Oi! Aaronovitch! No!
Dave has seen a book review in the Guardian he didn't like. Someone has used the occasion of a few historical novels about wars in the USA to have a few unrelated digs at the septics today. Dave has a go back at him, on the general topic of "they saved our asses in World War 2". But then he promises "more on this anon".
Please no, Dave, the world already has more than enough pieces of "this represents a tendency on the left" journalism and they are all terrible (read the last few months of Nick Cohen in the Staggers if you don't believe me, or for that matter Oliver Kamm's book). The vast current of the "anti-war left" do not oppose all wars ever, we didn't oppose the Iraq War because we hate Americans and we don't agree with your premis that democracy is being promoted. We can tell from the blog post what the general theme of "more anon" is going to be, so why not just take it as read, we will consider ourselves sternly admonished and there is no need to write the bloody thing, eh?
Please no, Dave, the world already has more than enough pieces of "this represents a tendency on the left" journalism and they are all terrible (read the last few months of Nick Cohen in the Staggers if you don't believe me, or for that matter Oliver Kamm's book). The vast current of the "anti-war left" do not oppose all wars ever, we didn't oppose the Iraq War because we hate Americans and we don't agree with your premis that democracy is being promoted. We can tell from the blog post what the general theme of "more anon" is going to be, so why not just take it as read, we will consider ourselves sternly admonished and there is no need to write the bloody thing, eh?
posted by The Rioja Kid at 1/29/2006 07:18:00 PM
6 Comments:
Are the Septics the opposite of the Decents?
septic tank = yank
I must learn how to read elementary English prose sometime. I'll put it down on my List of Things to Do.
You sure it's not a teaser trailer for his book?
Did DA check out this review by Peter Beaumont of three books on Iraq, including one by 'ambivalent' pro-war liberal George Packer. Try this for starters:
Packer uses the device of following the progress of a single figure as a motif of the book. That figure is Kanan Makiya, a friend of Packer and author of Republic of Fear, a reconstruction of the brutality of Saddam's regime, who emerges as a vain, egotistical figure with little knowledge of his own country, whose personality disintegrates in the face of the challenging realities of postwar Iraq.
But if Packer's ultimately critical assessment of his friend Makiya is undertaken with regretful sympathy, others - not least those senior figures in the administration and in the American armed forces - are utterly demolished. While he finds a tarnished and fated nobility in some despite their failings, in others he detects nothing but a dangerous, Panglossian folly.
Given that one of the other books is by Paul Bremer, Bush's man in Iraq, DA's going to have is work cut out refuting that lot.
"a, vain egotistical figure..."
and of course another example of our Nick's unerring nose for a dodgy source. Harry Fletcher sounds like a nice bloke, though.
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