Alkahest my heroes have always died at the end

September 17, 2006

i apparently picked the wrong profession

Filed under: Social — cec @ 1:51 pm

As I read the newspaper this morning, I came across Charles Krauthammer’s latest piece on how Iran is in the crosshairs of a U.S. decision. In the opinion piece, he lays out the costs of action and the costs of inaction and concludes that the U.S. has less than a year to decide how to handle Iran.

Leave aside the callousness of someone whose costs do not include tens or hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties. The thing that struck me most is why do we let this man write a column at all?! He been wrong about everything he’s written in the past five years. He’s been wrong about how to fight terrorism, he’s been wrong about the war in Iraq. He hasn’t gotten a thing right in all the years I’ve seen him in the paper.

If I was that wrong and that incompetent in my own job, my boss would have fired me by now. I know I work at a university, but we have this little thing called accountability and people who are consistantly wrong or consistantly fail to do their jobs properly get fired. Why can’t someone fire Krauthammer?

All credible sources tell us that Iran is a decade away from a nuclear weapon – assuming that it is pursuing one. It also doesn’t have a missile that can reach outside of the local region. Finally, it has not been demonstrated that Iran is in violtation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty which allows for the peaceful use of nuclear technology.

Given all of this, does Krauthammer have any reason for thinking that Iran is a serious threat in the next year? Only that he’s a warmongering loon. But apparently, if you are a columnist, that’s okay. Unlike those of us who work for a living, there is no accountability.

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