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August 25, 2005
The Politics of Moving Goal Posts
Whilst commenting on Redstate.org in a thread dealing with the reporting on the pending Iraqi constitution, "streiff" responds to a poster who says that the new Iraqi government doesn't look like it will be better than the previous one, by the poster's definition of "better".
This is just another instance of the dynamic moving of goalposts.First, we couldn't handle the heat of an Iraqi summer.
Then, Baghdad was Stalingrad on the Euphrates.
Then, civil war was imminent.
Then, no one would participate in the January election.
Then, no constitution would ever be drafted.
Now, the constitution isn't good enough.
Coming soon, no one will vote in the October electin [sic]; no one will vote in the December elections.
Eventually they'll move the goalposts far enough that they can declare we've been defeated and hopefully go home and leave the rest of us alone.
Good point. Virtually every prediction by the Left on the war in Iraq has been proven wrong, and as each one topples they've quickly built another one further downfield.
The topic that generated this thread noted that the NY Times praised the Afghan constitution but has deplored an almost identical one coming out of Iraq, so the "objectivity" of the Times comes into question here as well. Given virtually identical situations, they praise one and condemn the other. Why? Pure politics. "Good" is only good if we wanted it that way. They didn't object to the Afghanistan war, so the outcome is good. They did oppose the Iraq war, so the identical outcome is bad.
Politics appears to be the sole informer of their opinions. If they didn't agree politically with the conditions that brought it about, then they say the outcome is bad. How childish! Then they couch that opinion in language to suggest that the outcome itself is inherently bad, so as to cover up their real motivation. And they're betting on the short attention span of liberals.
Unfortunately, there are those with a little longer memories. Welcome to the Age of Blogs.
If you still had any shred of respect for the NY Times editorial page, I do hope you'll seriously reconsider.
Posted by Doug at August 25, 2005 01:26 PM