David Brooks - Still clueless after all these years

Commentary By Ron Beasley

David Brooks is once again pounding the drums of war from the comfort of his arm chair.  There is nothing in Brook's column worth quoting but there are plenty of take downs from both the right and the left that are.

First we have we have Justin Logan from CATO.

David Brooks Is Confused about Counterinsurgency

First, Brooks makes clear that he is not interested in merely
managing the problem of terrorism, but rather in �prevailing� in the
war in Afghanistan.  He argues that �only the full counterinsurgency
doctrine offers a chance of success,� but then proceeds to absurdly
define population-centric counterinsurgency doctrine as one in which
�small groups of American men and women are outside the wire in
dangerous places in remote valleys, providing security, gathering
intelligence, helping to establish courts and building schools and
roads.�

Either Brooks is being cute here or demonstrating his ignorance. 
With one word � �small� � Brooks has utterly mischaracterized what
counterinsurgency is all about.

Confused is what David Brooks is all about and as Glenn Greenwald points out that he was just as confused when he was pushing the war in Iraq from his arm chair at The Weekly Standard.

Needless to say, Brooks was writing all the same things in late 2002 and early 2003 about Iraq -- though, back then, he did so from the pages of Rupert Murdoch and Bill Kristol's The Weekly Standard. When I went back to read some of that this morning, I was -- as always -- struck by how extreme and noxious it all was: the snide, hubristic superiority combined with absolute wrongness about everything. What people like David Brooks were saying back then was so severe -- so severely wrong, pompous, blind, warmongering and, as it turns out, destructive -- that no matter how many times one reviews the record of the leading opinion-makers of that era, one will never be inured to how poisonous they are.

Greenwald then gives some examples of Brooks' "wisdom" before the invasion of Iraq.  That worked out really well didn't it?

But there is some good news - the left may finally be waking up.

MoveOn To Call On Obama To Develop Exit Strategy For Afghanistan

In its first direct pressure on President Obama
over a major war-and-peace issue, MoveOn will call on the president
today to develop an exit strategy for Afghanistan, a MoveOn official
confirms to me.

MoveOn will blast an email to its massive list later today calling
for members to write to the White House and demand �a clear exit
strategy,� the official confirms.

The move is significant, because the major liberal groups had, until
now, largely refrained from pressuring Obama on Afghanistan, partly to
give the new president breathing room to tackle major domestic
challenges, partly to preserve good relations with the new
administration, and partly because public opinion wasn�t exercised
about the war.

But a host of new factors � the sudden media focus on Afghanistan,
the public�s swing against the war, the administration�s internal
debate over a a troop increase, and pressure from conservatives for an
escalation � means MoveOn must now engage the issue, even if it means
exerting direct pressure on the President.

�U.S. policy in Afghanistan has reached a pivotal moment,� MoveOn�s
email will say. �President Obama is poised to make a critical decision
about the Afghanistan war in the next few weeks. And there�s a big
debate happening right now about what to do.�

�Pro-war advocates both inside and outside the admistration �
including John McCain and Joe Lieberman � are calling for a big
escalation,� the email will continue. �Can you write to the White House
and tell them we need a clear exit strategy�not tens of thousands more
US troops stuck in a quagmire?�