Monday, July 17, 2006

Glen Reynolds accused of "Water Sports" by Greg Djerejian in his latest Dispatch. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Andrew Sullivan links to a Belgravia Dispatch from Greg Djerejian, "a conservative of the reality-based variety," who criticizes Instapundit Glen Reynolds on a variety of fronts without offering much rebuttal or citation.

What to make of Djerejian's unhinged criticism? For example, Djerejian criticizes Reynolds' "repetitive primitive attacks on the 'Yale Taliban,'" without providing one link (either to an Instapundit post or one reflecting his own "correct" view of the situation).

Next, Djerejian takes on Instapundit foreign policy (again without a link), by simply dismissing Reynolds' worldview as "a breathtakingly naive Jacksonianism, fused with some soi disant neo-conservative gloss." Here, Djerejian, like Sullivan, tends to wax philosophical exactly when the debate keys on the consequences of more mudane decisions like troop strength, combat effectiveness, interrogation and detention policy.

Worse, Djerejian accuses Reynolds of, ahem, playing "water sports" (not that there's anything wrong with that), by
routinely piss[ing] on people who have loyally served their country (see Generals Batiste and Swannack, for the most damning examples), if they dare to point out what is blindingly obvious to all but the residual denialist fringe of bloggers and columnists--who still believe our war strategy was basically sound in Iraq--rather than an epic blunder (at least to date).
No debate or documentation of the slur needed for Djerejian. Never mind whether, logically or metaphysically, there can be an "epic blunder" to date (since he hedges with the possibility that the "blunder" may indeed prove to be a predicate to success). Again, Djerejian fails to link to a single post. When I used the Instapundit search to look up the names of the two alleged "pissed on" patriots, I found nothing. No puddle.
In fact, the only link Djerejian does provide in his post is Reynolds' "approving" link to Tammy Bruce, a "risibly under-informed blather-mouth" who above all had the audacity to not be known before to Djerejian. Djerejian focuses on one facet of Bruce's criticism relating to Tony Blair's comments when in fact her piece, as titled, was a much wider roundup of the "World's Selective Criticism of Israel." Djerejian doesn't rebut her point by a link to Blair's balanced criticism of Palestinian terrorists. Instead, Djerejian completely misrepresents Bruce's argument that "[t]his is a world, after all, that proves time and time again that they think nothing is worth fighting for," by attributing her belief about that complacency (rather than selective criticism of Israel) to Blair rather than other world leaders.

Worse, Djerejian seems to conflate the interests of the US and Israel (neo-cons call your office!) when he says in this context "We've had no better friend than Tony Blair these past years." Oy vey!

I agree with Djerejian on one point. "People have to get their head out of their asses, frankly, and get some perspective. Seriously."

UPDATE: Sure enough, Instapundit never did criticize, much less "piss on," Generals Batiste and Swannack, but he did link, with the comment "Ouch," to Judith Apter Klinghoffer. A Rumsfeld detractor no less, she did criticize former generals, none of them by name, who would "whine" to the press from retirement about being intimidated by Rumsfeld. Again, whine but no piss. Reynolds' extended post speaks for itself and Djerejian's animus.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lefties done gone crazy.

There that was was my insight into this moment, which seemes to bring news of bizzare outbrakes from left leaning blogs lately. Something in the water? Phase of the moon? Pure random chance? Dunno.

2:03 AM  

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