Robert Novak is an ass
Dec. 14th, 2008 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumThis is in addition to his being either a blatant liar, or unbelievably stupid. I don’t rule out the two being co-incident, but all things being equal, the level of stupidity required to believe the things he’s been saying about his role in L’affaire Plame.
See, either he didn’t think he was being told the truth (about her being a covert agent), in which case why write a lie?, or he did, and for reasons of partisanship he elected to risk national interests for some petty politics.
So he outed her, destroyed a network which had taken years to set up, and quite possibly compromised several other NOC agents; as well as putting unknown numbers of people, both those who were collaborating with us, and those innocent of any such activities, at risk of their lives. Some probably were killed.
Those just make him an asshole. A pathetic shit who doesn’t care about his country, just who runs it. A couple of ago he raised (perhaps lowered is a better term) the bar on how low one can go in rationalizing away betrayal of nation, and blatant lack of principle (the other possibility, perhaps more correct, is that he’s a hypocritical weasel who doesn’t care who knows it, because he’s never had to pay a price for his actions).
When he was asked if he would, knowing what he knows now, do things differently, he said, I’d go full speed ahead because of the hateful and beastly way in which my left-wing critics in the press and Congress tried to make a political affair out of it and tried to ruin me.
Got that, he’d do it again, not because it serves the national interest, not because it was true, not because of any objective thing about the story, but because after he did it; after it became apparent to people like me that he might have actually done damage to worth intelligence collection activities. After he put an agent in fear of her life, and that of her family. After he did those things, some people were mean to him.
People, God forbid, treated him as he, and his fellows treated them when they revealed things like Abu Ghraib. And because they were mean to him, after he did such things, he would do it again.
The logic is stunning. All he had to do to avoid that sort of treatment was not out a CIA agent, compromise the programs she was working on, and make it harder to reduce the spread of nuclear materials and weapons to proliferate in the Middle East.
But, because by doing such things he was criticised... well by God, he’s not gonna refrain from doing the same thing in the future.
That’s what makes him an ass.
See, either he didn’t think he was being told the truth (about her being a covert agent), in which case why write a lie?, or he did, and for reasons of partisanship he elected to risk national interests for some petty politics.
So he outed her, destroyed a network which had taken years to set up, and quite possibly compromised several other NOC agents; as well as putting unknown numbers of people, both those who were collaborating with us, and those innocent of any such activities, at risk of their lives. Some probably were killed.
Those just make him an asshole. A pathetic shit who doesn’t care about his country, just who runs it. A couple of ago he raised (perhaps lowered is a better term) the bar on how low one can go in rationalizing away betrayal of nation, and blatant lack of principle (the other possibility, perhaps more correct, is that he’s a hypocritical weasel who doesn’t care who knows it, because he’s never had to pay a price for his actions).
When he was asked if he would, knowing what he knows now, do things differently, he said, I’d go full speed ahead because of the hateful and beastly way in which my left-wing critics in the press and Congress tried to make a political affair out of it and tried to ruin me.
Got that, he’d do it again, not because it serves the national interest, not because it was true, not because of any objective thing about the story, but because after he did it; after it became apparent to people like me that he might have actually done damage to worth intelligence collection activities. After he put an agent in fear of her life, and that of her family. After he did those things, some people were mean to him.
People, God forbid, treated him as he, and his fellows treated them when they revealed things like Abu Ghraib. And because they were mean to him, after he did such things, he would do it again.
The logic is stunning. All he had to do to avoid that sort of treatment was not out a CIA agent, compromise the programs she was working on, and make it harder to reduce the spread of nuclear materials and weapons to proliferate in the Middle East.
But, because by doing such things he was criticised... well by God, he’s not gonna refrain from doing the same thing in the future.
That’s what makes him an ass.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 10:43 pm (UTC)It's possible that I'm just using this as a Smear Word, applying it to people who merely have priorities so different from mine that I find them reprehensible, but I wouldn't be surprised if psychiatrists developed and adopted that word to describe a mental condition that involves having certain priorities that they and most people consider reprehensible.
I don't think Mr. Novak is remarkably unusual in this. At least three prominent Republican/Conservative Pundits have calmly expressed the idea that if the Democrats were to come up with a good Universal Health Care program, and get it enacted, it would make them so popular among the American People that their Party would be returned to power for at least several decades. Therefor, in self-defense, the Republican Party must assure that such a program is not enacted. This idea -- that the Party (& its ideology) is more important than the well-being of the American People -- strikes me as being so Wrong as to be ... unsane, at best.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-15 01:54 am (UTC)And it occurs to me that I haven't heard much (or anything) from him in the last few years. I don't know if that's because I've been avoiding the places where such like he hangs out, or if his livelihood has been curtailed, but I hope its the latter.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-15 01:57 am (UTC)Novak
Date: 2008-12-15 07:47 am (UTC)There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave to tell us this.
As I've said before, I hope Bob Novak gets the shit kicked out of him by Sherman Alexie, Graham Greene, and Billy Frank, Jr., in a dark alley somewhere, I really do...
no subject
Date: 2008-12-21 05:01 am (UTC)Clapping wildly. Thank you. Totally agree.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-21 05:02 am (UTC)For John -- clapping equally wildly.
Re: Novak
Date: 2008-12-21 05:04 am (UTC)can i get a piece of that action?
Do i have to pay?
Can i use my CC'd?
Can we film it for a Comedy Central Roast of the GOP?