What is George Will Saying here... ????

[salin]

His column today in the local paper left me scratching my head. It's title here was: Freedom and other values less universal than Blair thinks

But in the Washington Post it was: . . Or Maybe Not at All

I think our local title softened the blow to bush and the neocon's by focusing falacies as being Blair's then equating them to the neocons.

So Will doesn't see himself as a neocon?

More I was struck - that the column was just plain confusing (anyone else see this) especially when thinking (as I couldn't help but do)... What is he really saying? That "Moral Certitude" (as opposed to the Bennet led attack on Moral Relativism - which Will used to echo) is BAD... or worse yet... doesn't catch the complexity of context? George, George, George - are you just figuring that out now?

I am very interested in other people's take on this column.

Where is he going with this? Why? and Why Now?

----------------
. . . Or Maybe Not at All

By George F. Will
Sunday, August 17, 2003; Page B07


U.S. warships carrying 2,300 Marines are off Liberia's coast, U.S. forces still are in harm's way in Afghanistan, and the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat operations over, is drawing closer to the total military deaths before May 1. But some people think America is underengaged abroad.

For example, the presidents of Oxfam America and Refugees International, writing in The Post in support of intervention in Liberia, urge the Bush administration to confront "head-on" many crises: "Central Asia, the Balkans and Western Africa are areas of the world that provide too many examples of what happens when U.S. power is not used proactively." Such incitements to foreign policy hyperkinesis can draw upon the messianic triumphalism voiced by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in last month's address to a rapturous Congress:

"There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don't; that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values, or Western values; that Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban; that Saddam was somehow beloved by his people; that Milosevic was Serbia's savior. ...

"Ours are not Western values, they are the universal values of the human spirit. And anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police."

Neoconservatives seem more susceptible than plain conservatives are to such dodgy rhetoric and false assertions.

---------read it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1214-2003Aug15.html (may require registration).

[Jacobin]

1. I stopped reading him a while back

You'll get a headache wandering through his obtuse prose only to discover that it's circular reasoning, fawning allegiance to RW ideology, woeful ignorance of basic facts acknoledged by everyone, or simply idiotic tripe wrapped in a pretty package. He is a neo-con and when pretending he's not, a neo-con enabler.

[salin]

2. I almost never read him - but did today

and he seems to be dumping on the Neocons - as essentially misguided/naive/arrogant (not so clear which - sort of a mishmash).

Only brought it here because it seems to be QUITE a departure from neocon bushco cheerleading.

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

7. Same here...

...I quit reading or even paying any attention to what he says on the news shows long ago for the same reasons you mentioned, circular logic and an infusion of "big words" so as to make himself feel important.

[liberalhistorian]

11. Exactly, that's an excellent way of putting it!

I never read him anymore, and I can't stand listening to him on all the pundit chatterfests, either.

But I REALLY stopped caring about anything he said when he came out against the extension of unemployment benefits because, and I quote, "it would be a disincentive for finding gainful employment"!

I kid you not, that's exactly what he said! Never mind that jobs for even white-collar, college-educated workers are scarce and getting harder and harder to come by. Never mind that it now takes almost a year for someone who's unemployed to find another job. And never mind that he's well-off and secure himself and doesn't have to worry about little things like getting money to feed your family!

[roughsatori]

3. I thought you must have posted his paragraphs out of order

The logic and mechanics were shoddy. I clicked to read the entire column. You posted it exactly. He is very confused. I had started to paste and copy sentences to illustrate these points, but it was useless.

Will has become an awful writer. I think he needs to go back to basics. Get out the index cards and work on a thesis statement to help guide him.

I have read that he is not thought highly of in the neo-con world. They consider him a phony Brahman who is in the past. Perhaps that is part of his problem.

[salin]

6. Ya know, I am glad you wrote this

because I consider myself mildly intelligent - but found myself jolting around a bit in trying to make sense of this. Generally I wouldn't give a darn and would skim and leave (he is not among my must read - but is a periodic scan). But this was a BIG dump - and not just about Iraq - but about the whole PNAC type approach to foreign policy. Unless his convoluted writing is SO bad that he is really saying something very different than what I think he is saying, this is quite a departure from his general bushcheerleading.

[lumpy]

4. I gave up reading this parasite's columns years ago.

He is very fond of embellishing, convoluting and tieing up the English language into knots until the thought gets lost. I visualize this wimp sitting in a dark dusty Victorian atmosphere pecking away on an ancient Royal typewriter.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

5. He is saying that he doesn't understand

that when foreign troops invade and occupy a country, and the people in that country fight back against the occupiers, that they are fighting for their freedom.

[salin]

8. I thought he was more going to

a "not all countries have the prerequisite foundations/contexts to develop democracies" and one of those prereqs being an appreciation of the concept of "freedom".

[GOPFighter]

9. I doubt if many people read George Will's columns anymore

I don't see the average conservative trying to wade through his obtuse prose, and certainly liberals stopped reading his blather years ago.

[Gloria]

10. In my local paper (the infamous Las Cruces Sun-News)

the title is "Our value system is not shared by all" with a little box with this quote: "Blair's thinking is Bush's, too. "There is a value system that cannot be compromised, and that is the values we praise," says President Bush.

That poor excuse for a sentence in English put me off right there.....

[salin]

13. Interesting that your paper

highlighted the bash (bash blair than equate bush).

I think folks above who said he is probably ignored by most - are right.

But something niggled at me as I actually tried to read this one. SOmething saying... pay attention, salin, there is something - can't name it - but something about this... will Will go Buchanon on the Wh? and if so the much more important question - is WHAT is making him turn much more critical? Because these dudes are his bread and butter - if he is turning (not sure that he is) I would think that it indicates that many more folks in that corner of the world have already turned.

Figure out where the split is (what makes the turn) and exploit it - that is what we need to do.

[aquart]

12. My take?

This boy is so disingenuous. Or too naive to breathe.

The Iraqis don't want our wonderful gifts of freedom. It isn't what they like.

So we don't have to stay and give them stuff they don't want. We can go home. We can stay home. Nobody likes us anyway and we aren't getting party invitations like we used to.

The great adventure in empire building isn't failing because we are invading sovereign nations which take offense at being invaded and having their people slaughtered and their lights turned off, it's failing because other people don't care about freedom.

That's the ticket.

[salin]

14. I think you have it

I couldn't get my hand around his on the onehand calling the logic behind the assumption that it would work (the neocon declared motivation) as both naive and arrogant - while embracing a very (convoluted) sort of arrogance in the response as to why it "wouldn't take".

So simply stated - this is about his rejection of "nation building" and equating what we are doing in Iraq as nation building rather than just deposing bad Saddam (which is what we are, indeed, doing).

So as we start trumping up rhetoric against Syria and Iran - will Will now start being more negative because he finally GETS that what these folks want to do is his reviled nation building?

Thanks for the synopsis. :thumbsup:

[Jacobin]

15. For a good example of Will's political schizophrenia and delusional

thinking, we need only look back to his March 13, 2003 column:

Enjoy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A49827-2003Mar18¬Found=true

snip:

The president demonstrated Monday night that he understands a tested political axiom: If you do not like the news, make some of your own.



He had allowed for pointless diplomacy to proceed too long, thereby dissipating some of his principal asset, his aura of serene decisiveness. He did this March 6 with his peculiar presidential speech disguised as a news conference, and then with the strange hours in the Azores. So Monday night he delivered perhaps the first presidential speech directed almost entirely at a foreign audience. At several such audiences, actually.

snip
To the incredibly inflated United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, who earlier Monday had said that a war without U.N. approval would be illegitimate, the president reasserted America's "sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security."

snip

Speaking of indiscriminate chaos, many elements of the Democratic Party, including most of its base and many of its most conspicuous leaders, seem deranged, unhinged by the toxic fumes of hatred and contempt they emit for the president. From what does this arise? It cannot just be Florida, the grievance that Democrats, assiduous cultivators of victimhood, love to nurse. No, many Democrats' problem, which threatens to disqualify their party from presidential responsibilities for a generation, is their incontinent love of snobbery and nostalgia -- condescension toward a president they consider ignorant, and a longing for the fun of antiwar days of yore.


Will pretends to live in a vacuum and that each column he writes is isolated in time and substance from the other and that no one will remember what he said from one column to the next...as if the message in the latest tome is so portentous that it will forever stand the test of time on its on.

The self-important prick can't keep his fucking stories straight. "War, now wait, no war, no wait, war!"

[salin]

18. Why is he still so widely carried?

You do capture his pretentious and almost dual personality thing pretty well.

[Jacobin]

23. He's good for creating an "out" for the republicans

when they (and he along with them) make a major blunder and miscalculation and need to scurry away from it with a manufactured excuse. "See? The invasion wasn't wrong. It's just that the Iraqis don't appreciate this gift of freedome we gave them. Fork em, let's get out". Retreat Blessed by George The Will.


What's instructive to me is that the "intelligensia" of the republican party (and I use that term quite loosely) is generating face saving reasons for getting the hell out of Iraq. They are finally coming to realize that the formerly warring factions in Iraq are assembling to toss out the infidels. And all of Rumfilled gruff, and glory and snide asides to reporters, and all of the cluster bombs and smart bombs and all the rest will do absolutely no fucking good in a guerilla war.

Glad you brought this up in your post. You did sniff something out hidden between the lines that is very interesting.

Beginning of the end of the framework of moving justifications for continuing the occupation of Iraq by the RW "intelligensia".

[salin]

25. but will the be heard?

I think the insular nature of the WH right now keeps all dissenting views away from the boykings ears. Even if some are manufacturing the rationale - I don't know that it would be used - unless rummy/fieth/wolfowitz start waning in their hold on power - and other voices again get it.

[Jacobin]

28. Good point.

They'll never listen to centrists or the left. They obviously have a deaf ear to anyone who doesn't believe in their absolute xtian moral authority to conquer the world for Christ.

It may be a crack in the thin veneer of the justification for the invasion as promulgated by Kristol, Perle, Wolfowitz who have been taking heat for what is becoming an obvious misstep and a quagmire.

Will may give them the beginning of the justification for ending the PNAC adventure. Not that he won't be lambasted by the fundies (for trying to stop the rapture) or the Zionists (for trying to stop re-drawing the biblical map of Israel) or the arms dealers (for trying to stop their profits), but it may help pull some of his traditional right of center support from the Conquest of the World Agenda. Whether they listen to Will (or at least this week's version of Will) or not, the half asleep non neo-con voters are stirring and rubbing their eyes and wondering what happened to their party. Rove will HAVE to listen to them.

[salin]

30. Read NSMA's response below

sadly I think she may be right. Maybe he isn't saying we shouldn't do the adventures and back away from the PNAC dream - just redefine it without the goal of democracy. x(

edit - darn typo in the heading.

[Jacobin]

32. Unfortunately, he's probably right

However, in my experience, its hard to get people roused up about going to war unless there is a real or imagined attack or threatened attack.

And this "building democracy" thing wasn't the stated reason prior to the invasion. It's merely a fall back excuse since the WMD fantasy didn't pan out.

So, the article begs the question of how they will justify future invasions. Maybe they'll be more careful to plant WMD next time.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

35. I disagree.

He invokes the troops stationed off Liberia, a mission that was DELIBERATELY scaled down by Rummy from the 2300 ASKED for to the 200 that are there.

Another thing he is saying is "Liberia...who cares?" He is not arguing AGAINST Afghanistan and Iraq..he is arguing AGAINST involvement in Liberia.

[Old and In the Way]

22. Fascinating....

Boy, how things change in a few months, George! Slamming Dems in March for precisely the reasons that we didn't buy the administration's reasons for pre-emptive war and occupation...but now you seem to be getting it.

For a dull, boring cheerleader, maybe even you are starting to understand that the interests of the oil companies don't necessarilly jibe with the interests of this country?

Whadda loser...no wonder why most intelligent people gave up on you a long time ago.

[maggrwaggr]

16. Repubs: "Some of us are smart! Look at George Will!"

I fucking despise this guy, being the token intellectual of the right wing.

He wastes whatever brainpower he has like Mariah Carey wastes her voice singing bubblegum.

He's a pompous scumbag.

[liberalhistorian]

20. Mariah Carey has a voice?

eom

[Droopy]

17. What George is saying is that

we should not become involved in other wars just based on our own notions of freedom. He makes the argument that a society that is different than ours, or has different values, can be a peaceful place and that we don't need to be running around the globe 'correcting' everybody who doesn't match with our idea of what a society should be. You are right to say he is inconsistent if he used to preach moral certitude.

I agree with him for once, but I don't think you are going to see him endorsing a Dem any time soon.

[salin]

19. Don't think so either - but I think it is instructive

to see what particular issues make a longtime cheerleader - go critical. Because those issues are exploitable.

Seems that he has just refound the light of "anti-nationbuilding" and somehow didn't get before this last war that it was all about nation building.

So now - when talking with our repub friends (esp those who are not fully neocon) - use words like Nation Building.

And when the admin starts the big PRmachine about our next adventure (they have been planting the seeds for months for Syria and Iran) - use NATION BUILDING.

If we keep track of what makes bushco supporters start backing away - then we can use those arguments in an intentional way - and start getting folks to THINK again and peel some support away from bush - voter by voter by voter.

[Jacobin]

21. Yeah, but he said the exact opposite on March 13

See post 15 above.

Maybe he's just trying to start the ball rolling to give the Repukes an "out" for withdrawing from Iraq when we get run out on a rail.

He's hardly consistent. First he supports the war for "self defense". Now that its apparent self-defense had nothing to do with it, he's blaming Iraqis for not wanting our gift of freedom,(the latest reason for the invasion) so screw 'em, let's leave. He never talks about oil. He is not connected to reality.

[bodhisattava]

38. George Will, being a bombastic windbag, a chickenhawk,

a coward and an adulterer, is always inauthentic when he writes his pompous columns. In this particular instance, his about face has come about because the Iraqi war did not result in the kind of neat denouement that Monsieur Will likes, i.e. smiling Iraqis throwing flowers at soldiers, an American Douglas Macarthur taking over Iraq,rewriting its constitution and moving it inexorably toward
"Democracy".Instead, Mr.Will sees that the Arab world resents any American intervention regardless of who rules them.A benevolent American Viceroy is still a foreigner while an evil despot still one of the arabs.This reality has dawned on Will and all the old shibboleths that were fed during the Reagan years are shown to be so much baloney.

The real world has finally intruded into the consciousness of this
fake spouter of quotations.Better late than never, I say.

[jfxgillis]

24. Laugh! All of you are missing Will's point ....

.... He's setting up an ALIBI for the ultimate failure of Bush's policies in Iraq.

It's the Iraqi people's fault, don't you know? They haven't been "acculturated" to properly recognize or benefit from the "gift" Bush the Great has given them.

[salin]

26. that would make sense... except this particular White House

does not act like others. They don't get rid of liability Appointees when huge scandals erupt. They don't ever admit failure. So those near (such as Will) may be setting up a framework - I don't know that the inside (particularly Rove) will ever concede failure - they will just keep finding new market-tested phrases to keep it looking like a success.

In my read - your and jacobin's point makes sense - what is interesting that some on the right think it is time to create the rationale for failure. Says they are concedng (already) that it IS a failure - and thus need the alibi.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

27. LA TIMES TITLE: Puncturing the Neocon Myth of Pax Americana

I read TWO undercurrents in Will's column mindful of his admiration for Samuel L. Huntington.

1.) The old "some cultures are better than others" routine.
2.) Democracy should NOT be a goal.

Maybe it's just me but that's what I got. I don't think he's taking them on, I think he is deliberate in steering the public away from a goal of democracy in the nations we are involed with.

[salin]

29. What a title!

He may be resteering the debate - BUT - he does some side swats to the head. He lands a couple of punches to the neocons - but intellectual ones (tone - they are naive in this assumption of democracy... is condescending - but it isn't a complete knockout punch).

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

31. Most of his punches are aimed at Blair

the one perceived as a liberal (although the LA Times excerpted this column...for some reason my browser can't get past that registration thingy on the Washington post)

[salin]

33. my local link

http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2003/08/17/digitalcity.0817-SH-D10_RSZ07734.sto

Even in the begining he ties blair to neocons. I think blair is used to slightly soften the blows. But to anyone who can work through his exceptionally akward prose and structure - you can't read it and not read "BUSH" - given the words and arguments attributed to Blair are the SAME that have been forcefed to us since last year from team Bush.

[Octafish]

34. George Will Gives Obtuse a Bad Name

The guy is almost as impossible to read as his mentors, the writing team of Robert Novak and the late Rowland Evans and their guru William F. Buckley. True masters of obfuscation, those guys wrote a lot without saying much about even very little.

In Will’s current example, he makes out how stupid Tony Blair is for actually believing ignorant third-worlders would have a desire for Democracy, Western-style. Will writes these ignorant masses haven’t a clue in Hades about American and (ancient) Greek values. In Will’s world, they’re lucky if we send them reruns of Dallas.

Will’s main point of writing this particularly odious piece of trash is to protect his paymasters’ hairy and ample pimpled backsides. It’s buried in graph five:

Neoconservatives seem more susceptible than plain conservatives are to such dodgy rhetoric and false assertions.

The guy works 24/7 to protect the world’s monied class. Showing he’ll do anything himself for a buck, the lying turd re-iterates his main point at the close:

The premise -- that terrorism thrives where democracy does not -- may seem to generate a duty to universalize democracy. But it is axiomatic that one cannot have a duty to do something that cannot be done.

Truly a master of providing a rationale for what is indefensible. All human beings deserve a decent life. How can anyone say otherwise? Oops! I almost forgot. The richest know when anyone talks about social justice, someone is going to have to pay for it, whether militarily or through taxes to support said military.

What is left unsaid is that this country once had a better approach. John F. Kennedy initiated the idea of the Peace Corps. Wouldn't it be more cost-effective, and moral, to win the hearts and minds, and build a better world, through initiatives to reduce hunger, poverty, want, ignorance, and enmity? Where's the profit for the weapons manufacturers, Will might ask.

Well, while Will is a turd, his efforts pale at the hypocrisy of William F. Buckley. That greasy pile of doggie-do seems to believe he is a good Roman Catholic.

Still, Buckley at least was open about his disdain for the working classes. I remember watching the guy on the Johnny Carson Show, bragging about how he sailed solo across the Atlantic. Buckley glowed as he recounted a mighty gale and how it was so liberating for a man to conquer the sea — sort of man versus nature theme, as Steinbeck or Hemingway might write.

Carson then asked him if that’s so for a wealthy conservative, why doesn’t the American government create more opportunities for the nation’s poor to enjoy such liberating activities as yachting? Buckley said the society can’t afford it. The poor, however, do have other recourses. They can go for a walk in the park and enjoy the trees and so forth. Truly enlightened, conservative approach: Protect my money. I don’t want (or have an obligation) to pay for the happiness of others.

Is it legal? Yes. Is that moral? No.

[gulliver]

36. I think it's paleocon talk ...

... and I think you're right, Will is hitting Bush. It's a strange thing to see.

The Bushies and their leader (Cheney) have only one leg left to stand on, and that's a sort of creepy, pie-eyed rendition of "freedom." Wolfowitz retreated fully to the "liberation from a tyrant" angle a couple of weeks ago. There was a tripod before that: WMDs, support of terrorists, and liberation. The first two have fallen through and even backfired. Liberation (freedom) for the Iraqis, is all that's left.

Will is pecking at that last leg. Bottom line, he is saying that the neocon vision of freedom is wrong. It's a nice inspiring platitude to say that everyone wants "freedom," but it doesn't hold water in reality.

Will is right. First, the neocons and Bush have a twisted concept of freedom to begin with. When the Bushies and their leader (Cheney) talk about freedom, they aren't talking about the simple freedom to choose what you do and say. Otherwise, they wouldn't be calling gays criminals for choosing to do what they want to do and they wouldn't be calling people traitors for choosing what they want to say. Heck, I don't even want the Bushie concept of freedom, and I'm an American.

Will attacks Blair most prominently, but then he shows how Blair's Polyanna/strawman approach to this last feeble Iraq war justification (freedom) is also an indictment of the Bushies and their leader (Cheney). The Bushies want to export a Bushie brand of freedom to people who don't necessarily want "freedom" (whatever that is).

And an aside. It drives me crazy to see Bush selling people what they already have. Bushie marketed freedom is a little bit like branding bottled air. The GOP thinks we should be thanking them for freedom and they think the Iraqis should be eating it up like cheap cotton candy. But Americans had (more) freedom before the Bushies, and Iraqis under Bremer don't seem to have a lot more freedom that is of any use to them.

[salin]

37. Interesting (and effective) last paragraph

worth repeating:

The GOP thinks we should be thanking them for freedom and they think the Iraqis should be eating it up like cheap cotton candy. But Americans had (more) freedom before the Bushies, and Iraqis under Bremer don't seem to have a lot more freedom that is of any use to them.

The mantra about going to war for OUR freedom is still repeated. Always makes me think "wtf?" - but it seems to have been said so much that for some folks it seems to have been internalized. Which is sort of scary given that the connection between our freedom (presumes "today") and the Iraq war is devoid of any logic.

But I think it plays, in part, because the post-911 mantra was: They hate us for our freedoms. Thus this current reasoning could be veiwed as a sequel slogan.

[bodhisattava]

39. Even the pompous ass Will has come to recognize that the

sheen has worn off the old storyline of how the American cavalry came to the rescue of the distressed natives and brought the joys and bounties of Democracy with a capital D.When you have a crew led by a clueless twit like George W., surrounded by rightwing oil imperialists like Cheney and Rumsfeld, with a supporting cast of British Imperialists like Blair trying to piggy back on the American
technical might, trailed by a crew of hapless Jewish intellectuals trying to save Israel from the wrath of arabs it has dutifully oppressed for five decades, it is hard to pull off the story of a benign American war in the service of Democracy and Freedom.The arabs
have instinctively come to recognize that Saddam, the evil tyrant is still one of them; Bush and his entourage are still aliens, notwithstanding their stated good intent.Of course, the track record of the Americans, British and the Israelis in the Arab world,
including colonialism, exploitation, racism etc. is something the Arab/Muslim world remembers too well.

Will, of course, likes to look at the world from his Georgetown mansion and look at the world and see a world full of smiling
benighted people grateful for the privilege of strewing roses and flowers at conquering American armies.Alas, the world has moved past this scenario a long time ago.People all over the world from Iran to Chile to Vietnam have experienced first hand the American death machine at work and are in no mood for Mr.Will's fairy tales any more.

I think it is a good omen that Will is finally waking up.