Reality, Substance, and the Right

The McGovern/Rumsfeld flap is turning out to be really interesting, not because someone stuck it to a liar (although in this day of tame news and administration Newspeak, that's noteworthy), but because the degree of reality in the responses from the right is nonexistent.

Jeff Goldstein, at Protein Wisdom, takes Andrew Sullivan to task for this post. True, it's a pathetic post, but Goldstein's agenda is not about Sullivan -- it's about discrediting McGovern. (Tbogg pretty much summarizes my feelings about Goldstein's comments.) He's bought and paid for the "McGovern is a nutfudge" mantra coming from such rational and impartial observers as Allahpundit, at Hot Air (and the name says enough, I think). This post, by the way, if full of conspiracy theories to explain the basis of McGovern's conspiracy theories (of which I've seen no firm evidence). Jacob Laksin, at Front Page, has the most clearly articulated version of this particular swiftboat episode -- unfortunately built on air. (And short on quotes, long on interpretation.) Of course, Little Green Footballs is in on the act, but I don't link to hate sites, so you'll have to find their comments yourself. (Oh, and Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit, dutifully provides his support to the smear, with links). The one unifying factor, aside from the lockstep "save the chief" attitude, is projection: there's a lot of attacks against what they wish he had said. (Formally, a straw man argument.)

This all comes from the fact that McGovern noted once upon a time that our Middle East policy is inextricably entwined with Israel's foreign policy. Let's face it, the neocons in the DoD are so tied up with Israel that they've lost any sort of realistic perspective on the Middle East. Sure, it's in our interests to have Israel as a strong pro-West anchor in the Middle East, at least on the face of it. (And this holds true even though the USSR is history -- China, in particular, would love to have more influence in that area, for the same reasons we do.) That doesn't mean that our interests and Israel's interests are identical, or that Israel is always right. I'm not saying cut Israel loose, but there are a lot of other countries there. We had, in the last two decades of the twentieth century, some success with diplomacy in defusing some of the tensions and actually making some progress toward peace. In the last five years, we've managed to increase tensions in the region, turned Iran from a potential partner into an enemy, destroyed one of the two secular states in the region (the other being Turkey, which is now pretty nervous about the Kurds; granted that Saddam was a nightmare, but we really screwed up that whole operation), and have basically thrown away whatever diplomatic leverage we had. (The current state of affairs in Palestine doesn't really seem to have much to do with any of our efforts, and probably would have happened no matter what band of goons was in power in Washington.) Calling attention to all this does not make McGovern a loon, or even antisemitic. I don't see that he ever said that we were Israel's cat's-paw (although the degree of ineptitude shown in the whole lead-in to the Iraq debacle could certainly give that idea some credibility). Israel is such a kneejerk item among the neocons, however, and antisemitism such a raw nerve in the US in general, that it's pathetically easy to play that card without anyone looking past the hand on the table.

What it boils down to is same-old-same-old: McGovern attacked Rumsfeld's veracity (and Rumsfeld lied again in his response). The approved response is not to deal with the substance of the attack itself, but to smear McGovern.

Bring in the clowns.