Every week, the PBS NewsHour gives viewers its version of a left/right debate segment. On the right is well-known conservative pundit David Brooks. On the left is Mark Shields, who is not especially well-known outside of the NewsHour, and certainly has no meaningful connection to leftish politics. As FAIR (Extra!, 7/98) has noted, Shields’ publicity materials used to proclaim that he was “free of any political tilt.”
On the most recent installment (NewsHour, 9/12/14), Shields was making the point that Congress should weigh in on any decision to launch military strikes against ISIS:
Here’s the one power that is defined, delineated by the Constitution, that resides with the Congress, to declare war. And they have abdicated that responsibility.
Shields was clear: Going to war needs a serious discussion.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You said it needs a healthy debate. Is it getting that kind of debate right now?
MARK SHIELDS: No, it isn’t.
Most people would agree that a debate over war sounds good. As someone who is paid to play the left on public television, what does Shields think about going to war? Well, something like this:
The United States military… has shown its ability, its capacity to come in and dominate the battlefield. But the idea of establishing order, security and peaceful government in its wake after that has eluded us.
Who are the troops who are going to be there to guarantee stability, order and some sense of justice in the areas?
You can’t do that with airstrikes. I mean, airstrikes are wonderful. They’re antiseptic. They’re at a distance. The possibility of your own casualties is finite. But they don’t occupy. You can’t occupy a nation or bring order and stability by airstrikes. So who are people on the ground? Who is the coalition? Where are the troops coming from?
So the left view of Obama’s war plan is that airstrikes “are wonderful,” but that in order to really win there needs to be a ground invasion? Or is Shields’ point that a ground invasion is necessary and therefore untenable? It’s hard to tell. During an earlier discussion (NewsHour, 8/8/14), when he was asked if Obama had “a choice but to go back in militarily,” Shields replied, “I don’t think he did.”
If Shields–and PBS, for that matter–believe in having a full debate about this war, they will need to find a more forceful critic of Obama’s latest war.
There is only one less-informed pundit on public television that Mark I-Agree-With-David-But Shields, and it is Babbling Brooks himself.
It’s time they got some new “pundits.” They used to have a few. Way back when, they had a commentator who I am quite sure was from Progressive magazine, and I think a socialist (Heavens forfend!) I think he died. We won’t see the likes of that sort again. But there are many excellent commentators and there is no reason to have “regulars.” Why not Dionne, Robert Reich, Joseph Stiglitz, Bill Moyers himself — who seems to be increasingly pushed aside going from 1.5 hours to 1 hour, to about 20 minutes now, and squashed into a time slot against another mystery. I’m sure there are some credible commentators on the right — I just can’t think of any names offhand.(that is not sarcasm; I really don’t know good, honest commentators on the right).
I’d love to hear more Richard Wolff. He is the greatest.
rdwolff.com
One suspects that he (Shields) is trying to say that we (the U.S.) must force Nations into diplomacy at gun point; something the Uber-right has condoned for a couple of hundred years. Only, as we all know, Diplomacy at Gun point is never successful for more than a very short time.
In either case, debate is no longer sorely needed, it is now vital requirement to stop the Fascist control of the media and the Government. Sadly when the weasels are in charge of the Hen House, it is impossible to get an accurate count of the eggs being produced.
Reasonable and realistic is more important than left or right. The ability to articulate a position and have a set of plausible premises as to why one reaches a particular conclusion. I don’t see a problem with either of those gentlemen in that regard.
As for diplomacy with ISIS … I’m not sure how that is possible. Diplomacy can only occur among those who accept a set of norms regarding what diplomacy is and its function. This is not the case with non-state militant groups and even some states such as North Korea and Iran where diplomacy is used as a tactic for delay while engaging in those activities that prompted diplomacy in the first place.
There are bad actors in the world and they aren’t just those people who engage in crimes broadcast on local news shows. They can also be very powerful and influential people. There is not a surfeit of trust in this world no matter how much we would wish otherwise.
PBS has been a farce for the past 20 years; trading on a brand that no longer exists. “Unbiased” Shields is typical of their propaganda ploy … 2 or 3 know nothings presenting the same side of the argument with a difference only in degree. Don’t trip over your furniture running for your check book during pledge week; their corporate sponsors will never let these frauds go dark. Shockingly they had Andrew Bachevich on a panel of tough guys and gals discussing flushing more of your money down the toilet chasing ISIS around the ME … maybe the pledge drive didn’t go so well.
Sayeth the wigged One: “Here’s the one power that is defined, delineated by the Constitution, that resides with the Congress, to declare war. And they have abdicated that responsibility.” Really? Since when? Truman designed US foreign policy to be one of a constant wartime footing, replete with what Gore Vidal termed “fascist loyalty oaths,” which remains the case today. In some parts of the globe, and often in many, the US has been waging congressionally undeclared war since WW2. Vietnam to take the starkest example. What planet is Shields living on?
Ha Ha. And also a mini-ha-ha: “As someone who is paid to play the left on public television…”
I wonder what delusional battlefield Shields is talking about. Afghanistan? Iraq? Palestine? Haiti? And I daresay it’s a safe bet it is a battlefield Shields has never been on.
What a savage. Shields, I daresay he’s a Christian, has the mendacity to proclaim: “I mean, airstrikes are wonderful. They’re antiseptic. They’re at a distance…” Moreover Shields is describing alleged battlefield successes with the same myopia Bush the Stupider did with his publicity stunt outside Camp Naval Base San Diego in May, 2003. From a distance Shields can’t see, even for the glasses, not so much. Newsflash Mr. Shields: We are humanity now, one; not nationalist. It’s either that, or extinction.
Shields asks: “You can’t occupy a nation or bring order and stability by airstrikes. So who are people on the ground? Who is the coalition? Where are the troops coming from?” How about you Mark? I’ll spring for the helmet and rifle, even if I have to make a loan to do so.
Some alternative public television voice.
Progressive Magazine? Not the outfit that was all out for Obama in 2008? I agree with the commenter about Bill Moyers. He invariably does excellent shows, even with a hiccup or two. Gabriel Kolko cite addendum to Padremellyrn’s comment: “Political problems have political and social, not military, solutions.” Actually, that’s an interregnum. The addendum is mine: ahaahaaaha.
Eli Cummings is simply wrong-headed. I presume he’s not mean-hearted and sour-souled like my senator, Kirk. Both Shields and the babbling one are pathetic Of course, as You intimate, Brooks is easily the biggest loser; and the one who has the darkest stains on his karma. Oh yeah, I’m old enough to be stern. I’m looking forward to the babbling one’s payback. I don’t think I’ve read anybody on this site suggest diplomacy vis-a-vis ISIL. I would suggest immediate US withdrawal of all troops, payment of substantial reparations, and leave the mess the United States left in Iraq to the Iraqis. I don’t see what solution could be more obvious. Astonishing that US pols simply overlook the far vaster crimes of the US, Vietnam just to take the most glaring example, and pin the very sins of which they’re guilty on the other. That’s projection isn’t it? Enough. Two words in response to Cummings: complete lunacy.
What Dessenter said. What difference does it make if PBS goes the way of the pay telephone and newspaper? The best reporter on PBS in Chicago is Carol Marin, a refugee from WMAQ-TV and Jerry Springer, where she was an anchor before she, along with her co-anchor Ron Magers, quit when they hired the circus clown to give political commentary. Speaking of the make-upped one. What kind of delusions does the left harbor, specifically Air America, when they hire an idiot to put it in the kindest terms, who, at the last report I read some 10 years ago, was making $6 million annually facilitating the boxing matches of guttersnipes for entertainment?
Like Bob Schiefer of CBS, Mark Shields has become a silly, senile man, so ravaged by an eternity of sitting and talking and generally bad living that he is an insult to intelligence and dignity. Both exemplify very convincingly the adage: “There is no fool like an old fool.” Needles to say, their visages are hideous.
I think you are way off on this one. Way off. It seems plain from the context that he is not saying that air strikes are “wonderful.” He is criticizing the mindset that “airstrikes are wonderful” because they don’t get our people killed, they are anti-septic (from our side). But they don’t really do anything but kill people. It will not solve our government’s problem with IS.
Shields states that airstrikes do not settle matters, and proposes that military occupations do?
This is NPR.
It is much clearer now why Ukrainian “army” continues shelling of Donetsk even when Ukrainian “president’ receives a hero welcome in Washington.
The Military-Industrial Complex with its neocon-fascist orientation– Netanyahu orchestrating the Middle East foreign policy–has control of America. We citizens lost our country to a tiny minority, possessing great wealth, many occupying powerful political positions, but all with an inexorable loyalty to Israel. If this scenario does not contain the truth, what then accounts for our United States Senate voting 100% approval of Israel’s deadly assault against a defenseless Gaza because the Palestinians imprisoned there resist an illegal embargo with the equivalent of Vietcong punjy sticks: impotent rocket launchings resembling our 4th of July displays with about the same casualties? What are the results of America’s freely supplied bombs, bullets, and missiles: 2,200 dead civilians (500 children), 5,000 wounded, 500,000 traumatized, billions of dollars in destroyed buildings, apartments, homes, businesses, water purification plants, sewage treatment plants, and other necessities of the 21st Century? There is no legitimate justification for this genocide, but there will be blow back (CIA term) with millions of American nuclear terrorist deaths. The simpleton’s response to all this: “They hate our freedom!” Palestinians are guaranteed the same human rights as Israelis by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When Israel acknowledges Palestinian human rights, the world will see an end to ISIS, IS, al-Qaeda, Taliban, and other Arab (Muslim) organizations struggling for what they are entitled to as members of the human race.
Potshot would do well to consider world peace that should begin in the Middle East. America has no enemies except the ones created for us by our insane Israel paradigm: Israel is always rights, and Arabs are always wrong. For 330,000 Jews to drive 1,000,000 Palestinians from their homes and into neighboring countries with no right of return mimics Nazi tactics and has no legitimate existence in the modern world. Google our “ally” in the Middle East: Mossad [Israel’s FBI] filming 9/11, view eye-witness accounts, read the New Jersey police report, check the FBI investigation (I wrote the FBI under FOIA) and learn some very interesting facts about our “closest ally” in the Middle East. With friends like Israel, we don’t need enemies! Potshot is absolutely on target: America should get the hell out of fighting wars for Israel. Cut the umbilical cord: no more vetoes for the international criminal outlaws in Israel that have requested and received 45 vetoes in the United Nations.