Ted Koppel Reinforces 'False Flip-Flop' Meme, Equates Endless War With 'Toughness'

Have I been giving Ted Koppel too much credit all my life? Because whoever showed up wearing his skin today on This Week with George Stephanopulos behaved like such a drooling font of unparalleled nonsense that introducing it as "Ted Koppel" didn't adequately prepare me to have my mind blown away by some of the most specious crud I've heard in a long while.

This Week's panel was hot on the trail of the Obama "false flip-flop" meme: where the McCain camp paints Obama's unhesitating position on Iraq as a sudden and unexpected change of course and the press puts on the court stenographer's cap and tsk-tsks it into infinity. Well, Ted went a few steps beyond:

KOPPEL: You know, George, you said we'll get to the energy thing later. Let me suggest we get to that right away. I think his advisers have conveyed to him what has known all along: U.S. troops are in a part of the world that produces a vast -- not the majority, but a huge amount of oil and natural gas. We will have U.S. troops in that region for years to come, whether we want to or not. And I think Senator Obama has come to that realization. He's come to know that you cannot pull all the troops out of Iraq, unless you put them somewhere else. You talked a little bit about Iran and about the dangers in Iran. This is not a time to be saying, yes, we're going to pull all the U.S. troops out of there, come what may.

[WATCH.]

Koppel went on to say that involved upwards of "80,000 to 100,000 troops" in Iraq "three to five years from now."

Where to begin? Maybe with the notion that Obama needed "advisers" to tell him, last week, that Iraq was an oil-producing nation, and that this sudden realization is what has powered Obama's flip-flop...you know, the one that hasn't even happened yet!

Then you get this nonsense: "I think Senator Obama has come to that realization. He's come to know that you cannot pull all the troops out of Iraq, unless you put them somewhere else... This is not a time to be saying, yes, we're going to pull all the U.S. troops out of there, come what may."

But Obama hasn't recently "come to the realization" that you "cannot pull all the troops out of Iraq" without putting them somewhere else. In fact, this is the very thing he has been advocating - redeploying these resources to fight and defeat al Qaeda. Remember al Qaeda, Ted? Afghan-Pakistan border dwelling al Qaeda? Attacked us in 2001? Since let off the hook by the merry appeasers of the Bush administration? That was the "come what may" that the Bush White House turned into one big "What? How come?"

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But Koppel didn't stop there. A few minutes later, ABC's viewing audience got hit with this claptrap:

KOPPEL: And that what he is showing, essentially in just about every decision that he has made, and you can refer to it as a flip-flop, each flip has been in the direction of showing how tough he is. None of them has moved in the direction of softening a position. He's been doing nothing but hardening positions all along. And I think that's wait that he shows that he's tough enough to be president.

[WATCH.]

Wow. So "toughness" is best demonstrated through a willingness to occupy troubled Middle East nations - thus fomenting international terrorism - because their oil needs to be secured - thus bringing the nation no closer to ending our nation's oil addiction? Why stop there? Why not be a President who's tough enough to hammer a nail into his own skull with a rock?

Someone needs to drive over to Ted Koppel's home, where I believe you will find his cocooned corpse, laid out next to a seed-pod from a distant, and idiotic, galaxy.

Comments

[rebeccaj]

Koppel's son-in-law in Ken Pollack.

Nuff said.

[thatvisionthing]

NO! Is that true? O.M.G.

[nellie]

Thank you, Jason. It's so important for progressive commentators to set the record straight and show the corporate media for the craven shills that they are. Too many progressives jumped on the flip flop bandwagon. It was unbelievable. Not only the level of hostility, not only the lack of research, but the ease with which people were gamed.

Thanks for being sharp and smart. And telling the truth.

[MaryanneAZ]

Posters have missed the salient point of the article: Koppel is furthering a FALSE flip-flop meme. It is false. I imagine Barack declaring on 1/21/09: "The Iraq war is over. The U.S. will today begin an immediate and orderly withdrawal of our troops. The rate of that withdrawal will depend on the safety of our troops as we draw down. If everything remains status quo, our present troop levels should be completely drawn down in approximately 16 months. Iraq is not a third world country. Iraq is literate, oil and agriculture rich and now has an opportunity, due to the sacrifice of our brave troops, to prosper and be free. It is well past time for the Iraqi government, military and citizens to stand up and handle their own affairs." The difference is that McCain plans to continue the Iraq war indefinitely until he thinks we have somehow "won" it and Barack plans to declare the war at an end. This is not rocket science.

[Mayoyo]

Jason why are you waisting time on the "other old guy" in the room.
Like McCain Ted is old and obsolete.

[geobushono]

just another rightwing msm zionist telling america what's real.

[Tomlastliberalleft]

Bottom line is if you want to watch the real news your are going to have to find a way to access BBC. We have reached that point in time were the MSM is not even worth a second of attention. I have been unable to sit through a single entire news segment and not want to throw a large object through the TV screen for some time now. I suppose the younger crowd can still watch , say CNN, but I'm just old enough to understand what total BS they are trying to parade around as the news. For crying out loud even the PBS stuff is almost as jaded as Fox!

[Jamchinadian]

Wow! Koppel had me fooled for a lifetime as well. So, since we know he is clearly more intelligent and aware than his coments suggest, the sad conclusion is that he is just another McCain surrogate like Lieberman. The only difference is Lieberman was more obvious to this point. And since the only "appeal" of McCain is his war-mongering - evidently Koppel shares that trait with Lieberman.

[SeriousBlack]

Geez, Ted, you been hanging out with Bill Kristol?

What a joke.

[Transcendentobserver]

Hey folks, recall the mantle that Koppel adopted to ascend from obscurity to the the ranks of electronic journalism's elite. It was the daily drumbeat from his nightly broadcast, introducing his broadcast by dramatically counting each day following the kidnapping of the the American diplomatic staff for 400 + days that "America [was] held hostage"...by Iran. Tragic as the event was, his myopic rejection of the nuances and subtle diplomacy which might have resolved or at least presented options could have been shortened, the agony for the hostages, was obviated by his emotional appeal to the lowest of human motivations--revenge.

[Rothgar]

Lest we forget it was Ted Koppel and Nightline that brought negative images of the Iranian Hostage taking into our homes for 444 days. Nightline got its start during the Iranian Hostage Crisis. It is hard to argue that these images did not lead to the image of President Carter as a ineffectual leader which improved Reagan's election prospects.

We replaced a US Naval Academy graduate and member of Rickover's Nuclear Naval (an elite group) with a B-Movie Actor and proligate Governor.

[richardgordon]

You may dislike what Koppel says but there is a certain ring of truth to what he says.

It all revolves around oil.

Assume that Obama gets elected and still the price of Oil climbs to $200 a barrel and beyond. This implies the following: the great nations of the world are continuing to access as much oil as they can lay their hands on. If the US pulls out of Iraq and leaves it to the squabbling Arabs then there is a distinct possibility that the region will devolve into civil war. That means even less oil gets to the marketplace and implies even higher prices of oil.

But the most damaging for Obama would be to see America lose its access to Iraqs oil AFTER having spent a trillon dollars of its own money and sacrificing over 4,000 American lives. How could this happen? Well in the first place there is Iran, and then there is the issue of the Iraqi Clerics who are virulently Anti-American who could possibly take over the country. Eventually, they might decide to sell Iraqi oil to China or India instead. How would Americans feel then? They would be damn angry of course. But what would they be able to do about it if they had moved their military out of Iraq? Not much. So Koppel is simply illustrating that it an exceptionally difficult situation to resolve. There are no black and white issues in international politics just many shades of gray.

[apduncan1]

Well, why don't we do what your idol did and build some gas ovens and gas the Arabs?

[meanguy]

that's pretty juvenile, even for an obamanaut...hysteria is such a demeaning habit

[EspressoAtNoon]

But there's a big point that Koppel ducked under - and that's US national debt - to the tune of $14 billion per month!

Out debt is growing out of the stratosphere and as a result our dollar is so weak - thereby making oil even more expensive. At the rate we are going we are going to spend ourself into our own demise. I found it quite shocking that Koppel didn't address this point.

And frankly, the longer we're over there the more likely we'll end up getting drawn into a war with Iran which could double the price of oil. We need to get out of the Middle East and create drastic new legislation to cut our dependency on oil. We should force all new cars in the US to be hybrid after a certain date - something drastic...

[richardgordon]

You've got a good point. In fact, America's demise as the leading Superpower along with the demise of the US Dollar as the reserve currency, is precisely why oil (and all the other commodities) are going through the roof. Before Bush came to power, Clinton did a fine job of managing the economy, tackling among other things the budget deficit and getting America's books in order. The international community had confidence in the US Dollar. So, if worst came to worst, international investors would store their wealth in US Dollars. Today that credibility is gone. Gone with the sub-prime mess. Gone with the out of control spiraling debt. Gone with the "good guy" image that the world had of America. Ever since George Bush decided to Unilaterally wage war on Iraq on a whim, America has lost total credibility. So how is an international investor to store his/her wealth. Well not, US Dollars, that's for sure. America is in the unenviable position of being in a catch 22 situation. They can't raise interest rates to protect the dollar because that will destroy the economy, on the other hand they can't leave things as they are because that will destroy the value of the US Dollar. So what do speculators and investors do? They buy commodities as a defacto currency. And that creates inflation and huge problems for everybody. Not just America. Don't expect things to get better any time soon.

So don't expect

[SeriousBlack]

"see America lose its access to Iraqs oil "

Are you kidding me?

Right, lose its access to oil THAT. WASN'T. OURS. IN. THE. FIRST. PLACE.

You can thank George W. Bush for "having spent a trillon dollars of its own money and sacrificing over 4,000 American lives".

My God.

And as for your statement "There are no black and white issues in international politics just many shades of gray." Maybe sometimes. In other cases, like when someone decides to INVADE AND OCCUPY A FOREIGN COUNTRY FOR NO GOOD/LEGITIMATE REASON, it sure as h-e-double-hockey-sticks IS a black and white issue.

[richardgordon]

Yes. I agree with you there was NO LEGITIMATE reason for invading Iraq and yes that WAS a black and white issue.

However, after spending 7 years in Iraq, spending close to a trillion dollars in taxpayer money and wasting close to 4500 soldiers lives, how do you think the average American would feel if Muqtada al-Sadr (the virulant Anti-American cleric) gets into power and decides (after the US has exited Iraq) that he is not going to sell Iraqi Oil to the US but instead will sell it to China and India instead? I think the average American will be pretty pissed off. Don't you?

And lets say that Obama is President and it was he who ordered all the troops pulled out of Iraq (as per his promise to do so). Don't you think the American people will rise up in anger and blame him for "unnecessarily taking all the US troops out of Iraq and leaving a power vacuum in which Muqtada al-Sadr could flourish.

The point is, Obama has some difficult decisions to make here. Does he pull all of the troops out as he promised he would? Does he leave American Bases in Iraq to secure America's future oil? There are no easy answers are there?

[booker52]

I heard this statement as well. I get tired of hearing this. Since when did we become the worlds cop for oil??? I believe we need to get out of the middle east. All we do is inflame in the middle east just by being there. We need to remove ourselves from that part of the world and leave them to it. To believe otherwise is crazy. We have be there far to long already since desert storm. Let these people start taking care of their own problems. Right now, The US is part of the problem.

[exPatPatti]

"He's come to know that you cannot pull all the troops out of Iraq, unless you put them somewhere else."

WTF was that?

[Palspal]

I think we only have to understand that Koppel is an Israel-first Zionist to know where he is coming from. That's why his 'dangers of Iran' talk.

What does Israel want? It wants the US to stay in Iraq and attack Iran. So that's what Koppel wants.

[apduncan1]

... and build a pipeline from Irak to an Israeli port in the Mediterranean.

The occupation of Irak is about oil and its delivery to the western markets. Israel will benefit handsomely from an extended occupation of Irak and the construction of a pipeline to the Mediterranean. Period.

[arvay]

Koppel is and always was a pompous, self-important ass who specializes in acting as though he actually understands the issues. Walter Cronkite without the insight or accomplishments.