I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
I tried to make sense of Brooks, I really did. But what do you do with someone who misquotes, argues with, lies to, and then claims intellectual victory over a dead man?
So what I'd thought was a catastrophically short-sighted quasi-deluded mis-analysis and lack of planning was actually just a laudably charming All-American quirk ?
Awwww. Aren't we cute.
Every time I read Our Miss Brooks I keep expecting to see a giant editorial hook emerge and pull him off-stage.
Shorter David Brooks: "It's good that we suck! It's good!"
The willful absence of a common-sense plan for the occupation has almost certainly cost dozens of Americans their lives in occupation combat or by accident brought on by overwork or rushed-up pacification schemes, as well as hundreds of Americans their health; it is no doubt implicated in the deaths of dozens of employees of the UN and other humanitarian organizations; the almost certain death of thousands of Iraqis in the violent aftermath of the invasion; perhaps thousands more who died of disease or accident enabled by the civil disorder. It has made a superpower potent enough to topple a regime look too weak to put an end to petty theft, kidnapping, carjacking, and looting. It has empowered the Shi'a clerics whose armed militias protected hospitals and mosques and neighborhoods in the absence of Coalition authority. It strengthened those Iraqis who believed that this was not a war of liberation, but a war for resources, in that belief.
What can one say? David, go to Baghdad and live with an Iraqi family for a month or so, without body armor or escort. And, fuck you.
Scooter, your shorter DB is pretty good, but I think we may have found the first "shorter"-proof column. I mean, how can you say something that dumb better than he already said it? pathetic. Thank goodness people are dying and have no water and electricity and that God that American troops are getting killed. Pathetic. One might say that he's even giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Josh Marshall's weblog has it that Bobo of the NYT is trying on Glenn Reynolds shoes now.
Looks like Bobo is not quite the pundit everyone thought he was and it's amazing how much they have to lie for Bush.
NYT "---Our government couldn't even come up with a plan for postwar Iraq — thank goodness, too, because any "plan" hatched by technocrats in Washington would have been unfit for Iraqi reality.---"
Colin Powell's long lost doctrine that now lies in ruin since Colin Powell throw all his integrity to the four winds with his countless outrageous lies before all worlds UN members with all that non-evidence about Saddam’s alleged WMD. Powell's old doctrine is now such a worthless major waste of paper right? Along with dear old Daddy Bush, the senior who dumbfoundedly bought into that need for a “required exit strategy”. There simply was no keeping us out of the long hard slog...this goes beyond groupthink and something into the realm of perpetual group-ruin psychology.
Let us now trash the name of Bush senior and ever stupid and worthless Colin Powell. To bad Colin Powell put Bush's lies before the people of the US. Some would call such an act treason General Powell.
Utterly mind boggling!!!
What is saddest of all is how little outrage this will create in the mainstream.
Slightly longer David Brooks: "It's obvious, even to me, that we've completely fucked things up in Iraq, costing the lives of American soldiers, allied soldiers, and innocent Iraqi civilians. It's also clear that Iraq will be an albatross around our necks for the next several decades and that America has been significantly weakened by this foolish, foolish enterprise. However, because I'm a robotic suck-up to George, I'll claim that this horrendous state of affairs is really a good thing, even though I know it's a bad, bad thing. After all, what's really important--the well-being of America or the well-being of George W. Bush and his cohorts? I think you know which side I'm on, and I can assure you that I don't mind selling my soul a bit."
That's David "I'm Writing as Bad as I Can" Brooks to you, sir (inside joke for all you Spy fans)...
Scooter nails it. Twice.
dave sez: "Scooter nails it. Twice."
It wasn't that hard. I'm not very good at reading between the lines of these pundits, but Brooks' craven blowjobbery just bleeds off the page. I'll have to clean my monitor...
I like the shorter one. A version of up is down. It's good that we suck! Has a ring to it, and handily defeats democratic criticism.
Brooks may have contracted the dreaded Horowitz Incoherency Disease.Like the constipated,he doesnt care what comes out,as long as it comes out!
Bring back "Spy"! BOY do we need it now!
Our founders had a great grasp on what constitutes the "good life." Unfortunately, they didn't provide enough handles to accomodate everyone. How long must we cling to the absurd notion that everything we do today must be based on, or blamed on, the actions of our forebearers?
Shorter Republican Manifesto. "Big goverment is evil and incompetent, so we're going to take over every branch of the federal government and prove it."
I'm going use the "thank goodness I didn't plan it line" when I fuck up, er...finish my basement. I'm sure my wife will understand. I think it will work with the IRS too: I didn't plan to pay my taxes because that's un-American, damn it!
Safire, Friedman and Brooks use similar sophistry to legitimize the egregious bungling of this administration. How does the NYT justify this embarassing alignment of illogic? Somebody ought to write a book.
Making sense of David Brooks is like expecting a bowl of soup to drive a car.
(Last part stolen from a witty blogger I read here the other day-- can't remember who it was. Probably Town Drunk, who always nails it.)
Our government couldn't even come up with a plan for postwar Iraq — thank goodness, too, because any "plan" hatched by technocrats in Washington would have been unfit for Iraqi reality.
Anyone want to bet on whether Brooks knows what the word 'technocrat' means?
what passes for commentary in america's newspaper of record is just amazing. they really need to hire an editor. maybe even two.
apparently once you are on the nyt payroll you never have to work again.
Speaking of Spy, I can never read the name "Abe Rosenthal" without thinking of his wife "bosomy dirty-book-writer, Shirley."
Another Shorter: It's Thomas Jefferson's fault!
Somebody ought to write a book.,/i>
Yep, only Hitler’s regime had a more sick society enlistment apparatus. If Germans could just get rid of enough Jewish folk, that would finally make the Germany blood pure or in Bush's case get rid of enough liberal perspectives to maintain complete Bush style patriotism contol that would complete the righteousness of the "war is peace" world George W. Bush as he trys so hard to mold the world into sharing his visceral hate image.
Good catch Beth. Wow what a job Brooks has, to have the New York Times pay you for whatever mental diarrhea you put on paper. There are obviously no "technocratic" standards for Brook's job.
Someone might want to give Davey a crash tutorial on the Marshall Plan and how this American brainchild facilitated unprecedented peace and stability in war-torn Europe, which is why the Marshall Plan is lauded as the greatest foreign policy success story of the 20th Century, and possibly the last thousand years. (So much for Americans not being able to plan, eh?) Someone might also tell Davey that the reason Americans could come up with this brilliant plan is because President Truman wasn't an intellectually incurious war-profiteering drunken greedy frat boy who couldn't get through a newspaper written at an eighth-grade reading level. I suspect that when we once again have a president with an IQ greater than 90 occupying the Oval Office, there will actually be a sensible post-war plan in Iraq. Sorry, Davey...
basically the column sounds like Brooks had a few drinks with Andrew Sullivan-- where Andy told him aboout his PhD thesis--- and then Brooks wrote the piece while still loaded.
Atrios is right-- Brooks is surely destroying his reputation, whatever it was worth.
After I went into a blood pressure rising tizzy upon reading his third or fourth column, My Smart Spouse laid down the law: No More David Brooks Columns For You! Since I've stopped reading him, I've attained a level of calm not unlike Sartori.
And so, I strongly suggest that not reading Brooks is far more useful and healthy than reading him.
David Brooks is a stupid cunt.
tristero - your wife is very wise. I adopted that policy long ago, after almost having multiple strokes reading the columns of a local right wingnut pundit in the Dallas paper. Now I pretty much ignore all of them. I get the best parts here, where I can let some of the head-exploding emotions out.
You just live longer that way.
Matt nails Brooks...
Oakshott
I can't say that I'm terribly familiar with the work of Michael Oakshott, but David Brooks' latest makes him sound like an awful hack, the sort of guy who would pose as a "reasonable" conservative while, in fact, doing nothing but carrying water for a strikingly inept and highly partisan administration. I mean, honestly, "planning is hard" is supposed to be a political philosophy? Please.
--Posted by Matt Yglesias at 11:45 AM
Actually, I found that reading him was quite amusing. The mental image that came to mind was of a helium balloon that is overly gassed to the point of exploding. The guy is just full of himself and in love with what he percieves to be his cleverness that he blows up his column and leaves a big mess.
Who's yewr daddy, davey? Who's yewr daddy?
David E. and the Giant Hook:
If only. But not bloody likely.
Has anyone else noticed that Mark Shields has been less comabative/critical toward Brooks in their Friday tete a tetes, since Brooks return to the PBS fold as a genuwine NYTimes pundit?
How clueless is Gail Collins, who offered Brooks his current position? Post impeachment in the late 1999, when Collins, then a columnist on the Times OpEd page, was a guest on Washington Journal on C-Span and several callers asked her about the Times coverage of Clinton and referenced the work, separately and together of Gene Lyons, Joe Conason, John Camp on CNN, and others, Ms. Collins had never heard of any of them and proclaimed herelf innocent of any knowledge that there were legitimate jounalists anywhere, other than partisan hacks, who would have defended either Clinton, or attacked the rightness of the impeachment process, even if said journalist agreed with the not guilty vote.
Was that not the very moment which cemented her ascension to editor of the OpEd page?
I still fondly remember Brooksie's column about gay marriage, which if I recall was an impassioned against the state using its coercive power to engage in social engenieering whose effects are entirely speculative. That *is* what he was arguing, right? This new half-baked Burkeanism isn't just ad hoc rationalization, is it?
well, really Safire writes equally stupid columns as has Brooks when you really think about-the word must now be that Bush couldn't have planned for the war, so should he have bothered.
Lets face it, WAR and visceral hate are the only two things real Republicans understand. Diplomacy is simply "appeasement" and the only way to relate to other countries is via under the table deals or open bulling of other nations and the all important smear tactic.
Bush is the isolationist that has successful managed to isolate the US just like he wanted too. Bush doesn't understnad that war is not peace anymore than he understand that liberals aren’t necessarily the enemy. War and threats has been Republicans cure all for everything that gets in Juniors way. No matter how obviously unproductive this tactic has actually been and how trapped Bush and US have now become in Iraq.
Brian C. B. makes many good points.
However, I would disagree with the phrase "The willful absence of a common-sense plan for the occupation"
It's even worse than that. They had a plan and refused to use for ideological reasons. Tom Warrick, the man who headed the post-war, research group, the Future of Iraq Project was "not acceptable" to the Pentagon and General Garner could not get him on his team. When he tried to get him on his team Rumsfeld personally told him to get rid of Warrick. Rumsfeld said the decision was made above him. So that means the Vice President or the President.
Yes, this decision led indirectly to the death of American soldiers and made the US political goals in Iraq far more difficult.
We can look forward to reading that fucking up is optimistic.
We've been an forward-looking bunch since the Pilgrims. So naturally in our post-war planning, the technocrats, being the sons and daughters of liberty that they are, assumed only good things would follow the liberation of Iraq.
Anything else would have been an un-American pessimisism of the kind we need to purge from the State department, Pentagon, and intelligence.
By the way. Saddam was caught in a rat hole with lice in his hair, so shut up.
Shorter David Brooks:
We were right to invade Iraq because we knew that was the best thing for them. We were also right to do no postwar planning because it's foolish to think we could know what's best for the Iraqis.
Here's the URL for the Rumsfeld quote
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
worldl...3433043,00.html
KevinNYC - you got it. They are perpetuating the "it's so complicated" (or should I say "it's sooooooooo complicated") argument. We all know it's way too complicated for our dear leader, but the rest of those guys are proactively fucking it up.
Y do I hate Amurika?
"basically the column sounds like Brooks had a few drinks with Andrew Sullivan-- where Andy told him aboout his PhD thesis--- and then Brooks wrote the piece while still loaded."
Drinking with Sully?!?!! (trying to imagine David Brooks at "The Spike")
Good heavens -- his wife must be calling her lawyer even as I post.
Here's the computer generated response from Davey-boy -- I sent him some of Crunchy's thoughts, dolled up.
Dear friend,
jeez, did you have to say that?
Thanks very much for sending a response to my column, positive or negative. I'm afraid I can't respond to each message. My editors would wonder why I have no time to write for the paper.
good idea, please read them all very carefully, and respond away.
But I do read every e-mail, and I frequently learn from them.
we can only hope
So, again, thanks,
David Brooks
fuck you, again, David
so good, it had to be repeated:
Shorter David Brooks:
We were right to invade Iraq because we knew that was the best thing for them. We were also right to do no postwar planning because it's foolish to think we could know what's best for the Iraqis.
Beth
David Brooks is a congenital constipated prevaricator just like George Will, whom he aspires to be.
He hasn't gotten to be the polished panderer/philanderer as Will yet, but give the boy time.
It can't be all Bushboy's fault that the rightwing Talking Heads and Pundits are getting dumber could it??
Or is it just that Bushboy's personal and policy stupidities are so gross that it would make any of his supporters sound speciously silly?
"My editors would wonder why I have no time to write for the paper."
A very target-rich statement.
A minor point: the postwar plans that were unceremoniously trashed by Rumsfeld's crew were NOT written by federal "technocrats" but by Iraqi exiles whose knowledge of Iraq was far greater than anyone now running the show.
I think Brooks just likes slamming any group of Americans that ends in "-crat".
"But I do read every e-mail, and I frequently learn from them."-DB
hmm, I wonder if he's learned about the Nigerian financial system, various products to enhance his manhood and/or bust size, how to refinance his house and get out of debt and if this has affected the lucidity of his columns
gee, imagine how well WWII would have gone if only eisenhower and FDR had the sense not to plan!
Has anyone here mentioned the fact that there WAS a detailed plan for the occupation, and that Rumsfeld (probably on cheney's orders----it's in TPM somewhere) forbade the use of the plan, and prevented the arabic speaking experts from going to iraq?
So Brooks's column is founded on a lie, as usual.
Never mind.. "Kevinthewise" already tackled this one, I see.
Anyway, Brooks is a major embarrassment. Sully would be a better choice.
Excuse me, but isn't the Constitution, like, one massive exercise in social engineering? Not to mention the abolition of slavery and child labor, the rather successful institution of Social Security and other little tweaks.
That aside, Brooks knows full well that we did have a plan, and it was the height of epistemological immodesty: the installation of Ahmed Chalabi and his instant Iraqi National Congress government. I mean, talk about hubris ...
He's the Red Queen in drag.
/
We were right to invade Iraq because we knew that was the best thing for them. We were also right to do no postwar planning because it's foolish to think we could know what's best for the Iraqis.
Sounds vaguely like a redneck bumpersticker "Kill all the evil doers (preemptively), let god sort it out."
Soup: perfect.
/
When David Brooks writes a shitstorm of lies in fealty to the Bush Administration, he fails to mention that lying to aid those lying liars is a right wing right enshrined in the Constitution.
David E.,
if only a 'giant editorial hook' emerged and pulled Miss Brooks offstage!... I suspect, however, that Bill Keller knew precisely what he was in for when he hired Brooks and approves of all the execrable stuff the man produces. As long as Mr Keller keeps Krugman and Herbert on ...
I think Brooks just likes slamming any group of Americans that ends in "-crat".
lisa,
I think that's half of it. The other half is that 'techno' sounds like something you'd associate with left coast, elitist, cheese-eating intellectuals.
And this to scooter (12.27.03@ 11:34 am):
"Slightly longer David Brooks: "It's obvious, even to me, ...' "
YOU ARE A LEGEND, SCOOTER! You've really pinned it down and made me chuckle at the same time.
Shorter David Brooks: "Planning is Un-American!"
My Smart Spouse laid down the law: No More David Brooks Columns For You!
i thought that was what the "shorter" format was all about....to prevent massive strokes.
IT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE.
KevininNYC: I'm pretty familiar with the "Future of Iraq" Project and the DoD refusal to use it (George Packer brings it up nicely in his New Yorker piece--the best piece on occupied Iraq) because it implied a more complicated and extended and expensive American involvement in Iraq than the neocons wanted to project, and because the CIA and State Department were "tainted" in their belief that Chalabi and the INC were money-grubbing scum. I suppose that my comment didn't really make that clear, but it's what I was thinking.
I think people are missing what's really going on in this column ... a complete denial of the neoconservative idealogically driven character of the Iraq occupation.
It is precisely NOT an "Oakeshottian enterprise" based in "epistemological modesty."
There's more than just nonsense in this column. And Brooks is sweeping more than just bureaucratic incompetence under the rug of nonsense. He's also sweeping neoconservatism, PNAC and Leo Strauss.
Someone should clue Brooks in that there are actually people in the State Dept. who actually study and understand other cultures. Oh wait, they're not conservative enough are they?
What a complete and total moron.
Oh yeah, SCOOTER FOR PREZNIT! I trust as preznit he'll immediately deport Brooks to Iraq.
"Drinking with Sully?!?!! (trying to imagine David Brooks at "The Spike")
Good heavens -- his wife must be calling her lawyer even as I post."
Hmmm. Come to think of it-- this might also explain Brooks' pro-gay marriage column.
Everywhere I turn, the NYT, All Things Considered, the Lehrer Newshour, there is smarmy David opining away. How do you get away from this oily asshole?
Brooks presumably owes his position on the editorial staff to the Mother Lode Krugman has hit dealing with Bush mendacity. Presumably it was getting so lopsided the Times felt it had to do some re-balancing. But defending the indefensible is always hard, and Brooks is not up to the job.
David Brooks waxes philosophic (not!) in the New York Times (see Cal Pundit and Talking Points Memo).But ours is the one revolution that worked, and it did precisely because our founders were epistemologically modest too, and didn't pretend to know what is the good life, only that people should be free to figure it out for themselves.
Because of that legacy, we stink at social engineering. Our government couldn't even come up with a plan for postwar Iraq — thank goodness, too, because any "plan" hatched by technocrats in Washington would have been unfit for Iraqi reality.First, we did have a plan for managing the post-war situation in Iraq, but it was ignored and disappeared by the ideological faction in charge of the war. This faction largely has been spouting off about bringing freedom and liberal democracy to Iraq, which is hardly a form of modesty in any sense of the word. Indeed, modesty is something noone will accuse our new foreign policy of being.
Second, we've been damn good at social engineering here in America, after fits and starts when those who seek to forestall reforms used their advantage to do so. The Marshall Plan seemed to work pretty good in Europe, and Japan seemed to bounce back great after WWII as well, after we wrote their Constitution. I'm not advocating social engineering as one of our highest goals, or that it's always gone well, but when we've been forced to do it, we've succeeded on at least a few occasions.
Third, the "reality" in Iraq, and the situation and chaos that occurred after the war, were largely predicted and planned for in the very plans that were thrown away and/or ignored by the "modest" fanction running the war. It's safe to say that had these plans been studied and implemented, the task of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, and thus giving less quarter to the resistance, would have been more effective.
Last, there are plenty of nations in the world today that have freedom and liberal democracy. They are mostly our friends, or at least were until the "modest" guys and gals started calling the shots. They may or may not call it a revolution, but surely that isn't what the Iraqis will call our war with Saddam. There has been lots of success in implementing liberal democracy in the world, and, though we deserve some credit for it, we have also on many occasions worked drastically against it. We are not the only successful liberal democracy and free society.
David Brooks should be given no quarter. His brand of nonsense is the worst I've ever read in a major newspaper. He gets everything wrong, and does it by twisting and deforming sound philosophical reasoning in regards to "epistemological modesty". It is truly Orwellian in some ways to describe a war and occupation that insists on liberal democracy and separation of church and state to a people whose vision of the good life may not separate the two as "epistemological modesty".
There is a deep conflict in the world today between Islamicism and liberalism, and the basis of it is differing conceptions of the "good life", and differing conceptions of how you achieve the "good life". It is not modesty that says what's good for me is good for you, and we're going to push it on you whether you like it or not, but we know you're going to love it so please don't resist.
And if only that were the case. Instead, we're doing this war for our own interests, for our own security, and "epistemological modesty" or Iraqi self-determination is not even a factor. Due diligence would have assured that adequate plans for post-war Iraq were studied and implemented.
To sum up, one group of technocrats purposely ignored the post-war plans drawn up by another group of technocrats. In retrospect, these plans anticipated much of the problems that ensued. There is no need to attribute it to "epistemological modesty". It should be attributed to ignorance, arrogance, and incompetence on the part of the technocrat group that thought they had all the answers.
One group of technocrats purposely ignored the post-war plans drawn up by another group of technocrats. In retrospect, these plans anticipated much of the problems that ensued. There is no need to attribute it to "epistemological modesty". It should be attributed to ignorance, arrogance, and incompetence on the part of the technocrat group that thought they had all the answers.
. . . we stink at social engineering. Our government couldn't even come up with a plan for postwar Iraq — thank goodness, too, because any "plan" hatched by technocrats in Washington would have been unfit for Iraqi reality. . . .
No, any "plan" hatched by the Bush Administration would have been--and was unfit for Iraqi reality.
Americans, by and large, "get" representative democracy. And so does pretty much any other population allowed to try it out for a while. But Bush's actions in December 2000 forced his hangers-on--like Brooks--to take the position that government by honest and freely elected officials who don't have, e.g., Halliburton's fist squarely embedded in their rectums, is not a requirement of democracy. And they don't just argue these positions--they internalize them. So they've self-amputated the ability to recognise how stunningly incompetent Bush is--including his inability to deal with the most obvious considerations w/r/t Iraq (e.g., outside of a fool's fantasy, why on earth would Iraqis think Chalabi was acceptable as president?).
Brooks seems to think: Gosh, if Fearless Leader couldn't get it right, what hope is there for anyone else? What he misses is (a) putting together a straight-up election (and maybe cleaning up some of our own mess), then getting the hell out ain't social engineering; (b) the main complication to this isn't some big cultural wall, it's that Bush and his cronies don't want the Iraqis to run their own country so much as they want to divert Iraqi oil and federal contract money into their own pockets and; (c) Bush is a greedy, incompetent dick.
Pierce takes a hack at him on Altercation this week, too.
Bad at social engineering?
The Marshall Plan?
Modern Japan?
The GI Bill?
God, it's Tool Time twice a week.
"How clueless is Gail Collins, who offered Brooks his current position?"
It's quite possible that an influential colleague expressed admiration for the talent of David BROCK, and Gail Latella ran out and hired . . .
Speaking of Brock, and Michael Lind, ever notice that when a Rightie goes Left, it's a plus in the talent pool and a loss to the other side--and when a Leftie goes Right, like Horowitz or Hitchens, it raises the average IQ of both sides?
This editorial could've been written by Peggy Noonan! It's over, David. Poor you. You should never have taken that gig at the NYT. You could've just continued to be the nice little 'reasonable conservative'... but NOOOO.
You heard it here first: I predict Brooks will leave the NYT within 2 years. He's not really built to take heat, I don't think....
Even by conservative standards, I found his editorial about how the problem with George Bush is that he's too HONEST to be one of the most shockingly evil columns I've seen. I don't think it's a trial balloon that will fly, even in today's incredibly biased political atmosphere, but the fact that he attempted to make such a stunningly false argument disgusted me. I think that Bush fans could legitimately admire their guy's craftiness and determination, for what it's worth. But the dude who blatantly lied us into Iraq could not possibly be considered an exceptionally honest president, unless one is exceptionally dishonest onesself.
Brooks gets my vote for Ministry of Truth's Employee of the Year of 2003.
Brooks looks like Tommy, except goofier and on Marmalade and making U-turns and scary right turns every 5 seconds, no consistency or principles whatsoever, it is expediency uber alles, whatever serves for the precise moment, that’s it.
He just meanders on, making any deduction that suits his case, however far-fetched or goofy, and simply uses the occasion to take some pot-shot at something (seemingly one that is giving him the inferiority complex du jour), in this case, it appears to be intellectual analysis, because it could lead to ideological thinking.
Dude, where’s the rationale.
Intellectual “pride” whatever it is (I presume he means some kind of devotion to intellectual discipline) leads to testing of reality, empirical assessment, logical analysis and willingness to evaluate competing hypotheses, whereas OTHO being a marmalade muffin, who falls for anything is what leads to ideological thinking.
Anyway, the dude looks like he is still yesterday’s goof, yesterday’s goof was the failure to plan, today, that’s all over, today Bushie is focused like a laser shark on showing a better trajectory, so all Brooks hand-wringing about lack of planning looks totally pointless, we are moving on dude and he is way behind.
.....
Characters Remaining:
Commenting by HaloScan
