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News and links

by Mark Gisleson

MoJo blog

I'm not sure how long Mother Jones' new blog has been up, if it's entirely or just partly written by Tom Engelhardt, but this blog is a daily must read. Engelhardt also blogs for The Nation, and his work is characterized by some very cogent observations. Extended comments today at MoJo on Japan's rearmament, a prisoner release in the Middle East, and Liberia.

A couple of great links via Buzzflash today (and an especially good batch of original content/editorials worth checking out). The Toronto Star has a surprisingly hostile anti-war article, and The New Yorker has a very good, in-depth article on Osama bin Forgotten.

Surprisingly, big media has even more good articles up today, but that's just because it's Krugman-Kristof day at the New York Times. Today it's Paul Krugman teeing off on Iraq, with Nick Kristof taking point on Liberia. Krugman's money shot is worth quoting;

Here's what Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, said in a speech last week: "To gauge just how out of touch the Democrat leadership is on the war on terror, just close your eyes and try to imagine Ted Kennedy landing that Navy jet on the deck of that aircraft carrier." To say the obvious, that remark reveals a powerful contempt for the public: Mr. Delay apparently believes that the nation will trust a man, independent of the facts, because he looks good dressed up as a pilot. But it's possible that he's right.

What must worry the Bush administration, however, is a third possibility: that the American people gave Mr. Bush their trust because in the aftermath of Sept. 11, they desperately wanted to believe the best about their president. If that's all it was, Mr. Bush will eventually face a terrible reckoning.

Kristof, on the other hand, focuses on the current big and ongoing tragedy: Liberia.

[W]ith Monrovia (named for James Monroe) now collapsing into killing and cholera, Mr. Bush has sent a symbolic presence to the waters off Monrovia for possible deployment later.

Africa needs a lot of things, but symbols aren't high on the list. Liberian children are not being slaughtered offshore, but on the ground, and that's where troops are needed. Sending troops to Liberian waters is a waffle, a gesture that saves no lives. After 9/11, Mr. Bush displayed leadership, moral clarity and decisiveness in sending troops to Afghanistan; today, Africa desperately needs those same qualities.

"Dithering only makes it worse," notes Ken Menkhaus, an Africa expert at Davidson College, arguing for intervention. "If we don't do it, it'll fester and blow up."

There's a tremendous divergency of opinion within the Left regarding military action. I am not a pacifist, and Liberia sums up for me why we need a well-functioning military force capable of intervening when countless lives are at risk. Guns for peace may sound like an inherent contradiction in terms, but it still pales next to "imperial democracy."

Oh, and the New York Times also has a decent editorial about the 9/11 report and the Saudis. We fought a revolution to free ourselves from one king, but imperial democracy apparently requires the assistance of a kingdom. Is anyone on the right paying any attention to what these bozos are doing in our name?

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Plame update

The major print media have backed off on the Valerie Plame story, but The Hill has a new article today, and the list of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle demanding an investigation continues to grow. Even on Capitol Hill this seems to be a CIA vs. the Administration battle, with former CIA operative Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL) saying any such investigation "could be part of a wider weapons-of-mass-destruction investigation."

JustOneMinute has an excellent chronology of the Valerie Plame scandal.

Posted by Steve Perry at July 29, 2003 10:00 AM

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