Bill Keller wins – meet the new Joe Lieberman

The once (and never-again-please-I-beg-you) Editor of The New York Times, Bill Keller, steps up to speak out about Syria:

As a rule, I admire President Obama’s cool calculation in foreign policy . . . frankly I’ve shared his hesitation about Syria, in part because*, during an earlier column-writing interlude at the outset of the Iraq invasion, I found myself a reluctant hawk. That turned out to be a humbling error of judgment, and it left me gun-shy.

*Good old Bill, predictable fellow that he is, still thinks it’s all about him. (The whole sorry thing is here.)

Of course, there are important lessons to be drawn from our sad experience in Iraq: Be clear about America’s national interest. Be skeptical of the intelligence. Be careful whom you trust. Consider the limits of military power. Never go into a crisis, especially one in the Middle East, expecting a cakewalk.

Now, here we go . . .

But in Syria, I fear prudence has become fatalism, and our caution has been the father of missed opportunities, diminished credibility and enlarged tragedy.

Looks like he got over that gun-shyness thing just in time for Sock It To Me: Chapter II. I think John McCain and Ms. Graham should have the guy over for a few cocktails and high fives.

Zacharia scrapes bottom of pundit barrel on Memorial Day weekend

Why was Peggy Noonan making sense this morning? That doesn’t make sense.

Maybe she just looked good, sharing, as she did, the pundit table with this sorry collection:

• Ross Douthat, The NY Times’ least deserving op-ed hire of all time
• Bill Keller, former Exec Editor of the The NY Times (big morning for the Old Grey Lady!) and legend-in-his-own-mind and probably the guy who hired Douthat
• Chrystia Freeland of Reuters online, a teenager through and through – not surprising I guess from a woman saddled with such a precious name. Also shrill.

 

The unbearable justifications of the self important

In Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, former editor Bill Keller wrote a lengthy article, in which he apparently explains why he ‘wanted war’ with Iraq in 2003 so much that he put the whole paper behind the drums of war.

I stopped reading in the fourth paragraph when he listed other liberals who – he claims – were suddenly bloodthirstty. Here’s his astonishing list of ‘liberals’:

1. Thomas Freidman
2. Fareed Zacharia
3. George Packer
4. Jeffrey Goldberg
5. Richard Cohen
6. Andrew Sullivan (he’s really reaching, isn’t he)
7. Paul Berman
8. Christopher Hitchens
9. Kenneth Pollack

I stopped reading right there. Dishonest then, dishonest now. No link.