Jack Shafer, immortal moron, and our last twenty years

 I have a long memory for stupid media. Luckily, in the 2000-2003 period, it was all gathered together in one place: Slate! Today, let us celebrate Jack Shafer. Frankly, Shafer is an idiot and a valient member of the uncancelable media club. He goes from place to place within the DC circuit, always wrong, always smug, always promoted.

In 2003, Shafer presented his own greatest hits as he lambasted a much better reporter, Johnny Apple of the NYT. Johnny Apple had the unpatriotic instinct that the Afghanistan war fought in 2001 was going to lead to quagmire. The heresy! As Shafer unforgettably put it, Apple's view was"

"The United States has bitten off more than it can chew; the allied war effort is underpowered; we’ve underestimated the enemy—again!; air power is overrated; and guerrillas can do U.S. forces great damage as they did in Vietnam."

As Shafer contemptuously showed, what rot!

"Apple’s fear that dropping bombs on civilians wouldn’t “win Afghan ‘hearts and minds’ ” and that the country would prove ungovernable even if the United States won turned out to be unfounded. Two weeks after his comparison of Afghanistan to Vietnam, the allies liberated Kabul, and 16 months later the place is at least as governable as San Francisco.""

Ah, the things they said at the beginning of this century! The things they did! The fan club for the utter shit of the Bush foreign policy, the moronic smugness that would result in a sentence like: "the place is at least as governable as San Francisco." But fear not, failing upwards is the one iron rule of punditry. And when that rule is attacked, letters are written to Harper's magazine about how the entire freedom of expression is under attack!

I laugh until I want to vomit about the waste of the last twenty years.