Brooks reads Bush’s ‘body language’ on Iran

October 27, 2007

The president is making irresponsible references to “World War III,” and Cheney is dusting off his 2002 speeches to bluster about “serious consequences” for Iran, but the NYT’s David Brooks suggested yesterday we don’t really have to worry about another war.

Brooks has read Bush’s “body language” and has come to believe we’ll be fine. ThinkProgress has the video clip, which is truly odd.

On PBS last night, Brooks noted that he and several other conservative columnists have been invited to the White House on occasion for chats with the president. That’s when he was able to see Bush’s “body language” when it came to a military confrontation with Iran.

“Right. And we get together with the president periodically. And there are two of my colleagues who, every time they ask about Iran, and the president knows the questions are coming, it’s sort of a joke between us, and we see his body language and response to these questions. Some of it is on the record; some of it is off the record.

“But if you look, read his language, if you look at his body language, you see a man that’s totally different than before Iraq. He is preparing the way for the next administration to have some means to deal with the situation. He believes in the diplomacy. But unless I totally misread him, I think he has no inclination to launch a military action.”

Well, if Brooks is willing to disregard everything Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the gang are saying, and focus specifically on the president’s physical mannerisms, then I feel better already.

Is David Brooks really that big of a moron, or does he just think we are? And when the bombs start falling over Tehran will he admit that he was a fool and a clueless dupe? Not likely.

  • I feel better now. There won’t be an unconstitutional military “conflict” with Iran, if Brooks is reading the Frontman-In-Chief right. Maybe “Islam-O-Fascists” aren’t hiding under my bed after all.

    I’m going out to buy something in support of the Global War On a Psychological State now.

  • That’s when he was able to see Bush’s “body language” when it came to a military confrontation with Iran.

    Considering their “body language” around the Deciderator consists of dropping trou and grabbing ankles, I’m not going to give much credence to Brooks’ reading.

    But unless I totally misread him, I think he has no inclination to launch a military action.

    What a stunning analysis. I especially like Brooks’ tone of certainty.

    File this one under HackAttack.

  • Isn’t Brooks aiding and abetting the terrorists by revealing Bush’s body language?

    Admittedly, I have trouble figuring out when someone is helping the terrorists by supplying them with information and when it’s okay. For example, I always thought all those details about the surge were helping the terrorists plan a defense against it. I mean we were told about all the troop deployments which you’d think would have been very useful to them, but I guess not.

  • Does he not read what he writes. What stupidity is this? What about Putkin’s eyes? Brooks couldn’t ‘read’ Bush’s body language even when the president is pissing down his back and telling him it’s raining.

  • I too have always paid attention to the conflict between Bush’s rhetoric and body language. Whenever I see him at a podium reciting some speech about some important issue or another with the furtive way he moves his beady little eyes from side to side I would wonder; is this the look of a man who is intent upon spreading democracy around the world, or just the way a kid looks preparing to boost some candy from aisle 9 at Walmart?

  • So David, who are we to believe — Bush’s verbal calls for war with Iran or your lying eyes?

  • Considering how little goes on in Bush’s head and how much less comes out of his mouth, reading his body language might actually be the most accurate gauge of the man. He is a Man Of Action, after all.

  • […] if you look at his body language, you see a man that’s totally different than before Iraq.

    If you look at Bobo, *his* body language is different than it had been 5 yrs ago; only the self-satisfied smirk has remained the same. Otherwise… there’s so much of the body *to* talk than there used to be.

    And I wonder if, by any chance, they serve tea at those cozy, little, pundick get-togethers. Perhaps Bobo could bolster his body language reading with a bit of teal-leaves reading, for complete education.

  • If we are to believe the acuracy of body language, then I’ d fear the insanity of GWB even more than before. After all, the man has more hand gestures in a twenty-minute “psychophant-appreciation-day speech” than Hitler had at the Nuremburg torchlight rallies….

  • I really don’t think we’re going to attack Iran unless they do something that warrants it, or makes for a good excuse. I think the talk about attacking Iran has been sabre-rattling. I could see the Republicans sending out a little bit of disinformation, to make us cool our heels, to get us feeling less annoyed at Bush and the Republicans and to stop bad-mouthing them so much, so we’re not saying to everybody, “You know if the Republicans keep winning elections, they’re going to have us attack Iran!!” They might think that their over-all sabre-rattling campaign (aimed at Iran) wouldn’t be hurt much if they just let one or two specious things (i.e., body-language substantiated opinions) slip out to the liberals- that it won’t hurt the over-all impression in the Iranians’ minds that all their other signals have worked to instil. But I don’t have any opinion as to whether Brooks is the kind of guy who would do that, who they could ask to let a little tidbit like that slip out in an interview, or if these are just his honest impressions of what he thinks he sees in the President.

  • Also, if we do get into a fight with Iran, I think it is more likely to be limited to striking any nuclear-weapons-development facility they have that we are worried about (not a bad thing) and responding to any retaliation they take over that strike, and less likely to be a most-overt-example-possible of capitalist neo-colonialism, with occupied areas in Iran and Iranian oil being shipped out to foreign interests to sell and profit off of.

    What I will concede to the biggest of alarmists is, if we were not in a state where our military was “broken,” in the words of high-ranking U.S. military officers, and if Iraq were all cleaned up and had a significantly smaller problem with street violence so we could pull the majority of forces out of there, then, yes, I do think we would engage in a crass war of occupation against Iran (under a Republican President). Why? Because that’s what we already did in Iraq.

    If you’re familiar with my comments, you’ll notice I never out-and-out state my opposition to an attack on Iran. That’s because I’m not sure it would be a quandary, like I described in my second paragraph above, and not a totally easy, justified action, like I described in my first paragraph above. It’s possible that some details of the neocon foreign policy buffet make sense, even if the broader smorgabord is tasteless and repulsive. One less state actor with nuclear weapons has to be a good thing, even at the cost of a few lives, I would think any liberal would have to think. As Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved, it’s not impossible to give the orders to use the weapons.

  • I wrote in my comment #13:

    I could see the Republicans sending out a little bit of disinformation,

    Of course it might not really be disinformation, exactly, if you read the rest of my comments #13 and #14.

  • Ok, here’s one more thing I’ll grant to worriers about Iran:

    What if there really is not legit weapons-site target in Iran right now?

    What if the ostensible weapons-site target is just an excuse? Like it was in the case of Iraq!

    Then, the real target, even if we’re only engaging in limited operations, and the real goal is regime-change, and the goal is a political goal.

    Then, we really have to consider as a nation whether that’s the best thing for us, and whether that’s what we really want right now, because the neocons’ goals are not our goals, and their plans to take out Saddam and make Iraq a perfectly happy, wonderful place turned out to be very bad plans.

    As much as Ahmadinejad is a bad man, that doesn’t mean that the Republicans aren’t going to put something in place that’s a shit-storm if they try to take him out. Neocons are self-promoters who break with the “all else being equal, it’s better to be cautious about the use of military force” truism about rule of a nation, to try to show themselves as path-less-travelled geniuses who can show you when it is smart to use military force. In their race to do that, they either jump to recommending endeavors that aren’t really good ideas, or that they don’t also have the expertise to show their bosses how to pull off effectively, even if in the abstract it would be a good thing if we could accomplish the ultimate goals they recommend. In sum, neocons are in a sense reckless and the nutty professors of the foreign policy world, and they should not in any circumstances be anywhere near “the rudder of a ship,” if the ship’s a nation.

  • Then, the real target, even if we’re only engaging in limited operations, and the real goal is regime-change, and the goal is a political goal.

    Then the real target is Tehran, that is.

  • If my comment #s 16/17 theory is correct, then the sabre-rattling isn’t really sabre-rattling in the usual sense (since we’re not really trying to get them to let us inspect nuclear sites). Instead, it’s an attempt to provoke them to undertake some kind of stupid military act of defiance, which we would then use as a pretense to strike their leadership and Tehran.

  • Following up on #18- As a red herring we would also strike some sites which we would claim were dangerous weapons development sites, even if in fact they aren’t really far along enough on nuclear weapons development right now for the projects they have in place to be a worry to our allies.

    The attack/war would still be sold as a nuclear disarmament campaign, with the leadership-removal touted as a necessary and concommittant part of that campaign.

  • So, if Bush and Cheney are talking tough to ratchet up the pressure on Iran without actually intending to attack Iran, then isn’t Brooks helping Iran by telling the world that this is just a bluff? And since Iran is a terrorist state, then Ipso Facto Brooks is aiding terrorists. Damn those wingnuts.

  • But if you look, read his language, if you look at his body language, you see a man that’s totally different than before Iraq.

    Jesus Christ, this kind of fixation is like a man trying to read a woman’s signals about going to bed with him. Who gives a damn about Bush’s “body signals”? When he farts at his aides, what’s that “body signal”? Who gives a damn about what Bush says, either? He lies to hide his motives, but we can sure see his actions.

    David Brooks sounds like a ninny, just too precious to be believed.

  • Zeitgeist, my posts were substantive and have a lot of good thinking in them. No one else posted for more than an hour and a half. I’d like to see an example of someone else who puts so many ideas into their typical seven consecutive blog comments. Writing that many real ideas (instead of pointless, waste-of-time hand-wringing or tripe) sometimes takes more than one or even two or three or four comments. Putting them on my own blog would be like throwing them into a bottomless pit, since I don’t get a lot of traffic, but I’m sure there are a lot of Republicans who would like me to do just that, and just for that reason.

    What don’t you just chill out? It’s not as if we’re talking about pro-wrestling and TV here. This is about the fate of the world and the fate of history. It’s worth it to get a bunch of ideas out there that obviously merit some serious consideration, even if I’m the only one who writes down those ideas and even if (every once in a loooooooooooooooonnnnggg while) I have to write as many as seven comments to do it. It’s not as if I was being self-serving and writing seven idiotic comments or seven in-joke comments in a row or something.

  • My theory is that the saber rattling against Iran is Bush’s way of insuring that the oil companies make even more money in the last months of his presidency. Oil is how much a barrel now?

  • If you’re really worried about us attacking Iran without them doing something first, you should ask yourself, if we’re so set on attacking them, then why haven’t we done it yet?

  • The thing about the neocons is, there is always a conservative contingent that wants to go to war (just because they like war, or to get money for weapons manufacturers, etc.). The neocons arch their backs for the approval of these people, but what they don’t realize is these people have a vested interest in a rationale for war, any war, and their approval doesn’t mean they see any honest merit in your schemes to get us to a battle theater. So if you think powerful people who come from a different perspective than you see merit in your ideas for how it affects their own big, important interests, you may be fooling yourself that your idea really is the answer to everything, or that other sophisticated people believe your plan could work out– rather, their approval could just come from a very narrow interest in lining their own pocket book, and it may be they hardly give a shit whether the war is a good use of the taxpayers’ money, good for the country, morally justified, or worth the cost in lives. You are just the pet nerd of a bunch of foolish baboons, and they are really not smart enough to evaluate your idea on criteria that you would respect, so you are fooling yourself only if you think their approval is really worth a damn. Guys who grew up with the Martha’s Vineyard set are drastically different people than the NYC, Catholic-school raised sons of working-class Japanese immigrants.

  • On October 27th, 2007 at 9:42 pm, zeitgeist said:
    Swan, did you really make 7 posts in a row?

    Yeah, then he had a conversation with himself.

    Swan, if you want anyone to read what you write, you should try to be more succint. I usually skip over your posts because to see everything you’ve got to say would take an hour a day, and there are plenty of other people who say more in less space. No offense, but if you said less you would be heard more. Just make it short and sweet, and post a link to your full diatribe at your blog.

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