Iraq and Other Debacles

Q: How is George W. Bush's Iraqi Clusterfuck like the institution of marriage?

A: They're two subjects about which David Brooks should not say one more fucking word for the rest of his natural life.

And yet... 

Voters, Your Foreign Policy Views Stink!Rogue nations thrive when the good lose all conviction.

Seriously, The New York Times should have a big, loud, building-wide red-alert siren that goes off whenever their page-layout software detects David Brooks typing the words "marriage" or "Iraq".

At a minimum they should have assigned a couple of strapping young interns around-the-clock to body tackle him anytime he comes within a 100 yards of getting into any subject About Which He Should Keep His Pie Hole Shut Forever.

But because the Sulzberger family is too cheap to spring for these basic protections against such publicly humiliations, the public once again gets to watch Super-Humble, Sorta-Christian, Midlife-Crisis guy, trying really hard to squeeze into a conversation about Foreign Policy in the same way one might cyber-stalk an ex-girlfriend.

By pretending to be some other person entirely!

Not the guy who penned this cover-story for the Weekly Standard:

Certainly not the guy who leveraged his undistinguished career as a Weekly Standard wingnut hack into a New York Times brand on the strength of writing column after column after column slagging anyone who took issue issue with the Great Iraqi Clusterfuck.

Iraq and the Polls
By David Brooks 

There's a reason George Washington didn't take a poll at Valley Forge. There are times in the course of war when the outcome is simply unknowable. Victory is clearly not imminent, yet people haven't really thought through the consequences of defeat. Everybody just wants the miserable present to go away.

We're at one of those moments in the war against the insurgency in Iraq. The polls show rising disenchantment with the war. Sixty percent of Americans say they want to withdraw some or all troops.

Yet I can't believe majorities of Americans really want to pull out and accept defeat.
…

…one thing is for sure: since we don't have the evidence upon which to pass judgment on the overall trajectory of this war, it's important we don't pass judgment prematurely.
...

It's just wrong to seek withdrawal now, when the outcome of the war is unknowable and when the consequences of defeat are so vast.

Some of you will respond that this is easy for me to say, since I'm not over there. All I'd say is that we live in a democracy, where decisions are made by all. Besides, the vast majority of those serving in Iraq, and their families, said they voted to re-elect President Bush. They seem to want to finish the job.

Others will say we shouldn't be there in the first place. You may be right. Time will tell.

But right now, this isn't about your personal vindication…

No, this David Brooks really gets where you're coming from man!

We need a leader who can grapple with failures like Iraq...

America’s leaders made some terrible mistakes (Vietnam, Iraq)...

After Iraq and other debacles...

This David Brooks is Super-Humble, Sorta-Christian, Midlife-Crisis guy, who just wants to sit and rap with you  ... (wait for it) ... about ... (wait for it) ... how ... (you know what's coming) ... Both Sides (there it is!) ... are equally wrong when it comes to American foreign policy:

There are two types of low-trust voters. On the right there are the Trumpian America Firsters, who want to cut immigration and break alliances. On the left there are the New Doves...

Of course all variations David Brookses have one thing in common: they always have big-big plans for other people's children to jump on those gunboats and sail 'em up Yangtze River to bring Democracy to the heathens or whatever.

Postscript Fun Fact:  I was combing through my archives looking for the first time I referred to the Iraq War as a "debacle".  Turns out, one of the earliest example was from June of 2005 --

Where is the push from the sleek little GOP rodents that cheerled us into what is shaping up to be the Worst Foreign Policy Debacle in a Lifetime to pony up their own sons and daughters in the service of their Great Cause?

-- just a couple of months after I began blogging (shout-out to Haloscan 1.0 survivors!) and still was still figuring how to work the machinery.

It was from this post, in which I was responding to the very same New York Times column I reference above by you-know-who...

Private BoBo!  Let me see your war face!



Bullshit! You didn't convince me!

This is such a vile, little slice of tripe, that it’s hard to even know where to being.

Especially when you’re slogging though a summer cold, and can’t really tell if BoBo is actually this feculent, or if part of it is the DayQuil talking. Sadly, while the hacking cough of a cold goes away, coughing hacks like BoBo just trundle on and on and on. Which is why we must keep smacking their pointy headsies…

It's fourteen years later and it turns out that we on the Left were right about the Right all along.

And yet coughing hacks like David Brooks are bigger than ever, while we on the Left are still relegated to smacking their pointy headsies from the disreputable margins.

Funny old world.

Behold, a Tip Jar!