Remember when THE NATION pretended to care about the Iraq War? Cover stories,editorials,columns . . . These days? They did run Laura Gottesdiener's "The Children of Fallujah: The Medical Mystery at the Heart of the Iraq War" last November. That was pretty much the only original reporting on Iraq that they ran in all of 2020 (as opposed to rerunning things printed at other outlets). We're not going to give credit for bad coverage -- in other words, grasp what took place in Parliament last January (a large number of MPs boycotted that session and did not vote -- though THE NATION missed that). We will give Katrina vanden Heuvel for "It's Time To Leave Iraq Once And For All" last February. But we'd give her even more credit if, since she is editor and publisher, she'd regularly task someone with covering Iraq.
We loved to be so radical
But like a rugged love affair
Some became disenchanted
And some of us just got scared
-- "Playing Possum," written by Carly Simon
So what was it for THE NATION? Disenchanted or scared?
18. The Iraq War turns 18 in March. If it were a US citizen, it could vote, drive a car, get married and, in some states, even drink (might require parental consent). It would have a lot of rights. Sadly, we apparently do not have the right, as American citizens, to end the war. Our Congress has that power. A sitting president has that power. But neither are inclined to end the forever wars.
Somehow, this isn't a story or a pressing issue to THE NATION.
They have the following columnists: Jeet Heer, John Nichols, Joan Walsh, Elie Mystal, David Bromwich, Alexis Grenell, Kali Holloway and Katha Pollitt.
Strangely, despite the nation being involved in several forever wars, THE NATION has no columnist assigned to cover wars. Even stranger, they have national affairs correspondents but no foreign affairs correspondents. In other words, they are myopic navel-gazers.