Iraq Update

The US has managed to bumble its way up shit creek in Iraq spectacularly, as ‘predicted many months earlier’:http://ko.offroadpakistan.com/world/2003_08/iraq_predictions.html. Just about every report in the ‘NYTimes coverage of Iraq’:http://www.nytimes.com/iraq is negative. The NYTimes is supposed to be somewhat ‘left leaning’, so to balance that lets see say about ‘4500 other news sources’:http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&ie=ascii&q=iraq&btnG=Search+News to get a broader overview of the whole Iraq/US mess. Nope, not a single positive news item anywhere as far as the eye can see. Hell, even Fox News, that bastion of goodness, freedom and American Pie has been bashing Bush and co. _softly, with padded sticks_, but it’s a start nonetheless.


Even people who had previously supported the war are now finally seeing the light: (The Fool being George Bush)

bq.. Fool. The region is ablaze with terrorist activity, and you just gave them new heroes, new mentors, and a new victory. You weak fool. Hundreds of our countrymen dead in a just fight against Ba’athist tyranny, and you allow that general in that uniform to stride into Fallujah as ruler with your imprimatur. You self-deluding fool. Iraqis see us as defeated, because you forgot the crux of the problem. You damned fool. You legitimized another Islamist party, set Islamist radicals free, gave the Sunni revanchists heart, and doomed Iraq as a unitary state. You hypocritical fool. Like a good liberal, your solution to a problem was — the tragic irony! — to create another government agency to paper it over. You ignorant fool. They have found the price we are unwilling to pay for victory, and now they will demand it every time. You callow fool. You spilled Marine blood for nothing. You feckless fool. It may take a decade or more, but I can guarantee you that your lack of spine will pay off in American blood spilled at jihadi hands. In Iraq, it has already begun. But it won’t stay in Iraq. It’s coming here, to these shores. It’s coming back, because the only thing keeping it away was vigor and resolution greater than theirs. That’s gone. That’s gone, you fool.

>> ‘Tacitus: The End’:http://www.tacitus.org/story/2004/4/30/125923/437

p. This post, and the ones preceding it give one an insight of how even fervent supporters of Bush are finally realizing what a “fool he is”:http://ko.offroadpakistan.com/world/2003_10/bush_leads_a_medieval_presidency.html. The only suprising thing is what took them so long.

From Dailykos, who were against the war from the start:

bq.. Frothing at the mouth is not my usual style. But with thousands dead, our diplomacy in shreds and the Neocon Terrorist Recruiting Machine worsening our security on a daily basis, a gob or two of spittle cannot be avoided. I had hoped that, with the end of the Cold War, the imperialists would be confined to obscure think tanks rather than getting their hands on the joystick of U.S. hegemony. Alas.

…Advice ignored. Evidence concocted. Propaganda and psy-ops deployed against the American and British peoples. The dream of the Project for a New American Century – their dream, our nightmare – aided and abetted by an oligarchy-friendly media and journalists too cowardly to remember that their true role is not boot-licking. To top it off, a patented rightwing smear campaign assigning a lack of patriotism, unAmericanism and treason to the dissidents who dared challenge the half-baked neocon blueprint for a hundred years of global dominion.

…Today, a year and a week after “Mission Accomplished,” we can say “I told you so.” But there is no relish in those words. Only ashes.

>> ‘Dailykos: Incandescent With Rage’:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/5/7/15221/51314

p. If the neocons had been right, I can imagine them calling for the blood of all the naysayers. The real question is then why do these American ‘liberals’ just roll over and let these neocons do whatever they want? All the complaining in the world really doesn’t mean anything.

*Update:* Lots of bloggers and journalists are now having to belatedly rethink their last three years of arguments supporting a futile cause:

bq.. The question I have asked myself in the wake of Abu Ghraib is simply the following: if I knew before the war what I know now, would I still have supported it? I cannot deny that the terrible mismanagement of the post-war – something that no reasonable person can now ignore – has, perhaps fatally, wrecked the mission. But does it make the case for war in retrospect invalid? My tentative answer – and this is a blog, written day by day and hour by hour, not a carefully collected summary of my views – is yes, I still would have supported the war. But only just. And whether the “just” turns into a “no” depends on how we deal with the huge challenge now in front of us….

The one anti-war argument that, in retrospect, I did not take seriously enough was a simple one. It was that this war was noble and defensible but that this administration was *simply too incompetent and arrogant to carry it out effectively. I dismissed this as facile Bush-bashing at the time. I was wrong…*

By refusing to hold anyone accountable, the president has also shown he is not really in control. We are at war; and our war leaders have given the enemy their biggest propaganda coup imaginable, while refusing to acknowledge their own palpable errors and misjudgments. They have, alas, scant credibility left and must be called to account. Shock has now led – and should lead – to anger. *And those of us who support the war should, in many ways, be angrier than those who opposed it.*

>> “Andrewsullivan.com”:http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_05_09_dish_archive.html#108415840160364769 via “CrookedTimber.org”:http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001830.html and “WashingtonMonthly”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_05/003880.php

p. Emphasis added. But note still that all these oh-so-pround war bloggers are still basically saying that we were always right, we are still right, it’s just that for some godforsaken unchristian satanic reason involving these pagan muslims that reality has diverged from its one true path, which is the path we said it to be. So now that it turns out that all the crapola they were spouting off for -months- years was complete and utter bullshit they can still manage to say that oh the shit might have hit the fan but we were oh so right.

The way things work in American politics, as must be obvious to anyone who’s ever observed them, public percpetion matters a whole lot. So when so many pundits all over the country were whole heartedly supporting the war on _insert favorite war here_ the Bush -administration- mafia could illegaly invade a country or two. So these schmucks who are now busy doing a lot whole of soul searching and saying hmmm… elections are coming up, and there’s no way this Bush idiot is going to win, so this looks like a fine excuse to drop him, why not singalong with these dummy demmies for a few days… even those who are actually feeling sick to the core for their -idiocy- no crime of supporting Bush can’t just walk away all clean and pure hearted. They’ve slimed not just themselves but their whole once proud country… despite all the rotten things the US had done over the last hundred odd years, American’s could still hold their heads high – but not anymore.

5 thoughts on “Iraq Update”

  1. Well, you have to keep in mind that someone like Andrew Sullivan would rarely, if ever, admit to being “wrong”. He and I were good friends for a while, and still stay in touch, but his whole position on life is predicated on the notion that views other than his don’t really count.

    Wait, that sounds like Bush.

    No parallelism intended.

    The sad truth though, is that public perception really doesn’t matter a great deal to American politicians. The Coasts, East and West are traditionally Dem. strongholds, with minor variation, if any. Having spent a LOT of time in the midwest and the “heartland”, I can promise you that the same is true, insofar as they’re primarily Rep. bastions. In the end, it’s the occasional swing-voting state that makes a difference. As long as people appear to be properly chastised, their actual behaviour remains “beyond reproach”, and will, as tradition demands, be vilified in certain locations, and taken as the norm in others.

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