I was chatting with a friend about the relentless, one-sided hawkishness on display yesterday on the morning chat shows, and he responded:
The recurring “stay tuned for” loop are clips of McCain (“We never should have left”), Graham (“ISIS no longer JV”), Ryan (“What’s the president’s plan for eradicating ISIS?”). Over and over again. Nowhere are clips of people urging caution or restraint. War is great news, is action, is drama. Whether consciously or not, the media simply drives inevitably to pushing for a clash.
It’s really beyond belief. Israel invades Lebanon and gets Hezbollah out of the deal. We arm the mujahideen and get the Taliban and Al Qaeda out of the deal. We depose Saddam Hussein and play kingmaker with Nouri al-Maliki, and we get ISIS out of the deal. But hey—this time is different. Really. This time we’ll be done once and for all if we just go in and spend a decade wiping the theocratic butchers of ISIS off the map. This time there won’t be any blowback. This time we’ll fix the Middle East once and for all. This time things can’t possibly get any worse. Right?
Of course, the hawks always have Munich, don’t they? Always Munich. And so we need to fight. We need troops. We need leadership. And no one with political aspirations really wants to argue the point. There’s no future in siding with the thugs, is there?
Besides, maybe this time really is different.
