Who's Really Blaming America First?
In his column today, Michael Barone recycles one of his favorite themes, that liberals/democrats always "blame America first." He writes:
In his June 12, 2006 column, Barone wrote:
It's more than a little ridiculous, therefore, for Barone to claim that Democrats and liberals "always blame America -- or the parts of America they don't like -- first." After all, that's exactly what Barone does all the time. It's his MO.
Our failures in Iraq and elsewhere aren't the result of ill-advised policies and incompetent leadership. No, the real problem is that our "covert enemies" here at home--the press, Democrats, liberals--are compromising our national security and undermining our will to fight.
Somehow, in Barone's mind, this doesn't qualify as "blaming America first" (if it did, his head would have exploded a long time ago). Maybe it's because he doesn't consider these "covert enemies" to be real Americans. I don't know. What I do know is that this entire line of reasoning in internally incoherent. If you need any further evidence of this, look no further than this post by conservative blogger Dan Riehl. Riehl links to Barone's column approvingly and makes the following observation--which is unintentionally hilarious:
So I ask again, who's really blaming America first here?
"They always blame America first." That was Jeane Kirkpatrick, describing the "San Francisco Democrats" in 1984. But it could be said about a lot of Americans, especially highly educated Americans, today.But this is the very same Michael Barone whose other favorite theme is that our country is being undermined by "covert enemies" here at home. In a column published last August--entitled "Our Covert Enemies"--Barone wrote:
In their assessment of what is going on in the world, they seem to start off with a default assumption that we are in the wrong. The "we" can take different forms: the United States government, the vast mass of middle-class Americans, white people, affluent people, churchgoing people or the advanced English-speaking countries. Such people are seen as privileged and selfish, greedy and bigoted, rash and violent. If something bad happens, the default assumption is that it's their fault. They always blame America -- or the parts of America they don't like -- first.
In our war against Islamo-fascist terrorism, we face enemies both overt and covert. The overt enemies are, of course, the terrorists themselves. . . .Barone ended the column by observing that "in some corner of their hearts," these covert enemies "would like us to lose."
Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness.
In his June 12, 2006 column, Barone wrote:
It comes down to this: A substantial part of the Democratic Party, some of its politicians and many of its loudest supporters do not want America to succeed in Iraq.Another of Barone's favorite targets is "the media," which he blames for undermining our war effort and harming our national security. His June 26, 2006 column was aptly titled "The New York Times at War With America."
It's more than a little ridiculous, therefore, for Barone to claim that Democrats and liberals "always blame America -- or the parts of America they don't like -- first." After all, that's exactly what Barone does all the time. It's his MO.
Our failures in Iraq and elsewhere aren't the result of ill-advised policies and incompetent leadership. No, the real problem is that our "covert enemies" here at home--the press, Democrats, liberals--are compromising our national security and undermining our will to fight.
Somehow, in Barone's mind, this doesn't qualify as "blaming America first" (if it did, his head would have exploded a long time ago). Maybe it's because he doesn't consider these "covert enemies" to be real Americans. I don't know. What I do know is that this entire line of reasoning in internally incoherent. If you need any further evidence of this, look no further than this post by conservative blogger Dan Riehl. Riehl links to Barone's column approvingly and makes the following observation--which is unintentionally hilarious:
It's important to know one's enemy in any struggle or conflict. Unfortunately for America, her greatest enemy may be America itself. Irresponsible political Liberalism, a mostly unaccountable media and an educated but unenlightened academia, they are the real forces against which the best of America must struggle, simply to be herself.You cannot make this stuff up. In a post in which he criticizes liberals for "blaming America first," Riehl actually states flat-out that our "greatest enemy may be America itself" and proceeds to blame all of our problems on various groups of Americans he doesn't like.
So I ask again, who's really blaming America first here?
posted by A.L. at 12:25 PM
9 Comments:
The themes you see coming from conservatives these days are tired old wheezers, arent' they? It appears Michael Barone hasn't had a fresh idea since 1984, when Jeanne Kirkpatrick gave him one.
Barone and those like him don't "blame America first", they blame Americans first. Americans they don't like and don't think of as Americans. Their problem is those not-real-Americans are the majority of the country now.
When Donald Trump proclaims a Republican president the worst in the history of the country, you know things are bad for the Michael Barones.
It seems they are the ones suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. Their unwaivering adoration of G.W. Bush has made them crazy.
In a post in which he criticizes liberals for "blaming America first," Riehl actually states flat-out that our "greatest enemy may be America itself" and proceeds to blame all of our problems on various groups of Americans he doesn't like.
So funny.
Those who yell about liberals "destroying America" and condemning them as "Blame America First" are themselves blaming Americans.
Ha, good observation.
They always blame America -- or the parts of America they don't like -- first.
And yet if you asked him why we are losing in Iraq he would probably reply that it's mostly because of...the parts of America he doesn't like. Liberals. And the media. And George Soros. How this is supposed to be any different from liberals blaming conservatives for America's problems, I don't know.
Michael Barone hasn't had a fresh idea since 1984, when Jeanne Kirkpatrick gave him one.
Barone thinks a "fresh idea" is when he soils himself and needs a change in the plastic underwear that he requires for sanitary purposes.
"In their assessment of what is going on in the world, they seem to start off with a default assumption that we are in the wrong."
I love my country, but not right or wrong. We do it no favors by mindlessly saluting anything that any half-baked hack of a president runs up the flagpole, so to speak.
Case in point: invading a sovereign nation on the basis of faulty intelligence, even more-faulty use of that intelligence and an incompetent self-proclaimed Decider's intention to do as he saw fit, despite international law and the protests of the U.N. and U.S. allies.
Case in point: Standing by while the country invaded became a murderous hell hole lapsing into civil war, all the while insisting no more troops were needed despite glaring evidence to the contrary presenting itself daily for four years.
Case in point: the serious effort to abridge, dodge or outright ignore the Geneva Conventions in dealing with terror war captives, including mere suspects, coupled with shipping prisoners to countries that practice torture, coupled with the goings on at Abu Ghraib Prison.
With a track record like that just over the past five years, a default suspicion the U.S. might be in the wrong seems justified.
As for Barone, he's a run-of-the-mill component of the right-wing noise machine. Like Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Beirne, Blankley and all the rest, he gets the memos, he writes the columns.
It is important to remember that the Iraq war was not based on faulty intelligence, though faulty intelligence there was, but was based on deliberately manufactured intelligence such as the forged Niger documents, Colin Powell's phony pictures of base camps that were long abandoned, Rice's "mushroom cloud", phony mobile biological weapons labs, collusion between terrorists and Iraq, caches of chemical weapons twelve years old, a nuclear program that ended in 1992, and galvanized aluminum tubes not used in centrifuges were all part of a campaign to excuse the invasion of a country that represented no immediate or short term threat, to commit the murder of over 100,000 Iraqis and steal $14 trillion dollars of the country's natural resource.
The invasion was not a mistake, miscalculation, blunder, poor judgment, or stupidity; it was a criminal act for which no one has been held accountable. The invasion of Iraq was a cold and calculated crime, sold to the American people as a necessity and as their patriotic duty to support. The mainstream media was a co-conspirator in the selling of the crime to the American people.
The invasion was the worst foreign policy move in U.S. history, because it was a criminal act, ordered by criminals to enrich themselves and their cohorts.
Meanwhile the criminals used the war to consolidate power, and strip Americans of their sacred rights.
The criminals deserve no mercy because they gave none. There were other ways to negotiate protection of Iraq's resources, but the administration chose a blunt instrument rather than to operate surgically, just as the majority of other criminals do when they act on their greed.
conservatives don't want to play by the rules ..and they don't honor our social contract..
while claiming to be the best and most patriotic among us all they regularly trash the idea and the moral underpinnings of our democratic society ...
America- the US is a great country,and I think in someways like a person, a human being so to speak. Humans are not perfect, they make mistakes,sometimes in well meaning intentions they end up hurting other humans. Taking reponsibilitiy for ones error and fessing up to their error is a good sign in trying to be a decent humnan being. To make amends would even be better, but not at the expense of another.Two people amy not always agree on everything but can compromise to the center. If this is multiplied continuasly there would less likely be extremism.Wars begin because one side beleives they are absoulutly right,and when that is decided solely on the might of one rather than logical reasoning then it does not matter.
The founding fathers of this great nation realized that, that is why they put in many safeguards and tried to balance the powers; so that one would not have a dominating influence over the other. I beleive it was a good Constitition and Charter. If followed with original intents we might not have so many aproblems today.Unfortunatly it has been forgotten by many that the goverment is for its people,by the people and not the other way around.Maybe an assessment of where our Nation is present day is in order, before we rush to the future without learning from past errors.In many ways we are more fortunate than our predecessors because of the ability to communicate instanteoulsy and perhaps that is what worries the absolutes, and they know who they are.
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