August 08, 2007
David Rees on Michael Ignatieff
Via DeLong, David Rees in The Huffington Post, too funny, can't breathe...
Hello everyone! Personal message to all the New Yorkers out there: Did you read Michael Ignatieff's essay in the the NY Times Magazine? If so, contact me ASAP to let me know you're OK. I put your flyer up at Grand Central Station, but have heard no response.
Myself, I'm just making my way out of the debilitating Level-Five Mind Fog that came from reading the thing. Even my "Second Life avatar" has a headache! (Hey young people, did I get that right? Hope so! See you in "Warcraft Worlds!")
The essay is called "Getting Iraq Wrong." And baby, if Michael Ignatieff got Iraq wrong, I don't want him to be right! Because this essay can MAKE LEMONADE IN YOUR MIND.
I wrote a "cyber-essay" on the Huffington Post a couple years ago about Ignatieff. (Oh, sorry, you didn't know I blog on the Huffington Post? Yeah, not to brag or nothing, but I totally do. Also, my friend has a flickr.) My cyber-essay concerned itself with a masterpiece of foreign-policy fan fiction: Ignatieff's 2005 NY Times Magazine essay justifying the Iraq war. Ignatieff's essay was called "Let's All Fly Up In Space Together and Smoke Dope." (That was the vibe, anyway.)
In that 2005 essay, you'll recall, Ignatieff said the reason the American public wanted to invade Iraq was to spread "The Ultimate Task of Thomas Jefferson's Dream." (I am not making a joke. This is for real.) And, he implied, anyone who opposed the invasion of Iraq did so because they hated Thomas Jefferson-- and they didn't believe in the Ultimate Tasks of Dreams!
So far, so GREAT, right?
Ignatieff's latest essay is what Latin people call a "mea culpa," which is Greek for "Attention publishers: I am ready to write a book about the huge colossal mistake I made."
Posted by Robin Varghese at 04:46 PM | Permalink
Comments
I can't breathe either, Robin, but even in my hypoxic state I know that I must devote the rest of my life to being able to write like this, though I know I am doomed to a life of tears of clowns clouding my visions of the Tasks of the Dreams of Pervez Musharraf's poignant hopes for the glorious future of rational Afghanis...
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Aug 8, 2007 5:16:37 PM
Over and over one pundit writes about another pundit and on and on it goes....Ask not what the first guy said but rather what did you say, do, feel when the president asked Congress (and got) consent to invade Iraq...Better the guy says he was wrong than that he continues to believe in the mission as does our president, against all common sense.
Posted by: fred lapides | Aug 8, 2007 5:39:27 PM
"bong-poster koans"
LMAO
Rees for President!!!
Posted by: beajerry | Aug 9, 2007 10:03:25 AM
Once again you guys zero in on the best stuff on the Intertubes. How do you do it?
I can only add that, as many commentators on the Ignatieff essay have pointed out, plenty of "academics" knew that the Iraq war would be a disaster before it started, and they knew pretty much what kind of disaster it would be. But they were "academics" who knew something about Iraq, unlike our boy Mike I.
Posted by: JonJ | Aug 9, 2007 10:13:10 AM
truly hilarious, thanks. how did ignatieff do when he split home to canada to run for presidential elections? (he lost, i know, but was there any icarus humor in the fall?)
Posted by: ed rackley | Aug 13, 2007 11:37:23 PM
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