It’s been mired in this syndrome (NDS) for several years, ever since it was determined that the UWSPL (Upper West Side Party Line) was that the Iraq War was a disaster. But oops… along comes this Petraeus character and it may not be a disaster after all. Apparently things are looking up, at least for the moment. As Fred Thompson dryly put it, “You can tell that the news is good coming out of Iraq because you read so little about it in The New York Times.”
Of course, no one can tell what the verdict of history will be – although if you read Timothy Noah’s review of Jacob Heilbrunn’s They Knew They Were Right/The Rise of the Neocons in today’s NYTBR, you wouldn’t know it. Mr. Noah is a true believer in the UWSPL, holding aloft the banner of the NDS with pride. For him, Iraq was a catastrophe equivalent to the flood of that other Noah. And naturally it was the cursed neocons’ fault. Though Bush squeaked out a higher grade average at Yale than John Kerry (acknowledged even by the NYT on page 406 or whatever), Georgie-Peorgie never could have thought of invading Iraq by himself. He needed to be drugged by Richard Perle on a moonlit night.
Needless to say, Noah ignores such inconvenient truths – and others including the fact that Iraq is a functioning (albeit limping) democracy with people in the streets and growing businesses, that it is one of our least violent wars (less than five percent the US fatalities of Vietnam) and at the very least we will be left with bases inside Mesopotamia to help control the expansionist fascisms in Iran and Syria. It could be better than that. Who knows? The Iraqis could turn into real allies for freedom, just like those dreaded neocons hoped.
Of course, for the likes of Noah, the fact that it took a few more years than predicted means all is lost. Not exactly the kind of guy you’d like in your foxhole, is it? Ditto the editors of the New York Times. Not all that long ago (September 2002), Bill Keller wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine – The Sunshine Warrior – quite laudatory of Paul Wolfowitz. Not long after that, the real war was on and Wolfowitz became anathema. The slightest inkling of a sinking ship and it was “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!”… everybody overboard.
Now, ironically, some people will have to climb back in again or they will have to – horror of horrors – look at something as frightening as a McCain presidency. So it goes.
I think history will be very much unkind to the Bill Kellers and assorted “NDS” cliques. But will they care? Nah — I don’t think they’ve got it in ‘em to apprehend the enormity of their perfidy.
I have two culprits in mind for this.
First, obviously many in the dovish Left (Does a hawkish left still exist? Most seem to be calling themselves Independents these days…) are eager to be proved right when they say defeat is inevitable. For some, the surge is even worse– demonstration that victory is possible, or at least the illusion of victory. For them, it’s easy to take that next step: the realization that an early withdrawal will ensure a messy defeat, that such a defeat would ensure that America never contemplates war again.
My entire living experience consists of democrats convincing themselves that the republican president is either stupid with evil counselors (they don’t say anything about Bush that they didn’t say about Reagan), or are evil themselves (Bush Sr.) I wonder if they put it the way they do, relentlessly bashing neocons, to make hawkishness a fringe phenomenon, rather than the consensus of the entire conservative movement. It’s much easier to undermine a faction’s agenda than a whole political movement.
The other big culprit is President Bush himself. He’s repeatedly declared victory, and in a way that implies easy, quick, bloodless victories. By not preparing the American people for what are (in historical terms) light casualties on our side, he’s painted himself into a corner and endangered the outcome of the war. I can’t understand what he was thinking, except perhaps the all-important second term.
Wellspring, but he used the words “hard work” (re the war) so many times and so often that he became an object of ridicule for *that*, too. Go back and read a few of the big speeches, you’ll see how a meme has erased a history.
Today you are safer in Bagdad than anywhere within earshot of a Kennedy
The last part of the book review was particularly laughable when he describes the change in our VP from being a pragmatic realist to a warmongering neo-con after 9/11. He doesn’t bother to mention what occurred on that date or how it might have affected Cheney’s view of the world. Accordingly, he was at a loss to explain this change. Even the American Firsters changed their views after 12/7.
Noah’s review, and the book itself perhaps, have just a touch of anti-Jewishness; or is that just my (mis)perception?