…”Yikes!” not the most illuminating assessment from probably the leading liberal war-hawk public intellectual.

Two things:

1. I’m surprised that Bromwich never used the word “pragmatist” to describe Obama. That’s the one that always comes to mind first for me–he’s by nature a moderate pragmatist, one who tries to find not the best policy, but the best policy he thinks has a good chance of being implemented. From the campaign on, we’ve seen this, and thus far I think it’s worked, with a few real hiccups (probably lowballed the stimulus, may have boxed himself in a bit on healthcare by suggesting a too-small dollar amount). Part of what makes Afghanistan so tough is that pragmatism is a harder fit there: the best policy also looks like the toughest sell. Pragmatism has its limits, clearly, and in the wrong hands it can be dangerous, but I think it’s served Obama pretty well thus far.

2. Bromwich said Obama hadn’t made a major speech on the economy, but he did, at Georgetown back in April. The transcript is here: ; some praise and criticism (specifically focused on rhetoric) by James Fallows is here:

I read the Lawrence Wright article on Gaza and felt that it was very fair- very even handed and quite good. I have no problem with that report. Still, Israel, came out looking very bad, and would have anyway this story is told. So I thought the point that Bromwich made was insignificant. I read past or through such language gymnastics or don’t notice. I don’t say that is good that I do that and I recognize Bromwich’s focus and that others may be persuaded by the way language is used. In this case it was to ostensibly or supposedly or inadvertently “deny agency”. The criticism may not end there either (blaming the agent of this particular spectacular self-defeating crime) in the blame game. So I thought, using this example, that Bromwich has a very definite point of view and is criticizing based on his own feelings, that his view is the one that should prevail. ( I agree with his POV).

The problem we had with Judy Miller taking stenography ( for me anyway) was that she was pushing one point of view, that of the administration, through the NYT ( with little editorial oversight it turned out right?). But quite prior to 9/11 I thought her reporting on Al Qaeda was good and we needed to be informed and alerted at a time when few were focussing on them.

Ethan Bronner ( NYT Jerusalem bureau chief) has come into much criticism from certain quarters on the Jewish progressive left for “taking dictation” from the “powers-that-be” in Israel. I listened closely to his interview with Terri Gross months ago. He is trying very hard to be fair- ie not take a position or rather to give both sides. This may in fact be what the NYT wants I don’t know. I know the NYT gets reader criticism from at least two sides of the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict and therefore the public editor has on more than one occasion wound up saying that this means they are doing their job.

I am okay with the reporting. The editorials are usually spot on- they were against the invasion of Iraw if I remember correctly. I go elsewhere and on the internet now for more detail and even better criticism/opinion. We don’t rely on the NYTimes that much anymore for complete nourishment ( if we ever did) even though it is still essential and we read the tree form of the paper ( expensive and probably wasteful).

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I hope that the UK sending 500 additional troops would not be indicative of Obama’s need to send many thousands more.

As well I am in denial that we have actually accepted the culture of permanent war or torture. If we have accepted war all the time then we should be bringing in the draft- as Bill Moyers has recently called for ( again).

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I agree fully that Obama’s acquiescence, his need to placate and reassure at the expense of his principles is very ( very) troubling. Political animals across the board in every issue sense this and take advantage and will take advantage and so I am afraid that he will end up one great appeaser- a big disappointment, not the decider we long for to turn this ship around, but failing all around and maybe even a one term president. Failures because of weakness in one area are signals to others in other areas and the notion that if you push Obama, or even if you don’t, he is ready to give in.
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One good speech on the economy was prior to Obama’s election in March of 2008, if I am not mistaken about the exact date.

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Jim Lehrer had some good questions for Sheila Baer the other night- unusual for him, I agree he usually is very boring but Margaret Warner is quite good.

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Finally- what a horrible thought if it were true or of it IS true that the generals run this country. I’d like to see Obama challenge that.

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Thank you for this provocative enlightening interview.

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The day our political leaders decide to give more than lip service to the idea of energy independence is the day our relationship with the middle east will change for the better.

I have long felt uneasy about Afghanistan – something about it just didn’t add up. And now even more so. I think the approach of Greg Mortenson’s book “Three Cups of Tea”, building schools for girls in remote areas of Pakistan, would do more for Afghan culture and hope than all the military operations we can envision.

Much more needed is an enormous transformation of OUR OWN ECONOMY. Al Gore was right. Our global common enemy is climate change. Our common solution is ENERGY – clean, renewable energy. Clean skies that we may capture pure sunlight, and no longer poison our atmosphere with our waste.

Enormous transformations are needed, and every budding scientist and engineer can be put to work. Cars that do not run on gas – every car in America converted. New kinds of batteries to capture the sunlight, wind, and wave power. Every home in America properly insulated – imagine the building boom from that! And this is just the beginning – no telling how far the transformations can go.

Obama needs our prayers.

And, Bromwich seems sometimes too in the center of his own readings. At times I got the feeling that he doesn’t want us to be in Afghanistan, that he likes Obama on some level, and thus Bromwich is sure that Obama doesn’t really want to be in Afghanistan, either. Therefore when Obama talks about needing to be in Afghanistan, Obama’s language is problematic. Maybe, but I’m not entirely convinced.

Finally, almost nobody (I won’t say nobody) likes the idea of eternal war, however much Bromwich seems to think most people do, but what does he really think would happen if we left Afghanistan? That’s the question language mavens don’t have to answer.

Thanks for the conversation.

Gosh, I am blown away by how you find these people. It is so wonderful to hear someone articulating the truth. I’m even going to listen again.

I never posted anything regarding the Chris Hedges interview you did recently but I’m still worried about everything he said about the fall of our culture and his observation that revolution can happen suddenly.

I could go on (and have proven as much in the past) but just have to tell how much I appreciate the work you do. I’m doing my best to spread the word. These are some of the best conversations I’ve ever heard.

The beginning of the conversation, on the way reports about the destruction of Gaza use all sorts of language games to hide the agency and thus responsibility of israeli authorities, reminded me of Roland Barthes’ quote in ‘African Grammar’ describing the way that colonization was erased in earlier colonial official speak:

“DECIREMENT/LACERATION (cruel, painful) – This term helps accredit the notion of History’s irresponsibility. The state of war is masked under the noble garment of tragedy, as if the conflict were essentially Evil, and not a (remediable) evil. Colonization evaporates, engulfed in the halo of an impotent lament, which recognizes the misfortune in order to establish it only the more successfully.”

Among the terrifying euphemisms D.B didn’t mention is “smart power,” the key principle of Clinton’s foreign policy, which James Der Derian unmasks in his genealogy of the terrifying oxymoron, ‘Virtuous War’, maybe the most extreme (and accepted) euphemism around.

What’s at stake, as Judith Butler shows us in Frames of War, is our ability to FEEL anything about the violence we see all around us. But Baudrillard best captures this zombification of politics we now face much earlier in ‘America’ written in 1986:

“The have-nots will be condemned to oblivion, to abandonment, to disappearance plain and simple. This is ‘Must-Exit’ logic…entire social groups are being laid waste from the inside (individuals too). Society has forgotten them and now they are forgetting themselves. They fall out of all reckoning, zombies condemned to obliteration, consigned to statistical graphs of endangered species. This is the Fourth World. Entire sectors of our modern societies, entire countries in the Third World now fall into this Fourth World desert zone. But whereas the Third World still had political meaning (even if it was a resounding world-wide failure), the Fourth World has none.”

http://www.williampfaff.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=440

I now read much of the NYT as a species of insidious pathology. It is often complicit in the mystifications it pretends to report (thank you, Judith Miller). It diseminates them as “straight” journalism, then applies its assumed authority to create the public mood necessary to act on them (thank you David Brooks, Thomas Friedman et al). There’s a passage in Beckett where one of his bums stuffs his trousers with copies of the TLS; I’d do the same apropos the NYT if only the computer would fit.

Bromwich’s discussion of Lawrence Wright’s use in the New Yorker of the phrase “anger and confusion” to describe the feeling of the Palestinians after the Israeli assault especially acute. Surely the appropriate word was “outrage.” Maybe even “sadness,” thrown in for good measure. But that would have been to suggest the Palestinians had grounds for grievance, and a humanity that granted them that right. It’s a view of that specific human condition as abstract and misbegotten as the nouns it deploys. A brief adventure in empathy in lieu of cliché might have led him to wonder what he would have felt in similar circumstances. “Anger and confusion”? Not me, or not just.

I haven’t read Bromwich’s essay about euphemism, but “contractor” for mercenary an example I find abhorrent. A contractor builds, a mercenary kills. What slime-devil contrived to confuse the two?

Another thing I find disturbing in politico-journo speak is the infantilizing, impolite, and often incorrect use of “guys,” as when the White House press secretary refers to the assembled press corpse as “guys,” turning what should be a stricter, more adversarial relationship (given that honesty is generally out of the question) into the absurd spectacle it usally is. I knew the gig was up when GWB simply cancelled the usual schedule of press conferences and no one really seemed to mind. Then there was Ari Fleisher warning a reporter to watch what he said, to similar effect. And there was GWB admonishing a reporter, who quickly fell in line, for not addressing him as “President.” “Who do you think you’re speaking to,” he said.

That’s all she wrote.