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September 24, 2007

Namely Oil

Now that we know George Bush and Karl Rove recently spent 45 minutes listening to Norman Podhoretz's views on Iran (kill! kill! kill!), it's worthwhile to remember this May 21, 2004 statement by Podhoretz's wife, author Midge Decter:

We're not in the middle east to bring sweetness and light to the whole world. That's nonsense. We're in the middle east because we and our European friends and our European non-friends depend on something that comes from the middle east, namely oil.

(You can listen to it yourself here at 35:55. Decter was appearing on KCRW's show To the Point.)

Bush gave Podhoretz the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2004. And he hired Elliot Abrams, Iran-contra criminal and Podhoretz and Decter's son-in-law, for his National Security Council staff. (Delightfully, Abrams' title is "Deputy National Security Adviser for Global Democracy Strategy." I understand the position was originally called Deputy National Security Adviser for Sweetness and Light.)

So Bush really digs this family. How strange that he loves hanging around with a clan whose matriarch he disagrees with so fundamentally.

BONUS: Just before her oil comment, Midge Decter said this about another guest who referred to neoconservatives as "Jacobins":

I'm with Bill Kristol here. You can put a name on it and make it a very unpleasant name. That's not the way to conduct an argument.

Yes, there's nothing neoconservatives hate more than the use of name-calling in political arguments. It's their absolute refusal to engage in it themselves that gives them their well-deserved reputation for intellectual integrity.

Posted at September 24, 2007 07:13 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Billy Kristol doesn't need to engage in nasty names exchanges...all he has to do is show that lunatic smile.

Posted by: bobbyp at September 25, 2007 12:14 AM

Envision this: The Oil Party (which has been allied with U.S. intelligence interests since Allen Dulles first met with King Saud) pulled off a coup in 1963 in Dallas. Since then they have been running this country. LBJ? Oil Party. Nixon? Oil Party? Ford, who sat on the Warren Commission? Oil Party. Carter? Don't know, but they pulled that October Surprise on him around the Iran hostage thing (oil!). Reagan-Bush was basically 12 years of BushCo I with an actor in front for the first 8 years. Clinton? Oil Party. A Demo who gave the oligarchy what they wanted but didn't publicly treat the poor with disdain. BushCo II is what we thought it was.

So what's next? Another dose of Clinton? Maybe an actor who'll transport us to the imaginary frontporch of yore where we can sit in a rocking chair, chew on a piece of straw while the country goes further into fascism.

Posted by: Bob In Pacifica at September 25, 2007 10:20 AM

And let us not neglect the Podster's son John and his provocative NY Sun musings, eg.

"What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn't kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn't the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?"

Posted by: Chak at September 26, 2007 02:38 PM

A paranoid anti-semite might think Decter would have reason to point to oil as a reason for destroying Iraq, rather any 'Clean Break'-type objectives.

Posted by: Mandible at September 26, 2007 02:51 PM

Should read 'rather than any'.

Posted by: Mandible at September 26, 2007 02:54 PM