Out on a Limb

Daily Best of the Web   —   Posted on April 2, 2014

The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

Out on a Limb

• “Australian PM: ‘Overwhelming’ Evidence That MH370 Is Lost”–headline, Agence France-Presse, March 31
• “Ratings May Sink Ronan Farrow’s Show on MSNBC”–headline, Daily News (New York), March 31

His Wife Must Be Very Annoyed 
“Judge Refuses to Throw Out Pink Slime Suit”–headline, FoodNavigator-USA.com, March 28

Bottom Stories of the Day

• “Police Find Pellet Gun at Stevenson U., No Sign of a Shooting”–headline, Washington Post, April 1
• “Fournier Repents: Put Obama on Rushmore”–headline, NationalJournal.com, April 1

U.S. Out of Austro-Hungaria! 
Barack Obama is taking some criticism from the pacifist left. At issue is not the use of drones or the continuing U.S. presence in Afghanistan or the intervention in Libya, but–well, we’ll let Matthew Rothschild, a senior editor of The Progressive, explain it:

President Obama just went to Flanders Field in Belgium to pay homage to those who lost their lives in World War I.

But rather than use the occasion to point out the idiotic hideousness of that war, he whitewashed it, praising “the profound sacrifice they made so that we might stand here today.”

He saluted their “willingness to fight, and die, for the freedom that we enjoy as their heirs.”

But this was not a war for freedom. It was a triumph of nationalism, pitting one nation’s vanity against another. It was a war between empires for the spoils.

They say generals always fight the last war. Progressives, it would seem, are several conflicts farther behind.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”