Reason publishes a ridiculous rant today from Terry Michael on the surge. Michael is a former DNC press secretary and heads up the "non-partisan" Washington Center for Politics & Journalism. He's not much of a journalist, but his politics are clear:
When it comes Iraq, neoconservative true believers have been allowed to set the bar of "success" below ground level. In this, they're aided by media siding with power instead of challenging it, all while congressional Democrats cower in their cloak rooms.... Except for a few pieces in left-liberal journals and blogs, Democrats have simply allowed neoconservative propagandists to define the terms of what has become a one-sided monologue about "victory," voiced by elective warriors who employed deception about phantom weapons of mass destruction to market a multi-trillion dollar travesty; claimed a paper tiger thug was our enemy, when the real culprits of the 9/11 attacks still hide in caves, not spider holes; imagined Iraqi embrace of pluralistic democracy, in a tribal culture with no indigenous movement for it; and fielded an imperial American occupying force, drawing jihadists to Baghdad while fomenting civil war that raged outside a surreal "Green Zone," as our puppet government dithered.
I guess what bothers me about this kind of hysterical shrieking is that Reason would publish it. The guy is so hot he couldn't even be bothered to throw in the occasional period. And he puts it right there, nobody but a few "left-liberal journals and blogs" will publish this kind of nonsense because any objective analysis of the situation in Iraq shows that there has been a dramatic improvement in security as a result of the surge. Reasonable people can argue over whether that's enough to justify a continued presence, whether the country will tear itself apart if U.S. forces leave, but no serious journal is calling the regime in Iraq a puppet government, or ranting about "an imperial American occupying force." It's a DNC press release...and what self-respecting libertarian would care what a Democratic party hack has to say about the surge anyway? Could Reason find nobody to write a rational take-down of the surge? Maybe not.