If Only The Washington Post Editorial Board Read The Post's Reporting

From a news report on today's once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle front page:

As President Obama was weighing how to halt Islamic State advances in Iraq, some of the strongest resistance to boosting U.S. involvement came from a surprising place: a war-weary military that has grown increasingly skeptical that force can prevail in a conflict fueled by political and religious grievances.

Top military officials, who have typically argued for more combat power to overcome battlefield setbacks over the past decade, emerged in recent White House debates as consistent voices of caution in Iraq. Their shift reflects the paucity of good options and a reluctance to suffer more combat deaths in a war in which America’s political leaders are far from committed and Iraqis have shown limited will to fight.

“After the past 12 years in the Middle East, there is a real focus by senior military leaders on understanding what the endgame is,” said a military official, “and asking the question, ‘To what end are we doing this?’ ”  (our emphasis)

From the lead editorial in today's once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle:

Mr. Obama’s escalation nevertheless is most notable for excluding the steps that American and Iraqi commanders and military experts have been saying for a year are necessary to decisively reverse the Islamic State’s momentum. These include the deployment of U.S. advisers to front-line Iraqi units, along with spotters who can call in airstrikes, and an increase of close-in air support.

Such tactics worked during the U.S. “surge” in Iraq, and they allowed Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taliban government in 2001-2002. That they are not being used now, despite the Islamic State’s recent gains, seems to be explained only by Mr. Obama’s political resistance to reversing his decision to withdraw U.S. forces four years ago.  (our emphasis)

Perhaps it's too much to expect the neo-conservatives on the Post's Bugle's editorial board =cough= Fred Hiatt =cough= "Action" Jackson Diehl =cough= to absorb the reporting of their own staff, or to ever ask "to what end are we doing this?"  Rather than being confused with the facts, they prefer to continue to bang the neo-con drum in an effort to browbeat  President Obama (contrary to the advice of his military officials) into sending someone else's children into war.  Of course, both Diehl and Hiatt were vociferous cheerleaders for Dumbya's Iraq misadventure War and, to no one's surprise, have learned precisely nothing from that experience.  Also, we seem to recall that one of the policies President Obama ran on in 2008 was to bring the troops home from Iraq (in accordance with the timetable set by the status of forces agreement with Iraq signed by -- wait for it -- the Post's Bugle's "surge" hero Dumbya). 

No, it seems the neo-cons of the editorial board are determined to have the United States make the same mistakes they foolishly counseled back in 2003.  Fortunately, no one is listening to them.

(Image:   Fightin' 101st Keyboarder Jackson Diehl -- or is that "J. Fred Muggs" Hiatt?)

Debt, Deficits and Austerity: The Credulous and The Credible

Once great Washington Post Kaplan Daily editorial page editor and prominent austerity fan Fred "Pain For Thee, Tax Breaks For Me" Hiatt, quoting President Obama from 4 years ago:

"...Obama has said the national interest requires both revenue increases and reform of entitlement programs."

“'The real problem with our long-term deficit actually has to do with our entitlement obligations and the fact that historically if our revenues range between 18 and 20 percent of GDP, they are now at 16,” the president told the Post editorial board in January 2009. “We’re going to have to shape a bargain. This, by the way, is where there are going to be some very difficult choices, and issues of sacrifice and responsibility and duty are going to come in, because what we have done is kicked this can down the road. We’re now at the end of the road. And we are not in a position to kick it any further.'”

"In a phone interview with me later that year, the president added: “It may start with Social Security because that’s, frankly, the easier one.'”

Let us introduce Fred to E.J. Dionne, same page, same day:

"The moment’s highest priority should be speeding economic growth and ending the waste, human and economic, left by the Great Recession. But you would never know this because the conversation in our nation’s capital is being held hostage by a ludicrous cycle of phony fiscal deadlines driven by a misplaced belief that the only thing we have to fear is the budget deficit."

"Let’s call a halt to this madness. If we don’t move the economy to a better place, none of the fiscal projections will matter. The economic downturn ballooned the deficit. Growth will move the numbers in the right direction."

Hiatt's views are an example of the credulous Beltway-think that has gone on for at least the past 4 years: the Simpson-Bowles worshipers, the "serious thinkers" who are almost always late to the realization that their long-held serious thought has, at the very least, been overtaken by events. Note how he quotes Obama's 4-year-old prescription of sacrifice approvingly (not that we're not for "sacrifice" -- we just prefer it be evenly distributed and only when it's going to solve a real problem rather than undermining faith in government as a protector of the vulnerable).

Meanwhile, Dionne points out that there's an emerging counterweight to the austerity chorus that's been dominating economic policy discussions here and abroad. Austerity has been a disaster in Europe and would effectively halt the recovery that's been slowly building here over the past 18 months. That, of course, is what the Rethuglican agenda really boils down to: it's not the deficit, stupid -- it's dismantling the progressive social safety net and diminishing the Obama legacy. Too bad Hiatt and his fellow Beltway chin-strokers have a deficit of insight (or honesty) and can't see that.

The Failure of the Austerity Doctrine

Paul Krugman today in the NY Times:

"Last week the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a British think tank, released a startling chart comparing the current slump with past recessions and recoveries. It turns out that by one important measure — changes in real G.D.P. since the recession began — Britain is doing worse this time than it did during the Great Depression. Four years into the Depression, British G.D.P. had regained its previous peak; four years after the Great Recession began, Britain is nowhere close to regaining its lost ground.

Nor is Britain unique. Italy is also doing worse than it did in the 1930s — and with Spain clearly headed for a double-dip recession, that makes three of Europe’s big five economies members of the worse-than club. Yes, there are some caveats and complications. But this nonetheless represents a stunning failure of policy.

And it’s a failure, in particular, of the austerity doctrine that has dominated elite policy discussion both in Europe and, to a large extent, in the United States for the past two years. [snip]

...Yet influential people on both sides of the Atlantic heaped praise on the prophets of austerity, Mr. Cameron in particular, because the doctrine of expansionary austerity dovetailed with their ideological agendas.

Thus in October 2010 David Broder, who virtually embodied conventional wisdom, praised Mr. Cameron for his boldness, and in particular for 'brushing aside the warnings of economists that the sudden, severe medicine could cut short Britain’s economic recovery and throw the nation back into recession.' He then called on President Obama to 'do a Cameron' and pursue 'a radical rollback of the welfare state now.'

Strange to say, however, those warnings from economists proved all too accurate. And we’re quite fortunate that Mr. Obama did not, in fact, do a Cameron."

Now let's see what lessons Fred "Mr. Dinky" Hiatt has for us in today's Kaplan Daily:

"If America doesn’t tackle its debt problem, everything else is at risk: economic growth, the safety net for the poor, investment in research and roads. Over the past two years, Obama and congressional Republicans have squandered one chance after another to get serious about fiscal reform. A better political moment is always just over the horizon."

Alas, poor Mr. Dinky. Still cluelessly ringing the Broder/ Rethuglican austerity bell.

Wanker of the Week

The Liberal Media strikes again!! Fred "Mr. Dinky" Hiatt's new hire at the Kaplan Daily, former Dumbya speechwriter Marc "Li'l Bush" Thiessen, has this to say today:

"What has gummed up the works during the past year has been the Obama administration's relentless partisanship. Obama's immediate predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, reached across the aisle in their first months to forge bipartisan coalitions on major issues...[Republicans] should come to the [health care reform] summit with this offer: 'Mr. President, you say we agree on 80 percent of the issues, so let's pass that 80 percent solution right now.' If Obama refuses, he will make clear who the real obstructionist is."

Heeheehee! Wowser. The alternate universe Li'l Bush lives in is, of course, one inhabited by all wingnuts and not a few low-information voters. But to try to sell Obama as the "relentless" partisan and "real obstructionist" over the past year is not just laughable on its face; it clearly isn't bought by the vast majority of Americans who rightly see the Rethugs as the ones playing politics in order to destroy the Obama Administration (see DeMint, Limpballs, etc.). (Love TBogg's moniker for Li'l Bush: "Dickless torture gerbil.")

Nice hire, Mr. Dinky!

(Photo: Li'l Bush Thiessen, Mr. Dinky's newest friend -- and a dickless torture gerbil)

Sunday WaPo Reading

It looks like both Fred Hiatt and Broderella have gone on vacation and let someone else write their op/eds today. On the other hand, Kathleen Parker, whose occasional bouts of sanity we've noted here, is back on the "Bush-good, Obama-not-so-much, media-biased" wingnut train.

Hiatt goes over the "three camps" in the health reform debate, concluding that the camp represented by the Rethugs and their insurance industry financers ain't got nothing but fear mongering.

Broder, who must be taking a colonic in Florida while someone writes his latest entry into the conventional wisdom, passes modest, albeit of course highly caveated judgment on the efficacy of the stimulus on stopping the economy's slide into Great Depression II.

Parker is back from her walk on the sane side to argue that Obama has not been "treated to the same scrutiny" as Dumbya was on the subject of a Faith-Based Initiatives program in the White House. Well, lady, the reason Dumbya was "scrutinized" was because of well-founded suspicions that the primary function of the initiative was to funnel money to his Christian religious right base (hello, Revs. Dobson and Robertson, have a grant Tony Perkins). Had he not been "scrutinized," Turdblossom and his minions would have run roughshod over the system. Nice try, though.

Kraphammer's "Faulty Analysis"

Former Bush Assministration Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer takes to the op/ed pages of today's WaPo to deliver a stinging rebuke to crackpot neocon Charles "Kraphammer" Krauthammer's recent op/ed on the Obama Administration's position on Israeli settlements. Saying Kraphammer's "faulty analysis of the Israeli settlement issue is being passed off as fact," Kurtzer (who was actually a participant in the Bush diplomatic efforts, as opposed to Kraphammer who merely dreams what he wants to be true) takes apart Kraphammer's argument that Obama's policy means "strangling to death the thriving towns close to the 1949 armistice line...It means no increase in population. Which means no babies." Kurtzer rightly labels this pernicious falsity "nonsense."

One hopes the editors at the WaPo would exercise some...um... editorial controls over the jackassery that Kraphammer, climate change denier Quill Will and others of the wingnut fringe publish every week, though ultimately such hope is in vain as long as fellow neocon Fred Hiatt remains at the head of the WaPo editorial page.

What's Wrong With the Post -- Part 3,456

Balloon Juice had the same reaction we did upon viewing another Amity Shlaes piece in the Washington Post's "Outlook" section today. Shlaes, who's been quoted favorably by an expert no less self-assured than Quill Will, is to the field of economics what Dumbya was to the field of electro-magnetics.

We, too, suspect the hand of "Mr. Dinky," a.k.a. Fred Hiatt (pictured here contemplating how much more perfect a world this would be had Herbert Hoover beaten that Commie FDR), our poster boy for "What's Wrong With the Post."

Our Broken Media, Cont'd., Cont'd.

Fred "Sir Wanksalot" Hiatt, dillweed Iraq War apologist and tread-mark on the reputation of the once-esteemed Washington Post, is at it again this morning. Rising Hegemon handles the appropriate evisceration.

Photo: Sir Wanksalot in "Middle East magical dream" mode.

Fred Hiatt Strikes Again

Washington Post editorial page "editor" (Right Said) Fred Hiatt is introducing a new wingnut to his op/ed page (soon to be known as the "kooks korner," already stocked with the likes of Kraphammer, "Mushroom Cloud" Gerson, Will, Novak, etc.): Kathleen Parker. Whew! Reading her inaugural piece makes me wonder, "Does it hurt your neck to carry around such a huge brain?"

Fred Hiatt, Fourth Estate Wanker Extraordinaire

On the same day the WaPo published an editorial essentially saying the surge was working and the assministration's critics were wrong about the level of violence in Iraq, Post correspondent Salih Saif Aldin was shot in the head and killed while covering a story in a Baghdad neighborhood. Should we expect editorial page editor and neo-con acolyte Fred Hiatt to send a condolence letter to Aldin's family, noting the progress made by his assministration in curbing violence? The execrable Hiatt is also responsible for adding more crackpot neo-cons (Frank Gaffney, Jr., Michael Gerson, Robert Kagan), to the already-full stable of right-wing horses' asses assembled on the WaPo editorial page (George Will, Charles "Kraphammer," Robert Novak, and the occasional half-page gas bubble emanated by the rotting Henry Kissinger). Walter Lippmann, Eugene Meyer, and Katherine Graham are doing 100 rpm in their graves.