Iraq War Critics: Mark Shields

A lot of younger activists may not fully appreciate the commentaries of Mark Shields. He's one of the best examples around of a combative New Deal type liberal: confident, combative, patriotic, pro-labor, anti-militarist and pragmatic. He's a partisan and a good journalist, a partisan with integrity.

One of Mark's gigs is the PBS Newshour, where he appears Friday nights on the weekly "political wrap" with conservative columnist David Brooks as his opposite number. On tonight's segment, Mark had the following to say about Bush and Rummy's grand little war in Mesopotamia (Jim Lehrer moderating):

Jim, what we are seeing this week in the administration is not a fine tuning of policy. What we're seeing is 180 degrees.

JIM LEHRER: Going to the U.N.

MARK SHIELDS: Going to the U.N.. we've seen men, Cheney, Wolfowitz, who have disparaged the French, condemned the Germans, who have said that the U.N. was worse than feckless, that it was counterproductive and even harmful. Now, I mean, just swallowing what is left of their pride and in tatters, a policy totally in tatters. 180-degree turn, saying we're going to the United Nations and [we're gonna] ask the French who we've called snooty, snotty, naive, patronizing, all those things. We are going to say please, put your troops in what John Edwards called a shooting gallery in Iraq and come back to the reality that after the United States, after World War II, rebuilt Japan, and there was not a single U.S. Company that got a contract. And, you know, Germans, the French, anybody else right now, I think have a legitimate concern. Say wait a minute, you're asking [us] to come in, put up our money, put our blood and our treasure on the line and for what? There is no piece of the action no, there's no control, no autonomy.

I couldn't have said it better myself. In fact, I've been trying to say it that well and haven't made it there yet. The whole segment is worth checking out.

- Bruce Miller

Tags: iraq war, mark shields