Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

January 18, 2012 By Fausta

Patterico refutes Sullivan, and so does The Atlantic

More on the dumb Newsweek cover:
Patterico’s Karl posts When Andrew Sullivan is useful,

Insofar as his defenses parallel the likely narrative of Obama’s reelect campaign, it’s worth looking at his takes on criticism of Obama from the right (Sullivan also addresses criticism from the left, which won’t play much role in the campaign) on major issues:

The issues are

  • Jobs
  • Stimulus
  • Taxes
  • Spending
  • Obamacare
  • Foreign policy

For instance,

Foreign policy.  Sullivan focuses on the least controversial aspect of Obama’s record, claiming “Obama reversed Bush’s policy of ignoring Osama bin Laden, immediately setting a course that eventually led to his capture and death.”  In reality, the key info to finding bin Laden was gathered from Operation Cannonball, launched during the Bush administration.  Sullivan also claims:

[W]here Bush talked tough and acted counterproductively, Obama has simply, quietly, relentlessly decimated our real enemies, while winning the broader propaganda war. Since he took office, al Qaeda’s popularity in the Muslim world has plummeted.

Confidence in al Qaeda was declining for years in the Muslim world before Obama took office.  Then again, confidence in Obama has declined in the Muslim world from 2009-11 (the most recent Pew Global attitudes poll).  The latter was one of Sullivan’s arguments for electing Obama in the first place. Sullivan also argued that Obama could reduce the polarization in Washington.  Obama started poisoning that well three days into his presidency, becoming one of the most polarizing presidents in modern history.

Which brings us to Dear Andrew Sullivan: Why Focus On Obama’s Dumbest Critics?
A major defense of the president exaggerates Obama’s accomplishments and misses the point: his scandalous transgressions against rule of law
, which starts with

After reading Andrew Sullivan’s Newsweek essay about President Obama, his critics, and his re-election bid, I implore him to ponder just one question. How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the following?

(1) Codify indefinite detention into law; (2) draw up a secret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate without due process; (3) proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens; (4) prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers for violating state secrets; (5) reinterpret the War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressional declaration is permissible; (6) enter and prosecute such a war; (7) institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in major American airports; (8) oversee a planned expansion of TSA so that its agents are already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and bus depots; (9) wage an undeclared drone war on numerous Muslim countries that delegates to the CIA the final call about some strikes that put civilians in jeopardy; (10) invoke the state-secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits brought by civil-liberties organizations on dubious technicalities rather than litigating them on the merits; (11) preside over federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries; (12) attempt to negotiate an extension of American troops in Iraq beyond 2011 (an effort that thankfully failed); (13) reauthorize the Patriot Act; (13) and select an economic team mostly made up of former and future financial executives from Wall Street firms that played major roles in the financial crisis.

and concludes with,

It isn’t that I object to Sullivan backing Obama’s reelection if his GOP opponent runs on bringing back torture. Is he the lesser of two evils? Maybe so. But lauding him as a president who has governed “with grace and calm” and “who as yet has not had a single significant scandal to his name”? If indefinite detention, secret kill lists, warrantless spying, a war on whistleblowers, violating the War Powers Resolution, and abuse of the state secrets privilege don’t fit one’s definition of “scandal,” what does? If they’re peripheral flaws rather than central, unacceptable transgressions, America is doomed to these radical, illiberal policies for the foreseeable future.

That the second article comes from The Atlantic, not your hive of vast-right-wing-conspirators, is even more telling.

By the way, I’m not pleased to be giving importance to Newsweek, a worthless publication that doesn’t deserve any. The important thing about Sullivan’s article is that Sullivan is laying out the narrative for Obama’s re-election campaign. That’s why both articles above should be read in full.

UPDATE,
Linked by Obi’s Sister. Thanks!


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Filed Under: Barack Obama, politics Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Newsweek, The Atlantic

October 5, 2010 By Fausta

Castro and the Jews

Fidel Castro, the liberals‘ favorite thug was interviewed by tool Jeffrey Goldberg, who quoted Fidel Castro as criticizing Iran for anti-Semitism. Of course Goldberg doesn’t recall all the times that Castro sided with Yasser Arafat over the years.

The timing of Castro’s statements coincided with the Jewish holidays.

As I mentioned last month,

The real story is that Cuba is broke, the Cuban dictatorship is desperately trying to stay in power and is seeking for the USA to grant it credit so it can continue.

Jaime Darenblum writes (h/t Babalu),
Fidel Castro, with Ploys and PR Stunts, Seeks to use Jews (emphasis added)

A final point about Castro and the Jews: While his remarks to Jeffrey Goldberg appeared to be a harsh critique of anti-Semitism, they were actually an example of anti-Semitism in disguise. Fidel was motivated to make those remarks by a conspiratorial belief that Jews are an all-powerful lobby in the United States. The whole episode reminded me of Erich Honecker’s attempts to boost his image with American Jews in the late 1980s, at a time when his East German regime was hoping to establish warmer relations with the United States. In 1988, Honecker restored a synagogue in East Berlin and visited with World Jewish Congress leader Edgar Bronfman, assuming that Bronfman could arrange a meeting with President Reagan. Needless to say, the Honecker-Reagan meeting never happened, and the Berlin Wall soon collapsed. But Honecker’s outreach to Bronfman reflected his belief that Jews control the American government.

Castro apparently harbors the same illusions. Don’t be misled by his comments to Goldberg. In his clumsy attempt to ingratiate himself with American Jews, Fidel revealed the deeply ingrained anti-Semitism that continues to shape his worldview.

I said it when the Jeffrey Goldberg articles first came out, and I repeat it: Goldberg has been played for the useful fool he is.

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Filed Under: Communism, Cuba, Fidel Castro Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic

September 12, 2010 By Fausta

Fidel: It’s capitalism that doesn’t work!

The other day I was asking, Is Jeffrey Goldberg fluent in Spanish?

Well, it looks like Fidel Castro doesn’t think Jeffrey is,
Castro: I Meant That ‘Capitalist System’ Doesn’t Work

Fidel Castro said Friday his recent comment that communist-led Cuba’s economic model does not work was badly understood and that what he really meant was that capitalism does not work.

Castro, speaking at the University of Havana, said his words had been misinterpreted by his interviewer, U.S. journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic Monthly magazine, who quoted a U.S. analyst saying they indicated Castro now supports a smaller state role in the island’s Soviet-style economy.

Goldberg wrote in a blog on Wednesday that he asked Castro, 84, if Cuba’s model was still worth exporting to other countries.

“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,” Castro told him.

Castro confirmed that he said those words “without bitterness or concern.” But, he said, “the reality is that my response means exactly the opposite.”

“My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn’t work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious.”

And Fidel also says that Jeffrey – who even told Fidel that “At a certain point it seemed logical for you to recommend that the Soviets bomb the U.S.” and makes you wander what kind of American would even think that? – also misunderstood what Castro said about the Cuban missile crisis,

Goldberg, who interviewed Castro two weeks ago in Havana, wrote in a Tuesday blog that Castro had criticized Iran for anti-Semitism and renounced his own actions during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when he urged the Soviet Union to launch nuclear weapons on the United States.

“After I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn’t worth it at all,” Castro told Goldberg of his recommendation to the Soviets.

Castro said Goldberg did not understand the irony in his comments and that had the U.S. threatened to invade Cuba, he would have recommended a nuclear strike to prevent it.

Poor Jeffrey has still to figure out that the tough thing about being a tool is he’s being played by a murderous Communist dictator with half a century of experience in playing fools like him, no matter how you “interpret” it.

Hat tip: ryukyu

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Filed Under: Communism, Cuba, Fidel Castro, propaganda Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic

February 9, 2010 By Fausta

What is wrong with The Atlantic?

I have linked to posts and articles at The Atlantic on ocassion. What I don’t understand is why they keep Andrew Sullivan on the payroll, and provide him with ghostbloggers.

Sullivan, as you may know, has gone off the deep end and claimed that Ahmadinejad is Karl Rove and Sarah Palin’s son is actually her grandson.

But Sullivan’s lunacy has a darker side – his festering hostility towards Israel and the Jews; Leon Wieseltier looks into it,
Something Much Darker
Andrew Sullivan has a serious problem.

Sullivan accuses Israel and the Jews of “intensify[ing] the polarization that the Jihadists relish.”

Sullivan seems unaware that his analysis is nothing more than a digital version of the traditional analysis of Arabists in Washington since 1948, and even before. This analysis is not entirely incorrect: America’s alliance with Israel has often interfered with America’s interests in the Arab world. This is obvious to any student of history. But the American alliance with Israel, like a good deal of American foreign policy, though not these days, was never only an affair of interests. Sullivan is apparently indifferent to the moral dimension of the alliance. On January 6, moaning that he is “sick of the Israelis and the Palestinians,” he noted also that “I’m sick of having a great power like the US being dictated to in the conduct of its own foreign policy by an ally that provides almost no real benefit to the US, and more and more costs.” The high moral dudgeon of the heartless realist: that is quite a trick. Like all of America’s other allies, Israel is a sovereign state, and like all of America’s other allies, it sometimes exercises its sovereignty in ways that baffle or infuriate us; but Sullivan’s patience is wearing thin. “My own view is moving toward supporting a direct American military imposition of a two-state solution,” he wildly announces, “with NATO troops on the borders of the new states of Palestine and Israel.” A new war! Even better, a new war of liberation! Never mind that Israel is a sovereign and a democratic state, and that Palestine is not remotely unified on behalf of such a solution. But at least it would not be a war against a Muslim country. And now that you mention it, isn’t it time that we attacked a Jewish country? It would prove our even-handedness, wouldn’t it? But alas, there’s no way AIPAC will allow it.

Having demanded that the Jews behave apologetically in America, Sullivan now demands that the United States behave apologetically in the world–that it adjust its relationship with Israel to the preferences of the Muslim peoples. This is a little like decrying the election of a black president because it will inflame white racists. (Sullivan writes about the “middle” and the “core” in the Muslim world as if they were the independents and the base in Massachusetts.) But peace between Israelis and Palestinians should be made primarily for them and by them. And anti-Americanism, like anti-Semitism and many versions of anti-Zionism, cannot be adequately understood as a response to the actions of Americans, Jews, and Zionists. Prejudice is not an instance of empirical thinking, as the tenacity of anti-Americanism after the election of Barack Obama demonstrates. There is a progressive president in America now, enchanted by “engagement” and by Muslims. In the universe of jihadism, however, this alters nothing. As a matter of numinous conviction, the jihadists are anti-Americans and anti-Semites and anti-Zionists, and their anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. They do not want to take the Israel-Palestine question off the table, they want to take Israel off the map. Their goals are literal and maximal. Their worldview is unfalsifiable; their “paradigm” does not “shift.” They do not make Sullivan’s distinction between Israel’s existence and Israel’s actions. If the two-state solution were to come into being, the jihadists would consider their job half-done.

It is true that peace and Palestine would have a modest and marginal impact upon the reputation of the United States in the Muslim world. But the scale of this impact is too inconsiderable to assure anything that Israel does an important place among the causes of jihadism. It may be “loopy,” as Sullivan says, for Israeli policy to “be bracketed entirely out of that dynamic,” but it is even loopier to include it significantly within it. Jihadism is a violent political theology determined by ideas and fantasies that do not come from America or Israel, and its abhorrence of freedom, materialism, democracy, modernity, and the West exceeds even its abhorrence of Jews. We do not determine who Muslims are, and they are more than their reaction to us. What does Sullivan really know about the origins and the writings of the jihadist tradition? Yet he has an even more brilliant theory of the origins of Muslim anti-Americanism. He accounts for it not only in terms of Israel’s policies, but also in terms of “those who want to brandish Gitmo, embrace torture, and accelerate Israel settlements.” The neocons, once more. They are what stand between America and Muslim adulation. Bad Jews are making bad Muslims! I doubt that even Krauthammer believes that Krauthammer is this important. The neocons have deranged Sullivan. I suppose they must take what victories they can get. This would count as merely a small comic episode in American political anthropology, except that Sullivan’s bitterness crosses the line into something that is neither small nor comic.

Which brings me to the question at the start of this post: Sullivan may have the right to express whatever ridiculous and insane opinion he may have, but why is The Atlantic paying him for it and keeping him in their website?

Related:
Dan Riehl has another theory onthe cause Sullivan’s hate.

UPDATE
Via Larwyn, Vanderleun asks the same question.

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Filed Under: bloggers Tagged With: Andrew Sullivan, Fausta's blog, The Atlantic

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