Somalia. Moreover, disunity at home gives the Saddamites and other terrorists hope and prolongs the conflict. I can’t see how anyone can seriously want that – not even Howard Dean. In fact, one of the good things about Dean’s campaign has been his clear statement that we need the Iraqi liberation to work. But sadly it’s no surprise that many in this country and abroad want the liberation to fail. They think it’s more important for the U.S. to get a bloody nose than that the Iraqi people get a successful transition to democracy. I can see no other rationale behind the French arguments to hand over power immediately to an interim government that is not capable of running the place. And the obscene “Bring The Troops Home” rhetoric of A.N.S.W.E.R. revals again that their major motivating factor is opposition to U.S. power rather than concern for Iraqi democracy or human rights. We have to do better than this. What troubles me about the Democrats’ current rhetoric is not that there shouldn’t be good criticisms of what we’re doing over there; but that those criticisms should be aimed at getting the process to succeed. Right now, it seems designed purely for domestic political points: the domestic politics of Vietnam without Vietnam. So what is new? For what it’s worth, I was equally disgusted by the oportunism of many Republicans when the Clinton administration needed support for the effort against totalitarian genocide in the Balkans. It was cheap then. With far higher stakes, it’s even cheaper now.
The Dish 