Fisking Kristof

It’s time for that right honorable blogger activity borne of frustration: the Fisking. Today’s victim: today’s New York Times op-ed column by centrist liberal Nicholas Kristof. Kristof, some will recall, believed that the war in Iraq should be given a chance to succeed because there was always a chance that some good might come out of it.

Oh, and before I start: the book offer (scroll below) remains in force. For now.

Calling Bush a Liar

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

So is President Bush a liar?

Plenty of Americans think so. Bookshops are filled with titles about Mr. Bush like “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,” “Big Lies,” “Thieves in High Places” and “The Lies of George W. Bush.”

A consensus is emerging on the left that Mr. Bush is fundamentally dishonest, perhaps even evil — a nut, yes, but mostly a liar and a schemer. That view is at the heart of Michael Moore’s scathing new documentary, “Farenheit 9/11.”

In the 1990’s, nothing made conservatives look more petty and simple-minded than their demonization of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who were even accused of spending their spare time killing Vince Foster and others. Mr. Clinton, in other words, left the right wing addled. Now Mr. Bush is doing the same to the left. For example, Mr. Moore hints that the real reason Mr. Bush invaded Afghanistan was to give his cronies a chance to profit by building an oil pipeline there.

Kristof seems like a smart guy, but he displays one of the quintessential personality traits of a moron: the unwillingness to check things out for himself. A quick run of Nexis/Lexis would bring up hundreds of articles from mainstream news sources–the BBC, even the Times itself–that confirm the Administration’s prurient interest in building the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline. This is not the stuff of conspiracy. It’s fact, as lazy journalists like Kristof would learn if they started turning over a few rocks now and then.

Did conservatives look bad in the ’90s? I guess not, since they now control all three branches of government.

“I’m just raising what I think is a legitimate question,” Mr. Moore told me, a touch defensively, adding, “I’m just posing a question.”

Right. And right-wing nuts were “just posing a question” about whether Mr. Clinton was a serial killer.

I’m against the “liar” label for two reasons. First, it further polarizes the political cesspool, and this polarization is making America increasingly difficult to govern. Second, insults and rage impede understanding.

By this reasoning, calling Hitler a murderer created polarization in Germany. Bush is a repeated, sociopathic, over-the-top liar; what’s the matter with saying so? Maybe, with luck, he’ll respond to his critics by, well, telling the truth. Rage? Anyone who doesn’t feel rage at the stolen 2000 election, two illegal wars that have killed tens of thousands and injured hundreds of thousands of people, and transforming a government with a balanced budget into a debt-ridden mess is devoid of thought, much less emotional response mechanisms.

Lefties have been asking me whether Mr. Bush has already captured Osama bin Laden, and whether Mr. Bush will plant W.M.D. in Iraq. Those are the questions of a conspiracy theorist, for even if officials wanted to pull such stunts, they would be daunted by the fear of leaks.

I don’t subscribe to either of those theories. But why be so quick to dismiss the possibility? This Administration, after all, still wants Americans to believe that Saddam, and not Osama, was responsible for 9/11.

Bob Woodward’s latest book underscores that Mr. Bush actually believed that Saddam did have W.M.D. After one briefing, Mr. Bush turned to George Tenet and protested, “I’ve been told all this intelligence about having W.M.D., and this is the best we’ve got?” The same book also reports that Mr. Bush told Mr. Tenet several times, “Make sure no one stretches to make our case.”

In fact, of course, Mr. Bush did stretch the truth. The run-up to Iraq was all about exaggerations, but not flat-out lies. Indeed, there’s some evidence that Mr. Bush carefully avoids the most blatant lies — witness his meticulous descriptions of the periods in which he did not use illegal drugs.

Obviously someone at the Times read my column from last week. Do I get royalties or a footnote?

True, Mr. Bush boasted that he doesn’t normally read newspaper articles, when his wife said he does. And Mr. Bush wrongly claimed that he was watching on television on the morning of 9/11 as the first airplane hit the World Trade Center. But considering the odd things the president often says (“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family”), Mr. Bush always has available a prima facie defense of confusion.

Mr. Bush’s central problem is not that he was lying about Iraq, but that he was overzealous and self-deluded. He surrounded himself with like-minded ideologues, and they all told one another that Saddam was a mortal threat to us. They deceived themselves along with the public — a more common problem in government than flat-out lying.

Did Kristof really read “Plan of Attack”? The book, which the Republican Party has officially approved, doesn’t read like paranoid lunatics working themselves up into a lather. It reads like determined ideologues using 9/11 as a pretext to do what they wanted to do years ago: invade Iraq. And if Kristof is right, what kind of defense is that? I’d rather be led by lying fascists like the Bushies I perceive than the delusional psychopaths Kristof portrays.

Some Democrats, like Mr. Clinton and Senator Joseph Lieberman, have pushed back against the impulse to demonize Mr. Bush. I salute them, for there are so many legitimate criticisms we can (and should) make about this president that we don’t need to get into kindergarten epithets.

Great. Two Republicans-in-Democrats-clothing defend Bush. Big deal.

But the rush to sling mud is gaining momentum, and “Farenheit 9/11” marks the polarization of yet another form of media. One medium after another has found it profitable to turn from information to entertainment, from nuance to table-thumping.

Or, alternatively, the American people are turning to formats whose practitioners are honest enough to say in public what people like Kristof believe privately. The “polarization” that Kristof derides has been with us for years. Now it’s out in the open, where we can have an open exchange of ideas. Kristof’s whining reminds one of genteel Southerners decrying unruly civil rights protesters. Why can’t the oppressed be more polite?

Talk radio pioneered this strategy, then cable television. Political books have lately become as subtle as professional wrestling, and the Internet is adding to the polarization. Now, with the economic success of “Farenheit 9/11,” look for more documentaries that shriek rather than explain.

What’s there to explain, Nick? Haven’t you read your own paper for the last three years? For Chrissake, man, your “president” opened concentration camps, encouraged torture and disappeared thousands of innocent people! Your “president” is a neofascist. People need to wake up and channel their anger. Explanation time is over; perhaps we can find you a tutor so you can catch up with the rest of the class.

It wasn’t surprising when the right foamed at the mouth during the Clinton years, for conservatives have always been quick to detect evil empires. But liberals love subtlety and describe the world in a palette of grays — yet many have now dropped all nuance about this president.

Alleluia! It’s about time.

Mr. Bush got us into a mess by overdosing on moral clarity and self-righteousness, and embracing conspiracy theories of like-minded zealots. How sad that many liberals now seem intent on making the same mistakes.  

All we’re doing is fighting fire with fire. Don’t worry, we can all go back to sipping sherry while listening to NPR after we get our country back.

San Diego Union-Tribune Reviews GENERALISSIMO EL BUSHO

The San Diego Union-Tribune Book Review has reviewed my new collection of Bush-era essays and cartoons GENERALISSIMO EL BUSHO:

Mixing incendiary prose with disturbing, deceptively simple, quasi-cubist art, Ted Rall’s “Generalissimo El Busho: Essays & Cartoons on the Bush Years” (Nantier Beall Minoustchine, $19.95) will have you seething in five pages flat. Four, maybe. Exactly why Rall ticks you off will tell your whole story, bucko. Three pages should do it. Two, maybe. Introduction by Tom Tomorrow. Keep a defib handy.

Boston Globe Mention

Alex Beam reviews the “Killed!” anthology in today’s Boston Globe.

Beam mentions my 1997 essay “To Hell With Father’s Day”:

Another gem is Ted Rall’s scathing Father’s Day “tribute” to the man who abandoned him and his mother. After an attempted reconciliation, Rall’s father reneged on a promise to pay his son’s college tuition, just as the boy was packing his bags for Columbia. “This year on Father’s Day, I’m calling my real dad,” Rall writes. “I’m calling Mom.” The New York Times Magazine killed the essay. “I heard that it made some influential people on West Forty-Third Street feel `uncomfortable,’ ” Rall recounts.

I’d Like to Defend Michael Moore, But—

Christopher Hitchens and other neoconservative critics are all over Moore’s new “Fahrenheit 9/11” like flies on shit. And if half the stuff they say is true, well, that’d be terrible for him, for moviegoers, and for patriots (i.e., Americans who see Bush as the neofascist that he is). Of course, it’s entirely possible that they are lying. You know, as usual.

Anyway, Hitchens especially focuses on the film’s discussion of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project and the war in Afghanistan—pet topics of mine, as readers know. I’d sure love to know who’s on the side of the angels here, but there’s no way. Why? Because Mike didn’t bother to save one of the several thousand seats at Manhattan’s Ziegfield Theater premiere for the only writer in America who has actually written an entire book about the pipeline and the Afghan war. I didn’t see the film, and as a resident of NYC will not go see it until several days after it opens. I’m too busy to wait in line, you know?

So, Moore aficianados, if you wonder why so many lefties seem to leave Mike twisting in the wind while the rightist vultures peck away at him, now you know. You wanna help out, you really do, but the dude just won’t let you.

Limited Offer: Signed Copies of WAKE UP, YOU’RE LIBERAL and GENERALISSIMO EL BUSHO

As long as they and I last–probably a month or two–you can buy your copies of my new books WAKE UP, YOU’RE LIBERAL: HOW WE CAN TAKE AMERICA BACK FROM THE RIGHT and GENERALISSIMO EL BUSHO: ESSAYS AND CARTOONS ON THE BUSH YEARS directly from me. And I’ll sign the books to whomever you want!

Here’s what you do:

1. Send an email to me at chet@rall.com letting me know: (a) your address, (b) which books you want, (c) how many of each you want, and (d) how you’d like them all signed. I’ll email you back; don’t do anything until you hear back from me.

2. Figure out your payment. WAKE UP is $15.95 a copy. Priority mail is $3.95 to anyplace in the United States, so send me $20 (money order or check) for EACH copy of WAKE UP you want. EL BUSHO is available in hardback and softback. EL BUSHO hardback is $19.95 each, so send me $24 for each EL BUSHO hardback. EL BUSHO paperback is $13.95 so send me $19 for each EL BUSHO paperback.

3. Send your payment to:

Ted Rall

P.O. Box 1134

New York NY 10027

4. Payments by cash or money order result in quick shipping, within a week. Checks must clear first, so that means more like 2-3 weeks.

5. EXTRA BONUS OFFER: For an extra $50, I’ll throw in a unique 7×10 sketch of whatever I feel like–a rough draft of a published cartoon, an EL BUSHO, whatever. I’ll even take a request–but won’t honor it unless I feel like it. I will only do this for people who buy at least two books. Price is $200 for all others.

6. I will post notice on the when this offer expires.

Frank Rich

There’s a small reference to me in tomorrow’s New York Times.

Brilliant media and culture columnist Frank Rich writes:

To conservatives, anyone who opted for even modest restraint in Reagan coverage (like The New York Times, with its three-column headline announcing his death) was guilty of insufficient sentimentality; anyone who criticized the man was a traitor. “Thoughtless, mean, hateful” were just some of the epithets heaped by Fox’s Sean Hannity on a rare Reagan dissenter who showed his face on TV, the political cartoonist Ted Rall.

Fahrenheit 9/11

My best friend the film critic saw it at Cannes. He says it’s great; we should see it.

That said, there’s something a little odd about the way publicity for this film has been handled that demonstrates how disorganized and plain stupid the American Left is so often.

There was a sneak preview of the film a few days ago here in New York City. One would think that Michael Moore and the film’s promoters would want people like me to attend. Who knows? I might write something up.

In reality, I receive more offers and free tickets to attend right-wing and Republican functions than from liberals. I didn’t get invited to the screening, an advance DVD, or jack shit. Many of my fellow liberal-minded cartoonists and columnists say they get treated the same way. Is it any wonder that the majority’s progressive message can’t get out? We’re disorganized as hell.

Moore DID invite, however, right-wing Fox demagogue Bill O’Reilly.

Nice priorities, Mike.

Errata Slip For This Week’s Column

Several readers wrote to point out a glitch of omission in this week’s op/ed column:

Great column on the potential downfall of Kerry picking McCain as a running mate. One minor historical quibble, however. You mention 1796 as the last time a cross-party ticket was elected. I believe in 1864 Lincoln was re-elected on a “National Union” ticket with Democrat Andrew Johnson as his running mate. This even emphasizes your point, as that match didn’t turn out that well, either.

They’re right.

Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot to Print

I have an essay in a anthology of essays killed by newspapers and magazines called KILLED.

My essay, about Father’s Day, was killed by the New York Times Magazine in 1997 because it struck one of the editors a little too close to home. There are also 23 other awesome killed essays, mostly by better and more famous writers than me, so check it out and buy it!

The Pointless Death of David Johnson

In the grim calculus of death and mayhem in the Middle East, the videotaped beheadings of Nick Berg and Paul Johnson are somehow supposed to count as “told you sos” for the prowar right wing. The brutality of the killings, coupled with the grisly footage thereof, are supposed to elicit disgust, not just for the men who murdered these men but by extension to the Iraqi resistance and Muslims in general.

Obviously the murderers are first and foremost to blame. But a share of the responsibility also lies at the feet of those who have made America so despised throughout the world: presidents, policymakers and spooks past and present. They made “American” a dirty word. They made Americans targets.

It’s also true that Mssrs. Berg and Johnson took a risk by, respectively, traveling to the active war zone of occupied Iraq and, in Mr. Johnson’s case, working in Saudi Arabia—a nation ruled by a widely despised U.S.-puppet dictatorship under siege from internal dissidents and outside Islamists. Having a risk go bad doesn’t make one responsible for the consequences, but the risk should be acknowledged. Both men would be alive today had they chosen to work in stable, democratic nations.

Johnson’s killers are naive if they believe that Americans or their Saudi puppets will release prisoners or alter any of their policies in response to his beheading. Ditto with the Al Qaeda group that killed Berg. Americans are revulsed by these deaths, but they don’t change anybody’s minds. Supporters of U.S. foreign policy under Bush view the deaths as confirmation that Arabs are inhuman; opponents see them as further indicators that we should act to become less reviled.

As we consider these gruesome murders, we should consider them on par with the gruesome murders of 800+ American servicemen and women and close to 100,000 Iraqi and Afghan civilians and soldiers killed during Bush’s two wars. Bush’s hands are dripping with their blood, just as surely as the men who drew the knives across Berg and Johnson’s throats. They’re all tragic; unnecessary and pointless. The difference is that their deaths aren’t on tape.

And even if they were—as we see in the case of the still yet to be seen Anu Ghraib videos—the American media wouldn’t broadcast them.

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