Far East Cynic

Such as the fact that on any given issue, Mark Steyn will be wrong about it. How do you know Steyn is lying? His lips are moving or his fingers are touching a keyboard.

Over at The Atlantic. Conor Friedersdorf points out the latest example of Steyn's hypocrisy by examining his unaplogetic defense of the decision to invade Iraq. You should read Steyn's self serving blabber first, then read Friedersdorf's skilled dissection of it.

He exposes Steyn as the complete hypocrite he has always been.

What neoconservatives never seem to understand is that you go to war with the citizenry that you've got. Urging a war of choice that requires more years of fighting to win than the citizenry will permit is itself an error. If guys like Steyn didn't realize, when they were calling on the U.S. to invade Iraq, that Americans would tire of fighting there after a decade of conflict, thousands of troops killed, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, they should blame themselves for missing the obvious. If America looks weak for failing to win the war, we have Iraq hawks to blame for urging a war that required far longer to win than a democratic citizenry was ever likely to want to fight (and that might well have been unwinnable regardless of how long we remained an occupying force).

The Iraq hawks would be culpable even if they'd encouraged war without making any predictions about its likely cost. Instead, the hawks spent the pre-war period assuring Americans that victory would be sure and swift; proclaimed "Mission Accomplished" soon after the invasion; and started speculating in those heady days about regime change in Iran and Syria. It isn't ADHD that caused so many to support the invasion only to turn against the occupation. Many of the Americans who changed sides were misled by the faux-assurance of writers like Steyn, who puffed themselves up as if they were speaking obvious foreign-policy truths, openly mocked academics and pundits who warned of impending calamity, and most incredibly, continue all these years later to act as if subsequent events have vindicated their analysis. The hawks who say we'd do well to stay in Iraq and secure Bush's victory aren't winning converts in part because their predictions about how the war would unfold have been proven so spectacularly wrong by events — without their admitting it — that no one takes them seriously.

Some things just never change can always be counted on.  The sun coming up every day, for example, and the fact that you can always count on Mark Steyn to be a douchebag.

Its Thursday now, and after 13 hours of sleep last night-I went to bed at 6:15 PM- I feel much better.

Meanwhile, the post mortems on the election have begun. And as I expected, some people are learning all the wrong lessons. Writing off the results of the election to a bunch of parasites doesn't get you any friends. Giving your pompous speeches on self sufficiency won't either. I already work hard as does just about every member of the 60,000,000 who voted for Obama. The more you guys delude yourself about this misguided idea of "dependency"-the more it makes the rest of the country want to kick your ass. People don't want handouts-they want a level playing field. They want the incredibly rich to understand that decently compensating and benefiting one's employees is not an act of kindness-its an obligation of being part of the civilized world. And they don't want pompous bastards telling them what to do with their bodies-and what they should do if they are raped.

John Cole has it right, "  when you insult folks and dismiss them, they tend to get mad and they tend to want to kick your ass.". That had a lot to do with my feelings on the election-the more I heard that because I felt strongly about decent benefits and wanting what I was entitled to, that I was a "moocher" the more emotionally invested in Obama's victory I became. Well played wingnuts-well played. 

So what are the lessons learned here?

First for the Democrats, they should heed Jon Chait's warning:

Democrats will not keep winning forever. (In particular, their heavy reliance on young and non-white voters, who vote more sporadically, will subject the party to regular drubbings in midterm elections, when only the hardiest voters turn out.) Eventually, the Republican Party will recast and reform itself, and the Democratic Party’s disparate constituencies will eat each other alive, as they tend to do when they lack the binding force of imminent peril. But conservatives have lost their best chance to strike down the Obama legacy and mold the government in the Paul Ryan image.

Which of course begs two important questions. 1) How effectively will the Democrats use that time they have before the day of defeat comes? And 2) How well will they be prepared to persevere when the day of defeat comes? More importantly, will they heed the message that came from the stridency of the folks who didn't vote for Obama? The unspoken message is that admit it or not-steps will need to be taken to get America's financial house in order. The real challenge will be to do so in a responsible fashion that does not resort the Draconian-and quite evil-methods of Romney's running mate, the "zombie eyed granny starver" Ryan. Spending cuts are going to have to come-as is the repeal of the Bush tax cuts. Finding a good middle ground will be hard. And much as he might rightly be able to point to the immensity of the damage done by the idiot who preceded him, in the second term, Obama will own everything that happens, for good or bad.

For the Republicans the lessons are more stark: "Being in bed with extremism doesn't work-it just pisses people off".

Alas I fear that the GOP won't learn this lesson but will learn exactly opposite. The forces of lunacy, who say that the party should be even more conservative are already gearing up their efforts.  The slime is already starting to crawl out of the woodwork, like Herman Cain advocating the creation of a third party. I find this more than a little amusing-since its clear that the GOP could probably have won this election, just as they could have won in 2008,  if they had not gotten so off the deep end groveling to people who are not worthy of anything but utter contempt. The Teabag wing has to be put out of its misery, like Old Yeller,  taken out back and dispatched quickly with aid of a loaded shotgun.

Will the Republican Party mature, reach out, and bring in the old guard centrists who were/are the adult voices in the room so that they can be competitive and work for the Common Good? Or will the Tea Party GOP dig in, become even more extreme, and further obstruct the Common Good in order to advance their increasingly narrow partisan agenda? Does Romney's defeat lead to a more reasonable Republican Party or one that is even more extreme and intransigent? 

 

 

The answer should be a definitive yes-the party has to go back to its roots. Unfortunately this requires and honest understanding of the facts and the truth-and the information machine of conservative American is quite ill equipped to do this. Connor Friedsdorf, writing at The Atlantic points out very well how the right is not served well by its insistence on living in an echo chamber. One big reason that so many conservatives are disappointed today-is that they had no one telling them the honest truth. They believed they could live in a world where they made up the "facts"-and they bought those lies hook line and sinker. In a proper world, it should lead to a massive loss of revenue for Fox and a decline in readership for  Hinderaker and the rest of the swine like William Jacobsen who inhabit the Liars Club. But it won't:

Barack Obama just trounced a Republican opponent for the second time. But unlike four years ago, when most conservatives saw it coming, Tuesday's result was, for them, an unpleasant surprise. So many on the right had predicted a Mitt Romney victory, or even a blowout — Dick Morris, George Will, and Michael Barone all predicted the GOP would break 300 electoral votes. Joe Scarborough scoffed at the notion that the election was anything other than a toss-up. Peggy Noonan insisted that those predicting an Obama victory were ignoring the world around them. Even Karl Rove, supposed political genius, missed the bulls-eye. These voices drove the coverage on Fox News, talk radio, the Drudge Report, and conservative blogs. 



Those audiences were misinformed.



Outside the conservative media, the narrative was completely different. Its driving force was Nate Silver, whose performance forecasting Election '08 gave him credibility as he daily explained why his model showed that President Obama enjoyed a very good chance of being reelected. Other experts echoed his findings. Readers of The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other "mainstream media" sites besides knew the expert predictions, which have been largely born out. The conclusions of experts are not sacrosanct. But Silver's expertise was always a better bet than relying on ideological hacks like Morris or the anecdotal impressions of Noonan. 

Sure, Silver could've wound up wrong. But people who rejected the possibility of his being right? They were operating at a self-imposed information disadvantage.

Conservatives should be familiar with its contours. For years, they've been arguing that liberal control of media and academia confers one advantage: Folks on the right can't help but be familiar with the thinking of liberals, whereas leftists can operate entirely within a liberal cocoon. This analysis was offered to explain why liberal ideas were growing weaker and would be defeated.

For all the conservative whining about the "main stream media" they missed the main point-those folks understand the profession of journalism far better than their conservative counterparts. Jon Stewart pointed this out a couple of times last year when interviewed by Fox. The media as a whole is not biased politically-it is biased towards sensationalism .Still, even with that handicap they for the most part kicked the right wing news media's ass:

In conservative fantasy-land, Richard Nixon was a champion of ideological conservatism, tax cuts are the only way to raise revenue, adding neoconservatives to a foreign-policy team reassures American voters, Benghazi was a winning campaign issue, Clint Eastwood's convention speech was a brilliant triumph, and Obama's America is a place where black kids can beat up white kids with impunity. Most conservative pundits know better than this nonsense — not that they speak up against it. They see criticizing their own side as a sign of disloyalty. I see a coalition that has lost all perspective, partly because there's no cost to broadcasting or publishing inane bullshit. In fact, it's often very profitable. A lot of cynical people have gotten rich broadcasting and publishing red meat for movement conservative consumption. On the biggest political story of the year, the conservative media just got its ass handed to it by the mainstream media. And movement conservatives, who believe the MSM is more biased and less rigorous than their alternatives, have no way to explain how their trusted outlets got it wrong, while the New York Times got it right. Hint: The Times hired the most rigorous forecaster it could find. It ought to be an eye-opening moment.

It would be nice if folks would learn the right lessons from this and move back to a more balanced seeking of information-but they won't. And ass rockets like the National Review and Michael Barone are determined not to let them. Which leads to one final point, this cycle of self destruction cannot continue. Americans have to figure out how to have political conversations without them devolving into a shouting match. I tried to have one at work today with my incredibly still pissed off co-workers. It failed miserably. The Economist writing in a post yesterday points out I am not alone in this dilemma.

AFTER a panel discussion on the US elections hosted by a Dutch radio station the other night, I got to talking to a fellow American who's looking for work stateside. His Dutch government-funded job had been eliminated by austerity measures, so he was trying to convince his wife of the virtues of moving back to America. The main reason he was hesitating was the mood of vicious and increasingly entrenched political animosity. "Do you get the feeling," he asked, "that it could get violent?"

I said I didn't know. But it's certainly not a silly question. A recent broadcast of "This American Life", which focused on people who have lost close friends in recent years over politics, seemed to capture the mood pretty accurately. One sequence portrayed a student with a life-threatening pre-existing condition that until recently rendered him uninsurable, who has stopped talking to a conservative friend who refuses to support ObamaCare because he said it felt as though the friend didn't value his life. A conservative man describes being unable to continue talking to a former friend who supports a president he is convinced is destroying the country. Two sisters can't agree on who is being rude and condescending to whom after a furious falling-out over political philosophy.

Barack Obama has just won re-election, but America remains a country bitterly divided, as it has been for well over a decade. The divide is simultaneously very narrow in numerical terms, and gaping in ideological or partisan terms. This is what strikes one most strongly looking back at America from across an ocean: the country seems repeatedly embroiled in savage 51-49 electoral campaigns, and it seems to be increasingly paralyzed by irresolvable rancor between right and left.

And think about it for a second: this is bizarre. If Americans are in fact divided between two extremely different political ideologies, it would be an extraordinary coincidence if each of those philosophies were to hold the allegiance of nearly equal blocs of support. That situation ought not to be stable. Adherence to these two ideologies ought to shift enough just due to demographics that the 50-50 split should deteriorate. And yet the even split seems to be stable. What's going on?

 

I'm not sure-but I blame a part of it on my tea sniffing friends who have decided that there are moral absolutes in politics. There are not, and it would be better if we stopped pretending that there were. Realistic arguments over policy don't happen any more especially in places that are rather backward to begin with,  like it was in Alabama. After enough bad starts you quickly learn to avoid politics altogether, since it is impossible to have a political conversation. Every conversation one tries to have risks a descent into Republican talking point hell. When I try to refute those points with facts, it falls on deaf ears. This has to change.

Setting aside the policy issues we're facing over the next four years, I think the most immediate need is for Americans to find a way to live civilly with each other. "This American Life" brought on a pair of writers, liberal Phil Neisser and conservative Jacob Hess, who've written a book ("You're Not as Crazy as I Thought (But You're Still Wrong)") about their efforts to find a way to talk to each other and agree to disagree on fundamental philosophical and moral issues. There need to be a lot more similar efforts along these lines. This election has put Barack Obama back in office, and returned him a Democratic Senate and a Republican House. Over the next four years, legislative battles are going to continue to be savage and hard-fought. Neither conservatives nor liberals are going to change their minds en masse about fundamental issues of political philosophy. The top priority is for Americans to figure out a way to keep these divisions from dividing the country into two hostile armed camps that are incapable of talking to each other.

The extremes have gotten too much influence on both sides of the aisle. The biggest lesson learned is that the center has to come back to the fore and the extremists have to be marginalized so we can go back to having the national conversation that must be had-what kind of a nation does the citizenry want to build and how do we work together to achieve it?

That's a lesson we all should be able to learn. But, alas, I fear the US just won't want to.

Whenever I get depressed about the sad state of American politics-which in the month of October is just about every day-I don't have to look far for people who should be held to blame for polarizing our politics.

The collective group of idiots who populate the Liars Club.

To review, the Liars Club is that group of conservative bloggers,who no matter what the subject is, will ensure that whatever story they post on their blog is casting the current President of the United States in the worst possible light-and casting themselves in a light of "brilliance". Or at least that is how they want you think they are. They consist of the National Review, Powerline, Gateway Pundit AKA Jim Hoft, also known in saner circles as the "dumbest man on the internet", William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection, Weasel Zippers, Jammie Wearing Fools ( the last word is a correct title-they are fools),  any Town Hall author-but especially Hugh Hewitt. And last but not least, the emotionally crippled children who carry on the legacy of their thankfully expired namesake-Andrew Breitbart.

All of them are quite useless and all of them to figuratively to be beaten to death with a Louisville Slugger.

When they can't find anything news worthy to tar and feather the President or any other Democratic Party member about-they just make shit up.

What probably depresses me the most is that -one can just know when one reads a tag line by them on Memeorandum, that they are completely and certifiably insane. While they all have different day jobs-some are professional   hacks "journalists", others are part time writers-but they are all certifiably stupid. I hate them all with a well deserved passion.

They are as John Cole describes it, Serious Persons:

Serious Person- Also frequently appearing as “Very serious person,” this is applied to a person held in great esteem by The Village, who is repeatedly entirely wrong about everything, usually with tragicomic results. Conversely, those who have pretty much been right about everything the last twenty years are referred to as “not serious.” Serious persons believe the only solution to any foreign policy issue is bombing brown people (preferably Muslim, when at all possible), and the only solution to domestic affairs is cutting entitlements and demanding that the poor and working poor “sacrifice.” 

In other words, they have no fucking clue what they are talking about. Nor do they have any idea at all the world has changed and its not going back to the 80's-EVER.

Why do I hold them to blame? Because they write for an audience that clearly is as ignorant as they appear to be. Notice I say appear to be-because deep down they know what they are doing. They have no desire to have an honest discussion about anything. Their sole purpose in writing is not to celebrate the joy of communicating a well thought idea. And to take the time to do some research about it. Or to even pause to write about the truly beautiful things in life that have nothing to do with politics.

No they do what they do for the purpose of getting people angry. They want their supporters to be angry at the nasty black man in the White House. They want people like me-smarter than any of them-to get angry in return. And then if I write something that actually catches them in their lie-or points out again how they love to lie-they will simply turn up the volume and make it about me and/or some aspect of my personal life.  They truly are reprehensible people.

They exert too much influence in American politics today-and sadly the news media by and large seems to take cues from them. In the case of Fox News, they appear to get story lines from them.

And they get away with it. They shouldn't but they do-because too many Americans are stupid. Right Charles Pierce?

The threat to the country, and to its commitment to self-governing democracy over the previous decade, and especially at the end of it, when the institutions of self-government seemed powerless to stop a cascade of destruction brought down on all of us by the institutions of private capital, the strength of which most of us never had begun to guess. That, through lassitude and a nearly bottomless thirst for snake oil, we had been complicit in the coring out of the strength of the institutions of self-government seemed terribly beside the point at the time, given the ruin that seemed to be looming to all points of the compass. But now, in the first real election conducted entirely after the crisis, and after the depths of the recession that it caused, we do not have that luxury anymore. The stakes are plainly clear. The decision, at this point, may well be irrevocable, and the first opportunity to make that decision is in the simple act of voting, and of explaining to ourselves why we vote. We vote because it is something we do together, for one another. We do not vote to take something back from someone else. We do not vote in a bubble, even if we think we do. Voting is communal, whether we want to look at it that way or not. We will have a self-governing political commonwealth or we will decide not to have one. And, right now, 20 days out, you'd have to be crazy or Nate Silver to think you know what which way that decision will fall.

The lies of the aforementioned members have a lot to do with that. And so I place the blame squarely on them-and hate them with a fervor that will be a flame unrequited until they are exposed as the charlatans they truly are.

I was in Israel when the attacks on the embassies occurred-and rather busy. I did not learn of the actual event until I got home to my hotel and had a chance to digest both Haaretz and the TV news. Thanks be to God-one cannot watch Fox at my hotel. But it absolutely appalled me how quickly all the usual suspects in the Liars Club came out to pounce on this tragic set of events-and as is typical,  misrepresent it. So I have waited till I came home to comment on it.  I regret the tragedy that occurred-but truth be told-I am not very surprised by it.  It was going to probably happen eventually and was inevitable-especially as long as the United States persists with the myth that it can somehow change the course of history among a group of people who have proven themselves so unworthy of help as the Arabs. 

By and large-your average American, and in particular your average conservative douchebag commentator-like Mark Steyn, is pretty ignorant about the long and short term history of the Middle East. That, by the way, is one of the things that makes Steyn so called"great writing" so hard to tolerate. In particular what is hard to accept that Americans have such a one sided view of events, decrying the violence which is right to do, while being perfectly ignorant of the American actions that lit the fuse. As Connor Friedersdorf points out,  imagine what it would be like if the shoe was on the other foot:

If a dozen French-Algerians gathered in Paris next year on Easter Sunday, erected side-by-side crucifixes painted red, white, and blue, flew a remote-control plane into them to evoke the 9/11 attacks, and afterward gave a press conference about how American Christians are filth who orchestrated the attack on the Twin Towers as a pretext for a Crusade-like campaign against Muslims, I wouldn't want the organizers of the protest arrested or charged with a crime. I wouldn't want them harassed by police either, being a partisan of free-speech rights, though I can't imagine that American conservatives would be bothered if French police questioned them.

(Am I wrong, conservatives?)

I myself wouldn't be bothered if the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., released a statement saying, "Although the right to free speech is inalienable, the insensitive jerks who conducted that anti-American protest on the Champ de Mars yesterday don't reflect the beliefs of the French government, or the vast majority of French people." Those conciliatory words would be accurate. It might still be a bad idea to release a statement like that. Once French diplomats establish the precedent that they render value judgments about the speech of French citizens, they might be pressured to do so in instances when the truth would not in fact prove conciliatory. 

Americans would be outraged-or at least conservatives would be. Whether they would riot or not, is probably another matter. They probably would not for not only with being in the aggregate quite ignorant-are mostly to lazy to take the streets. They didn't even do so in large numbers when their own civil liberties were being stripped from them in the last decade.

Which is where the good Mr Steyn comes in. Issuing his talking points and marching orders to the wingnuts-he asserts that the violence is….wait for it………..all Obama's fault. Because he too was "lazy". And as is usual for him and the rest of his ilk-was perfectly content to get an insinuation in that the President does not care what happened. Even though he does and its been clearly demonstrated. That's never good enough for Steyn and his sycophants. They start from the premise that everything is always Obama's fault. Its a ludicrous proposition and down the page I will tell you why. But lets hear the little asshole say his piece: ( I won't link to him as a matter of principle-go read over at the National Review Online yourself-if you can stomach it).

The president is surrounded by delirious fanbois and fangurls screaming “We love you,” too drunk on his celebrity to understand this is the first photo-op in the aftermath of a national humiliation. No, no, a filmmaker would say; too crass, too blunt. Make them sober, middle-aged midwesterners, shocked at first, but then quiet and respectful.

The president is too lazy and cocksure to have learned any prepared remarks or mastered the appropriate tone, notwithstanding that a government that spends more money than any government in the history of the planet has ever spent can surely provide him with both a speechwriting team and a quiet corner on his private wide-bodied jet to consider what might be fitting for the occasion. So instead he sloughs off the words, bloodless and unfelt: “And obviously our hearts are broken . . . ” Yeah, it’s totally obvious.

And he’s even more drunk on his celebrity than the fanbois, so in his slapdashery he winds up comparing the sacrifice of a diplomat lynched by a pack of savages with the enthusiasm of his own campaign bobbysoxers. No, no, says the Broadway director; that’s too crude, too ham-fisted. How about the crowd is cheering and distracted, but he’s the president, he understands the gravity of the hour, and he’s the greatest orator of his generation, so he’s thought about what he’s going to say, and it takes a few moments but his words are so moving that they still the cheers of the fanbois, and at the end there’s complete silence and a few muffled sobs, and even in party-town they understand the sacrifice and loss of their compatriots on the other side of the world.

 

 

Interesting-albeit more than a little untrue. First of all -not that Steyn would note it-but Libya is 6 hours ahead of the United States. The attack in Benghazi occurred in the evening on Tuesday, Libya time — about midafternoon on the East Coast in the United States. This is important because it plays into the later events that followed.  I suspect there was a lot of misunderstood reporting that goes on-and no prudent President reacts immediately to the first reporting. However only about 6 hours elapsed between the attack and the first Statement by the White House.  Which was followed up by a statement the very first thing the next morning.  Contrary to Steyn assertions its a quite respectful tone:

I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Right now, the American people have the families of those we lost in our thoughts and prayers. They exemplified America's commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe, and stand in stark contrast to those who callously took their lives.

I have directed my Administration to provide all necessary resources to support the security of our personnel in Libya, and to increase security at our diplomatic posts around the globe. While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.

On a personal note, Chris was a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States. Throughout the Libyan revolution, he selflessly served our country and the Libyan people at our mission in Benghazi. As Ambassador in Tripoli, he has supported Libya's transition to democracy. His legacy will endure wherever human beings reach for liberty and justice. I am profoundly grateful for his service to my Administration, and deeply saddened by this loss.

The brave Americans we lost represent the extraordinary service and sacrifices that our civilians make every day around the globe. As we stand united with their families, let us now redouble our own efforts to carry their work forward.

And subsequent to that event a whole host of violence has broken out all over the Middle East-somehow Steyn thinks that Obama could have prevented all of that himself. Well I hate to tell you something, you arrogant little prick, they may see it coming, but for the most part they are powerless to prevent it without the cooperation of the local government.  And to put it simply the local government in Libya is not that strong. And contrary to Steyn's logic-that has very little do with us, and everything to do with how truly worthless your average Arab is.  Or it also ignores the corrosive effect of 30 years of a way too large presence in the region.  Even Reagan recognized that for the most part we needed to give the area a wide berth.  And contain it. Not so Mr Steyn and current crop of neocon cheerleaders. It  is kind of sad they are so ignorant of the region's history: 

The success or failure of a democratic experiment is almost wholly reliant on the historical circumstances under which it is carried. Egypt's recent history, like that of the entire Middle East, is ghastly and suggests that democracy can only produce more war, terrorism and hatred, not less.

After the war, the British adopted the monarchy as a figurehead government and trained and funded its secret police to destroy their enemies, among them, the then-moderate Muslim Brotherhood. After the 1952 revolution toppled the monarchy, the Soviets filled that role for Nasser. And then Sadat and Mubarak became the puppets of the Americans.

One thing that never changed was the foreign sponsorship of government terror and the regime's political enemies. Any organized, democratic opposition was jailed, tortured, murdered or exiled years ago, which was not only tolerated by the West, but funded by it as well. That leaves the dangerous radicals as the only organized alternative to the Mubarak regime.

The example of the Iranian Revolution is also instructive. The Revolution was actually a coalition between the Islamists and various Marxist groups. Within a year of the Shah's exile, the Mullahs simply had the democratic Marxists killed. Organization isn't just the most important thing in the aftermath of a revolution, it's the only thing.

Assuming that what's happening in Cairo and Alexandria is a democratic revolution, it almost certainly won't stay that way for very long.

For the moment both Egypt and Libya seem to be proving that statement wrong-but only just. Steyn seems to forget the turbulent forces that are in play in both Libya and Egypt. And the mechanics by which people get themselves elected. And the simple truth its not American "weakness"-but its rather, so called American strength that have gotten the Arabs all stirred up. And they all started before Obama became President:

 

 As the Muslim protests subside, more and more people have come to realize that what seems to have sparked them–one of the worst YouTube videos ever, which is saying something–isn't what they were mainly about.

But what were they about? Here theories differ, and some of the best theories haven't been getting much attention, because they're not on the talking-points agendas of Democrats or Republicans–which means they won't be occupying much airtime on network or cable TV during an election campaign.

Ross Douthat, writing in Sunday's New York Times, embraces a theory that's true insofar as it goes: these protests often got a boost from local political jostling. For example, in Egypt the struggle "between the Muslim Brotherhood and its more-Islamist-than-thou rivals" is what led those rivals (Salafis) to call protestors onto the streets.

Fine, but since people aren't sheep (though they sometimes do a good imitation), we have to ask why the protestors responded to such calls in Egypt and elsewhere–and why sometimes the crowds swelled.

 

…..when a single offensive remark from someone you've long disliked can make you go ballistic, the explanation for this explosion goes deeper than the precipitating event. What are the sources of simmering hostility toward America that helped fuel these protests? Here is where you get to answers that neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney wants to talk about and that, therefore, hardly anybody else talks about.

 

Below are three examples, but first the customary disclaimer: I'm not excusing any violence that American policies may have helped cause and I'm not blaming America. But when American policies have bad side effects, Americans need to talk about them.  

1) Drone Strikes

2)Israel Palestine

3) American troops in Muslim countries.

 (Skippy-san note:Robert Wright goes into more detail on all of these-read the link for more details).

Of the last bullet, most long time readers know where I stand. In the Middle East-less is more. Our presence there is provocative in its numbers and appearance. Just ask anyone who has been to Ft. Apache in Bahrain.

Furthermore-Steyn, as usual, misses the obvious point-there is no evidence whatsoever the government of any of the nations are involved in this. Certainly not in Libya, not in Egypt or any of the other nations in the Middle East. So what exactly does he expect to gain by his so called "get tough" approach? They are still going to hate us-and as I suspect is the case-quiet efforts to strengthen our security posture in the area are being undertaken.  People like Steyn are talking nonsense.

I saw a post up on another blog pointing out that when Americans died in 1986-the President bombed Libya. Yea,  he did.  But that same said Ronald Reagan also endured over 7 incidents of violence at the hands of extremists where he bombed no one. And he only bombed Libya after there was clear cut evidence the government was involved and thus had certifiable targets to go after.  And in hindsight there is a clear cut link between his funneling arms to terrorists and the harm inflicted on US citizens in 1988. Steyn and his little band of moronic followers forget that.

But I'm not surprised. Steyn cares for no one but himself. And he makes money and fame for himself by being an ill informed liar. He does not care about Libya or the people who died. All the little prick wanted was yet more stupid way to attack the President. Steyn is as much a part of the problem as any Muslim-only he gets a free pass on his stupidity by the moronic conservative set. In a perfect world-Steyn deserves to suffer as much as any Muslim does.