'NYT' Op-Ed Recalls Errors of 'Liberal Hawks' on Iraq -- Newspaper's Editor Was One of Them

[DeepModem Mom]

Editor&Publisher: 'NYT' Op-Ed Recalls Errors of 'Liberal Hawks' on Iraq -- Newspaper's Editor Was One of Them
By Greg Mitchell
Published: October 07, 2007

NEW YORK The New York Times carried an Op Ed column today by Tony Judt, warning that the “liberal hawks” who had helped promote the U.S. into an invasion of Iraq in 2003 are “back,” defending anew that war and possibly an attack on Iran. Two of them, Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon, wrote a highly influential Op-Ed in the Times this past summer. Judt describes them as “politicians and pundits who threw in their lot with George W. Bush in 2003: voting and writing for a 'preventive war' — a war of choice.”

Ironically, Judt’s column appeared in the same spot on the Op- Ed page where one of pieces that made the term “liberal hawk” popular appeared on February 8, 2003, during the fateful run-up to the war. The earlier column was called “The I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-a-Hawk Club.” It was written by Times columnist — now executive editor — Bill Keller. Here are a few excerpts from the Keller column:

*

The I-Can't-Believe-I'm-a-Hawk Club includes op-ed regulars at this newspaper and The Washington Post, the editors of The New Yorker, The New Republic and Slate, columnists in Time and Newsweek. Many of these wary warmongers are baby-boom liberals whose aversion to the deployment of American power was formed by Vietnam but who had a kind of epiphany along the way -- for most of us, in the vicinity of Bosnia.

The president also has enough prominent Democrats with him -- some from conviction, some from the opposite -- to make this endeavor credibly bipartisan. Four of the six declared Democratic presidential hopefuls support war, with reservations. (Senator John Kerry seemed to come down from the fence last week after Colin Powell's skillful parsing of the evidence.)....

Much as we might wish the administration had orchestrated events so the inspectors had a year instead of three months, much as we deplore the arrogance and binary moralism, much as we worry about all the things that could go wrong, we are hard pressed to see an alternative that is not built on wishful thinking.

Thanks to all these grudging allies, Mr. Bush will be able to claim, with justification, that the coming war is a far cry from the rash, unilateral adventure some of his advisers would have settled for….

I don't pretend to speak for the aviary, but almost all of the hesitant hawks go out of their way to disavow Mr. Bush's larger agenda for American power even as they salute his plan to use it in Iraq. This is worth dwelling on a little, because with this war the administration is not just taking on a dictator, it is beginning to define in blood the new American imperium….

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003654953

[Rageneau]

1. It isn't "Bush's War." It's his and the NYT's and the WP's and NBC's war.

The New York Times has as much blood on its hands as Bush does.

Perhaps more -- because their job was to keep blood OFF America's hands.