Good Guy veteran/lawyer Phil Carter moves his blog into the Washington Post site. It’s well-deserved good news for him and for us in the reading public. While Phil’s certainly a mainstream liberal – I always wish for more iconoclastic views – he’s a million times better than Arkin.
Congrats to the Post for landing him, and to Phil for continuing to be someone I learn from constantly.
Iconoclastic? Which “icons” should he be smashing?
Carter has two tours in Iraq, I believe, and mostly writes on law and national security issues.
His writings on national security are always grounded in experience, which I guess prevents the flights of fantasy you find around here.
And he’s really for Obama, as opposed to just pretending to be.
metrico, bite me. Phil is someone I consider a personal friend, and while your sooper-sekret mind-reading powers might be able to figure out what he & I really believe, I’ll trust the direct conversations we’ve had and hope to continue to have.
Here’s my offer to you. Stop being personally insulting or take a hike.
A.L.
Me, “being personally insulting?” Like saying, “bite me,” for example?
If he’s your friend, I think you owe him, if not me, an explanation of how he is lacking the “iconoclastic views” you long for, rather than just being a “mainstream liberal.”
Because it just looks like you’re just faulting him for not being more right-wing, or as you to put it, “iconoclastic.”
AL looks for iconoclasts on both sides of the aisle, since neither orthodoxy encapsulates his views. In this, he is joined by a big chunk of the American electorate.
Folks like Marc and myself are often pressed for time by work et. al., and the archives exist for such things as well. MArc… if you do have a sec, however the thread might benefit from a couple of examples re: those differences, and also the common ground you value with Phil. Might be enlightening.
Meanwhile, metrico, you would have made the same point without the last sentence and a half. The next to last sentence is simply stupid given Michael Totten’s writings here, or Donald Sensing’s whose son has been a Marine in OIF. Or the late Maj. Andrew Olmsted… which may explain part of the ill-feeling you generated with your foolish comment.
A civilized man would take that back.
Cripes, Joe, watch your temper. It’s deeply insulting to people like metrico to be called civilized. That’s like accusing him of giving syphilis to the Aztecs.
And asking somebody like him to take something back is like asking a python to spit out the pig it’s eating. It’s actually physically impossible.
metrico, take a seat on the bench; you’re not welcome on my threads until 4/21. I don’t owe you anything, you owe me – as a host here – a basic level of civility. See how your ‘style’ does on MyDD, as an example.
A.L.
I’ve enjoyed Phil’s take on ID, which is why its remained in my Bloglines feed for years. Not surprisingly, his regular commenters are “less than pleased with the move”:http://www.intel-dump.com/posts/1207601277.shtml , but in my opinion the comments section there had become something of an echo chamber for negativity, which was a shame considering Phil’s posts were usually pretty reasonable. I hope he gets a more diverse crowd for his posts at his new spot.
So, A.L.: I’ll try to put this more politely than metrico did, but I also am curious as to what more (and what sort) of “iconoclasm” you would expect out of Phil Carter? I have been reading Intel Dump for years, and have always found Carter’s posts to be pretty sober, level-headed and un-ideological to a large degree. AND usually informative (and well-informed).
His commentariat is another matter, of course, but that’s a common affliction of almost every blog on the Net.
Jay, that’s a fair question; Phil is one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful commentators I know of on the issues of defense and national policy. In his commentary on domestic politics, he’s a thoroughly mainstream Democrat – and given that I think that the Democratic mainstream needs to rethink some issues in order to meet what I believe the core meaning of the party are – which is to help lower-income and working people.
That’s my sole issue.
A.L.