I saw Phil Lesh at the Tower Theater last night and he jammed out. My mind is putty this morning. I sat down to read the morning papers and I am glad to see Armando has taken Fred Hiatt apart limb from limb. Hiatt’s position is that the Democrats are undermining the war effort for political advantage. Apparently, we are not supposed to talk about the manipulation of intelligence in the lead-up to the war because it erodes public support for the debacle in Iraq.
But the aptness of Mahdi’s view of the United States is already evident in Congress, which pours most of its Iraq-related energy into allegations of manipulated intelligence before the war.
“Those aren’t irrelevant questions,” says Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). “But the more they dominate the public debate, the harder it is to sustain public support for the war.”
What Lieberman doesn’t say is that many Democrats would view such an outcome as an advantage. Their focus on 2002 is a way to further undercut President Bush, and Bush’s war, without taking the risk of offering an alternative strategy — to satisfy their withdraw-now constituents without being accountable for a withdraw-now position.
I am very sorry, Fred, that the we don’t have any great alternatives to getting the fuck out of Iraq. It’s not like any of our advice has been heeded at any stage of this phony war. It’s not like the commanders in the field have been listened to when they asked for more troops. If we went into a preemptive war based on forged documents that were fixed around the policy and none of our advice has had any effect on the way the war has been conducted, one eventually has to ask what the point would be of offering an “alternative strategy”.
The bottom line is that it is too late to salvage our Excellent Iraqi Adventure, and it is ridiculous to fault Democrats for not having a plan to save Bush’s bacon. What is needed is some honesty, not false bravado and self-censorship.
What’s bizzare is that this is the same WaPo the right wing mouthpieces hold up as the leader of elite liberals.
Somewhere in the last 20 years, or 30 year,s the country I knew has gone so horribly wrong. That the paper whose reporting helped expose the Nixon crimes is calling Democrats traitors and opportunists for speaking the truth about a far worse criminal regime is too much like a Kafka novel.
suggest that we avoid the truth about the Iraq War so that the Iraq War can continue until maybe, hopefully, someday we could might possibly win what? What would we win? And while all these assholes sit around yammering their ideas people die and die and die some more……but they want to win what again? They want to win peace and democracy in Iraq? Is that right? All these dead people and these angry people because of dead loved ones and destroyed property are how we get to peace and democracy? So just shut up people so that soldiers can continue to feel good about dying in Iraq and Americans can feel good about sending them there to do that!
I seriously doubt the insane architects of this debacle have any interest at all in pursuing and furthering peace or freedom or stability or democracy in Iraq or the broader MidEast. There’s no evidence whatsoever to support this notion. Indeed, evern a cursory analysis of every major strategic and policy decision made by these BushCo neocon lunatics supports the exact opposite; more violence, more instability, and perpetual war for the foreseeable future. These are the goals they’re pursuing, and the brass ring they want to “win” is the ultimate control of all the energy reserves in the region.
More ignorant buck passing, which, along with butt-covering, seems to be all the leadership of both parties seem to know how to do real well anymore.
What happened to the idea that genuine "leadership" meant having character, courage honestly and integrity? And involved acting,(not just talking,) in ways that engendered trust in those one wishes to lead, so they come along with you by choice and shared committment, rather than under threats of dire consequence if they don’t?
"Where, oh where true leadership gone?
Oh where, oh where can it be?
With it’s steady light and strong hand of hope,
Oh where, oh where can it be?"
(Sad. I am regressing to the point of rewriting nursery rhythms)
From Lewis Lapham in Harper’s
“Dissent at home hurts the war effort over there.”
NOw we all know that this adm. is living in a bubble. That is a given. NOw they have the ordacity to want someone to bail them out…well, like I said, this adm. wants us to become codependent for them so that they can find someone to bail them out and then go back to doing the same old things like as before…no no no…this dog won’t hunt. Until ppl wake up and smell the coffee about what is happening here, there will always be confusion and no direction of where we are going. bush and his cronies have gotten themselves in s hell of a mess and now they want the dems to bail them out! Even though some of those dems went along with them in creating the mess. what do they really want??!!
May I suggest that in my opinion, they are doing exactly what bush has always done in his past. They expect others to bail them out of their mess….make the problem everyone elses but y ours…that is their memo to the gang in the WH and Cong.
My alternative: don’t go to war and instead take care of our own citizens by protecting personal freedoms and critical social programs.
Unfortunately, I think Hiatt’s 100% on the ball in that last paragraph you quote:
Most Democrats in the House and Senate don’t favor a withdraw-now position (and, among those that do, many like John Murtha favor wars like this in general, but just think this one is sufficiently FUBAR that we need to withdraw so we can fight similar wars more efficiently in the future). Far from being spineless, the majority of Democrats in DC are hardcore militarists who are, as Hiatt correctly suggests, in the difficult position of trying to win an election on the basis of the fact that a solid majority of the American people — and the vast majority of their base — oppose a war that they essentially support.
Until we fundamentally alter the bipartisan foreign policy consensus in DC, we can expect a lifetime of future Iraqs and Vietnams.
I think Fred Hiatt is saying in not so many words is that he wants the Democrats to provide an Exit Strategy for Bush Co. Why can’t wingnuts just admit, BushCo took this country into a quagmire of a war, without an exit plan.
Well the only exit strategy now is for the W/H to admit it never had one. Unless..Stay the Course, Plan for Victory, Mission Accomplished, is a war plan.
telling an abused spouse to keep his/her mouth shut so the happy family image isn’t shattered.
“Mission Accomplished” is nothing more than an illusion, smoke and mirrors. I’m proud of Keith Olbermann for adding the number of days since “Mission Accomplished” was declared to his signoff. Would that the rest of the MSM have the honesty to do that…
Because facts are not at issue. Bush has decided to fight the propaganda battle by instilling a cult-of-personality among his followers so that whatever policy they propose – even if contradictory with previous policies – are accepted and defended without regard to historical fact. As long as Bush retains the bullhorn his adversaries cannot win the debate because there is no debate. And in those few cases where debate takes place, primarily covered on CSPAN, the game becomes to cherry-pick facts and shout down anyone who disagrees or attempts to provide context in refute.
This is a power struggle, not a hunt for truth. The Republicans didn’t win, Bush did. Notice that Frist announced support for the United Arab Emirates port deal? After opposing it only days before?
So the question becomes, how does a minority fight a cult-of-personality leader who has taken the reigns of power? I don’t think it’s possible. The solution can only be found in building a right/left coalition strictly to oust this president and return the Republic to a nation built on the foundation of law and not one man.
There is a lot of progress going on in Iraq right now. The press simply isn’t reporting it because they are owned by the Liberal Media Empire.
They don’t want you to know about the fresh coats of paint still drying on a school floors in Diwaniyah, the bags of priceless handsomely packaged Toblerone candy given away by our caring troops to hungry Iraqi children, the many many utilitiy projects that have brought stacks of plastic bottles of fresh flouridated Aquafina water to thirsty Iraqis, the electricity that sometimes illuminates not only the streets but the minds of the Iraqi young,
All this is forgotten in a world where the liberal press slavishly carries on the party line without asking the right questions or confronting the obvious politicization of what’s really going on there.
Why doesn’t the press talk to the Iraqi people and ask them what they think? You never see it on the news. It’s because they are afraid of the answers they will get. Iraqi’s will tell you they love freedom, the freedom that only America could give and has given not only with the blood of so many American solidiers, but the love of an entire nation that cares about Iraq.
America cares about the Iraqi people. THATS why we are there!
That’s certainly the central myth the propagandists are working so hard at spreading.
Booman you said two things.
1). that somebody didn’t listen to somebody when they didn’t ask for more troops.
More troops would never and will never help or make any difference and it implies that things might have been better. Better for what? For what purpose, for what end? This argument or even bringing it up implies that we could have raped Iraq in a more humane way. Now after the brutal rape which could have been done with more finesse…I guess….the idea is how do we uh….pulll out!. The answer is: quickly, with no apologies and run as fast as you can. You don’t apologize for raping someone, unless you are really, really even sicker than being just a rapist. Apologizing for rape is just another form of rape, it’s so much worse for the victim, because it’s so unbearably twisted.
The United States needs to seek treatment, not apologize or find better ways to rape.
2). If you want honesty, then we can all take a look at ourselves, (I don’t give a damn if you are an activist or not). The blame for this is on all the American people regardless of race creed or color, or activism.
Because this was a group effort.
This is a very distrubed nation. And we are all affected by the disturbance, and I am afraid by implication infected by it.
That is why it is appropriate and possible to feel ashamed you are a member of this country. In fact we pay taxes, we participate in the economy of a nation that is committing atrocities and so we are all contributing. If you haven’t move out yet, if you havent’ gone complelety underground then you are a part, no matter how ambigous, of this nations fascistic policies toward the rest of the world.
1) Agreed. However, the failure to listen to the generals proves beyond argument that Bush never really wanted to “win” this “war”. That’s why the revelation is crucially important, but it gets lost among nonsense about how “we” could have “won”, even on the liberal/left media/blogs. What needs to be hammered mercilessly is that there was never a “victory” strategy because there was never a possibility of victory, and NOW WE ALL SEE THAT BUSH KNEW THAT ALL ALONG, and didn’t care. It was never about democracy, dictatorship, blablabla.
As far as apologizing, I take your point that it would be ludicrous in a way. But to get past the shame, the US needs to openly admit not just to mistakes, but to criminality. That will happen about as soon as mommy and daddy Bush admit that their little bastard is a psychopathic moron. Creatures like the ones we choose to “lead” us are never, ever, wrong.