“It’s Wrong To Say It”
by digby
So I see that Joe Klein is going on television and regurgitating halfway digested cocktail party chatter again. He doesn’t seem to have a basic understanding of what kinds of things you can “say outloud” and what kinds of things you can’t. It’s a continuing problem for him.
On the Chris Matthews Show yesterday, Time magazine senior writer Joe Klein said of Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) support for setting a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq: “That may well be true, but it’s wrong to say it.”
Apparently Klein overlearned his lesson from earlier this year when he blurted out that a nuclear first strike should be on the table.
A few weeks ago, I made a mistake while bloviating on the Sunday morning television program This Week With George Stephanopoulos. I said that all military options, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, should remain on the table in our future dealings with Iran. I was wrong on three counts.
First, my words were a technical violation of a long-standing protocol: A diplomat friend tells me that while it is appropriate to say, “All options should remain on the table,” the direct mention of nukes — especially any hint of the first use of nukes — is, as Stephanopoulos correctly said, “crossing a line.” If George had asked, “What about nukes?” the diplomatic protocol would have been to tapdance: “I can’t imagine ever having to use nuclear weapons,” or some such, leaving the nuclear door open, but never saying so specifically. In truth, I was trying to make the same point, undiplomatically — which comes easy for me: If the Iranians persist in crazy talk about wiping Israel, or New York, off the face of the earth, it isn’t a bad idea if we hint that we can get crazy, too. One can easily imagine the unthinkable: a suitcase nuclear weapon, acquired from the former Soviet Union by Iranian agents, detonated in New York, London or Tel Aviv. A nuclear response certainly would have to be on the table then — and the military would be negligent if it weren’t studying all possible nuclear scenarios.
Klein seems to have difficulty understanding why people should say certain things publicly and why they shouldn’t. Speaking casually about pre-emptive nuclear strikes and how we need to make other countries think we are crazy is not a bad idea because it is impolitic — it’s a bad idea because it is immoral and unthinkable and invites the world to loathe, shun and band together to oppose us as a rogue superpower. The Bush administration and all the perpetually wrong pundits like Klein seem to truly believe this playground logic that says unless the world thinks we are insane they will not respect us. (I can only speculate about the psychological factors that lead to such an absurd conclusion.)
Withdrawing from Iraq, on the other hand, is a serious policy discussion which must be imposed on the administration and discussed publicly because they have given the nation no reason to believe they will do anything reasonable unless they are forced to do so. In fact, they seem intent upon going “full steam ahead” no matter what the people think, so in this case it is in our best interests to let the Iraqis and the world know — outside the official White House policy — that Americans favor withdrawal. Bush’s resolute idiocy has put the country in this unfortunate position.
Klein had to be schooled about why it’s a bad idea to advocate for a first strike and now he’s saying that everyone should keep mum about timed withdrawal in the face of a president who insists that he will stay the course till doomsday. Clearly, hanging around with fellow social conservatives Hugh Hewitt and Bill Bennet has taken its toll on his ability to reason. That’ll happen.
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