The Serious People Are Still Serious

Andrew Sullivan wants to make perfectly clear in his hedging, "But the other kids were doin' it tooo!" apology for fucking up on Iraq so very badly that he deeply regrets not taking serious critics seriously.

Of course anyone else now claiming to have gotten it right is obviously just another Bush Deranged twat who never loved American like Andrew Sullivan loves America but was, instead, merely steamed that Conservative radicals on the Supreme Court hijacked the 2000 election and handed the White House over to inept son of the guy whose boss appointed most of them.  

Because Andrew Sullivan went to those marches, damn it!  And he can personally attest to the fact that they were mostly unwashed drum-circle assholes who never liked Margaret Thatcher anyway!  (emphasis added):

How do you go from my criticism of my own “broad brush” in describing the Iraq War opposition to an inference that I am casually dismissing the serious critics and skeptics of the WMD argument? I was doing the exact opposite. I was distinguishing between those I should have listened to and those who were blindly against the war, fueled by the simmering resentments of the 2000 election. As to why my skepticism was completely AWOL, I’ve said I was terrorized by 9/11 and fear overwhelmed doubt. I was also marinated in a DC culture that saw Saddam’s WMDs as a bipartisan matter, backed by the Clintons and Bush. And I genuinely believed that Saddam was such a monster and so convinced of US military skill that the moral question seemed clear. I was wrong on every count. But I was wrong in good, if nearly-blind, faith. And the opposition shouldn’t be painted with a virtuous broad brush either. I went to the anti-war marches. You think ANSWER was animated by the WMD question?

Reality continues to remains too scary for Mr. Sullivan's hardwired Tory contempt for Liberals to tolerate.

Which, in the end, is what marks him a genuine American Conservative after all.

I mean, who but a genuine American Conservative would have sheer, screw-Reality-and-the-horse-it-rode-in-on brass to still be aping the Weekly Fucking Standard's Dirty Hippie party line 

For example, on September 19, a group of peaceniks took out a full-page ad in the New York Times opposing the campaign in Afghanistan and a possible campaign in Iraq. Signatories included all the usual suspects: Jane Fonda, Edward Said, Barbara Ehrenreich, Tom Hayden, Gore Vidal, Ed Asner, and on and on. In the text of the ad, which runs to 15 paragraphs, Saddam Hussein is not mentioned. Weapons of mass destruction are not mentioned. The risks posed by terrorists and terror organizations are not mentioned. Instead there are vague sentiments, ethereally removed from the tensions before us today: "Nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great powers. . . . In our name, the government has brought down a pall of repression over society. . . . We refuse to be party to these wars and we repudiate any inference that they are being waged in our name." The entire exercise is a picture perfect example of moral exhibitionism, by a group of people decadently refusing even to acknowledge the difficulties and tradeoffs that confront those who actually have to make decisions about policy.

-- from 2002.