13 October 2001

Anthony Lewis Unrepentant

Lately, the NY Times has been in a quandary. Its snide intellectual criticism of all things conservative -- and certainly all things related to the Bush Presidency -- have lost virtually all salience following the 11 September terrorist attacks and Bush's overwhelmingly high approval ratings, and the paper has retreated somewhat from its modus operandi.

But Anthony Lewis (who is very much like Strobe Talbott, in that virtually everything he's ever written on foreign policy has turned out to be wrong) today points the way for what will likely begin to resonate in the NY Times and other elite liberal publications: the claim that they were right all along, and now Mr. Bush's actions offer proof!

Lewis is more snide, and more fashionably "intellectual," than most liberals, and for that reason the NY Times is a good home for him. Note the pompous self-importance of the following:

Political leaders do not usually find it easy to change their positions. I think Mr. Bush deserves great credit for abandoning ideological postures when they did not meet the test of reality. He has learned, and it shows.

That is to say, "we" (Mr. Lewis and his friends at the NY Times) were right all along, and the country bumpkin from backwards Texas deserves credit for seeing it "our" way now.

What precisely is their way? It seems to boil down to "multilateralism" for Mr. Lewis. Because President Bush has assembled a coalition to fight terrorism, according to Mr. Lewis, he is now a multilateralist, which is far preferable to his previous "ideological postures." Mr. Lewis even entertains the fanciful notion, in his final paragraph, that Mr. Bush might wish to pursue a truly international court trial to pass judgment on terrorists!

Strangely, the President Bush I have been observing does not seem to be the "West Wing" multilateral liberal constructed by Mr. Lewis. Recall that Kofi Annan immediately proposed just the sort of "multilateral" approach to terrorism favored by Mr. Lewis in his final paragraph, something the Bush Administration dismissed without argument. Further, recall that the Bush Administration initially set unilateral (i.e. neither our allies nor our foes had a "vote") conditions for the Taliban, which were rejected out of hand by the Taliban. Shortly thereafter, aircraft flying a U.S. (not U.N.) flag began dropping bombs; the reliable Brits also helped out. Certainly, the U.S. has attempted to engage allies in support of the operation in Afghanistan even while indicating we will go it alone necessary. THAT certainly is not the style of multilateralism advocated by the NY Times in recent years! So what is Mr. Lewis really trying to say?

Mr. Lewis is much too intelligent to believe that Mr. Bush has become the sort of liberal multilateralist -- the kind that defers to the U.N and the Europeans and every squishy contingent on the face of the earth -- that the NY Times prefers. But this is a time when direct attacks on the U.S. President have not found much favor among the American people, or even among many liberals. Desperate times call for desperate measures -- so Mr. Lewis has written what is actually typically snide criticism of the U.S. President in the form of praise. It would be pitiful if it weren't so predictable.

Count Anthony Lewis among those (Jerry Falwell, Susan Sontag, Bill Maher, even Strobe Talbott) whose true colors always come shining through.

[Posted @ 01:01 PM CST]