Yellow Journalism

I have a policy of not linking to sycophantic, ideologically blinded, truth-deficient morons. But there are exceptions. This beautiful piece of journalism was penned by the illustrious James Carroll for the Globe. Hat tip to Momma Hill, who pointed this article out to me.

As you know, I disagreed with the war in Iraq. However, there are plenty of good reasons to denounce it, without resort to untruthfulness.

As Momma Hill (yeah, I gave her the nickname) says, Carroll is out to lunch. He writes,

"The situation hardly needs rehearsing. In Iraq, many thousands are dead, including 564 Americans. Civil war threatens. Afghanistan, meanwhile, is choked by drug-running warlords. Islamic jihadists have been empowered. The nuclear profiteering of Pakistan has been exposed but not necessarily stopped. Al Qaeda's elusiveness has reinforced its mythic malevolence."

Not a great situation, but certainly no worse than before 9/11! If anything, the Bushes have failed to change the World Order. A whole lot of scholarship came out in the early 1990's, books like "The End of History", which predicted that the end of the Cold War would mean a totally new era for the world. "The End of History" is now regarded as a joke, and all that hope and expectation has been replaced with a realization on scholars' part that the world isn't quite as different as they thought.

"Disorder spreads from Washington to Israel to Haiti to Spain."

Um, Bill Clinton was the one who messed around in Israel and Haiti.

"the Pentagon's unprecedented military dominance, the costs of which stifle the US economy, is shown to be essentially impotent"

Further fabrications. The military accounts for 10 or 15 percent of the government budget, or 3.5% of GDP. Social security is about the same size (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/tables.html) and growing much, much faster.

And you are absolutely right that the Bushes initiated neither conflict. Dubya did initiate the recent war in Iraq, but there's no doubt that the entire world wanted Saddam out of Kuwait, and Bush 41 acted well within the global attitude in responding (with others) to Saddam's aggression.