Witness to Hopelessness

New at Reason: Cathy Young finds plenty of reasons to worry about the War On Terror.

Comments

[Mitch]

Fyodor,

Yeah, in the same way Bonaparte and Hitler invaded Russia in hopes of having their armies destroyed.

[Thorley Winston]

Normally, I love reading Cathy Young, but that was one lame-o article. I wonder if all the genetically modified products in the food chain have affected her reasoning skills.

I cannot think of the last time I read anything she wrote which was enjoyable. This last column was utterly lacking in any substance and seemed to spout the usual ?if you criticize the president they call you ?unpatriotic?? clich?s and made only the most obvious of observations (?danger of radical Islamic terrorism remains high? ? you don?t say!).

Seriously, I think it?s time for reason either to consider replacing some of their columnists or actually hire someone to edit them for content ? as in requiring their writers to actually include some in their articles.

[Anonymous]

Right, it's everyone else's responsibility to make sure that Thorley never has to do his own editing.

"why is it worse to have terrorists in Iraq, where our troops have free rein and can hunt them down,"

Yeah, we did a fine job on that UN building blow up thing. The US doesn't give a shit about the UN (which is one thing I agree with), so terrorism toward the UN rates pretty low on our priorities. That one incident alone makes it clear that even where the US defense department has free reign, it can't stop everything. So we can at least ask the administration to cut the bullshit that we won't rest until terrorists are eliminated completely, 'cause it'll never happen.

[Beaner Babe]

Wasn't that a Boston Globe column?

[Citizen]

Gee, I hope Cathy doesn't read H&R and take it too personally.

[Justin Raimondo]

Cathy Young is even worse than Matt Welch.

[Anonymous]

Like Matt, her brain is obviouslly controlled by the neocons. Still...unlike another shitty columnist I know, she doens't troll thousands of blogs to post stupid, pointless comments.

[Warren]

I too find Ms. Young regularly dissappointing.

[Anonymous]

Least substantial article EVER.

Nobody knows anything and everyone's scared. How insightful is that?

At least there was the Fouad Adjami link.

[Mitch]

Ms. Young writes:

"At the same time, it now seems clear that the regime's downfall and the ensuing chaos in Iraq have turned that country into more of a breeding ground for militant Islamic terrorists than it was before, with fanatics from Saudi Arabia and other countries crossing the borders into Iraq to conduct their activities from there."

For one thing, if the fanatics are crossing the border into Iraq that doesn't make Iraq a breeding ground; they were "bred" where they came from. More importantly, why is it worse to have terrorists in Iraq, where our troops have free rein and can hunt them down, instead of in Saudi and Iran (or wherever) where our troops do not have as much ability to discover and kill or capture them?

[fyodor]

So Mitch, you think terrorists are crossing into Iraq in order to increase their chances of getting caught?

[Bob]

Normally, I love reading Cathy Young, but that was one lame-o article. I wonder if all the genetically modified products in the food chain have affected her reasoning skills.

[Anonymous]

I'm a little tired of reading things like "the cultural climate in which criticism of the administration's policies is often branded unpatriotic." *Often*? Please. The ratio of criticism actually being "branded unpatriotic" to writers reaching for the easy cliche that "criticism is branded as unpatriotic" is about 1:50.

[Anonymous]

If you're "tired of reading..."- stop reading.

Moron.