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DougJ: Just don’t tell me how the story ends

I hate to burden you with more Broder, but I honestly believe that you can hear a civilization—our civilization—crumbling when you read this:

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision—whether or not it is right.

I believe we should get the hell out of Afghanistan, the sooner the better. And I hope that is the decision that Obama arrives at, the sooner the better.

But to suggest that it is more important to make a quick decision than to make a correct decision, to suggest that an extra few weeks of reporters’ and civil servants’ time is more important than the the next six months of 40,000 American soldiers’ lives…the fact that a journalist can suggest this and still be taken seriously does not bode well for where we are headed as a country.

It’s all part of the cult of the “tough decision”, the “gut decision”. It’s easy to laugh at that. But I just don’t see all of this stupidity ending in anything other than collapse.

• Steve Benen adds:
  

  What a crock.

  I realize there's been a painful decline in the quality of Broder's analysis in recent years, but this column is a mess. He's effectively calling for President Obama to act and think more like President Bush -- make decisions first, and think through the consequences and implications second.

  Worse, Broder goes so far as to castigate the administration for "all this dithering" -- using Dick Cheney's preferred choice of words.

  The premise of the piece is that a decision is needed immediately. Where did this arbitrary deadline come from? Broder doesn't say; he just warns of the Taliban "coming back in Afghanistan," as if the Taliban hasn't already reclaimed much of the country.

  Thinking back, I don't recall Broder ever showing this kind of Afghanistan-related antagonism towards the Bush administration -- which was, not incidentally, the team that allowed Afghanistan to deteriorate, watched as hard-earned gains slipped away, and never bothered to craft a strategy for the future of U.S. policy in the country.

  Indeed, reading today's Broder piece I get the distinct impression that the columnist had lunch with John McCain at some point this week, and then rushed back to his desk to jot down the senator's criticism. That's a shame. Given the reality, Broder was facing an editorial deadline, and he decided the urgent necessity was to write a column -- whether or not it was right.

DougJ: Very serious people

NYT via Atrios:

Yet both Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney, Farmer says, provided palpably false versions that touted the military’s readiness to shoot down United 93 before it could hit Washington….Farmer’s verdict: “History should record that whether through unprecedented administrative incompetence or orchestrated mendacity, the American people were misled about the nation’s response to the 9/11 attacks.”

History’s verdict so far is that Dick Cheney should be given unlimited media time to air his lies.