David Brooks on neocons today / response-edit

[rlev1223]

(Edited for spelllling)

David Brooks wrote a completely disengenuous piece today ridiculing anyone concerned about neo-con influence in foreign policy as being anti-Semitic.

He also equates years of harsh conservative rhetoric with more recent (and still tepid, to me) liberal responses and decries both as shrill and partisan. Talk about blaming the victim!

Anyway, please read the article at

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/06/opinion/06BROO.html?th

and maybe email Brooks a reply. Here's mine:

(to David Brooks)

So, to think that Rumsfeld, Cheney et. al. are dangerous, delusional dopes is now to be anti-semitic. Feh!

Reality? Well, all one has to do is read the PNAC papers, especially regarding use of the military and the establishment of "Pax Americana" (they actually use that phrase) and then cross reference the names of the authors with the current occupants of some rather high offices to see reality.

Of course, were it actually a small cabal of 4 or 5 loosely unconnected friends with an amateur desire to putter in foreign policy theory, it would be basically no different than me and the guys who argue politics down at the bar. However, we don't have Rupert Murdoch's money and media behind us.

Go learn something -- read the NY Observer's large "neo-con genealogy" of a couple of months ago. The same paper that did a perplexingly positive puff piece on yourself.

Richard Levinson

[wakfs]

1. I read that junk

And got halfway through before clicked off the page in disgust.

I dislike David Brooks. He represents a significant decrease in the quality of the New York Times editorial pages, in my opinion.

[PATRICK]

2. I think he's wrong again

It is his nature politically of course. PNAC resembles very much those enthusiastic forces that seek a strong needy ally that seems natural and it turns out to be Isreal or the Jews. They start out seeming to happily share the same pragmatic goals and even appear to have some common ideological ground. They embrace, they enthuse. they destroy their enemies and pursue their agenda.

And in the end the biggest losers are always the Jews. The fact that deep and longstanding anti-Semitic hatred lurks in the poisoned well of the conservative establishment, the old money, and the oil barons always will out in the end. Somehow seeing all the early things happening for Israel's benefit seems to suddenly go flat and all they have left are millions of angry Moslems, diminishing oil in the hands of Americans and constant war. The worst would be happy to watch them battle biblically from afar via satellite. They might even invite a later conflagration of the then used up region to game the rest of the world under America's nuclear umbrella.

I know James Michener is kind of a simple source, but it did impress me how historically one bright group of Jews after another assimilated enthusiastically into these friendly new reform movements in the beginning and then were turned on hatefully when not needed. I think PNAC by simple dint of anncient violence as a cure is extremely dangerous to Israel and that is proving out- and at the least is not much of a concern to Bush who has as much advantage out of them as he is bound to get with his agenda.

[Kolesar]

3. what does "feh" mean?

informal English, I assume.

[tishaLA]

6. It's a yiddishism

it means something like "phooey"

[Kolesar]

7. a ha! Then it is a very sophisticated interjection

...Reflecting the cultural context. Perfect!

[alonso_quijano]

4. My reply...

Not to Brooks, but to [e-mail]


Dear Editor,

Mr. Brooks' Op-Ed piece today is one of the most reckless and reprehensible pieces of writing I have ever read in any media. To equate criticism of the neoconservative agenda with anti-Semitism is nothing short of loathsome. One hopes that even the hacks of the Coulter/NewsMax/O'Reilly fringe would pause before giving voice to such accusations; to find them in the newspaper of record is chilling.

While Mr. Brooks' head-in-the-sand denial of reality and penchant for argument by assertion are nothing new, today's article ventures far beyond even the usual wide latitude you provide to Op-Ed authors. Both the groundlessness and the gravity of the accusation demand that Mr. Brooks either offer some proof that any of neoconservatism's mainstream critics have any truck with anti-Semitism, or, if that is (as I suspect) impossible, print a retraction of and apology for his article.

Sincerely,
XXXXXX XXXXXX

[Cocoa]

5. I hope Clark responds to this

Clark is half Jewish, and Brooks is accusing him of being antisemitic.

It seems to me that Clark has a pattern of making whores pay for going after him, I hope he continues the pattern with Brooks, who deserves to be called out.