It's all wrong

New York Times columnists are pitching a fit today.  When aren't they, you ask?  Point taken.  First Maureen Dowd reprises the anti war arguments against going into Iraq.  The occasion of her tantrum is the completion of work by a commission examining America's intelligence failures that, as reported by her very own paper, "found no evidence that political pressure from the White House or Pentagon contributed to the mistaken intelligence."  That can't be right, says she.

Dick Cheney and the neocons at the Pentagon started with the conclusion they wanted, then massaged and manipulated the intelligence to back up their wishful thinking.

As The New Republic reported, Mr. Cheney lurked at the C.I.A. in the summer of 2002, an intimidating presence for young analysts. And Douglas Feith set up the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon as a shadow intelligence agency to manufacture propaganda bolstering the administration's case.

...There are, after all, more than 1,500 dead American soldiers, Al Qaeda terrorists on the loose and real nuclear-bomb programs in Iran and North Korea that we know nothing about.

But it's not as if Dowd has any proposals for doing anything about Al Qaeda, Iran, or North Korea.  In the New York Times Utopian dream, weapons inspectors would still be wandering through Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and at the UN there would be round after round of Security Council Resolutions.  And if it were possible for serenity to exist during a Republican administration, it would prevail at the Grey Lady.

Thomas Friedman, on the other hand, believes reform in the Middle East is the right to path to take.  But for him it was done all wrong, and done for the wrong reasons.  Friedman could often be heard on Imus in the Morning railing at the criminal incompetence in the prosecution of the war.  Now that things seem to be working out as he hoped they would, in spite of the hopelessly incompetent administration, it turns out it was all done for the wrong reasons.

For the last month or so, the Bush team has been doing a victory lap, taking credit for the outbreak of democracy in the Arab world. While I disagree with many Bush policies, I think the president does deserve credit for unleashing something very important in the politically moribund Arab East. Many of the necessary elements for democratization are now in place in Iraq (free and fair elections), in Lebanon (a Syrian withdrawal from Beirut), in Egypt (President Mubarak's commitment to multicandidate presidential elections) and in Gaza (an Israeli commitment to withdraw and Palestinian elections).

But while the necessary conditions may now be in place, the sufficient conditions for democratization are still not present in any of these arenas.

Can anybody figure out what that last sentence means?  Can something be in place but not present?  But I digress.

...In history, a lot of good has started with people doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. But you will only have self-sustaining democratization in the Middle East if people start to do the right thing for the right reasons - if the different sects in Iraq and Lebanon really do hammer out a shared vision and set of rules for their two countries. If Egypt recognizes it can't thrive without liberalizing its economy and political institutions. If Israelis and Palestinians really do come to terms with each other's nationalism. Otherwise, you'll have constant backsliding.

Trying to make any one of these democracy projects self-sustaining - and that is the test - would be a career. Secretary Rice's challenge is to do all four at once. The burden is not hers alone. The parties themselves must carry the lion's share. But her responsibility is undeniable. Does she have the toughness to deal with Ariel Sharon? She has not shown it up to now. If the Bush team lets Mr. Sharon trade Gaza for the West Bank, the whole U.S. democratization agenda in the region will be set back. Does she have the moxie to restrain the Kurds and Shiites from overreaching in Iraq? The steel to deal with the Syrians? The will to move the Egyptians?

Does she have the moxie?  A better question would be, does anybody at the New York Times have a brain?  Or perhaps an ounce or two of integrity?  If they do, they have not shown it up to now.  One would certainly be hard pressed to accuse Dowd or Friedman of having either.

Comments

[Mike Lorrey]

Dowd, along with the rest of the liberal establishment can't stand the humilitation if a republican turns out better at doing democracy than democrats. Of course, Democrats have always been more about 'rat' than about 'demos'.

[Clint Lovell]

The Democratic Party and the liberal MSM have been "caught playing in traffic" as an attitudinal shift in world politics began unfolding on 9/11, the outcome of which was far too byzantine for them to be able to understand, much less articulate into a cohesive strategy that would allow them to adopt and/or suggest (as the case may be) prudent policy alternatives. For a standard bearer of the modern conservative movement, this delicious piece of irony is served up on the alter of public spectacle on an almost daily basis. After all, is not World Liberalism the very bastion of nuanced thought and philosophy that is as obiquitious to the American body politic as it is correct in all policy matters? How could World Liberalism have been caught so brazenly in public with their knickers down at their knees?

The reactions we see playing out in the MSM from Dowd, et. al. are but a symptom of a movement that has been completely betrayed by itself in its quest for power at any price - including its so-called principles of nuanced thought. As a layman would put this matter, they bet the ranch on the U.S. losing the War On Terror and made it a sucker bet of such magnitude as to distort any reasonable person's sense of propriety. The movers and shakers of World Liberalism and the MSM know this in their flinty little hearts and we are seeing nothing more than fear lashing out against those of us who took a more reasoned approach. They fear the inevitable backlash may rob them of their remaining power to hold sway and dictate the terms of our society's existence. A position of privilege they have grown accustomed to and taken for granted for far too long. Now they must count all those chickens as they come home to roost and that isn't as much fun as ordering the chickens to go somewhere else.