Even arch-imperialist Nial Ferguson is afraid of the prospect of Rudy Giuliani in the White House. And rightly so.
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Be Afraid
18 Sep 2007 12:49 pm
Comments (17)
Dennis Kucinich would beat Rudy Giuliani like a drum in a general election. Incurious people might be able to win an election, but I don't think insane people can. Rudy's entire schtick is that he was mayor on 9/11, so we should bomb terrorists and the people who look like them. It might get the GOP base all pumped, but it can't win overall.
More importantly are the concerns about the mythologizing of the terrorist threat Ferguson laid out in the piece. Rudy, he claims, can only win if this bogus narrative is prevalently believed in.
More important are the concerns about the mythologizing of the terrorist threat Ferguson laid out in the piece. Rudy, he claims, can only win if this bogus narrative is prevalently believed in.
Elegant: for a moment you appreciate that he may have come to be a noted professor not just as an eccentric charismatic but perhaps because he has reason to be one; most of his Times op-eds have been rich in crankery.
On the other hand reservations are not the same thing as opposition. In the end you guess he'll vote for the SOB despite his alleged misgivings.
And it only helps our potential next Man-Boy in Chief to be underestimated.
It occurs to me that Mr. Ferguson may not be voting for anyone in the next American election.
Like our other British friends who come to this country to comment on our politics I gather this fellow isn't a citizen.
Note to all of you (and you know who you are): TS Eliot became a British citizen.
TS Eliot became a British citizen.And a catholic. We get Hitchins.
I agree with much of Ferguson's article, but I don't understand how it jibes with his previous works.
Is Giuliani's hawkishness all that different from McCain's?
Wasn't the idea of turning Iraq into another Japan or Germany the whole point of Ferguson's books Colossus and Empire ?
Is Ferguson now admitting imperial overreach is likely under a Giuliani presidency?
I find it unlikely that Giuliani is wrong just because of his tone and his mayoral history. This seems to me to be similar to Friedman, where he supported the goals of the Iraq invasion but claimed it was only Bush's partisan tone and implementation that produced failure
* the descent of the greater Middle East into a large-scale war;
* the disintegration of the system of nuclear nonproliferation;
* the escalating competition between developed and emerging economies over scarce raw materials;
* the breakdown of the system of multilateral trade liberalization.
Interesting list of things about which the next POTUS ought to give serious consideration. Seems to me, however, that won't happen. Why? In part because every time a person actually gives serious consideration to these and similar issues, they are dismissed as being "unserious about terrorism", "anti-Semitic" (even if they are committed Jews) and "economically illiterate".
"We get Hitchins."
Oh yes. He's no Orwell.
I'd settle for a latter-day Siegfried Sassoon or Wilfred Owen over that guy.
Hitchens is a professional character assassin; he's never written serious literary non-fiction let alone fiction, poems, plays. He uses his command of English to berate and belittle grieving mothers of dead soldiers and innocuous rich wives of presidential candidates. He's also a liar and a huckster. He'll be mercifully forgotten a generation from now.
To clarify, Eliot became High Church Anglican. (Anglo-Catholic" can be confusing.)
As for Ferguson, I liked Colossus. Particularly the part about how the American pro-Empire types stayed home unlike the 2nd sons of England. You can't have an empire if nobody wants to run it, and running Iraq entailed risking getting your heinie blown to smithereens.
Not to detract from the main points of the essay, but -- other than the Ohka kamikaze jets -- what "guided missiles" did the Axis powers have? And what aircraft carriers did the Nazi and Italians have? (I'll grant Ferguson Japan.)
Just wondering, since he's, you know, a historian and all.
eh, the v-2 rocket perhaps, only the first ballistic missile ever!
Linus, I'll agree with you that ever since 9/11, Hitchens can't seem to write about politics without panting and ranting. But he's still one of the best literary and cultural critics alive. On Tom Paine, Rudyard Kipling, Evelyn Waugh, etc., etc., you'll find no better. And he's a master prose stylist. That's why his current obsessions are such a tragedy and a waste.
He wrote a brutal and hilarious take-down of Paul Johnson years ago, describing how a fine mind had been addled by drink and reactionary politics. If only he could look in the mirror...
Linus, I'll agree with you that ever since 9/11, Hitchens can't seem to write about politics without panting and ranting. But he's still one of the best literary and cultural critics alive. On Tom Paine, Rudyard Kipling, Evelyn Waugh, etc., etc., you'll find no better. And he's a master prose stylist. That's why his current obsessions are such a tragedy and a waste.
He wrote a brutal and hilarious take-down of Paul Johnson years ago, describing how a fine mind had been addled by drink and reactionary politics. If only he could look in the mirror...
" But he's still one of the best literary and cultural critics alive."
Maybe that's true (although on atheism he's no Bertrand Russell and if you want the candy-coated kind even Ingersoll is better).
Still, we remember F Scott Fitzgerald and forget - mostly - Edmund Wilson.
No matter how high postmodernism (which I gather Mr. Hitchens has ritually deplored) may try to elevate the critic he or she is in the end just a critic.
Unless of course they're an artist too.
And the critics with the most staying power tend also to be the artists with the most staying power.
Still, we remember F Scott Fitzgerald and forget - mostly - Edmund Wilson.
Indeed. Hitchens may well turn out to be the Macaulay of our age.
Comments closed October 02, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Niall could've spent a paragraph or two predicting how Giuliani would behave on the domestic front, too. Can you say "unitary executive"?
Posted by Bill | September 18, 2007 1:44 PM