Krauthammer Day

Again, it’s Krauthammer Day. Today is the unlucky thirteenth anniversary of the day when the prominent pundit announced:

Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

As of today, we’ve had five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months, and another month on top of that of Charles Krauthammer’s credibility problem. He’s still opining.

The day has rolled around again when we celebrate Charles Krauthammer’s linking of his, and his administration friends’ credibility to a confident prediction about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

bq. Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

We’ve had over twenty five five month periods since then. There have been lots, and lots of words from Charles Krauthammer in the interim (most recently – pushing against “disclosure”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-the-zealots-win-again/2014/04/17/ac0b6466-c654-11e3-8b9a-8e0977a24aeb_story.html of political funding because people might be mean to rich donees). Discoveries of Iraqi nuclear weapons? Not so much.

It’s now been exactly a decade since Charles Krauthammer “told us that”:http://www.aei.org/events/2003/04/22/iraq-what-lies-ahead-event-3/

Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

Charles Krauthammer has not only had that five month period, but twenty-three other five month periods after that first one, for weapons of mass destruction to be found. It’s news to no-one that no weapons have been found. It’s news to no-one that the reason they haven’t been found is because they weren’t there in the first place. It’s news to no-one that Charles Krauthammer is still a columnist at the Washington Post, a syndicated columnist across the US, and a regular talking head on TV. It’s news to no-one that Fred Hiatt, his then-boss and fellow Iraq bullshit artist is still the editor of the Washington Post‘s editorial page. Or that Jackson Diehl, who I heard at the time from Washington Post people was even worse than Hiatt, is still there too.

In short, it’s news to no-one that Iraq War related “credibility problems” aren’t really so much of a problem if you’re Charles Krauthammer. Or Fred Hiatt. Or any of the multitudes of journalists or pundits who flagrantly pimped for this disastrous war and hasn’t even gestured towards publicly admitting that they committed a gross dereliction of duty. I think it’s worth remembering Krauthammer day on this blog as long as Krauthammer and the people around him continue to pollute public discourse. I can’t imagine that it’s particularly efficacious, but the alternative of succumbing to the general amnesia seems even less attractive.

It’s that time of the year again – it’s been five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months since Charles Krauthammer “told us”:http://www.aei.org/events/2003/04/22/iraq-what-lies-ahead-event-3/

bq. Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

I’ll confess that I was a bit disappointed last week, when Charles Krauthammer didn’t make the cut for Atrios’ shortlist for Wanker of the Decade (he did get a nod-in-his-direction though; Fred Hiatt’s nod was intended to honor the Washington Post‘s editorial page as a whole). But having reflected a bit, I think this was the right call. To be a really first rate wanker, you have to be at least partially oblivious to what you are. I’ve always had the sense that Krauthammer knows exactly what he is – nasty and thoroughly mendacious. Not a wanker then, but rather worse than a wanker. He’s whatever it is that Karl Rove is (when rugose and squamous entities drag out their tortured forms from under rocks, to caper and desport themselves beneath the gibbous moon, they console themselves at least they’re not working for American Crossroads).

By the way, next year will be the tenth anniversary. Still writing for the Washington Post, still syndicated, still on the talk shows.

The calendar has once again rolled around to the date on which we commemorate Charles Krauthammer’s “pronouncement”:http://www.aei.org/events/filter.,eventID.274/transcript.asp that:

Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

You’ve had seven years now, Charlie. How’s it looking? Hoping for a result sometime in year eight?

I forgot to note a very special anniversary yesterday. April 22nd is the date on which Charles Krauthammer “opined:”:http://www.aei.org/events/filter.,eventID.274/transcript.asp

Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

You’ve now had six years. How’s that credibility looking?

There’s a case to be made, though a limited one, for de mortuis nil nisi bonum. There isn’t any such case for actively misrepresenting the public record of a writer, as Peter Wehner does for Charles Krauthammer in today’s New York Times. Wehner says:

In an age when political commentary is getting shallower and more vituperative, we will especially miss Charles’s style of writing — calm, carefully constructed arguments based on propositions and evidence, tinged with a cutting wit and wry humor but never malice.

None of this is true. Krauthammer’s writing was a wasp’s nest of chewed over paper, spittle and venomous indignation. It employed spleen as a poor substitute for critical intelligence, characteristically and systematically misrepresented the evidence to the point where it was impossible not to think that he was deliberately lying, and was thoroughly riddled with malice. His vicious insinuation that Francis Fukuyama was an anti-Semite is one example of the last. His mendacious vendetta against Hans Blix, who had the impertinence to be right about WMD in Iraq (Krauthammer later preferred to brush his own WMD claims under the carpet), is another. There were many more. The best that can be said is that Krauthammer was a clear writer, not in the sense that he was usually a clear thinker, but that it was clear who his enemies were; that he was intelligent enough to have known better, and that very, very occasionally, he did. While his personal qualities may have made up for his faults as a writer to those who loved and admired him, as a public figure and as a public intellectual, he was and will remain an example to be avoided rather than emulated.

Today is Charles Krauthammer day, the twelfth anniversary of the day when Charles Krauthammer opined:

Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

We’ve had five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and five months and another four months on top since then. But still no nuclear weapons. Some time in the last twelve months, the transcript of Krauthammer’s remarks finally slipped into the AEI’s memory hole; fortunately, the remarks are preserved for posterity at the Internet Archive.

Unfortunately, Charles Krauthammer is still writing pieces like this one on the proposed Iran deal, from April 9. Krauthammer complains of Obama:

You set out to prevent proliferation and you trigger it. You set out to prevent an Iranian nuclear capability and you legitimize it. You set out to constrain the world’s greatest exporter of terror threatening every one of our allies in the Middle East and you’re on the verge of making it the region’s economic and military hegemon.

This is a … remarkably un-self-aware … set of fulminations coming from a pundit who advocated invading Iraq as the second stage of a Grand Master Plan which would precipitate regime change in Iran by demonstrating “the fragility of dictatorship” next door. How exactly did that work out? Right. And I think we’ve already touched on Charles Krauthammer’s magisterial grasp of anti-proliferation issues – the man who confidently opined that we needed to go into Iraq, because Saddam “is working on nuclear weapons [and] … has every incentive to pass them on to terrorists who will use them against us,” should really just shut up. Forever. And not only shut up, but devote the rest of his life to doing whatever pathetically inadequate things he can to make up for the strategic and humanitarian catastrophe that he helped cheer-lead. Of course, Charles Krauthammer has no intention of shutting up. Which is why I’m marking this squalid anniversary yet again.

And so the year rolls around yet again to Krauthammer Day, the day on which we all celebrate Charles Krauthammer’s “confident assertion”:http://www.aei.org/event/274 eight years ago that:

bq. Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

Or _nearly_ all of us celebrate it anyway. Charles Krauthammer himself seems to prefer to mark the occasion with an entirely unrelated “Run, Paul Ryan Run!”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-racing-form-2012/2011/04/21/AFT4TxKE_story.html?hpid=z2 column. Which is a little sad – after all it has been five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus thirty days or so since he first put his, and his friends’ credibility on the line. It would be nice to see him (and others) mark the occasion more formally.

Perhaps the problem is that we have never _fixed on exactly how_ to celebrate Charles Krauthammer Day. Easter, Christmas, Hannukah, Festivus etc all have their associated and time-honored rituals, but Krauthammer day has none. Combining suggestions from “George W. Bush”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA2q00caZsY&feature=related and “Hugh Hector Munro”:http://haytom.us/showarticle.php?id=31, one possibility might be an Exploding Easter Egg Hunt. But then, this would perhaps prove simultaneously too dangerous to be very attractive to participants, and not dangerous enough to really mark the occasion properly. Better suggestions invited in comments.

Update: On the basis of a genuinely insane reading of this post, the execrable Glenn Reynolds gravely “deplores”:http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/119106/ my incivility. I don’t read Reynolds these days, for all the obvious reasons, but have quite clear and unfond memories of his own contributions to civil conversaton back in his heyday, such as this “denunciation of Chris Hedges”:http://www.pajamasmedia.com/instapundit-archive/archives/009671.php as a ‘flat-out racist’ for suggesting that Iraq was likely to be a ‘cesspool’ for the US invasion. How this claim comported with his “approving quote of a correspondent”:http://www.pajamasmedia.com/instapundit-archive/archives2/2006/11/post_21.php a couple of years later, arguing that

bq. The ball is in the Iraqis’ court. We took away the obstacle to their freedom. If they choose to embrace death, corruption, incompetence, lethal religious mania, and stone-age tribalism, then at least we’ll finally know the limitations of the people in that part of the world. The experiment had to be made.

and his own conclusion that:

bq. On the other hand, it’s also true that if democracy can’t work in Iraq, then we should probably adopt a “more rubble, less trouble” approach to other countries in the region that threaten us. If a comparatively wealthy and secular Arab country can’t make it as a democratic republic, then what hope is there for places that are less wealthy, or less secular?

has always been a mystery to me. The only plausible way in which Reynolds could have been promoting the cause of civil conversation here was by helpfully denouncing himself in advance as a ‘flat out racist’ so that right minded people could know not to associate themselves with him. Perhaps there’s another explanation – but if so, he has as best I know (as I say I don’t read him these days) been shy about advancing it.

The neocons have been wailing and gnashing teeth over the abysmal awfulness of the Iran deal. Meanwhile, everyone else says it’s good or, at worst, better than the alternatives. I am a creature of irony so it is hard for me to discuss the situation rationally. I would like to mock the neocons but what is the irony? Dog chases car. Dog catches car. What’s a dog to do? Bite it! So this is dog-bites-car. That’s just neocon nature.

But here’s something a bit ironic, so I’ll pass it on. The most eloquent, pithy assessment I have read on the subject is from Pat Buchanan, gaming out GOP rejection: [click to continue…]

Duncan Black – aka ‘Atrios’ – is trying to identify the wankers of the decade, and finding that reliving the trauma is hard.

bq. I’ve been a bit jokey about the difficulties of writing the wanker posts, but in truth it has been difficult, though not because it’s hard work or similar. The ESCHATON DECADE has been a pretty fucked up decade, a time when this country stopped even bothering to pretend to live up to many of its supposed ideals. We go to war and kill lots of people for no good reason, elites have eliminated any accountability for themselves for criminal wrongdoing, we’ve tortured and assassinated people, and the response to massive economic suffering and related criminal fraud has been to give lots of free money to the people who caused it all. And one premise of his blog is that all of this shit happens, in part, because of the fucking wankers who rule our public discourse. Paying too much attention to it every day can be bad enough sometimes, but reliving it all again is actually a bit painful.

I don’t know how you _could_ deal with this stuff without being jokey – it both helps you deal with the anger and gets the point across better than frustration and rage. Then, I don’t understand how he’s been able to do this day in, day out, for ten years either. Which is why I’m suggesting that people give him a hand.

We have seen seven of the ten wankers of the decade so far: in order, they’re:

9th runner up Megan McArdle.1
8th runner up Richard Cohen.
7th runner up Diane Sawyer.
6th runner up Jonah Goldberg.
5th runner up Lord Saletan.
4th runner up Mark Halperin.

This leaves three wankers yet to be chosen. I would be startled if Thomas Friedman isn’t one of them (surely, he has to be odds-on favorite to take the grand prize). I’m also hopeful that Charles Krauthammer won’t be overlooked. But there are many others who are surely worthy of consideration, and volumes and volumes of material to be gone through, all likely to cause anger and increased blood pressure. Hence my suggestion: I encourage CT readers with the time and inclination to document the _very worst_ atrocities of likely nominees, with hyperlinks and all, so as to help ease the anguish of Duncan Black’s trip down Memory Lane. The comment section is yours.

1 McMuddle must be disappointed with her poor finish behind Richard Cohen. Perhaps she’ll find consolation in the publicity for her forthcoming book, “PERMISSION TO SUCK, about “how risk aversion is sapping America of its core strengths.”” (We all have permission to suck, but Comrade McArdle abuses the privilege).

We’ve had a fair bit of fun here lately, pointing out the silliness of those who are supposed to be the intellectual leaders of the right, in its libertarian, neoconservative and Republican tribalist versions. But, as quite a few commenters have pointed out (one using the same, maybe Oz-specific, phrase that occurred to me) the exercise does seem to savor a bit of flogging dead horses.

It seems to me necessary to go beyond this, which was one reason for my post on hope the other day. To make progress, we need to reassess where we stand and then think about where to go next. This is bound to be something of a confused and confusing process. Over the fold, I’ve made some (quite a few) observations, making for a very long post, which is mainly meant to open things up for discussion.

[click to continue…]

“Duncan Black”:http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_07_06_archive.html#858626388020530189 links to Amity Shlaes at the Washington Post “telling us”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/11/AR2008071102543.html?hpid=opinionsbox1 that Americans _are too_ whiners. As he says, having people like Shlaes and Gramm mouthing off is a public service in a general election (if only McCain would nominate David Bernstein as a senior surrogate, my happiness would be complete). But talk of Shlaes reminds me of her notorious 2005 “FT column”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/73ac2964-50fa-11dd-b751-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

It is early to be getting partisan about New Orleans. …Iraq has not caused the US to botch Katrina – either the preparation or response. On the contrary, the fact that the country and President Bush personally were already mobilised for disaster has saved lives.

the US was prepared for Katrina. All the old and new federal offices worked together and confronted the storm early. Nearly two days before Katrina hit New Orleans, the president made millions available to Louisiana by declaring the state an official disaster area. In a press conference on Sunday morning, he instructed the country to listen for any alerts – and warned straightforwardly that he could not “stress enough the danger this hurricane poses to Gulf coast communities”. On Sunday too, Alabama and Mississippi received access to cash when they in turn were declared disaster areas. Citizens of New Orleans with special needs were instructed to go to the Superdome.

Very shortly after writing this appalling piece of hackery, Ms. Shlaes ceased to be a columnist at the _Financial Times._¹ I don’t think that it’s _at all_ unwarranted to surmise that the column and Ms. Shlaes’ rapid departure were connected.

So we may possibly have some idea of what it would take to get a columnist fired at the FT. I’d be interested to know what it would take to get a persistent vendor of mendacious and malignant tripe such as, say, Charles Krauthammer, fired from the _Washington Post_? By the man’s own admission, his credibility is problematic. A few months ago, we passed the fifth anniversary of his “statement”:http://www.aei.org/events/filter.,eventID.274/transcript.asp that

Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

Indeed.

¹ A “search”:http://search.ft.com/search?sortBy=gadatearticle&queryText=%22amity+shlaes%22&aje=true by date suggests that Shlaes produced one more column (which tried to blame the Katrina shambles on the Evils of Federalism, directly contradicting what she had said the previous week), a piece for the wealth section, and a book review over the next couple of weeks, and was then gone forever.

!http://www.henryfarrell.net/wank2.jpg!

Christopher Caldwell on Michael Moore:

Mr Moore’s enemy … is the complexity of it. He rejects subtleties. His goal is not to break through to those who do not agree with him but to drown out the doubts of those who do. Those who sit down to watch Sicko without a broad knowledge of the US healthcare system will leave the theatre with a shallower understanding of the crisis than the one they arrived with. One should face up to the fact that this is the way Americans increasingly choose to get their information on all sorts of issues, not just healthcare policy. The appetite for slanted ideological dramas grows. Mr Moore is not alone in satisfying it. His anti-Bush documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, was met with the anti-Kerry adverts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Perhaps the internet has made this kind of journalism easier. Mr Moore has been described as a “tireless researcher”, but you do not have to be, nowadays. He notes in his film that an online appeal for healthcare horror stories yielded 25,000 of them within a week. In a country of 300m people, any such appeal will provide enough anecdotal evidence to edit into a plausible and even rollicking case for pretty much anything – and to liberate a grateful populace from the heavy burden of level-headedness.

Doesn’t this prissiness about simple-minded propagandistic cherrypickers sit a little oddly when it comes from one of two senior editors at the _Weekly Standard_, the gutter-trawling publication that perhaps did more than any of the others of its ilk to “propagandize”:http://theweeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/768lyuyh.asp for the “Iraq war”:http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_11_21/article.html, to relentlessly “simplify”:http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=365971&page=0&fpart=7&vc=1 and “smooth away “:http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/360lggnc.asp the reasons why the occupation would fail, and to “demonize”:http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/920ygass.asp those who argued against it? And so it continues. Kieran has already “mentioned”:https://crookedtimber.org/2007/07/04/operation/ last week’s “everything’s dandy with the surge”:http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/818pmqsq.asp number from the Kagans, who, as he says, “get to author policy and neutrally report on it at the same time.” This week’s “The soldiers think they can win. Some Senators lose their nerve” “version”:http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/849nkdmm.asp of the same theme from Caldwell’s boss, William Kristol isn’t exactly what you’d call a level-headed assessment of the facts either. And that’s not even getting into the Weekly Standard‘s list of associate editors, which includes such notable flinty-eyed pursuers of truth as Charles Krauthammer, Tucker Carlson and John Podhoretz. Slanted ideological dramas, how are ya.