Brooks Comes Around

Greg Djerejian:

David Brooks, on PBS NewsHour July 6th: "And, then, the final thing, the problem with the Iraq Study Group--and Mark is absolutely right. I think the Bush administration bitterly regrets not embracing that now."

Ah, but where was David on the ISG back in the day, you know, when it counted most? Here he was on January 11th of this year, busily poo-pooing the ISG's findings ("pulling a tooth slowly"), just as debate had been raging as to whether Bush should adopt same: "So we are stuck with the Bush proposal as the only serious plan on offer."

Times change. The ISG report was, in my view, inadequate when it came out, but would have offered movement in the right direction. Now that the more perceptive hawks like Brooks are ready to embrace it, however, it's been essentially overtaken by events. And that's the tragic cycle we've seen in the Iraq debate -- a conventional wisdom that's perennially nine months or so behind the curve.

Comments

if brooks were a "perceptive" hawk, then he would have done as you suggest 9 months ago. ergo, he's not "perceptive" and you're simply falling for his charm when you act as though his mind processes information usefully.

Posted by howard | July 9, 2007 11:22 AM

The Bush administration's entire governing philosophy is, do what feels good today and worry about tomorrow when it comes. I'm not even trying to bash them, it's simply an accurate description that covers many different areas. As such, Brooks's observation is accurate and could hardly be less interesting, as analysis. Nine months ago, they wanted to stymie the ISG. Today, he wants to have embraced it nine months ago. Human beings older than about eight pretty much get the ironclad logic of temporality.

Posted by Martin | July 9, 2007 11:29 AM

Now that the more perceptive hawks like Brooks are ready to embrace it

I'm assuming that "perceptive" is being used ambiguously, and that you mean "perceptive to shifts in DC power." Time for Brooks to lick some the mud he threw at Democrats off their boots. I eagerly await the "King Kos: America's Glorious Revolutionary" column. What a mendacious, bankrupt piece of shit he is. Don't worry, he'll go back the other way soon enough. He does this little dance a lot.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 9, 2007 11:30 AM

Matthew seems to miss the Kabuki aspects of the whole debate.

There was a surge. Now there will be a withdrawal to a troop level identical to before the surge.

And why is all of this interesting?

Stop looking at the surface waves and pay at least some small amount of attention to the underlying currents.

Posted by Petey | July 9, 2007 11:32 AM

God, Brooks is such a simpering idiot. Bitter regrets in this house of delusion? Every TV appearance this pink-shirted halfwit makes should be punctuated with a laugh track, but only used on his unintentional comedy lines.

Posted by norbizness | July 9, 2007 11:41 AM

Step 1: Things in Iraq get worse.
Step 2: This downturn is reported in the news.
Step 3: People who follow the news call for a change in strategy.
Step 3a: Republicans and hack-- sorry *hawks*-- like Brooks deride those people as defeatist, and disbelieve the news, calling it "liberally biased against the President".
Step 4: Policy is not changed. We are told "stay the course", "battle of wills", "the only way we lose is to lose our nerve", etc.
Step 5: With a non-existent reaction from the US, things in Iraq get worse.
Step 6: goto Step 2...

And so on, etc. Periodically, hawks will admit that things actually have gotten worse as reported, but they are invariable a cycle or two behind in the process. This qualifies them as "perceptive".

Posted by bchurch | July 9, 2007 11:42 AM

Our current power elites cannot be shamed and they feel no guilt. I've been reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce. Parnell withered and died when his adultery became public. So at one time, there were leaders, somewhere, who could feel shame and who did feel guilt. Apparently that's simply been winnowed from the gene pool.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 9, 2007 12:01 PM

Yes, Matt must have meant "more perceptive hacks." I would quibble with "perceptive," but then again, when you consider the competition . . .

Posted by mary | July 9, 2007 12:38 PM

As Broder embodies the self-hating liberalism of our parents' generation, Brooks embodies the currently dying-an-agonizing-death self-righteous Right-shall-inherit-the-earth mentality. He is the exemplar of the pundit who reigns preeningly not because of any astute or penetrating insight into the zeitgeist--though he can gild the happy horseshit as well as any of them--but simply because he straddles his herd-pack perfectly at any given snapshot in time. The very definition of a hack.

But with his dismissal of any meaning attached to the Plame/Libby fiasco, Brooks has gone beyond the pale. His is the very face of reasonability that the most virulent power players of reaction love to hide behind. Now unmasked.

Posted by elle loco | July 9, 2007 1:19 PM

"Times change. The ISG report was, in my view, inadequate when it came out, but would have offered movement in the right direction. Now that the more perceptive hawks like Brooks are ready to embrace it, however, it's been essentially overtaken by events."

If the war's end requires a tenth or seventeenth Republican Senator to agree to some sort of change in course, it's probably going to be some idea that's a few months out of date. Outside of Chuck Hagel, no one is really running to embrace the Democratic view of the War.

Needless to say, this is very unfortunate.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | July 9, 2007 1:37 PM

At least 600 Americans (and who knows how many Iraqis) have died in Iraq since the Iraq Study Group's report was released in early December 2006.

Posted by croatoan | July 9, 2007 3:27 PM

The following is a slightly modified version of a comment I've posted at Djerejian's site

Brooks is blatantly shilling for the administration, parroting one of its sillier talking points about Iraq becoming 'an al-Qaida state'.

Greg, however, seems so desperate to rehabilitate his pet ISG that he is seeing support for it where it doesn't exist. Brooks still doesn't think much of the ISG as policy.

'But the central problem with the Iraq Study Group, as many people have pointed out, is that it still relies on some sort of central government in Baghdad to really run the country. And, if the Maliki government can't do it, then the Iraq Study Group plan also falls apart.'

Brooks's 'the Bush administration bitterly regrets' was about politics, not policy. Brooks was expressing agreement with these remarks of Mark Shields:

'And it mystifies almost all the Democrats and most Republicans why, last December, George Bush did not embrace the Iraq Study Group, because, at that point, it would have given co-ownership -- because the Democrats did -- co-ownership of the Iraq war to both parties.'

Posted by David Tomlin | July 9, 2007 6:46 PM