Hitchens pounds Jimmy Carter to a pulp:

In the Carter years, the United States was an international laughingstock. This was not just because of the prevalence of his ghastly kin: the beer-sodden brother Billy, doing deals with Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi, and the grisly matriarch, Miz Lillian. It was not just because of the president’s dire lectures on morality and salvation and his weird encounters with lethal rabbits and UFOs. It was not just because of the risible White House “Bible study” sessions run by Bert Lance and his other open-palmed Elmer Gantry pals from Georgia. It was because, whether in Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq—still the source of so many of our woes—the Carter administration could not tell a friend from an enemy. His combination of naivete and cynicism—from open-mouthed shock at Leonid Brezhnev’s occupation of Afghanistan to underhanded support for Saddam in his unsleeping campaign of megalomania—had terrible consequences that are with us still. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that every administration since has had to deal with the chaotic legacy of Carter’s mind-boggling cowardice and incompetence.

How very gratifying.

Last week he was even better. Hitchens let loose about Jerry Falwell, calling him, among other things, a toad:

Via: VideoSift

Al Gore, media critic, needles Diane Sawyer:

Sawyer kept coming back to the campaign, even as she admitted she was doing exactly what Gore condemns in the book: “Not to fall into your thesis that the press only wants the horserace of a political campaign, but–”

“But back to the horserace,” Gore mocked.

“But back to the horserace!,” Sawyer said as Gore laughed.

Then later, after Gore finished describing a central point in his new book “The Assault on Reason,” Sawyer went back to her original line of questioning.

After promising to “dig deeper” later, in an as-yet-unaired segment, Sawyer looked off-camera and said “to dig not very deep, at my peril here, I just want to say one more time. Donna Brazille, your former campaign manager, says ‘if he drops 25 to 30 pounds, he’s running.’ Lost any weight?”

Gore laughed heartily. “I think millions of Americans are in the same struggle I am on that one,” he responded. “But listen to your questions. The horserace, the cosmetic parts of this — look, that’s all understandable and natural. But while we’re focused on Britney and K-fed and Anna Nicole Smith and all this stuff, meanwhile, very quietly, our country has been making some very serious mistakes that could be avoided if we, the people, including the news media, are involved in a full and vigorous discussion of what our choices are.“

I like the new Al Gore. I don’t agree with him, but I like him.

That said: if we weren’t focused on Britney and K-fed, we would still not be spending our free time eating spinach…um, I mean, being “involved in a full and vigorous discussion of what our choices are”—not the kind of sober discussion Gore wants to have.

For better or for worse, TV infotainment is the circus tent under which we hash things out. All we can do is deal with it.

Bob Kerrey:

No matter how incompetent the Bush administration and no matter how poorly they chose their words to describe themselves and their political opponents, Iraq was a larger national security risk after Sept. 11 than it was before. And no matter how much we might want to turn the clock back and either avoid the invasion itself or the blunders that followed, we cannot. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein is over. What remains is a war to overthrow the government of Iraq.

Some who have been critical of this effort from the beginning have consistently based their opposition on their preference for a dictator we can control or contain at a much lower cost. From the start they said the price tag for creating an environment where democracy could take root in Iraq would be high. Those critics can go to sleep at night knowing they were right.

The critics who bother me the most are those who ordinarily would not be on the side of supporting dictatorships, who are arguing today that only military intervention can prevent the genocide of Darfur, or who argued yesterday for military intervention in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda to ease the sectarian violence that was tearing those places apart.

Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn’t you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage? I would.

A Kerrey critic:

In December 2003, an undeterred Kerrey claimed that he had been vindicated and Iraq war critics would ultimately be proven wrong. “Twenty years from now, we’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who says it wasn’t worth the effort,” he wrote.

Today, Bob Kerrey (D-NE), unrepentant over his failed Iraq war predictions, …

Maybe it’s me, but I count only four years (four very long years, that is) since the Iraq war started. Kerrey’s got 16 to go before he can be proved wrong—if you accept his premise.

The critic:

By staying in Iraq as an occupying force, the U.S. is helping inflame the terrorist movement.

Kerrey:

Those who argue that radical Islamic terrorism has arrived in Iraq because of the U.S.-led invasion are right. But they are right because radical Islam opposes democracy in Iraq. If our purpose had been to substitute a dictator who was more cooperative and supportive of the West, these groups wouldn’t have lasted a week.

Indeed.

They’re under-30 strongly partisan Dems with a big voice in the blogosphere and with a troubling inability to step outside their own shoes and their own cocoon. Plus, they know little about the world beyond. It makes them utterly blind to reality.

Case in point, MYDD’s Matt Stoller, who bases an entire argument for what Dems should hope for in Colorado on a pitiful lack of imagination.

I can’t find any Iraq polling that’s specific to Colorado, but I also can’t imagine that the Iraq war is very popular in Colorado.

He actually believes that Colorado, whose suburban population one of the most staid, conformist, and conservative in the nation, is fervently against the war.

What to they teach those young ‘uns at Harvard, anyway? Certainly, Stoller didn’t learn to think critically.

[NYT columnist Thomas] Friedman holds a special place in my development.  I took a class from him at college on ‘globalization’, and read most of his books.  In 2002, he and Ken Pollack were the two people that I relied on for guidance with regards to Iraq.  I trusted him.  I believed in him.  

Matt Stoller relied on the guidance of others before deciding where he stood on the war. That was his first mistake. Then he believed in Thomas Friedman. Why? He allowed his heart and mind to be won over to a hawkish position, and now he blames the believers who made him believe.

My mistake in looking at the Iraq war still pains me, and though I was a 24 year old kid with no experience in foreign policy or politics, my gullibility and the betrayal from my former guides still colors my thinking.  For someone like Friedman, who should know better and occupies the most valuable opinion space in the world, it’s stunningly immoral to pretend to having no responsibility in this quagmire.  All of us are responsible, and the first step is to admit error.  

Oh, you were only 24. That’s a great explanation.

Knock yourself out with the self-criticism, dude. The only people who care about it live alongside you in progressiveland.