Empathy
Over at Crooks and Liars they have a clip of an appearance by William Kristol in which “Pistol” Kristol says: “Look, if I were a Sunni extremist and was worried, which I would be, about a doubling of U.S. forces in Baghdad, what would I do? I would try to convey an impression of chaos.”
Kristol has no idea what anyone outside of his “support group” thinks about anything, because none of these people seems capable of understanding the motives of others. They can’t put themselves in the position of others, so they make nonsensical comments. These are the people who think torture works, because they know it would work on them. These guys would apparently sell their families into slavery on the threat of a paper cut, and can’t understand that some people are made of sterner stuff.
It doesn’t occur to Kristol that the upsurge in violence is a result of the Shi’ia militias disappearing from the streets. It is a tactical response by the Sunnis to take revenge while they can. Baghdad is fast being “cleansed” of Sunnis by the Shi’ia militias, so this is an opening for the Sunnis. The main Sunni area of operations is Anbar province. I guess Kristol missed the memo about the Sunnis of Baghdad welcoming the American surge as they view it as a way to halt the Shi’ia attacks.
Kristol has been consistently wrong about everything, but he keeps getting air time to give his opinion. You would think that the media would occasionally scheduled someone who was right, just for the shock value.
