Remarkable how Stephens can't discuss any subject without being facile. Grab any paragraph and find him eliding over key substantive points. E.g., it takes a truly dense/dishonest person to casually reference Dresden without even alluding to the decades-long debate about the propriety of it.
I remember Tolkien actually expressing distress in a letter towards the end of the war because some people were actually calling for the genocide of Germans. So, yeah...I wouldn't go there if I were trying to make a "It's not actually a genocide" argument.
The scale of Dresden is also debated given the person who pushed the highest numbers (which Vonnegut used) pushed soft holocaust denail
I guess this guy never got around to Slaughterhouse Five. There was controversy over building a statue to "Bomber" Harris in the UK decades ago because of the debate around this tactic.
they already shut off the comments on his piece, not one was positive!
when i overlapped with him at nyt opinion he tried to get me in trouble going behind my back to bosses to complain about a factual tweet of mine. only person i’ve worked with in 15 years who has done something like that (we’d never met or spoken, still haven’t)
snitching b/c he didn't like a tweet? that sounds about right cc: @davekarpf.bsky.social www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...
Ahhh Dresden, a bombing campaign beloved by all, nary a disagreeable word ever written about bombing Dresden
Their morality is fudamentally childish - "We're the good guys so whatever we do is good." The whole history of IHL/IHRL/LOAC has been the struggle to break people out of that mentality.
an incredible dedication to bad faith
I bet you anything Bretbug thinks the Dresden bombing happened after Germany surrendered and that upwards of 100,000 people died.
I think there’s a reasonable argument that lots of things are atrocities that we should condemn and also not genocide, which is a fairly specific thing Which is basically how I feel, but also “it’s not genocide, just various other war crimes” doesn’t feel like a very worthwhile debate to have
Bret isn't even arguing that but that Israel's actions are morally justified and that they have been more protective of Palestinians than they need to be. He argues that the IDF is probably the most moral army.
Yes, I’m not making Bret’s argument, which is bad
It's the same faux debate some people try to have about the genocide of the Native Americans. "These acts don't technically meet the definition of genocide as outlined by the UN," is wrong, but it would be a morally bankrupt argument even if it *were* correct.
His hiring is when I canceled my Times subscription. And I've never regretted it.
There are a lot of good reasons to cancel one's NYT subscriptions, but this is definitely one of the best ones.
“this is like the firebombing of dresden (complimentary)” jeeezus
Would love to attend a lecture by him on the works of Vonnegut
The fucking gall to ignore that most of those German civilians had been killed by the Nazis as part of the holocaust.
The fact that this is also likely a response to a guest essay from last week by an academic scholar who had this to say (see screenshot and also gift link www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/o...) is such HUBRIS
Profound hubris, and it's incredible (derogatory) that Bret Stephens isn't even embarrassed to have those two articles read in concert. One reads like a well-versed scholar writing for a popular audience. The other reads like a dim and arrogant high schooler spent half an hour with ChatGPT.