Last and First Men of Mars

We thought what we thought back then.

Thomas Friedman wrote another column about Iraq this week.

 In it he said this:

Iraq was always a war of choice. As I never bought the argument that Saddam had nukes that had to be taken out, the decision to go to war stemmed, for me, from a different choice: Could we collaborate with the people of Iraq to change the political trajectory of this pivotal state in the heart of the Arab world and help tilt it and the region onto a democratizing track?  

 ...But was it a wise choice?  

My answer is twofold: “No” and “Maybe, sort of, we’ll see.”  

I say “no” because whatever happens in Iraq, even if it becomes Switzerland, we overpaid for it. And, for that, I have nothing but regrets. We overpaid in lives, in the wounded, in tarnished values, in dollars and in the lost focus on America’s development. Iraqis, of course, paid dearly as well.
... 

Like so much of what Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. lets his pal Tom Friedman shovel into the pages of


his New York Times, this is just another load of Friedman's arrant revisionist bullshit.

But it is also in pretty execrable taste for Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. to let his Neocon pal use the word "we" when listing the butcher's bill for Friedman's catastrophic game of Risk-with-real-humans, given the fact that the Iraqi Debacle has cost Tom Friedman exactly nothing.

Not even the privilege of lying about it with impunity in the pages of America's newspaper of record.

Mr. Friedman added this:

 So no matter the original reasons for the war, in the end, it came down to this: Were America and its Iraqi allies going to defeat Al Qaeda and its allies in the heart of the Arab world or were Al Qaeda and its allies going to defeat them?

Mr. Friedman can do this over and over again, year after year -- compact this kind of raw, jaw-dropping dishonesty into sentences and then string them together on teevee or in publications like the New York Times -- because people like Mr. Friedman are never, ever held to account for the terrible things they say and do.

And speaking of unaccountable New York Times Neoconservative frauds who are still allowed by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. to run barefoot through the pages of his newspaper for no explicable reason...


 

 David Brooks had this to say about Iraq last week on "The News Hour":

Yeah, I don't know whether Iraq was worth it. The cost was obviously high in lives, treasure and national morale. But we have this -- we're left with this thing. 

... 

And now we have a moment of turmoil. We don't know this turmoil -- it could be worse, it could be better. But it's a moment of turmoil. I think the Iraq war and the deposition of Saddam Hussein was part of the things that encouraged, instigated the turmoil. 

...

It's very messy, very complicated. But, in 100 years or in 50 years, we will look back and see where the turmoil went and maybe we will have a better sense of how the Iraqi elections, getting rid of Saddam, getting rid of the Taliban helped lead to maybe getting rid of Mubarak, Gadhafi and all the rest.  

Again, this "we" nonsense.

Again, this special pleading of the Neoconservative to stretch of the timeline of judgment out to a distance of hundreds or thousands of Friedman Units.  "Let enough decades pass," Mr. Brooks argues.  "Let the continents shift and magnetic poles reverse.  Then and only then -- long after I am gone and my lies are long forgotten -- should we submit my blood-soaked bullshit to history for judgement."

And when Mark Shields dropped a little truth on his pointy head?

MARK SHIELDS: It's a terrible, terrible policy to go to war, the most serious decision a country can make, with absolutely no justification. I mean, let's be very blunt about it. Al-Qaida was responsible for 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with it. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and no ability or capacity to deliver those weapons that were nonexistent.

JIM LEHRER: And you don't dispute that, David?  

 DAVID BROOKS: No. Well, we obviously thought what we thought back then. But I always thought that the need to disrupt the Middle East was one of the reasons why it was necessary.

Of course, David Brooks' views on the Iraqi Debacle during and immediately after the invasion -- and his contempt for anyone who doubted the nobility and wisdom of George W. Bush -- are well-document all over the internets.

Needless to say they bear almost no relationship to what he now asserts his views

 As for myself, I still think now exactly what I thought back then:

There is a Club.
You are not in it.