Starsky & Hutch Take Libya

Here's an interesting bit of journalistic hocus-pocus from last night's Jon Stewart show. I'm labeling Stewart's comedy shtick as "journalism" because it is journalism to the hipper members of the American left since Stewart is popularly viewed as someone willing to "speak truth to power." Whatever the fuck that mouthful actually means in real terms is infinitely debatable.

Personally, I see Stewart as the anti-Beck. Or maybe Glenn Beck is the anti-Stewart. Either way, they feed at the same media trough, and they've both grown quite wealthy spoon feeding Americans the preformed opinions they crave like smack.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Mansour O. El-Kikhia
www.thedailyshow.com
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What I found interesting is how easily Stewart slips back into the "US as world cop" obfuscation.
This hunk of moldy dogshit has been painted on every boot heel we've stomped in someone else's chest since about the dawn of forever.

Tonight, Stewart followed with much of the same as he defended Obama's "why we're bombing Libya" speech as a less bullshit laden version of every president's need to balance "national interest" with "humanitarian concern."

It seems that even truth speakers like Stewart have their secret little hard-ons for a good bloodbath.

What I really found most disturbing about the little exchange above is Professor
El-Kikhia's cavalier dismissal of "nation-states" coupled with his call for Obama to
"take a stance in changing the world order."
How this differs from the neo-con agenda entirely escapes me.

Probably because it doesn't.

But Stewart, truth speaker to the powerful that he is, couldn't let that little canard fly free. He had to skewer it with that razor like intellect liberal America so loves to love.
My favorite part has to be this bit:

"The humanitarian goal of America to save people from despots is a righteous one but...do we have anymore the power, the capability, to go into these places, change the regimes, stay there and rebuild the country that we have disassembled...I don't know that that's feasible."

The professor responds, then Stewart goes on to say:

"So you believe in the leadership of the United States...the problem is our competing interests. The Chinese & Russia, they are very strategic in how...sure we can keep taking the lead, and they will keep taking the proceeds from that & not putting anything in."

I think we have, in a nutshell, Jon Stewart's entire quibble with the US military/industrial/cineplex...

Utterly fucking amazing.

Stewart, not content sounding like a complete buffoon, also goes on to alter history back to pre-GW status by saying this about the Soviet Union's foray into Afghanistan:

"Okay, Russia invades Afghanistan. We go in & we arm the rebels there, and they repel a Russian invasion there against all odds, and we think, 'What a remarkable thing we've done,' and those rebels become the Taliban & Osama bin Laden."

Do you see why Stewart is the anti-Beck?
If not, maybe the phrase "good cop/bad cop" will jog something loose.

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76

Of course, the above quote from ol' ZEE BEE is old baggage from The Bush Years: Liberal Internet Blogger Edition. I'd bet money that Stewart even covered it at some point.

But that was then



While this is now:

"The liberal class played the same function during the war in Vietnam. War becomes a necessary evil. The rhetoric of the liberal class, however, mocks the brutal reality of war. Most liberals have never been in combat. Their children rarely serve in the military. They neither know nor understand the destructive power of modern weaponry or the propensity on the part of armed combatants, whose fear and paranoia are raised to a fever pitch, to shoot any person, armed or unarmed, or obliterate whole villages in air strikes, if they feel threatened."
Chris Hedges