Nicholas Kristof should be in Prison, Not Julian Assange

For a good example of the absolutely decrepit state of mainstream opinion writing read Nicholas Kristof's embarrassing "Hungry and Desperate, but Away From a Country in Chaos."

The template remains unchanged: A nation's people are being brutalized by its leadership. So the enlightened, benign United States must intervene in that country to replace its leaders with ones of its own choosing.

What always goes unmentioned is that a majority of the citizens of the targeted country doesn't want its leaders evicted by the United States. What also goes unmentioned is that the leaders selected by the U.S. favor privatizing their country's assets.

As Kristof proudly proclaimed in the aftermath of Muammar Gaddafi's ouster in 2011:

I’m a believer in humanitarian intervention to avert genocide or mass atrocities — when the stars align, as I believe they did in Libya — so maybe I’m deluding myself to justify our bombing campaign. Yet it seems to me that the NATO military intervention prevented a massacre in Benghazi, saved countless Libyan lives and has put the country on a track of hope.

Countries like the United States, France, Britain and Qatar did something historic in supporting a military operation that was largely about preserving lives, not national interests. While plenty can still go wrong, my sense is that Libya is muddling along toward a future far better than its oppressive past.

In the years that followed, when Libya descended into civil war and chaos, Kristof changed his tune and became critical of the "humanitarian intervention," not only there but in Syria as well.

The important thing to note here is that Kristof's change of tune on Libya and Syria never translates into an aversion to making another call for a new regimen change operation.

This is also the case with Kristof's fellow columnist Thomas Friedman, who supported the invasion of Iraq, only to acknowledge later that he was wrong, but then ended up arguing for the removal of Assad in Syria.

People like Kristof and Friedman are not really independent thinkers. They are Borgs. They will always advocate for whatever war is being boosted at the moment, to fall back later, in order to maintain any credibility at all, and criticize the intervention, as Kristof does persuasively now with the war in Yemen.

Mainstream Media Suddenly Discovers the Threat of War

Fitting that Trump's replacement of Nation Security Adviser Lt. Gen H.R. McMaster with John Bolton comes directly on the heels of the 15th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. If the United States has been tacitly at war with the world, now it is explicitly so; at least that's "morning after" assessment in the prestige press.

Yesterday, before the Bolton bombshell was dropped, Nicholas Kristof penned "Trump’s Talk Worries Me, Like the Talk Before the Iraq War." When I read Kristof I think of him as a situational progressive whose views when they are enlightened usually line up with the "better angels" at Langley. I stopped reading him several years ago when he wrote a few columns from Ukraine championing the Banderites of Pravy Sektor.

The last part of Kristof's column caught my eye:

Looking back, the biggest problem 15 years ago was that the administration was stuck in an echo chamber and far too optimistic, and Democrats and the news media alike mostly rolled over. Journalists too often acted as lap dogs, not watchdogs — and today I fear that we may be so busy chasing the latest shiny object that we miss an abyss ahead.

I also frankly doubt that we as a nation have learned the lesson from Iraq. A recent Pew survey found that 43 percent of Americans still believe that invading Iraq was the correct decision.

Hello?

Forty-three percent believe invading Iraq was the correct decision because that is the prevailing wisdom found in the mainstream media. Governments and the corporate media outlets that serve them lie repeatedly. It didn't end with the invasion of Iraq. See Craig Murray's latest post, "Boris Johnson A Categorical Liar."

Suddenly war appears to be imminent when it was front and center the whole time.

Gary Chaison Announces the Death of Union Political Power

Judged by the amount of post-election coverage in the Gray Lady today -- day #2 following the GOP blowout of the Dems -- I think it is dawning on liberals that the 2014 midterms are a turning point.

For some shallow handwringing from a Deep State liberal, there is Nicholas Kristof's "America's Broken Politics." The Gray Lady actually features a helpful unsigned editorial, "In Red and Blue States, Good Ideas Prevail: From Marijuana to Gun Control, Liberal Initiatives Passed," which provides a rundown of progressive ballot measures that passed on Election Day.

The elephant in the room isn't the GOP mascot. The elephant in the room is the failure of Democratic Party and organized labor to represent the interests of working people. Gary Chaison, a labor academic who is frequently quoted by the mainstream media, sums it all up in a letter that appears in today's paper.

To the Editor: 

Re “Walker Wins Re-election, and Keeps Hope for 2016” (news article, Nov. 5):
Can there be a more glaring sign of the loss of union political power than the election success of Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin? Here is a man who thumbed his nose at the unions in 2012, when he led his Republican state legislature to pass a law that greatly curtailed the activities of Wisconsin’s public worker unions. Mr. Walker survived a recall election and has just won a second term, which might lead to his running for president in 2016. 

In the future, when someone asks, “When did the unions finally lose their political clout?,” the answer will be: “In the 2014 midterm elections, when the unions’ nemesis, Scott Walker, won re-election.”

GARY CHAISON
Worcester, Mass., Nov. 5, 2014 

The writer is a professor of industrial relations at Clark University.

What needs to be done -- clearly -- is a move to a new electoral vehicle. Dump the party of Jackson. After two hundreds years it is time for it to collapse; it is too infested with bankers and stockjobbers and warpigs. Unions should lead the way, but they won't. That is why change is going to have to come from the environmental crowd and socialists. It looks like Obama might soon sign off on Keystone XL. Once he does that there will be a golden opportunity for a large bloc of progressive voters to vacate the Democratic Party. It is something that Bill McKibben should consider in addition to organizing marchers and sit-ins -- a new national political party that can field credible candidates.

Friedman Lets Slip: "We Have to be Careful How Much We Aid Iran's Sunni Foes"

I am amazed at the subdued reaction of the pundit class to the caliphate rising in northern Iraq/eastern Syria. Nowhere have I seen evidence of alarm that Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS) now controls an expanded Sunni Triangle (see yesterday's "Iraq Rebels Stall North of Baghdad as Residents Brace for a Siege," by Rod Nordland and Alissa Rubin, for a comparison of the territory that was the hotbed of the Sunni insurgency during the U.S. military occupation with the area where ISIS is erecting its caliphate in northeast Syria and northern Iraq).

A good example is Thomas Friedman's column today, "5 Principles for Iraq." ISIS is not mentioned once! But Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is treated harshly, as is Iran. After reading Friedman's piece, you can't blame someone for thinking that it was actually an Iranian-sponsored Shiite terror group that had executed the 1,700 Iraqi soldiers (rather than the Saudi-financed Wahhabis of ISIS).

Friedman even gloats that the present state of chaos in Iraq is a win for the U.S. and a loss for Iran:

Maybe Iran, and its wily Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander, Gen. Qassem Suleimani, aren’t so smart after all. It was Iran that armed its Iraqi Shiite allies with the specially shaped bombs that killed and wounded many American soldiers. Iran wanted us out. It was Iran that pressured Maliki into not signing an agreement with the U.S. to give our troops legal cover to stay in Iraq. Iran wanted to be the regional hegemon. Well, Suleimani: “This Bud’s for you.” Now your forces are overextended in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, and ours are back home. Have a nice day.

We still want to forge a nuclear deal that prevents Iran from developing a bomb, so we have to be careful about how much we aid Iran’s Sunni foes. But with Iran still under sanctions and its forces and Hezbollah’s now fighting in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, well, let’s just say: advantage America.

So there you have it. Thomas Friedman, one the top pitchmen of bloody Pax Americana, flat out admits "[W]e have to careful about how much we aid Iran's Sunni foes."

This opinion, that the enemy is Iran along with its Shiite allies in the Middle East, has been uniformly repeated in the opinion pages since ISIS's capture of Mosul last Tuesday.

The problem is that the punditocracy, fused as it is with USG, is running far afield of public opinion. The public is unaware that the Sunni extremism of Osama bin Laden is now to be treated as an allied ideology. The spadework of public diplomacy has not be done. The populace is unprepared and unwilling to once again embrace Wahhabi suicide bombers as freedom fighters. That is why initially you had plenty of news stories about American veterans of the Sunni Triangle giving voice to anger and frustration that their enemy has triumphantly returned. (We will probably see less of those.)

But it is going to be tough to undo 15 years of programming. If Obama's failed attempt to bomb Syria at the end of last summer is any indication, people aren't going to go for it. The Far Right was front and center denouncing an attack as nothing more than the U.S. acting as "Al Qaeda's air force." Public outcry was enormous.

The pundits of the mainstream media should know that they can't have it both ways. The Friedmans and Kristofs have to expect that, when the newspaper that employs them frontpages stories about FBI concerns of homegrown jihadis traveling to Syria and Iraq only to return home as potential suicide bombers, their exhortations to blame Maliki and Iran and ignore ISIS will not make sense to most readers.

At least we can hope.