Joe Klein: It's Raining Nazis--Continued

[laststeamtrain]

It's Raining Nazis--Continued
Joe Klein


When a column starts off like this:

"The details of who did what to precipitate Russia's war against Georgia are not very important. Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia? Of course not, because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly remembered as a minor part of a much bigger drama.

"The events of the past week will be remembered that way, too."

...the author has got to be a neoconservative pushing for the next war. In this case, it's Robert Kagan, girding for a new twilight struggle with the Sovi...uh, sorry: that was a couple of twilight struggles ago...Russia. Kagan is smart and modulated in this case. He carefully lays out the U.S. and European Union initiatives in Eastern Europe that have led to the Russian pushback. Most of the western actions have been morally justified support for the new democracies--and Georgia may be the most heart-warming example--in the region; others, including the costly and technologically untenable missile defense system fantasized by Bush, have been unnecessarily provocative. And Kagan's (right)wingman, Bill Kristol, is similarly modulated in the NY Times:

"The good news is that today we don’t face threats of the magnitude of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Each of those regimes combined ruthless internal control, a willingness to engage in external aggression, and fervent adherence to an extreme ideology. Today these elements don’t coexist in one place. Russia is aggressive, China despotic and Iran messianic — but none is as dangerous as the 20th-century totalitarian states."

But don't let that fool ya. With Word War IV--Norman Podhoretz's ridiculous oversell of the struggle against jihadi extremism--on a slow burn for the moment, Kagan et al are showing renewed interest in the golden oldies of enemies, Russia and China. This larval neo-crusade has influenced the campaign of John McCain, with his comic book proposal for a League of Democracies and his untenable proposal to kick the Russians out of the G8.

<snip>

But it is important, yet again, to call out the endless neoconservative search for new enemies, mini-Hitlers. It is the product of an abstract over-intellectualizing of the world, the classic defect of ideologues. It is, as we have seen the last eight years, a dangerous way to behave internationally. And it has severely damaged our moral authority in the world...I mean, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, after Abu Ghraib, after our blithe rubbishing of the Geneva Accords, why should anyone listen to us when we criticize the Russians for their aggression in the Caucasus?

<more>

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/08/its_raining_nazis_1.html

[David Dunham]

1. Putin is emerging as a big bad guy

[spag68]

3. Putin

You say he is emerging as a bad guy. Have you lost the memory of him as the head of the KGB? I think he probably was a bad guy in kindergarten.

[spag68]

2. I often don't agree with Klein

This time he is making some sense. IMHO the nearest thing to Nazis in the world are right here in the USA. From the trough of the neocons to the white supremacists, the shit flows down. Why can't we wake up enough to rid ourselves of these cancers on humanity?

[lonestarnot]

4. Putehitler.

Not as good a fit as bushitler, but it will do.

[vixengrl]

5. I've been enjoying Joe Klein lately--

a thing I have not always done, even though I always read him. This one graf:

But don't let that fool ya. With Word War IV--Norman Podhoretz's ridiculous oversell of the struggle against jihadi extremism--on a slow burn for the moment, Kagan et al are showing renewed interest in the golden oldies of enemies, Russia and China. This larval neo-crusade has influenced the campaign of John McCain, with his comic book proposal for a League of Democracies and his untenable proposal to kick the Russians out of the G8.

sums up the righties' goofy "fight that last war", or even, "fight the next to the last", or maybe even "we're ready for three wars ago" attitude. If they mean to practice Realpolitik--why not, um, try living in reality? They pretend they are heirs to bigfoot foreign policy Gop-ers past like Theodore Roosevelt, but they talk loudly and are holding a pretty small stick. This is why their gut tells them Russia is bad (and it is, no question, being very imperialistic right now, and if not evil, concupiscent) but exactly what do they expect to do? Seriously? Can the US now pretend that invading other countries without UN support because they were asking for it is a particular grave evil that needs to be addressed? Can the US behave as if it was the only remaining Superpower in contradiction to the fact that other countries do in fact have nukes?

Bothersome. Which is why what the right has to practice their belligerence with is the ever-popular "strongly-worded letter to the Times." Or to Time magazine. Or a scathing blog-post. Recommending--sternness and disapprobation. Baleful disapprobation.

So we are reduced to the hawkish equivalent to a Ladies' Auxilliary Brunch response to a blue movie--much ado about nothing they can-a do about.

Diplomatically urging a ceasefire and suggesting a redrawing of the Georgian map in a way that creates an agreed upon semi-autonomous zone in the South Ossetra area, protected by Russia and not stormed on by Georgia comes to mind--you know, as a non-military intervention, if we still like those...maybe encouraging talks and not threatening to arm and train the smaller party who will still no doubt not be "biggened up" enough to actually withstand a Russian butt-kicking on their own--while holding out the promise to them they *might not be* one their own--when we know they will--uh that's dumb. (Erm, by which I mean the whoooole Bush approach thus far--is dumb. I wonder--does McCain understand enough between naps to suggest a solution, when he isn't requesting flunkies draft him up a talk-tough statement with facts caged from the intertubes?) Just sayin'.

[laststeamtrain]

6. Yeah. His war with the nuts at Commentary has been real 'popcorn' material.

:popcorn:

[vixengrl]

7. I think that's what lit the fire under him--to be sure.

I don't think he liked one bit being labeled as anti-Semitic (there's a joke) and maybe that helped him pull his liberal ideals back into perspective--nothing like being attacked to help you see just what ground you're standing on. And fighting for. Anyway, I appreciate that he's left off a "conventional wisdom" p.o.v. for telling it more like it t.i.s. If the "Commentary folks" (who are not Time Magazine columnists and reach who? And for what?) want to mess with him--he has a hell of a place from which to respond--and I'm glad he has. He's a solid liberal and he does a good job explaining foreign policy situations in a way weekly newsmag subscribers can dig (I get Time--I read it. It usually comes across like an artifact of a dead week to me, but I kind of like the analysis. And I think people who don't have my free time to read ten-or upteen blogs a day appreciate the encapsulaton of events they missed.)

Anyway--I noticed that's where he caught fire a little, too--just after they mentioned him.

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. I used to disdain Joe Klein, but now he seems to be on to the neocons

He finally figured out what Brent Scowcroft, Bush Sr's National Security Adviser, figured out years ago,,,as General Scowcroft described the neocons a long, long time ago, "they're a bunch of dangerous kooks."