TAP's put together a great roundtable of smart people talking about Heads in the Sand. Also check out my interview with DCist.
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Why I'm Wrong
15 May 2008 05:11 pm
Comments (11)
You can never trust the folks over there, but if this is true it's pretty unfortunate.
A pleasing sales update, via Bookscan:Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg: 91,246
Great American Hypocrites by Glenn Greenwald: 3,854
Right Is Wrong by Arianna Huffington: 5,495
Heads in the Sand by Matthew Yglesias: 705
No one ever lost money underestimating the taste of the American public, I guess.
"A pleasing sales update, via Bookscan:
Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg: 91,246
Great American Hypocrites by Glenn Greenwald: 3,854
Right Is Wrong by Arianna Huffington: 5,495
Heads in the Sand by Matthew Yglesias: 705"
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
I TOLD YOU Matt's book was two years and too little too late!
And shipping most of them to Pyongyang, North Korea, was the final straw!
Now we know why Matt is desperately hyping this lame crap on his blog daily.
Meanwhile, despite his promise to answer HITS questions on the blog, he STILL hasn't answered my two questions on Iran emailed to him last night.
Yikes. I get the sense Anne-Marie Slaughter isn't Matt's biggest fan.
How come those long Tapped pages seem to invite comments, but then they disappear?
None of those contributions was nearly as good as Matt's. Justin Logan's was at least worth reading, but I was disappointed in Chollet and Slaughter; the current creme of the Democratic national security establishment leaves a lot to be desired.
MY's problem is he supported the biggest foreign policy disaster in 50 years yet wants to be treated as a serious liberal foreign policy writer. The book is just an attempt to change the subject from wrong on the war to a disagreement liberal internationalism. It should be treated as his version of "War and Decision."
Wrong: Worse is that Matt STILL is wrong about Iran, so he can't even talk about it here in any substantive way without making himself look as stupid on Iran as he was on Iraq.
Which of course means he IS still as stupid as he was on Iraq.
And intellectually cowardly to boot!
Richard Steven Hack,
Seriously - you're e-mailing the boy blogger now too?
I guess the two or three dozen comments you post here a day aren't enough.
Please, please seek professional help!
Really, it's people like you that give violent, ignorant, narcissistic, disturbed, know-it-all loners with histories of violence such a bad name.
http://mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/databases
There are trained professionals you can talk to, dude. Pills you can take.
Get help. Honest to God, you need it.
Please, please seek professional help!
Or better yet, RSH, start your own fucking blog, write your own fucking book, and leave the rest of us the hell alone. Douchebag.
Matt,
I admire that you are willing to stake a clear position and philosophy on national security, as this is a step most liberals seem unwilling to take. But I think there are some serious problems with your thesis.
1."And following the end of the Cold War, Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton governed (albeit imperfectly) along internationalist lines, using American power to create, uphold, and strengthen a liberal world order."
The idea that Clinton governed along internationalist lines is BS. He launched military action in Kosovo without UN approval, his Sec of State described the US as "the indispensable nation," he signed into law the act (can't remember what it's called) which stated regime change in Iraq as the official American policy, he launched military strikes without UN approval in Iraq and Sudan. The scale of these deviations from liberal internationalism are not of the same magnitude as Bush, but then Clinton did not have to face the aftermath of 9/11. We simply do not know how he would have responded, but judging from his record I don't think he would have relied on the UN.
2. "In the aftermath of World War II, the United States, guided by liberal internationalist principles, sought -- successfully -- to knit together a "free world" of allied powers that interacted with each other in a cooperative, rules- and institution-based way."
Right, among the free world. The UN never worked as it was intended internationally. It was perpetually divided between the West and the Soviet spheres of influence. After the Cold War, China and the Russia continued to veto humanitarian missions over and over. The UN has not succeeded in preventing genocide in Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq, or mass murder in China, the USSR, and Cambodia. It did not succeed in preventing wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, not to mention countless smaller-scale wars that cost the lives of millions. The lack of major war between the US and USSR was due to nuclear deterrence, not speeches at the UN. The UN has no answers for how to prevent international terrorism or to keep WMD out of the hands of terrorists.
3."They sought to expand and deepen our existing close ties with democratic allies while also strengthening the United Nations, related worldwide institutions, and treaties. H.W. Bush prosecuted the first Iraq war under Security Council auspices, setting a precedent against aggression and for legitimate use of force."
True it set a precedent for "legitimate" use of force. This did nothing to help the Rwandans, Bosnians, Kurds, Iraqi Shia, and Sudanese who would be slaughtered in the years after while the UN did nothing.
4. "Clinton continued in this vein and helped shepherd the expansion of NATO while prodding it into a new role, and also offering American encouragement to the expansion and transformation of the European Union."
I would argue Bush also shepherded the expansion of NATO, only more successfully. The continued expansion east and the negotiations over missile defense will protect the new eastern European democracies against Russian pressure.
5."Bush argued that we should view the broadly and vaguely defined "war on terror" as the organizing principle of our foreign policy, and asserted that America's crucial nonproliferation goals would be advanced not by strengthening the existing treaties and institutions (like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its International Atomic Energy Agency)"
If the Democrats solution to the specter of mass casualty terrorism is to "strengthen" the NPT, then they will lose. American citizens are not going to rely on a decades old treaty that those who pose the greatest danger to us have no intention of obeying. Take the Iraq war for example. As much as you malign Bush for his unilateralism, had we given in to the French and the Russians, what message would that have sent? It would have meant, yet again, that the "international community" is not willing to enforce UNSC resolutions. For the kind of liberal international legalism you support to work, someone has to actually provide enforcement. Very few countries are willing to do this. How do propose to change this fact? Do you have some idea for how to get the Russians and Chinese to sacrifice their money and national interests in order to enforce international law? I'd be fascinated to hear it. Especially considering that these two regimes violate international law daily.
To the two (or perhaps one) numbnuts who posted here, may I point out that Matt specifically requested anybody who had questions about HITS or criticisms should email him and he would respond on his blog.
So I emailed him my standard two questions on Iran, which he has been ducking for months.
He hasn't responded, thus making him both a liar and an intellectual coward.
Q.E.D.
Since I can't recall either of you posting any significant comments here in the recent past, you're not "regulars" here, but trolls.
So the two of you can STFU.
Comments closed May 29, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Good interview in the DCist. I think your next project should be writing a minibook documenting the history of Bill Clinton's "opposition" to the Iraq War. I think that is one butterfly that should be pinned to the board of history right now or it's going to get fly away in revisionist history. The fact that the preeminent Democrat in our nation is so completely full of shit when it comes to describing his own role in the selling of the war is something that I think should be documented.
Publish it as a PDF for $5 a pop and you earn millions! Or less!
Posted by joejoejoe | May 15, 2008 5:39 PM