Friday, October 11, 2024

Dishonesty Rots Everything

A reminder that a year ago, Jake Sullivan published a piece in Foreign Affairs about how awesome Biden's Middle East policies were and then they let him "update" it.
Sullivan’s essay now exists in two forms: the print version, which can be found as a PDF here, and an online version available here. The online version carries this editor’s note: “Before this article was posted online, a passage in it about the Middle East was updated to address Hamas’s attack on Israel, which occurred after the print version of the article went to press.”

In truth, the article was more than just “updated.” It was substantially changed in ways that illustrate both the incoherence and bankruptcy of Biden’s foreign policy.

In the original print version, Sullivan boasted that the “disciplined” approach of the Biden administration to de-escalation and negotiation in the Middle East had borne fruit. According to Sullivan in the print version, “Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades.”
It is not healthy when "everybody" happily pretends things that aren't true are, and that this tacit agreement is enforced through the threatened revocation of club membership privileges.

You do not keep your career in the Democratic party industrial complex by being honest about what is happening right now.

Fetterman's golden, though I guess I can't say he's being dishonest, precisely.