I know, right? Wipe that look of gobsmack off your faces! David Freddeso:
If you’ve noticed that the active anti-war movement seems smaller these days, you’re not alone – and just at the moment when the public seems to support their cause.
But those few who have remained consistent, along with a vast and ideologically diverse majority of Americans opposed to war with Syria, must now contend with a media that reflexively assumes purer motives of President Obama than it did of his predecessor.
This is how the media had been dragging us into a war that both Congress and the public view with great skepticism – right up to the moment the British Parliament’s vote and extremely sour public opinion forced Obama to un-make his mind about invading without congressional approval.
Witness, for example, the coverage this year and last of Obama’s controversial drone-strike policy. Even while providing reasonably critical coverage, journalists did not hide their shock that Obama – “a good man … an honorable man … the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize … an unimpeachably upstanding citizen,” as Esquire put it – had made mass assassination his singular contribution to the history of the U.S. presidency.
The New York Times, even in revealing Obama’s personal role in approving strikes, merely presented this as evidence of his credentials as a deep thinker: “A student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas,” the Times asserted, “he believes that he should take moral responsibility for such actions.”
That provides some insight into the sympathetic assumptions from which the media currently operate and how they have nearly got us into a war last week.
New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan asked her paper’s managing editor, Dean Baquet, about whether Times coverage of Syria isn’t ignoring the lessons of Iraq.
His paraphrased reply: “Syria is not another Iraq, he said. One of the major differences, he said, is that the Obama administration has no enthusiasm for this conflict in the way that President George W. Bush’s administration did a decade ago.”
— So you see? Again, it’s about perception — and is propelled by the leftist’s circular reasoning that, because they intend to do it, it must be done out of goodness, they being good and so capable only of doing things with the purest of intentions. Even if they sometimes have to lie, cheat, steal, bully, berate, destroy, and lay waste to those who refuse to see their goodness.
What passes for intellectualism here is crass cartooning: we’re to picture Bush licking his chops with glee at the prospect of attacking other countries — which he did as a result of a series of bombings against us, the last of which took down the Twin Towers and killed 3000 Americans.
Whereas Obama is reluctantly — and with a good sharp mind, having pondered Aquinas and Augustine — using drone strikes to take out targets of interest, and then entering into actions in Libya and now (he hopes) Syria, having interfered with Mubarak in Egypt but left Achmanidinnerjacket and the North Koreans alone, because he feels the moral compulsion to do so. Though somehow we’re to bracket that the same moral compulsion hasn’t led him to take action in Africa, Iran, North Korea, or places where Christians and women are routinely slaughtered, or citizens are routinely imprisoned or starved.
Or, to put it another way, even provoked, Bush’s motives were base; while even unprovoked, Obama’s are beatific, because Good Men often must reluctantly do bad things for Good Reasons.
What those reasons are is irrelevant. Because they are good. Having come from a Good Man. A thoughtful man. A man who evidently fits Aquinas in between rounds of golf, fried food binges, concerts, basketball, and parties with Jay-Z and Beyonce.
In other words, the press, being progressive, has pretended not to smell Obama’s bullshit, either. But you can only sprinkle so much rosewater on a turd. Because pretty soon, somebody is going to step in it and realize that it ain’t rose petals they’re trying to unclog from the soles of their shoes.
…you can only sprinkle so much rosewater on a turd.
But, as the Mythbusters guys–and the Lickspittle Media(TM) with O!–demonstrated, you can polish one.
He may have read Aquinas and Augustine, but I don’t think he’s even heard of Sun-Tzu.
And the media will never take a hard look at Jugears, because they believe to their very core that he is One Of Them. He is, after all, the blank canvass on to which they’ve projected themselves. And if Teh Won is just a feckless gutless heartless ruthless simpleton who seems to think that Muslims and drones are just ants and a magnifying glass, well, what would that say about them?
Better not to inquire too deeply. Just to be on the safe side.
President Obama, pure as the driven snow-job.
He may have read Aquinas and Augustine, but I don’t think he’s even heard of Sun-Tzu.
If he read Aquinas and Augustine, it was the Cliff’s Notes version. My guess is he thinks they are different brands of sparkling water. And Sun-Tzu? Thanks for the laugh. I needed that.
. . . ants and a magnifying glass . . .
They’re finally comin’ for us.
We have raised a generation with too many cuckoos snuck into it (55% maybe 70%?) and now the songbird empire is just about over. ‘Silent Spring’ indeed eh Rachel? And you thought it would be killing bugs that did it.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/02/ready-here-is-the-series-of-drunk-tweets-a-student-posted-after-blowing-an-astounding-341/
Bonus campfire tale of horror.
Problem: I went to the Taco Bueno and there was a fat ginger lady telling her girlfriend that she felt like she had been raped because her boyfriend had a premature e-jac and went home. REAL LOUD. My stomach tried to escape. The horror…the horror. G. G. Allin concerts are bleeding into real life now.
Solution: So I’m going to the Taco Bueno drive-through from now on.
Also:
A kid broke his shoulder blade skateboarding in the driveway of the house next to me yesterday. Happy Labor day! I’m guessing he’s…14 maybe? I wonder if somehow his parent’s lawyers will wangle me into contributive liability by proximity?
Obama didn’t read Augustine or Aquinas. He had some schmuck read them ad give top staffers crib notes. Then those staffers distill the notes into something Obama can read on a teleprompter.
Sorta like the system that got him through Harvard
The Congress has sat through the most insane hearing in the history of hearings. John Kerry, who cannot point to an act of war committed by Syria against the United States wants the United States to take “military action” against Syria, and yet would have the world believe that such an “action” is not an act of war committed by the United States against Syria.
And no one in Congress even laughs at him.
So, when Assad retaliates against the United States for the United States’ act of war, we’ll still not be at war with Syria because Barry ObaZma and John Kerry say we aren’t at war with Syria.
Insane.
Vote no.
plus we can’t afford it cause of we gave away all the food stamps and didn’t keep none for in case of war
mostest. ghetto. superpower. ever.
A sudden surge of approval has dropped Drudge’s poll all the way from 92% against war to 91% against.
Beware the progressive wave.
They wave bye-bye to you as you die in a burning building.
Obama already blaming Congress and …
“First of all, I didn’t set a red line,” said Obama. “The world set a red line. The world set a red line when governments representing 98 percent of the world’s population said the use of chemical weapons are [inaudble] and passed a treaty forbidding their use, even when countries are engaged in war. Congress set a red line when it ratified that treaty. Congress set a red line when it indicated that in a piece of legislation entitled the Syria Accountability Act that some of the horrendous things happening on the ground there need to be answered for. So, when I said in a press conference that my calculus about what’s happening in Syria would be altered by the use of chemical weapons, which the overwhelming consensus of humanity says is wrong, that wasn’t something I just kind of made up. I didn’t pluck it out of thin air. There’s a reason for it.”
The Syria Accountability Act of 2003 is based on the same intelligence that got us into Iraq …
According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s ‘‘Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions’’, released January 7, 2003: ‘‘[Syria] already holds a stockpile of the nerve agent sarin but apparently is trying to develop more toxic and persistent nerve agents. Syria remains dependent on foreign sources for key elements of its [chemical weapons] program, including precursor chemicals and key production equipment. It is highly probable that Syria also is developing an offensive [biological weapons] capability.’’
… of course, “It’s Bush’s fault !”
And if Bush had done in Iraq what Obama is proposing to do in Syria, we’d still be talking about Saddam Hussein’s WMD capabilities and whether or not he was sponsoring international terrorism.