A serious question: When did the New York Times editorial board decide it doesn't give a @#%$ about quality?
Andrew Rosenthal et al. began February with Adam B. Lowther's bizarre argument that Iran getting the bomb wouldn't be such a bad thing. For those of you that missed it, Lowther lists five potential benefits that include Israel and Palestine getting serious about a peace deal, helping the US break OPEC, and forcing Arab states to pay for the "War on Terror." (Stephen Walt has the unnecessary full take-down here.) It's almost as if the editorial board felt bad for making the Iran hawks look stupid by publishing Alan Kuperman's ludicrous Iran invasion plan back in December and decided to right the wrong by publishing something equally stupid from the other side.
This week the bizarro NYT Op-Ed page got even worse with the publication of Lara M. Dadkhah's views on why we need more civilian casualties in Afghanistan. The piece is an annoying combination of callous bravado and complete naivete:
"So in a modern refashioning of the obvious — that war is harmful to civilian populations — the United States military has begun basing doctrine on the premise that dead civilians are harmful to the conduct of war. The trouble is, no past war has ever supplied compelling proof of that claim."
You know those tough dudes at college who love 24, sleep with a copy of The Prince under their pillow and won't stop taking your ear off about how although Hitler was a sicko but he certainly knew how to motivate people? Something tells Dadkhah was/is one of those people.
To the point that civilian casualties historical haven't been an issue, um... remember the last time a superpower tried to invade Afghanistan? Thankfully Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova over at Newsweek do:
More after the jump --->
Andrew Rosenthal et al. began February with Adam B. Lowther's bizarre argument that Iran getting the bomb wouldn't be such a bad thing. For those of you that missed it, Lowther lists five potential benefits that include Israel and Palestine getting serious about a peace deal, helping the US break OPEC, and forcing Arab states to pay for the "War on Terror." (Stephen Walt has the unnecessary full take-down here.) It's almost as if the editorial board felt bad for making the Iran hawks look stupid by publishing Alan Kuperman's ludicrous Iran invasion plan back in December and decided to right the wrong by publishing something equally stupid from the other side.
This week the bizarro NYT Op-Ed page got even worse with the publication of Lara M. Dadkhah's views on why we need more civilian casualties in Afghanistan. The piece is an annoying combination of callous bravado and complete naivete:
"So in a modern refashioning of the obvious — that war is harmful to civilian populations — the United States military has begun basing doctrine on the premise that dead civilians are harmful to the conduct of war. The trouble is, no past war has ever supplied compelling proof of that claim."
You know those tough dudes at college who love 24, sleep with a copy of The Prince under their pillow and won't stop taking your ear off about how although Hitler was a sicko but he certainly knew how to motivate people? Something tells Dadkhah was/is one of those people.
To the point that civilian casualties historical haven't been an issue, um... remember the last time a superpower tried to invade Afghanistan? Thankfully Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova over at Newsweek do:
More after the jump --->
"NATO is proving better at learning from Moscow's mistakes than the Soviets were. Take civilian casualties. Initial military victory came almost effortlessly for both the Soviets and NATO. But both powers soon stepped on the same rake: losing hearts and minds by accidentally hitting civilian targets. Yermakov recalls ordering his troops to mine the irrigation channels around the town of Gardez in 1983.
Many dushmany (a pejorative local term for the mujahedin) were blown up, but so were channels essential for local farmers. "At one point our aviation destroyed half of Kandahar because somebody did not get the right instructions," says Alexander Shkirando, a fluent Pashto and Farsi speaker who spent 10 years in Afghanistan in the 1980s as a political and military adviser. NATO has made similar blunders—notably two bombings of wedding parties in Kunduz and Uruzgan—but on nothing like the same scale. The exact number of Afghan civilian casualties during the Soviet campaign is hard to come by, but estimates range from 700,000 to more than a million. According to the United Nations, combined civilian deaths directly and indirectly caused by the latest war range from 12,000 to 30,000."
Dadkhah's point is that America's counter insurgency efforts are hampered the limits Gen. McChrystal has placed on air strikes is valid. There are legitimate arguments to be made for increasing the role of air power in America's counter insurgency efforts but Dadkhah's stupidity completely obscures this debate. (For a more serious discussion check out this summary of a conference on the topic held at the Kennedy School.)
Three things these two Op-Eds have in common:
1. They are incredibly bad
2. The authors are nobodies
3. And the NYT editorial board thought they they are important for national debate.
I'm all for challenging perspectives and contrarianism, but there is a point at which you just through your hands up and go "this doesn't even make sense anymore." As Daniel Drezner notes, just because you trying to go against the grain doesn't necessarily mean you are right. Rosenthal et al. aren't doing anyone a favor by giving this absolute rubbish legitimacy.
-Evan
Many dushmany (a pejorative local term for the mujahedin) were blown up, but so were channels essential for local farmers. "At one point our aviation destroyed half of Kandahar because somebody did not get the right instructions," says Alexander Shkirando, a fluent Pashto and Farsi speaker who spent 10 years in Afghanistan in the 1980s as a political and military adviser. NATO has made similar blunders—notably two bombings of wedding parties in Kunduz and Uruzgan—but on nothing like the same scale. The exact number of Afghan civilian casualties during the Soviet campaign is hard to come by, but estimates range from 700,000 to more than a million. According to the United Nations, combined civilian deaths directly and indirectly caused by the latest war range from 12,000 to 30,000."
Dadkhah's point is that America's counter insurgency efforts are hampered the limits Gen. McChrystal has placed on air strikes is valid. There are legitimate arguments to be made for increasing the role of air power in America's counter insurgency efforts but Dadkhah's stupidity completely obscures this debate. (For a more serious discussion check out this summary of a conference on the topic held at the Kennedy School.)
Three things these two Op-Eds have in common:
1. They are incredibly bad
2. The authors are nobodies
3. And the NYT editorial board thought they they are important for national debate.
I'm all for challenging perspectives and contrarianism, but there is a point at which you just through your hands up and go "this doesn't even make sense anymore." As Daniel Drezner notes, just because you trying to go against the grain doesn't necessarily mean you are right. Rosenthal et al. aren't doing anyone a favor by giving this absolute rubbish legitimacy.
-Evan
Comments
Leave a Reply
Loading
