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Boston Globe with an op-ed by a former Clinton and Bush advisor on the MoveOn.org BetrayUs ad.
… Let us be clear. It is legitimate to grill Petraeus on his testimony and to ask him tough questions about the strategy he has been pursuing. It is legitimate to disagree with him, or to conclude that an alternative course of action has a better chance of advancing US interests in the region. Healthy civil-military relations do not depend on accepting uncritically anything a senior military officer says. Quite the opposite, they depend on a full and frank exchange of views.
It is not legitimate, however, and it is exceedingly corrosive of healthy civil-military relations to question the general’s patriotism when his views differ from yours and are inconvenient for one’s political agenda.
This is a defining moment for the antiwar faction. They can continue on the path on to which they have veered, repeating some of the worst mistakes in American history. Or they can make a clean break with the past, police their own ranks, and promote a healthy, critical, public debate about the best way forward in Iraq.
NewsBusters tells us the discount the NY Times gave to MoveOn.org ad. Would you believe 62%? This from a newspaper whose earnings are in the tank.
… For a paper that has been paying its investors back with lead weighted returns I’d be a little irritated if I had a stake in a venture that puts the subjective political agenda of the editorial staff above the fiduciary duty of the corporation to its investors. Especially considering that MoveOn.org could easily afford the going rate and likely would have run the ad without such a lavish discount. But then again advocacy as a business plan is exactly what the newspaper is about.
When trying to explain how the New York Times Co. managed to shave 50% off the bottom line between 2002 and 2006 some analysts felt that editorial content was not the problem. They looked at other indicators such as poor cost control.
They were wrong in my eyes. The arrogance of the people running the New York Times Co. is a reflection of the paper and its approach to journalism. I’d consider this an example of how editorial persuasion reflects much of the back room operations at the newspaper if not the company as a whole. …
… Yesterday the New York Times Co. reached a simultaneous low while its crown jewel newspaper reached a new low by running a personal attack ad against a war hero. Their stock reflected their standing in the world of character by ending the day with a five year low of $20.72. What a perfectly deserving reflection of the quality of the product coming out of the nation’s biggest clearing house for advocacy journalism.
Roger L. Simon reviews Norman Podhoretz’s new book.
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.â€
I kept thinking of that line – often attributed to Trotsky – when reading World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, Norman Podhoretz’s analysis of the evolution of our current situation.
Not interested, indeed. What normal person would be? Like a lot of people, I was hoping Francis Fukuyama was right back in 1992 when he proffered the “End of History.†No such luck.
Podhoretz might be considered the anti-Fukuyama. His work – published today for the sixth anniversary of 9/11 and amplifying an essay he did for Commentary in August 2004 – posits a view of modern history as one long sequence of sometimes overlapping global wars from World Wars I and II through the Cold War (World War III) to the confrontation with Islamofascism (World War IV), which may be the most intractable and endless conflict of all. Not to pick on Fukuyama – who has long since abandoned his theory – at the present moment, unhappily for all of us, Podhoretz seems to be correct. …
John Fund on the slick Clinton money machine.
Marty Peretz caught John Kerry speaking up.
Jerusalem Post tells us what Israel’s air force was doing in Syria’s far eastern desert. This is the first of three items on the raid.
The Israel Air Force jets that allegedly infiltrated Syrian airspace early last Thursday apparently bombed an Iranian arms shipment that was being transferred to Hizbullah, CNN reported Tuesday.
A ground operation may also have been part of the foray, according to the network. Neither Jerusalem nor Damascus have confirmed the report. But Damascus has denied the presence of any Israeli ground forces on its territory. …
Contentions too.
The Captain closes out the subject.
… Israel would not risk war with Syria just to test out an air defense system that Iran might get. They would risk war to stop Hezbollah from rearming to the point where they would launch another attack on Israel and provoke another war in the sub-Litani region, and they would have every right to do so.
Under the terms of the UN cease-fire, Hezbollah is supposed to disarm and the only armed force in Lebanon is supposed to be the national army. Any resupply of Hezbollah is a violation of that resolution. Syria’s complaint to the UN could backfire, if the Security Council decided to take a closer look at Syria’s complicity in arming Hezbollah.
Unlike the last time, Israel appears to have few qualms about acting in its own interest in stopping the arms flow into southern Lebanon. It also has few reservations about the entire world understanding this. Perhaps that may unsettle Bashar Assad most of all.
Tech Central takes another look at the study that dissed diversity.
… As a champion of multicultural diversity, Putnam finds his results disturbing and he has been reluctant to publish them. The only place to find them is in a speech reprinted in the academic journal Scandinavian Political Studies. And even there the data is not provided, only summarized. Putnam told the Financial Times that he “had delayed publishing his results until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity.”
Slate answers the question, “What’s up with all those plane crashes?”
Millionaire Steve Fossett has been missing since last Monday, when he took off from a Nevada airstrip for a short flight. Rescue crews have yet to find the famous adventurer or his plane, but according to news reports, they’ve discovered at least six “uncharted wrecks” across a 17,000-square-mile swath of the Sierra Nevada—or nearly one a day since the search began. Why are there so many undocumented crash sites around the Sierra Nevada? …
Dilbert comments on the study showing liberals and conservatives have different ways of thinking.
… During this time of presidential elections, the story turned into “Scientists prove conservatives are simple-minded.â€
I’m guessing this is how the process went down: The scientists (usually liberals) report their findings to their university bosses (usually liberals) who call their public relations people (usually liberals) to sex up this story and feed it to the media (usually liberals). There wasn’t much to slow it down.
Still, you have to give props to the PR person who put the lipstick on this turd. Someone earned his or her money this week. Nice work. …