Intellectual Zingers (it tastes like burning)
Consider yourself Zinged to the Nth degree, Mr. Kaplan:
To be sure, there has been previous unrest in Kaplanistan. In 2000, the historian Robert Kagan noted Kaplan’s “cheap pessimism,” his indifference “as to whether societies are governed democratically or tyrannically,” and his “weak” grip on history: “Just about every historical event or political philosopher he discusses he gets at least half-wrong.” In 1993, the Balkans expert Noel Malcolm gutted Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts for its many errors of fact and judgment; Kaplan’s hapless response earned this rejoinder from Malcolm: “The basic problem, I think, is that Mr. Kaplan cannot read.” Kaplan’s new book, Imperial Grunts, in which one cannot be sure whether the latter word is a noun or a verb, has unleashed a new offensive. Writing in The New Republic, David Rieff takes Kaplan to task for his “boneheaded nonsense.” In the New York Times Book Review, David Lipsky laments that Kaplan “appears to have become someone who is too fond of war.” But these traits have been visible in Kaplan since his first book, as has his love of intellectual shortcuts and invincible humorlessness. Kaplan’s real and growingly evident problem is not his Parkinson’s grip on history, or that he is a bonehead or a warmonger, but rather that he is an incompetent thinker and a miserable writer.
