From Glen Greenwald:
"One of the most bizarre aspects of our current political debates is that the very people who were most glaringly and incessantly wrong about virtually everything prior to the invasion of Iraq are still held out as some sort of wise foreign policy experts. The converse of that distorted principle is that those who were most right about Iraq-related issues are still treated as subversive lepers who are unfit for decent company, as well as unfit to be heard in mainstream media outlets and television talk shows."
Read the rest here.
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13 comments:
what I'd like to know is what's going to happen to that Chinese woman who started shouting and protesting against the Chinese president yesterday while he was profiling with the devil? Any thoughts? Think she's going to peacefully continue her life-long commitment to advocate for Falun Gong in the free-speech haven of America? Or do you think that as soon as she opened her mouth, a computer somewhere deep in Langley, Virginia started spewing out every possible piece of data on her and her kin and how to best make their lives miserable for the next 10 years?
I really like this quote:
"Americans have no concept of what citizenship is, what it is they’re supposed to serve. Many Americans have become so addicted to a lifestyle that I say they’re better consumers than they are citizens."
so true Roberto
But what was the voice of the left? Policy experts dont only say what wont work, they also propose what to do instead. There was certainly no coherent strategy that liberals or dems put out there. Not invading was the common thread, but how to buckle down on a middle east dictator who appeared threatening and certainly acted as if he had wmd. this is very imnportant coming up with iran: if we dont do bombing there (easy), then what do we do? (harder) as for being a subversive leper for not supporting the war, i'm not sure who he hangs out with. maybe he ought to get out of kansas, most places i've been have the pro-war people being shunned and clowned in the cocktail party scrums. things dont look that easy right now. another problem that may actually have you looking like a leper, is that fact that many people make good points aganist the war, but rapidly delve into a broader "America is the font of all evil" tirades. it wasnt the weather, bush blew up the levees, it wasnt al-quaeda on 9/11, it was the pentagon blowing up the pentagon. so on and so forth....
Roberto 131:
What if in our twisted world being a good citizen, means being a super consumer who borrows all he can, spends everything possible on things not essential and keeps people around the globe working and prosperous? is that sick or what?
Nice straw man - "blame america first" - I see your Weekly Standard education is just about complete. This has nothing to do with blame America first, but nice try. After Iraq attacked us we, oh right, Iraq didn't have anything to do with 9/11. You want alternatives, here they are: diplomacy, bribery, espionage, double agents, economic embargos, taking the time to effectively plan a war with realistic projections so that 2000+ american lives wouldn't have been wasted in the rush to give Bush a photo-op he so dearly regrets now - Mission Accomplished! That would have been a start, and the left called for it, but reason stands no chance when the mob has already been riled up - which the right made sure of. Sorry, Shotblock, stand up straight, no, not on the side, front and center, this isn't a shared responsibility, you can't so easily disclaim this disaster your experts got us into. You're still behind this? Then step up, it's photo-op time. The left made their concerns known, only to be labelled red, french, faggy, weak, whatever. Macho men who ran when it was their turn to face the bullets of their father's wars launched a war with less planning than goes into the Oscars. Their hubris, pride, greed, and ego have been paid for with a lot of blood. And to this day not a single show of accountability, not a shred of integrity. Maybe when all is said and done, spending trillions on a war that launched a country into chaos, that turned a non-religious regime into a fundamentalist regime, that has cost the lives of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of iraqi civilians, maybe someday it will seem like a fair price to have paid. Less stability, more danger, all so a president who believes God chose him for this mission could get his shot at glory. As for Iran, you've got it backwards, the easy part is dropping the bombs, the hard part is what to do the day after.
I'm definitely left of center politically but I was in favor of our invasion of Afghanistan. It actually made sense and it also appeared to have the support of the international community. Clearly, there was a purpose to the invasion - to punish a government that harbored terrorists and to actually smoke out the leader of the terrorist organization that carried out the 9/11 attack.
All appeared to be going well until it came time to actually capture Osama. Waldo/Osama was pretty well-hidden in the mountains and suddenly the mighty US military looked a little inept trying to find him. Then just as our imminent capture of Osama "dead or alive" seemed to have been stalled, in a bizarre twist, Saddam Hussein and Iraq started getting an inordinate amount of attention in the media, mostly quoting top US gov't officials.
All I could think of was "Wag The Dog". Did the Dems stand up and call bull$hit on this? Some did (e.g. Howard Dean), most checked the political wind and determined it was political suicide to do so. The American people wanted blood, Hussein was from "that part of the world" and he seemed like a safe target for American aggression and "gettin' ours" I guess.
In all honesty, I'm still baffled as to REAL reason we invaded Iraq:
- Was the invasion of Afghanistan and the search for Osama not satisfying the blood lust in the American opinion polls?
- Did we really think that Iraq was a clear and obvious threat to the US - even though at no time in their history had they demonstrated an ability to reach us with any WMD's (assuming they actually had them)?
- Was it that we wanted another base and foothold in the middle east other than Israel?
- Was it about oil?
- Was it about spreading democracy - even if it's by the use of aggressive military force?
- Was it about the fact that Hussein tried to kill Bush's daddy?
I still don't know. All I know is at this point there are no easy solutions regarding troop withdrawal and actually rebuilding Iraq before it implodes. Iran is now openly antagonizing us and our government seems to be talking very tough about engaging them militarily.
How would a Democratic president - Al Gore - have handled things post-9/11? Good question. Something tells me we wouldn't have been in Iraq.
Iraq did not play a role in 9/11. it did play a role in being an extremely hostile, Muslim regime that would have loved to see americans die in very large numbers. it did play a role in allowing every western intelligence agency beleive that it had several types of weapons of mass destruction in production and planning stages.(french, german, russian, uk, italian, and yes....the cia too. the west has a major problem with the middle east and we cant really laugh that off by blaming creationists, chickenhawks, or fox news.....this issue is a real tough one. anti-war people can be principled and in this case where there was NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, they were freaking right, but too often they allow THEMSELVES TO BECOME STRAW MEN, by blaming america first.....not from the weekly standard, but from their own mouths....no one had a crystal ball dude...i wasnt for the war, i thought they could have let the inspections go on longer...but this issue WAS HARD. Now for those easy alternatives we have above....
diplomacy?---62 violations of UN sanctions, madates, etc. hans blix and the weapons team kicked out of the country
bribery?---who was there to bribe? it was a dictatorship, controlled by one man and his sadistic sons who were living quite large. in fact, it was sadam who was doing the bribing, not the other way around. (kojo annan anyone?)
espianage- we can send in the gringo with the all white suit and panama hat and see how long it takes him to be carved up on a spit or we can use our super spy space gear to take pictures-----oh, we did that, and that's why colin powell embarrassed himself before the UN with the pictures of the mobile weapons labs and gray buildings , and underground concrete fortified bunkers
double agents? you must mean like ahmad chalabi and the exile community, who assured us that iraquis' would throw flowers at our troops and sadam really really really did have wmd
economic embargos? you mean like the kind that impoverishes ordinary iraquis and has sadam and his boys building palaces? an embargo against what.....the international date and olive consortium? that place makes oil, and it was supposed to be embargoed. sorry, didnt work that well. the embargo system was breaking apart from smuggling through its porous borders and sadam's bribe machine that was subverting everybody from the french, to the russians, to the mayor of london, to the UN head's own freaking son????
Still see easy outs that the God Squad didnt think of? Do you really think that the US had STABILITY in the region??? That Sadam was not going to break that embargo, get his 70 dollars a barrell and not rearm? And that having a rearmed Sadam with a few billion at his disposal would constitue stability for the US???? Iraq is chaotic now but stable under sadam??? what about the 80 thousand gassed in halabja????? what about the half a million military deaths in the late 80's war with iran???? what about the tens of thousands of kuwaitiis killed during his invasion in '91??? as for iran, i think we both framed it the same way....easy to bomb, hard to deal with repurcussions. maybe bribery? double agentry, or an embargo of iran's major export products like oil (now at 73 dolllars a pop) can we all say.....GLOBAL DEPRESSION....how about we let the mullahs get nukes for the sake of stability??? all i'm saying is that the issue of what to do with iran is like the one dealing with iraq...it is hard....not boiled down to god, oil and halliburton
Shotblock--I agree with you, these global issues are hard. I am glad to see anti-war people engaging in critical discussion. I understand what you are saying--you want more concrete options other than war (some of which Big-D offered and you countered). However, try to keep in mind that some folks do not need super concrete back up plans, but rather just want peace/not war (yeah, longer UN inspections would have been better--or at least provided greater clarity on WMD). i know this approach (avoiding war without a solid plan B) might fall short of your expectations, but for some going to war for false reasons is worse than any instability Saddam created by being in power.
The key point that can't be lost in our constructive debate is that Bush had war on his agenda and mislead the country to go to war. and to the angry people in the middle east there is no debate about how unjust the war is. we have created many more future terrorist than OBL could ever recruit.
Yeah I know what you mean by anti-war people slipping into complete nonsense of "america is evil" bush blew up the levees...etc. it is hard to remain united on anti-war front when folks come up with insane theories/nonsense.
Anyway, with respect to your question regarding Scott Ritter's treatment as a subversive leper--i think that label applies to how media and policy making circles treat him (not regular anti-war people (the majority of us)).
I do hope we have a different approach with Iran.
peace,
R
side note/p.s.--yes that would be an absolutely twisted/sick world that defines good citizenship as just excessive borrowing and unnecessary spending.
How about letting every country run themselves?? How about Sudan?? There are plenty of examples where the US has not intervened but where serious intervention would have been helpful. To think that there is not an agenda behind our reasons for going to war is ignorant and naive.
I feel sorry for the soldiers whose lives are at the whim of these incompetent leaders.
Loosey: There are and were several agendas for any action like invading a foreign country. i am certainly not in doubt about bush seeing a major silver lining in thinking he could invade iraq and help out his dracula corporate buddies at the same time.....but without the spector of bad guys getting the worlds most destructive weapons, then there is no war. that scenario doesnt exist in sudan....i loved clinton for trying to save the somalians from the chaos, hunger, and war that has destroyed them....but without a nuclear bomb, precious resource which we are addicted to or geopolitical import, it was easy for him to walk away after 19 deaths....and that country and its people are largely living in what i would describe as hell...we can not go into every country and save the world....dealing with iran and north korean nukes (which has no oil), is more a matter of self-preservation. homie in iran is talking openly about nuking isreal and "wiping it off the map". should we let that country run itself??
Yo Shotblock,
Ask yourself this question - was anybody talking about invading Iraq before 9/11? Circumstances in Iraq didn't change after 9/11. They didn't suddenly come up with a proliferation of new WMD's. Any transgressions that Saddam had committed previous to 9/11 had already been dealt with by diplomacy, sanctions and weapons inspections. Suddenly after 9/11, which everyone acknowledges Iraq had zero to do with, he becomes priority no. 1 - even to the detriment of finding Bin Laden. How did you buy into the hype, dude?
Seems to me Bush rushed to get into Iraq so that weapons inspectors wouldn't be able to spread the news that Iraq didn't have any WMD's. So we get rid of Hussein by force - against the will of the UN, pretty much alienating any good will the rest of the world had for us after 9/11 - and for what? To spread democracy to the middle east? That's working well in the Palestinian territories now that Hamas has been voted in. Regime change? In Iraq, you'll soon have a government that will ally with Iran - a country that actually does sponsor terrorism and is about as hostile to the US as any nation in the middle east.
Any way you look at it - invading Iraq unprovoked and unapproved by the UN was a completely bone-headed move. Now you want to invade Iran? Are you looking to provoke World War III?
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