Casting America
As the bad guy.
Michael Kinsley has it all worked out. All of the blunders in foreign policy concerning the Middle East in the last 50 years all wrapped and packaged and put into a neat little box. Put a label on it saying, "America Bad" and the whole project is complete. The way Kinsley tells it, there's one disastrous bit of Republican meddling after another. It's just plain damning.
A few things are missing, though. Like the names Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter or Clinton. Who also pursued policies that didn't work out so well in the Middle East. Or the little thing that happened to be going on through the bulk of the fifty years Kinsley talks about. A little non-event sometimes referred to as the "Cold War".
Mr. Kinsley talks about Mohammad Mosaddeq, and says all he wanted to do was nationalize the oil companies. No big deal, right? He doesn't mention that Mohammad Mosaddeq also tried to dissolve the majlis himself. He doesn't mention that Mohammad Mosaddeq was strongly supported by the Iraqi Communist party.
Rather than belabor the point, I'll just leave it that Mr. Kinsley is misleading by omission here. This is a totally one-sided hit piece where only the names of Republicans are mentioned, as if no Democrat even existed during that 50 year span. It also leaves out a lot of crucial details about his heroic protagonists and does not even attempt to put the entire Middle East into context of the larger picture of the Cold War.
In other words, Mr. Kinsley, this is an extremely shoddy and extremely partisan column - and I think you know it, sir.
By The Ugly American, Friday, 14 April , 2006 @ 11:32 pm
Wouldn’t expect anything less from him.
By Gauis Arbo, Saturday, 15 April , 2006 @ 5:33 am
This one is so obviously slanted, I’m just appalled.
By Black Jack, Saturday, 15 April , 2006 @ 11:38 am
If Kinsley’s interested in girls, there’s a blogger over at My Left Wing who could use a big hug and a box of candy.