Roger Cohen at The New York Times engages in a measured even a well reasoned Western indignation about the Paris attack, yet still expresses a newly invigorated War Fever, as a solution to the vexing problem of ISIS. Instead of the current restraint we should engage in scorched earth?
William Kristol at The Weekly Standard doesn’t actually write about Paris but quotes at length from Mark Steyn’s essay “The Barbarians Are Inside, And There Are No Gates.” And admonishes his readers to ‘Read, and re-read, the whole thing.’ Unlike Cohen, Steyn is a vulgarian whose essay is a collection of wise cracks, as might be said in another America era. The essay doesn’t have the high seriousness of Cohen’s war mongering but makes up for it with it’s pulp fiction toughness, and it’s unintentional comedy.
For an antidote to these two writers see Andrew J. Bacevich’s essay ‘A war the West cannot win’
See also Vijay Prashad essay ‘We are in pitiless times’:
https://opendemocracy.net/vijay-prashad/we-are-in-pitiless-times
Political Observer
StephenKMackSD's Blog 