Fratsuds at The New York Times

You sometimes can't tell, what

gets into TNYT - comes over, I

guess one would say - while an

editorial board known for sedu-

cing the Left vies with warmon-

gers at WaPo to set the agenda.

Never mind, naturally, the low-

er orders at Fox. But there we

are, splitting syntactic foib-

les to save our self-respect,

as our clerks debauch themsel-

ves in fomenting another war.

It's only just going to be slightly more hideous, when the nausea of this next adventure is scooped up by fastidious histor-ians, to recall that it was a scary homicide of an honest journalist which actually turned the tide of this Pavlovian aban-donment of reason. And just when we were wondering why it should be, how any generation born since the mid-20th Century should gain exemption from their trek upon the slop-soaked slope of the Truman Doctrine. With TNYT behind her, how can anyone now demur from Senator Paul's prediction, that our second Clinton since Sister Souljah is poised to post them anywhere her resolve might be in question? Whose welts demand renewal next?

I believe it must be the policy

of the United States to support

free peoples who are resisting

attempted subjugation by armed

minorities or outside pressures.

Oh, come on, Harry. You don't believe anything of the kind. You're dressing up an absorption of the spoils of the Second World War (in this case, supplanting Britain in the Hellespont) in a demagogic toga of moralising gibberish, pre-figuring John Kennedy's tragic bear any burden mantra in his inaugural address. But this is no longer 1947. It's not even 1961. It isn't that we're tired of war. It's that we've been educated by the best. Every child is taught to argue the soundness of the extremest case on the slenderest legitimate predicate, where flamboyance is vulgar, foul, fatal; his mission doesn't creep, it drains in stagnant putrefaction. Done that.

The problem is, US foreign

policy is not fact-driven.

You have this notion, that

all you need to do is get

the facts before the policy

makers, and things'd change.

But gradually, you realize, 

that [they] don't care.

So confided a CIA veteran of service in the Near East to Kai Bird, in his biography of Robert Ames, The Good Spy. This is hardly the indictable disclosure that it might have been, if credibility were the flimsiest calling card of the nation's pretexts. Senator Vandenberg warned Harry Truman, he'd have to scare our people deeply to condone his plans. We've come to accept that we have "interests" no one can substantiate, to pursue objectives which are not available (office holding aside), and that we are "tested" repeatedly on the depth of our righteousness. I can not forget what we use as the gauge for that measurement, because for this he does not volunteer. For this he is seduced. 

The Editorial Board

A Necessary Response to 

  ISIS

24 August 2014

The New York Times©

D.D. Guttenplan

The Unquiet American

A review appearing in

The Times [UK] Literary Supplement

20 August 2014

The Good Spy

  The Life and Death of

  Robert Ames

Kai Bird

Crown, 2014©

Fredrik Logevall

Citing Harry S. Truman

March 1947

Embers of War

  The Fall of an Empire and the 

  Making of America's Vietnam

Random House, 2012©