Hafsa Kara-Mustapha in CounterPunch criticizes me at length in “Cross Talk, Semantics and the Downright Spineless” about our appearance on a panel on RT’s program CrossTalk™ and my own CounterPunch piece “Crosstalk, State Media and the Irrational.”
I won’t rebut point for point what she writes, because I think it will continue to fuel the CrossTalk™ that began on the program — she continues to alternate between talking about people “capable of questioning U.S. policy motives” on the one hand and then on the other referring to U.S. government policy as “blunders” and having “obvious flaws” — tepid crits from my point of view.
But, I should point out she claims: “It was only at the very end that Husseini gathered some courage to finally state that the U.S.’ policy was specifically designed to fuel conflict and encourage failed states.”
I think that’s a simplification of what I was saying, but the fact is that in the first segment of the program, at 6:30, I stated about U.S. government policy: “If you can’t have subservient state — and I think that’s a difficult thing to do in countries like Libya like Syria like even Iraq under the circumstances — then a failed state is a relatively positive outcome. That you have the Saudi ally/client whatever you want to call it being ever more dominant in the Middle East you have Israel having evermore carte blanche in the Middle East you have the alliance between Iran Syria and Hezbollah being hit at its weakest point.” [video]
I can understand her not having quite heard this given the CrossTalk™ on the program, I found it difficult to communicate under the circumstances as well, but she really should be able to have figured it out by watching the program after the fact. She’d then be free to respond to the substance.
I should note that my piece after the program didn’t just complain about the program, I posited a theory about why some associated with RT might not — as one would expect — be prone to criting the Machiavellian nature of U.S. policy: It would mean the U.S. government isn’t really getting schooled by Putin.
I’ve gotten a number of emails from folks about the substance of my remarks and hope to write a longer piece on that.
