Charles Krauthammer note to readers: “My fight is over”
washingtonpost.com
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> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
What I liked most is that he made me think.
I said I scan a ton of commentary. It used to be (ten years or more ago) that the majority would be, well, opinion pieces. Now only 5-10% or so are actually opinion pieces. Most of the time it's just cheerleading to people with more and more invective about things the audience already agrees with. There's really little value to be had.
An opinion piece which competently and cleverly convinces its audience that good is bad and wrong is right is a deeply unethical thing. And Krauthammer's entire career was spent doing exactly this.
And even today, there are plenty of people who, I think, strive for finding truth (e.g., Scott Alexander, Megan McArdle)
Also, what you're saying is your opinion, are you trying to get people on your side? Is your goal in writing a comment here today is to stop people from thinking?
This seems to be an understated danger. Whenever I hear about a young person confined to a wheelchair, it seems as likely as not that their mistake was diving headfirst into unexpectedly shallow water.
I regularly scan opinion columns from people all over the political spectrum. I enjoy reading well-reasoned essays whether I agree with them or not.
Krauthammer always provided well-reasoned essays. Whatever the issue, if the public got too far out ahead of it, either for or against, Charles was quick with a "Harumpphh" and a clever one-liner to point out that we should be more circumspect.
I stopped watching cable TV news years ago. Charles Krauthammer is one of a few commentators that I missed watching on a regular basis. He was a grumpy old uncle who had been around the block a time or two and was going to set me clear on how to think about some issue. Most of the time I just ignored him, but it was fun having him around anyway. The world will be a poorer place without his work.
"Time is running short. Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. He is working on nuclear weapons. And he has every incentive to pass them on to terrorists who will use them against us."
From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2002/04/19/w...
The Iraq war was sold to the public based on lies and Charles Krauthammer was one of those key promoters pushing those lies. For a good segment of the population at the time it was very obvious this was being done.
Opposing the war of aggression waged immorally, illegally (under international law and arguably— given the bad faith in the application of the conditional authorization by Congress—under US law as well), and incompetently by the Bush Administration isn't the same thing as defending Saddam Hussein (who is no more the Middle East version of Hitler than many other past or current leaders in the Middle East, many of whom—including Saddam, at the peak of his most Hitler-like actions—have or had the direct backing of the U.S. government, including—again, also specifically in the case of Saddam Hussein—the particular individuals most responsible for military and defense policy in the Bush 43 Administration. )
Whataboutism (also known as whataboutery) is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument, which is particularly associated with Soviet and Russian propaganda.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_Iraq_War
A citizen's level of responsibility increases for those who advocate for such actions, and the level increases with a wide and strong advocacy.
To attempt to wipe the slate clean of such responsibility is grossly unfair for everyone involved and must involve some deeper issues of which I will not speculate. The fact there was an appeal to eminent death as a reason to not call this out is absurd. A terminal condition doesn't retroactively absolve responsibility.
This is coming from someone who thinks the Iraq war was needed however it was done so in the height of incompetency.
The results of the Iraq war were foreseeable by those that pushed for it. I can't accept that we should just politely not mention it because someone is dying of cancer. This is a war and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. It's a big deal.
That is widely believed. For example, that's exactly what Obama and Hillary did in Libya.
That doesn't excuse the U.S., but we shouldn't equivocate culpability.
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/1...
I hope that humanity will one day become immune to this kind of individual-tragedy rhetoric and save their hearts for the stats.
He definitely pushed that war and thus has some responsibility for the consequences. I do not wish him ill will and it is unfortunate that he is dying of cancer, it is a loss for his friends and family. That said, just because he is dying does not make him a saint nor do I have to pretend he is one, he clearly wasn't.
I remember this particular period relatively clearly. There was intense debate everywhere, it was the most polarizing issue for a very, very long time. I was on the dove-side of the debate. I remember having some extremely heated debates with "hawks" (all online - these hawks somehow just disappeared after the invasion when it it got more and more obvious that there actually were no WMDs...).
(Liberal-minded americans downvoting this: please think twice. Not everything that seems to go against your instincts is downvote-worthy if you don't know the details. In this case the details matter.)
Please don't be so 1-dimensional.
No, they didn't; there was a bipartisan (but more Republican than Democratic) group that supported a hard line with war as the ultimate resort based on the unclear intelligence being put forward by the Administration, but the Administration (and, even before it existed as such, the element of the neoconservative movement from which it's foreign policy and defense leadership was largely drawn) was actively pushing for war for much longer, and deliberately engineered the intelligence (which was not merely spun, but actually falsified) presented to others, including in Congress, to build support for the war.
> To call him partially responsible for 100,000s of deaths is very unfair
It's entirely accurate, just as it is for the bipartisan group that supported the war in Congress, even though the administration did lie to them to build that support, since the information about the pre-existing intent of the Administration was readily and publicly available, and the debunkings of enough of the intelligence to make clear the administration’s absence of good faith was likewise available.