Daniel Johnson in the New York Sun (thanks to DFS) comments on the rapid advance of Ahmadinejadization at the BBC.
“It began with Israel and it will only end with Israel!” It was the authentic voice of the British Broadcasting Corporation, or at least one of its most renowned and respected presenters, at a cocktail party last week. The Iraq Study Group, he declared, had finally sounded the death knell of the Bush doctrine. A chastened president would now have to kick out the neocon kids and listen to the “grownups.” And the top priority would now be the unfinished business not just of 2001, but of 1967 and even of 1948. Had not James Baker himself “” the most grown-up of all the grownups “” endorsed both the return of the Golan Heights and the Palestinian right of return in his celebrated report?
The BBC now has a huge audience in America as well as in the rest of the world for its endless reiteration of the implied thesis that the Jewish state is the root of all evil “” not only of war in the East but of terrorism in the West too “” and that the ” Israel lobby” rules in Washington. Gloating over the supposed triumph of Realpolitik since the midterm elections, the BBC can hardly contain its Schadenfreude at the departure not merely of Donald Rumsfeld but also of John Bolton.
Interviewing Mr. Bolton shortly before he announced his resignation, the same BBC presenter was taken aback by the acerbic ambassador’s refusal to apologize for the invasion of Iraq, or indeed to agree with any of his assumptions about American policy: past, present, or future. The habitual hostility with which Bush administration officials are treated by the BBC was, unusually, turned back on the interviewer. “How do you know what my expectations were in 2003?” Mr. Bolton wanted to know.
Read it all.