David Brooks is Delbert Grady

David Brooks has written a piece of shit opinion piece that calls Obama's balls into question, vis a vis his willingness to order the killing of more brown people far, far away, and to sacrifice lives to do it. Brooks is a war-monger, and since his having been breathtakingly wrong about Iraq was not enough to have his soap box taken away, he continues to inject his sickly venom onto the pages of the New York Times. Shame on them, shame on him. Seriously, this crap is indefensible.

Here follows is a copy of the letter I wrote the NY Times in response to his "you ain't got the balls" opinion piece. Yeah, nobody fucking cares what I think or write, but that's not the point, is it? All that has to happen is that you fucking care. Do you?

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Subject: Re David Brooks "The Tenacity Question"

Editors,

David Brooks writes that he contacted "...the smartest military experts" he knows, and finds they all are concerned about President Obama's "determination" vis a vis his being a war president. Brooks writes: "But they do not know if he possesses the trait that is more important than intellectual sophistication and, in fact, stands in tension with it. They do not know if he possesses tenacity, the ability to fixate on a simple conviction and grip it, viscerally and unflinchingly, through complexity and confusion. They do not know if he possesses the obstinacy that guided Lincoln and Churchill, and which must guide all war presidents to some degree." The words employed by Brooks are taut, masculine, intense: Obama must "grip" a "simple conviction" and do so "viscerally" and "unflinchingly." Brooks seems to be pining for George W. Bush's unwavering allegiance to state-sponsored murder, at the same time he's not above hauling in Lincoln and Churchill to provide cover for his bloody fantasy.

What Brooks' writing brought to my mind was a brief encounter depicted in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film version of the Stephen King novel "The Shining." In the lip-curling scene in question, the former caretaker (played by Philip Stone) of the Overlook Hotel suggests to Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson) that he'd better get on with the task of "correcting" his family. From the film:

Grady: I see you can hardly have taken care of the business we discussed.
Jack: No need to rub it in, Mr. Grady. I'll deal with that situation as soon as I get out of here.
Grady: Will you indeed, Mr. Torrance? I wonder. I have my doubts. I and others have come to believe that your heart is not in this, that you haven't the belly for it.
Jack: Just give me one more chance to prove it, Mr. Grady. It's all I ask.
Grady: Your wife appears to be stronger than we imagined, Mr. Torrance, somewhat more resourceful. She seems to have got the better of you.
Jack: For the moment, Mr. Grady, only for the moment.
Grady: I fear you will have to deal with this matter in the harshest possible way, Mr. Torrance. I fear that is the only thing to do.

What kind of morbid question is Brooks really asking here? Does Obama "have the belly" for the slaughter that will occur as a result of continuing and possibly expanding the war in Afghanistan? To what purpose, this macho posturing? To what purpose should our youth be sent off to kill and be killed, maim and be maimed, driven mad even as they rain despair down on the people of that war-torn region? The mountains of Afghanistan are strewn with the bones of British and Soviet troops whose commanders "had the belly" for sending their young off to die, but shouldn't we all be asking, in the "here and now" as to what purpose do we sacrifice more of our nation's youth? Lincoln preserved the Union, Churchill kept the flame of liberty in Europe burning, but to what purpose should our President "fixate on a simple conviction" and stain the living world with yet more blood and tears?

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Author's note: If David Brooks could feel shame I would bring him over a million servings of it, delivered in caskets, accompanied by a soundtrack that howled from the bitterest depths of hell.

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