Well it’s happened.
David Brooks has officially freaked out.
His Sunday column sounds (even more) like the rantings of a madman.
Unable to accept that his heroes in power have led us into a debacle of historic proportions, he frets instead of a Mad Max future, presumably blamed on those surrender monkeys.
In fall 2007, the United States began to withdraw troops from Iraq, and so began the Second Thirty Years’ War. This war was a bewildering array of small and vast conflicts, which flared and receded and flared again across the entire Middle East, but which were joined by a common theme.
In the winter of 2006-07, David Brooks began publishing increasingly incoherent prose, fantasies, perhaps under the influence of hallucinogens and certainly under the suffering of severe cognitive dissonance as U.S. policy in Iraq foundered, causing Brooks’ nose to flare and recede, flare and recede again, as if a booger of coherent thought might incredibly emerge. But no, it was not to be. And so it began, the struggle to define the Iraq debacle NOT as an utterly bankrupt policy to begin with, but of a bright shining policy thwarted by the evil Orks (surrender monkeys).
Note, his column is behind the NYTimes Select firewall.
Chaos spread as governments in Lebanon and Jordan collapsed. The Palestinian Authority fell into complete dysfunction as Hamas and Fatah waged a low-boiling civil war. Al-Qaida reveled in the bloodshed and spread it with rapturous fury. The spreading disorder vindicated an observation that the historian Michael Oren had once made: that there are really only three nations in the Muslim Middle East -- Iran, Turkey and Egypt. The other nations are make-believe. The borders are arbitrary and the governments are artificial.
Oopsie. Does that include Israel? I think Mr. Brooks may hear about THAT one.
The Middle East’s weak national ties were ripped apart by the rising forces of the 21st century: religious fundamentalism, global terrorism, economic globalization and transnational communications networks. Efforts to do nation-building without security faced long odds. Efforts to exhort Iraqi and other leaders to behave "responsibly" -- as defined by Western nationalist categories -- were doomed to failure. The American defeat sealed the deal.
You see, Brooks still sees no problem with the ill-advised adventure. He is upset that Americans aren’t willing to see his hallucinogenic light at the end of the tunnel and have morphed into surrender monkeys, perhaps under the spell of some sociopolitical sorcerer.
And here his chilling finale:
It was a terrible era for those brave patriots fighting for national unity. There was horrific turmoil, and the emergence of sociopolitical organizations the likes of which the world had never seen.
Lions and tigers and sociopolitical organizations, oh my!
Wake up David! Wake up!
It was a terrible era for those psychotic pundits fighting for unrealistic goals with unrealistic tactics. There was horrific turmoil, and the emergence of sociopatholigical punditry the likes of which the world had never seen.