Thursday, December 07, 2006
Perle's Non-Wisdom
I cannot believe the nerve of Richard Perle, on the radio this morning talking about how the Iraq Study group report is naive. Like, advocating going to war in the first place in the belief that it would bring about a smooth transition to Western-style liberal democracies across the Middle East wasn't naive, then? Total git.
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What I can't understand is how the architects of this disaster still get given air time. Eerything they've ever said has proved to utterly false and harmful (e.g. Wolfowitz: "the Iraq war will cost $10bn and pay for itself within a year" - actual cost to US $400bn and running).
Why should anyone care what these maniacs have to say about anything? And why should the media give them any outlet at all?
Yes, absolutely. In politics and the media these guys seemed to be viewed as a little bit discredited, but with a contribution still to make to the general political discourse. In fact, they've been proved to be so completely wrong that they should have absolutely no credibility in anyone's eyes. It seems that if you assert your barmy views with enough arrogance, (unmerited) authority and confidence, everyone else lacks the confidence to dismiss them entirely. Meanwhile, they try to pass the buck for the worst mistakes onto others by saying that if they hadn't diluted their ideological neo-con plans everything would have worked out ok. Sometimes the principle of balance and objectivity in the news media just gives a platform to dangerous lunatics.
I suspect part of the problem is also that neo-cons and other lunatics make for such good TV. Producers on even serious programmes like Newsnight or Today know that an ill-informed, enraged and articulate war mongerer or global warming sceptic will animate audiences more than an academic expert who happens to actually know what he's talking about.
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