I completely agree with Abu Muqawama:

Abu Muqawama has always been a big fan of the late French intellectual Raymond Aron. Aron, writing in his newspaper column for Le Figaro, believed it was the responsibility of the public intellectual to make a careful study of the issues at hand — economics, military strategy, etc. — before putting pen to paper and presuming anyone should read what you have written.

Then he takes Maureen Dowd to task for her latest column on the Petraeus/Crocker reports:

Shut up. Shut up now. There is nothing in your cleverer-than-thou repertoire of pop culture references and mildly amusing 8th-grade literary devices that prepares you to even open your mouth to say anything about the war in Iraq. Just be quiet. Transport yourself back to the 1990s when the biggest issue facing the country was the president’s extramarital sex life, because for those times you were perfect. Now, you’re worthless. As a matter of fact, you’re worse than worthless. Because you, writing on the allegedly-serious op-ed page of the New York Times, give everyone else an excuse to treat this war and the debate surrounding it as flippantly as you do. If you want to be taken seriously, take the issue seriously. Study it. Learn about it. Talk to people who might know something.

And if you still don’t have anything of substance to say, keep quiet. This is why you don’t see Abu Muqawama writing anything about Manolo Blahniks. That’s your territory.

This goes for MoveOn and any number of other op-ed writers and bloggers.

Inform yourselves before you start talking shit. Otherwise, you’re no different from the ideology-driven folks marching in lock-step behind Bush.