Sadly, No!

A fantastic article from Rick Perlstein, which I dedicate to Brad DeLong:

America’s image of China changes with whiplash speed. What never changes is the sort of people propounding the images: the Kristofs, the Clintons, the Sandy Bergers; before them, the Alsops, the Trumans, the Dulleses; and back behind them, men whose names are unfamiliar to us but whose sociological and psychological profiles are the same–mandarins of American power, unshakable in their confidence that the natural and transparent truth about China just happens to coincide with America’s interests at any given time and to the well-being of the about-to-be-uplifted Chinese masses.

[…]

What easy marks these American mandarins are. China knows it can count on them to swat down critics via a standard lexicon of abuse: They are “China bashers” possessed of a “cold war mentality.” The China watchers are also absurdly deferential: “If we reflexively treat the Chinese as a threat, we will answer our own question: They will become a threat,” says Newsweek contributing editor Robert Samuelson. “If you treat China as an enemy,” says Harvard China hand Joseph Nye, “it will become an enemy.”

Economists, those not busy lionizing America’s favorite new source of dirt-cheap labor, might recognize this as a perverse set of incentives that hastens undesirable outcomes. “Pick a dictator anywhere on the globe,” Mann writes, and you’ll find Chinese backing. The Chinese gave Robert Mugabe an honorary degree–and “new surveillance equipment to crack down on Internet traffic and block dissident radio signals.” The military regime in Burma has enjoyed consistent backing, as have Uzbek President Islam Karimov (the “body boiler”), the genocidal government of Sudan, even the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. Don’t raise a fuss: “Any tension between America and China is inherently bad,” Mann paraphrases the China watchers, “and is the responsibility of the United States. However, if the confrontation involves intellectual property rights or other U.S. commercial interests, then it is China’s fault and is a legitimate issue that must be addressed immediately.”

Though it may be that they are not suckers at all: They enjoy a handsome quid pro quo. First Kissinger, then Brent Scowcroft, Madeleine Albright, William Cohen and Sandy Berger–all have set up lucrative China consultancies. So have “ordinary working-level civil servants.” Mann singles out Kenneth Lieberthal of the University of Michigan, a former Clinton NSC aide who pontificates wisely against China bashers (“Those who raise alarms focus too much on the problems of success and too little on the problems of failure” is a recent extrusion) without disclosing his employ at Sandy Berger’s consulting firm. […]

Wonderful stuff.

And a note to trolls: try not to fall into the undistributed middle fallacy, as does Dr. DeLong. One can be against the neoliberals’ reflexive and corporate-whorish ass-kissing of the authoritarian Chicom government without advocating a New Cold War a la 1995 model Bill Kristol or Richard Cheney’s goons in early 2001.

The Naughty Girl, citing the highly reliable and not at all ideologically biased Middle East Media Research Institute, is busting her last remaining gasket over Hamas-educated Arab children who wield toy machineguns and chant out slogans about dying for Allah.

There are only four appropriate reactions to this horrible news, and I went through all of them today: first, I thought “those kids are hilarious”. Then, I thought, “those kids are adorable”. After that, I went through a long period — I think about six and a half hours — of thinking “those kids are adorably hilarious, or hilariously adorable”. But finally, by focusing my vision on a spot directly between Michelle Malkin’s eyes, I was able to come to my senses and arrive at the most proper conclusion: “those kids are horrible menaces to freedom and truthficality”, I thought. “Surely this is just further proof that all Arabs are bad and should be blown up with cluster bombs.” Why, when I was a boy in parochial school, and I’d take a break from playing with toy guns on the playground to come into class and sing “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war” with my little chums, never did I dream that someday I would live in a world where children would be exposed to such violent religious rhetoric!

Michelle has a solution, of course: we must become as cruel and brutal as the evil ragheads. We need to gather our kids together and hand them fake guns and make them sing songs about destroying the vile serpents of Mahomet! “And how are we preparing the children of the West to defend themselves against these little soldiers of Allah?”, asks Michelle, showing her familiarity with the device known as the ‘rhetorical question’:

In New York City, one nursery school dragged 3-year-old toddlers to the office of Rep. Eliot Engel, where they sang “It’s a Small World” around a 12-foot “Tree of Peace.” The children’s teacher, Valerie Coleman-Palansky, defended the stunt thusly: “I think it’s appropriate for 3-year-olds to know that the world needs to be a peaceful place for everybody to live in and a safe place for everybody to live in.”

You see the problem here, folks? While in so-called Palestine, children are being told to grow up into human hand grenades, we here in pussified America are teaching our kids nonsense like ‘the world should be at peace’ and ‘people need a safe place to live’! Good grief, why don’t we just wrap ’em all in a hijab and throw them in the East River?

I have a pet peeve. It goes beyond the antiwar indoctrination rampant in American schools. At the playground and at the mall, I see 5-, 6- and 7-year-olds walking around with pacifiers in their mouths. Kids old enough to feed and dress themselves. Kids old enough to figure out the remote control and cell phone. Standing upright, suckling on brightly colored binkies.

Also, what’s with all the colored people chewing gum? And the so-called music they play on the radio! It’s just a bunch of noise!

Teacher asks: “How do you feel?” The sheeple answer: “I’ve been feeling optimistic about the future.”

You see what I mean? While the Muslim terrorists are breeding a generation of go-getters who are energetic and peppy enough to think of themselves as hopeless from birth and with no greater aspiration than to end up smeared across the roof of a bus, here we are in America, raising kids who feel good about themselves and who are optimistic about the future! We’re doomed!

British educators have now determined that “asking pupils to put their hands up when they think they know the answer to a question in class could make quiet children fall behind,” according to the London Telegraph. To spare students from this awful terror, the British Department of Education is now recommending that children be given 30 seconds of “thinking time” before being asked to answer or told to discuss questions in pairs before answering.

Encouraging our children to think before they answer a question? That’s the last thing we need! Do you think the jihoddlers are thinking before they speak? For Allah’s God’s sake, people! Listen to Michelle Malkin and Dinesh D’Souza! If we’re ever going to conquer the violent, irrational prejudice and hatred of Islamist indoctrination, we have to learn to start copying the violent, irrational prejudice and hatred of Islamist indoctination! What puts out a fire, after all? Water? NO! It’s MORE FIRE!

D. Aristophanes adds: Disheartening to hear that the toddlers were “dragged” to the “stunt” of singing a song for Rep. Engel and his staff.

I am told that little Billy Thompson only attended under formal protest. The precocious Olivia Jones put it bluntly: “Bad peas song! Bad for Mare-ka! Don’t wanna sing!”

And wee Mandy Applebaum was furious that her precious time was wasted, time that could have been spent taking a nap, playing blocks or live-blogging Fox News’ pre-show runup to the Republican presidential debate.

What is Rudy Giuliani talking about???

[…]

Rudy Giuliani’s answer to the first substantive question of the debate. Knowing everything we know now, good idea or bad idea to have invaded Iraq?

Absolutely the right thing to do. It’s unthinkable that you would leave Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq and be able to fight the war on terror. And the problem is that we see Iraq in a vacuum. Iraq should not be seen in a vacuum. Iraq is part of the overall terrorist war against the United States.

Huh????

You can understand why President Bush has to argue this case. To do otherwise would be to concede that his foreign policy has been a failure not just of execution but of fundamental concept.

[…]

What you can’t understand, or at least what I have a hard time with, is why somebody who is not lumbered with responsibility for the Iraq war — didn’t help plan or execute it, didn’t even have to vote for it in Congress — would voluntarily link himself to the war in this way. […] It’s not simply that the judgment of the military, intelligence, and academic worlds now stacks up so overwhelmingly against the “fight them there so we don’t fight them hereâ€? delusion. The public has turned against it too.

I flatly do not believe that Giuliani knows something the rest of us don’t know about the dynamics of Iraq, al Qaeda, or Islamic extremism in general that justifies his view.

See what I mean?:

Rudy Does It In One Sentence [Michael Graham]

It’s unimaginable that you’d leave Saddam in power while fighting a war on terror.

That’s the argument the GOP should embrace, seize and use to beat Hillary’s campaign into a coma.

06/05 07:07 PM

Rudy on Iraq [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

He is on tonight. Iraq can’t be seen in a vacuum. Exudes “I get it.”

06/05 07:09 PM

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Shorter Robert Haddick: In the future, sissy journalists who don’t act as propagandists for United States foreign policy will be killed.

Above: How I imagine Mr. Haddick in real life.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

John Derbyshire doesn’t like it when people refer to America as a “Nation of Immigrants”. So proud is he of his courageous nativist position, and the positive response it’s getting from the clay-eating white trash readers of NRO, that he repeats it, and adds the following for good measure:

As a footnote, it seems lexicographically wrong to me to describe the pre-1787 Americans as “immigrants.” They were not moving from one nation to another, as there was no nation at the receiving end. They were settlers in an essentially empty land, mostly moving from one part of the British Empire to another.

Empty, huh? Derb, I just consulted the shades of Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Crazy Horse, Squanto and Tecumseh and they say in unison, “Fuck You.”

But really now, it can’t be ethnic cleansing or even genocide when the victims never existed! And of course the victims never could have existed because then Derbyshire, an immigrant, would be hostage to the history of immigration of his own tribe — and what a bloody history it is. But since Derbyshire’s tribe can do no wrong and the current wingnut position is a big fat no to all new immigration of typically non-white people, it somehow must be argued that the colonists weren’t immigrants at all. Well played.

John Derbyshire is doing for America what Joan Peters did for Israel.

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Just some assorted bullshit:

I’ve updated the Wingnut Lookalikes post with entries on Rudy, Wolfy, Pipes, Frum, and some others I’ve already forgotten. You’ll have to scroll through to see all the new stuff.

Sorry, Andrew Sullivan, but I fail to see how I authorized torture, tried to bomb Iran, shot an old man in the face, or lied to children about Iraq when I wrote this post. But I do regret that, in my off the cuff list of VPs, I completely forgot the absolute worst pre-Cheney: John C. Calhoun. Sorry ’bout that.

Vox Day insists he never was a Bush fan, and so doesn’t belong on the list of weasels. Fair enough. But Vox still thinks Bush is a socialist. So to the list of idiots he goes. Wait. I write that with a smile, Vox! All friendly-like. So carry on beating the shit out of women and voting Libertarian, pal! Meanwhile, George Bush and I are about to discuss the finer points of dialectical materialism.

Trolling through his archives will never get old:

September 11th wasn’t terrible enough for most Western leaders to recognize the gravity of the threat and the urgency of victory. The two leaders who were catalyzed by the terror attack (President Bush and British Prime Minister Blair) have been boxed in by a combination of so-called friends and allies and by their own advisers who counsel excessive prudence. This antiwar coalition prevented the rapid and decisive action Mr. Bush seemed instinctively inclined to unleash.

— First, the uniformed military insisted we were not “ready” to take on Iraq until we had totally replenished our supplies and massed a quarter of a million fighters for the Battle of Baghdad, even though there is abundant information suggesting that the Iraqi people are counting the minutes until we give them the chance of liberation from Saddam’s terrible dictatorship, and will do much of the job themselves.

Just try to wrap your heads around that for a minute. Ledeen is insisting that the uniformed military are part of the “antiwar coalition.” Seriously.

— All along, the really big prize — Iran — was there for the asking, and at a bargain price. Not a single bullet needed to be fired, not a single bomb dropped. The president had only to instruct his people to support the openly rebellious Iranians with money, vigorous radio and television broadcasting, and some communications equipment.

Just like the Iraqis were counting the minutes until we invaded them. Got. Cha.

On the plus side, though, I’m sure the Iranian dudes woulda loved the free TVs.

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Dear God, why?

Althouse on the Republican debates:

In the background, we see Giuliani, looking rock hard.

This almost makes me long for the days when Ace would write about bacon and pl… no, scratch that. Ann, please continue as you were:

Huckabee is asked about his belief in creationism, and he does an amazing job of turning it into the question of whether he believes in God and passionately affirms that he does.

In other words, he dodged the question. Just admit it, Ann. He’s a creationist loon who completely dodged the damn question. By the gods.

Michael Ledeen, March 10, 2003:

I think Chirac will oppose us before, during, and after the [Iraq] war, because he has cast his lot with radical Islam and with the Arab extremists. He isn’t doing it just for the money — although I have no doubt that France is being richly rewarded for defending Saddam against the civilized countries of the world — but for higher stakes. He’s fighting to end the feared American domination before it takes stable shape.If this is correct, we will have to pursue the war against terror far beyond the boundaries of the Middle East, into the heart of Western Europe. And there, as in the Middle East, our greatest weapons are political: the demonstrated desire for freedom of the peoples of the countries that oppose us.

Radio Free France, anyone?

Remember when this sort of talk was considered “sane” by a lot of people?

As crazy as America is, we’re not quite this crazy anymore. I guess progress is possible after all.

UPDATE: Ah, another classic (my emphasis):

The talk about peace, and the endless “plans” that emerge from one capital or another, are no more and no less than stalling tactics by those who oppose the president’s vision. Peace in this world only follows victory in war. Enough talking, Mr. President. We’ve given our enemies too much time to plan their next murders. If we continue to dither, we condemn even more innocent people to their graves. Let’s roll again. Faster, please.

Indeed:

Having already solved all the major issues of our day, the great thinkers at Town Hall have focused their powerful minds on the critical problem of…bumper stickers.

As a tasty little appetizer, full-time frowny face Bill Murchison makes it clear that certain people, especially sissy-Marys with frou-frou haircuts, should not call things bumper stickers that are not bumper stickers.

Above: free weenies for everybody!
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