He got the US to spend $4.4 trillion in a decade on counter-terrorism, using just a handful of men with boxcutters – and a whole lot of fear. For good measure, he goaded incompetents like Dick Cheney into violating core US standards of morality.
Even granting that Sully already said his mea culpas, comments like this still make me gag. People like who said that kind of thing back when it might have made a difference were not simply ignored. They (we) were hectored, castigated and drummed out of polite discourse. On CNN they were radioactive. MSNBC cancelled Phil Donahue, their highest-rated show, and fired their war correspondent Ashleigh Banfield for verbalizing that maybe Iraq was not the awesomest idea ever. It almost seemed like even war boosters understood at some level that Iraq was stupid and were consequently terrified to hear anyone say the words out loud.
More than rehash old grievances, I would politely suggest that those who were right then, in the face of overwhelming ridicule and abuse, might also be right today. People with actual expertise and a decent record might make a nice counterbalance to permanent Sunday guests like John McCain and Newt Gingrich who don’t know a fucking thing about anything.
Anyone seen Juan Cole on the teevee? Anyone?
cleek
unless he’s one of the guys on Workaholics, or a contestant on So You Think You Can Dance, no. or possibly he’s a 16″ ceramic vase that someone brought to Antiques Roadshow? no?
then he hasn’t been on my TV, that i know of.
Danny
Yes Juan Cole should get more exposure. Not only because him being consistently on the money, but because he is a mainstream progressives progressive that doesnt sign on to nutroot dogma. That Hamsher gets to go on the shows and he doesnt is a freaking joke.
BGinCHI
I thought Juan Cole was John Cole with a black waxed mustache, two chihuahuas, and a gato gordo.
Han's Solo
I seem to recall that of the bigger print papers only Knight Ridder / McClatchky were even close to having been right. But I could be wrong.
Scott Rider and Hans Blix were also spot on, weren’t they? And Chris Matthews, who I know many of you hate, was mildly opposed to the “Eternal War to Resubjugate Brown People.”
But yeah, I’d love for there to be SOME form of accountability for America’s pundits.
trollhattan
Grumble, grrrr.
I’d have been perfectly happy if we’d 1. gotten the job done at ToraBora and then exited Afghanistan after liberally sprinkling it with CIA folk and 2. bagged the whole Iraq escapade (the arguments for which I never understood during the run-up). I guess I’m supposed to be happy anyway that we were 0 for 2, since I still have my foam finger and a giant bill that AmEx is totally not going to cover.
Not totally unrelated, this is how we treat career Marines who go up against the status quo?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/julyaugust_2011/features/the_unquiet_life_of_franz_gayl030495.php
TooManyJens
Would it be overly picky of me to note that the Iraq invasion wasn’t “counter-terrorism” by any reasonable definition?
Bulworth
The years 2002-2003 will live in infamy for ridiculousness and vitriol.
Bulworth
Not that I’m saying the years 2004-2005 were much better.
freelancer
Since Moyers went off the air, my TV needs more Bacevich. That dude’s writing can be a tad dry, but on camera, he is nothing short of awesome.
cleek
@TooManyJens
right.
at best, Iraq was orthogonal to terrorism.
jayackroyd
No. But Gideon Rose was in the Times yesterday pointing out that the only Serious way to conduct foreign affairs is Nixon-style–through deceit.
I talked to Daniel Ellsberg and Glenn Greenwald about this–about how Serious = Warmonger. http://bit.ly/jdsXu0.
About halfway in.
Bulworth
I didn’t watch Donahue but prior to 9/11 I still had a feint belief in the media’s legitimacy. After, not so much.
Barry
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney also surrendered to bin Laden’s key demand — withdrawal of U. S. troops from Saudi Arabia.
Bush’s surrender to bin Laden was the first U. S. surrender to a foreign diktat since the fall of Corregidor. That defeat was avenged in a scant three years later.
Warren Terra
Fnck that. Sullivan did a piss-poor, halfhearted, and mealy-mouthed recitation of his mea culpas, and if you blinked you could mostly miss it. More importantly, the realization that he had gone all-in on backing that bunch of morons, lunatics, and psychopaths didn’t lead Sullivan to contemplate any introspection whatsoever, to consider how he might avoid such errors in the future. He’s still the same emotion-driven, rationality-blind hystrionic narcissist that denounced people for insufficient fealty to The Deciderator (including denouncing specific named individuals to whom he has never apologized). His blind and impulsive obsessions can be useful and indeed emotionally satisfying (his backing of Obama in 2008, for example), but even a clock flashing 12:00 is correct twice a day. He is, quite simply and judged on his track record, not a person who should be taken seriously.
Three-nineteen
Bin Laden didn’t do any of that to us. Our elected officials did, especially (but not limited to) Republicans. I bet Cheney was salivating at the excuse Bin Laden gave him to do whatever the fuck he wanted and then be able to tell us that if we didn’t let him “the terrorists will win”.
We did it to ourselves.
Zach
The worst, I think, was reserved for folks who thought that maybe Iraq might not have any WMDs at all after Hans Blix spent so long following every lead America could drum up for him and having complete access within the country and then saying as much in his presentations to the UN. Once Bush & Co. jumped onto a remotely control airplane as evidence of Iraq’s existential threat, I was totally confident that Iraq’s WMD program was at most limited to a handful of things leftover from beefing with Iran.
Edit: And, as far as I know, Sullivan still claims that it was perfectly fine to be near certain about Iraqi WMDs because everyone else said it was so (even the French!)… the implication being that everyone who thought otherwise was coming to the least likely conclusion and was thus unintelligent even if totally correct. He’s also doing exactly the same thing with Iran today. If you suggest that the 2009 Iranian elections were most likely not a complete sham, you’re in league with rapists and murderers. Look at what he’s posted about the Leveretts and when he’s approvingly linked Goldberg on their analysis.
Calipygian
Actually Juan Cole wasn’t against the war in the beginning:
http://www.juancole.com/2003/03/my-mind-and-heart-are-like-those-of-so.html
BGinCHI
Bulworth:
I didn’t fake my belief even then.
Roger Moore
@TooManyJens:
That would be shrill. So would pointing out that when it came to fear, it was the allegedly manly men who were whimpering like babies about the need to protect ourselves by lashing out. Or that Sullivan was cheering the whole process on until it was blindingly obvious that Iraq was a horrific mistake. In fact, any mention of the stupidity of the Bush era that doesn’t speak in passive voice as a way of eliding the responsible parties would be the height of shrillness.
AAA Bonds
I was right about Afghanistan from day one, and I will never shut up about it.
They even ended up conducting a police action against Bin Laden, like I suggested on September 12, 2001.
TEN YEARS LATER, IN ANOTHER COUNTRY!
Han's Solo
I think what we really need is some sort of pundit rating system. I know a study was done recently that found that Paul Krugman was the most correct pundit studied, but I’d love it if I could look up pundits and politicians and get a clear idea of how likely, historically speaking, they are to be correct.
For instance, say Mittens Romney said something stupid like, “Obama made the recession worse,” and I didn’t know anything about Romney. I could then look up Romney, and find that he is only right 15% of the time. I could therefore discount his opinion accordingly. This would put pressure on politicians and pundits TO STOP FUCKING LYING!
That is a huge project though. You’d have to map out the big issues, standardize the responses into a quantifiable format, and later map out actual results. It would be a full time job.
PeakVT
More from the department of not getting it. Malfeasance is distinct attribute from incompetence. Cheney knew exactly what he was doing.
AAA Bonds
I’m pretty sure that Andrew Sullivan, as an incompetent, did his best to goad Dick Cheney into doing things Dick Cheney was already determined to do.
MattR
Han’s Solo – That is a wonderful idea in theory but in practice it would be implemented by folks who decide that a Democrat saying that the Ryan plan would end Medicare is a lie just like Jon Kyl’s 90% statement about Planned Parenthood was a lie and they would count the two evenly.
handy
@Han’s Solo
You understimate the power of BothSidesDoIt!
Cris (without an H)
This is so over-generous to Cheney as to be willfully delusional. If you want to know what constitutes “US standards of morality” for Rumsfeld and Cheney, look no further than the administration where they started their careers.
alwhite
This is a Sully standard – he is consistently, loudly and inflammatory wrong when it matters. Then when the dust settles he does a curtsey with a bashful “gosh, I guess I was a little off”. Then he can continue to pretend to be open minded and fair.
MikeJ
*They* didn’t. The people who were in charge changed. The new, competent people did it right.
El Tiburon
Please. BushCheney Inc. were already neck deep in violating any and all standards of morality. One way or another they were going to choke and kick and otherwise beat the shit out of somebody. This is what these people do. That they were given to the keys to the torture-shithouse so easily was just a fucking bonus.
Han's Solo
MattR – Yeah, it wouldn’t be easy to setup a model that could quantify punditry. And it would get a lot of pushback from pundits, that’s for sure. You’d have to standardize the questions and the answers, which would take interpretation of comments, which is problematic in and of itself.
Still, it sure would be nice.
The Moar You Know
PeakVT: Exactly. Cheney has been many things, but never incompetent. Most forget he was Bush I’s SecDef, and as such was in charge of Iraq Part I.
Most don’t know that he canceled the A-12 project, possibly the most expensive boondoggle ever crammed through the DoD, because he knew the next war wasn’t going to be against the Soviets.
Even back then, he knew where the next war was going to be.
goblue72
I still clearly remember being in law school during the 9/11 attacks and arguing in a seminar – one focused on Terrorism & Internationa Law – that some nuts living in caves in a desert did not constitute an army invading our country and thus the only rational and legal response was to treat them like the Sopranos – an organized crime syndicate that should be pursued using the same tools & tactics we’d use to go after international criminal conspiracies, or, at worst, through extra-judicial black ops type means. I was poo-pooed for being naive.
Instead, we got TWO full blown wars that burned through our treasury and bind Laden wound up getting killed in some other country as a result of investigative sleuthing and an off the grid operation.
A lot of us were right. But the mob rule was louder.
Tsulagi
[email protected]
So in March 03 Juan was basically a kinder, gentler, warm fuzzy nation building wingnut.
david mizner
Well, if Juan Cole were on TV, he’d push the stupid war in Libya, so. He also supported the war in Afghanistan. I’d prefer to see some actual antiwar voices on the teevee.
Derf
nothing is as it seems.
Dennis SGMM
He? He? Fuck. “He” had plenty of collaborators in the media as well as pols on both sides of the aisle. “He” and his very willing help convinced us that we we’re cowards who need all the protection that intrusive surveillance and endless foreign wars can provide. “He,” on his own, couldn’t wrap a Christmas present even if he used orthopedic ribbon.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
[email protected]: not quite win. definitely on the podium.
Derf
Nice try attempting to ban my proxy server John Galt Cole. Apparently your IT skills are like your Politics. Naive and poorly informed.
Timmy timmy tim tim. Sit down son and let me give you the facts of life.
Donald Trump was never serious about running for Prez.
Sarah Palin was never serious about running for Prez.
The ReThugs were never serious about forcing the US to default on it’s debt. If you still doubt it google around and you will see various reports on the FACT they are going around quietly telling the Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street exactly that.
Get a fucking clue!
Thoughtcrime
Not since Tunch knocked him off of it and Rosie stuffed him under the Morris chair.
Zifnab
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/222072/march-18-2009/juan-cole
Colbert shows the love.
handsmile
[Gonna try this one more time. The last two attempts were vaporized.]
Uh-oh! This suggestion that the microphone be given to those with “actual expertise” on a subject veers awfully close to what foundered the post below on sex-selctive abortion. Assertions of privileged knowledge based upon biological function, the usual flinging of poo, the comparison of abortion and the NFL. One person’s expertise is another person’s disinformation, I guess.
I might consider watching Press the Meat if the guests were invited in inverse proportion to their record of inaccurate statements and predictions. Producers of this fantasy program could actually draw upon the results of a recent Hamilton College political science project that evaluated the accuracy of television and print pundits. (Spoiler alert: Krugman ranked first; George Will lurked near bottom). Sadly, that would mean that I would only get to see President McCain hawking male EDF products during golf tournaments.
Of course, the defense industries that largely underwrite the bobble-fests might choose a different venue to manipulate elite opinion-making. Right doesn’t make might (or even usually see the light).
murbella
How about spending 4.4 trillion FOR FUCKING NOTHING?
A simple reading of the Generous Quran could have tipped that fucking WEC retard off that missionary democracy was never going to take hold in MENA.
TooManyJens
Bottom line, bin Laden didn’t make our Glorious Leaders do anything they didn’t already want to do, whether that be invading Iraq or ratcheting up the security-industrial complex. Remember how quickly the PATRIOT Act was drafted? Almost like they already had that waiting in the wings…
Cat Lady
In March of 2003 I spent 15 minutes reading about Iraq after googling “history of Iraq”, and realized that (1) we were going to war on total pretext, and (2) I knew more than the fucktards asking questions at Chimpy’s press conferences. It also dawned on me that this country was never going to fully recover. Why didn’t everyone get it? There was certainly nothing special about me. What the fuck happened to us?
Just Some Fuckhead
I heard he was fat and misanthropic.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Cat Lady:
I think we all understood something had to replace the Cold War to keep the MIC going. It’s just that too many people think that’s a good thing.
stuckinred
Cat Lady
You want the truth? I bought Colin Powell’s routine because I did not think a vietnam combat vet would allow what he did to happen. He sold me and I should have known better.
Cat Lady
@JFH:
I really don’t think that was it. I think it was a perfect storm of post-9/11 trauma, hyperpatriotism, media consolidation with their mouthpiece airheaded hacks; Republican shock doctrine adherents (like Cheney and his amoral minions) in high places and low information voters swallowing simple minded “tough talk” with the Russerts and Friedmans aiding and abetting for their own reasons. It was fucking mass hypnosis. I will never understand it.
ETA: stuckinred: the Powell speech gave me pause, too. If it’s ever up-against-the-wall time, his cowardice and poor judgment makes him a prime candidate, cuz he KNEW better. Fuck him, and all of the other Bush admin cowards and press corps sycophants who played along so they’d get a towel snapping nickname from the Deciderer. They’re the banality of evil personified, and the worst of all.
NobodySpecial
Tim, you are not going to rehabilitate Sully. He’s on the mock list for many, many good reasons. Yet another ‘Sorry if anyone was offended’ bullshit cop-out will not change that.
Dennis SGMM
@Cat Lady
To my mind, Powell was one of the worst sons-of-bitches in the whole sorry lot. His Powell Doctrine worked in the first Gulf War, he saw the bogus intel and yet when the administration abandoned his doctrine and issued bogus threats about Iraq being able to hit the US with everything from poison gas to nuclear weapons he kept his mouth shut. He was one of the few with the stature and credibility to head off the Iraq war and he didn’t. Granted he would have had to resign but, as a retired General Officer he and his would never have missed a meal anyway. He betrayed his duty to those who served under him. There is no greater failing in an officer.
Sly
And, of course, we got to see retired colonels and generals drum up the war as “senior military analysts” for the networks and being paid to do it by the Pentagon and private military contractors.
That wasn’t emblematic of actions taken by dupes and incompetents. If you think you have a good argument, backed by evidence, you don’t feel the need to lie to the extent that the Bush Administration lied. And not just about Iraq. The Bush Administration lied about everything. It was government by dishonesty and terror. And it shouldn’t have surprised anyone, since most of them made their bones in the goddamned Nixon Administration. And the ones that didn’t worked for America’s Favorite Terrorist, Ronald Reagan.
Cat Lady
Dennis SGMM: The FAIL of that administration was from top to bottom throughout every department- through Rumsfeld’s DOD to Gonzalez’s DOJ to Chertoff’s Homeland Security and Paulson’s Treasury to Cox’s SEC to Drownie’s FEMA and on and on and on and on and on. It was so pervasive and so destructive you’re actually forced to conclude that it was a feature and not a bug. You’re actually forced to conclude that it was all a way to loot the Treasury for crony hacks, all while screaming about the inability of government to do anything right, but Obama’s supposed to have fixed it all by now, so he’s as bad as Bush/
murbella
Shariah law forbids proselytizing the poor and ignorant. Freedom of speech legalizes proselytizing the poor and ignorant. That is not hidden…it is in the Noble Quran and in the islamic bill of human rights.
Freedom of speech and shariah are INCOMPATIBLE.
The CDHRI was adopted in 1990. Shariah law countries and majority muslim nations cannot at this time be invaded by missionary democracy with freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
And even Juan Cole won’t admit this.
He banned me for saying it.
When muslims are DEMOCRACTICALLY empowered to vote, they will vote for shariah, and never for missionary democracy with freedom of speech.
murbella
Juan Cole is another asshat that banned me for just telling the truth.
Dennis SGMM
Ooo, there’s MC again with yet another moniker but still commenting the same old shit. And another nick is added to my pie filter.
Chris
In retrospect, the most amazing thing about the decade was how hard the U.S. government and al-Qaeda worked to out-stupid each other.
The 9/11 attacks caused a backlash in the Muslim world against al-Qaeda, not the United States. We could’ve used that intelligently, but instead, we rescued them from their incompetence by invading Iraq. That sent their recruitment numbers soaring. That could’ve been THEIR great moment, but they, in turn, rescued us from our own incompetence by behaving so brutally towards the Iraqi population that by 2006 and 2007, even their Sunni allies, who weren’t exactly fond of us, were switching sides.
It’s been absolutely spectacular to watch. One wonders what kind of fuckups the future has in store for us. I can only hope we won’t top the last one, but you know, the past doesn’t really give me much hope…
Chris
I hear you. Not just because he was a Vietnam veteran, but because he’d been a voice of caution arguing against the use of force in Yugoslavia in the last decade (hence Albright’s infamous comment “what are you saving this army for if we can’t use it?”) If he was okay with the war, it wouldn’t be without good reason. Or so I thought.
Chris
Yeah, how do you do that, exactly? I think it might be time for me to get a pie filter too.
PeakVT
@Chris – you need to install the Greasemonkey add-on in FF, then click on cleek’s name to go to his site to get the filter.
Dennis SGMM
@Chris
cleek has a pie filter for Firefox at his site. Someone else (Whose name escapes me) here ported it over to Chrome as well.
It does save some scrolling.
ETA: Thanks, PeakVT. i’ve had the thing installed for so long that I forgot Grease Monkey.
Chris
Thanks, folks!
(another) Josh
I can’t believe people are suggesting that Powell’s conduct in Vietnam made them think of him as more trustworthy. The My Lai coverup was not a noble thing. And it’s consistent with Powell’s history of being a company man.
murbella
yeah Chris, its the same old shit. the same old TRUE shit.
Bush killed 7k soldiers, slaughtered a million muslim moms and dads, and spent trillions of dollars because he believed in missionary democracy. And the rest of you do too, in your secret hearts..
And now the chickens are coming home to roost.
and we are kicked out of Iraq in December with NOTHING to show for all that blood and treasure, except the undying enmity of dar ul islam…..you know….dar ul islam? where the oil is?
Chris
@ (another) Josh –
Although I didn’t know he had anything to do with My Lai, it wasn’t “more trustworthy,” it was “more cautious when it came to the use of military force.”
bob h
Not to mention that the 2001 attacks caused such shock to the economy that Alan Greenspan moved interest rates to near zero, and kept them there for a long time. The seeds of the housing bubble and financial panic of 2008-9 were planted by bin Laden.
murbella
yeah, OBL succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
He junk-punched America in the economic nads and brought the whole house of cards tumbling down.
In 2020 one out of four humans on the planet will be muslim.
And a hella lot of them will have good reason to hate America.
murbella
Glad you are having fun, Chris.
wasn’t much fun for these people.
not true.
there has been zero backlash against Al-Qaeda. what we did in Iraq was to bribe the Sons of Iraq in the Anbar “Awakening”. When the paychecks stopped, al-Q moved right back in.
arguingwithsignposts
Oh, m_c. How can we ignore you if you keep changing your nym?
Chrisd
Sully once wrote that Cheney’s machismo made him want to purr. To purr.
This isn’t a case of “raw muscle glutes” gone awry. You don’t come back from that. No apology, half-assed or otherwise, will suffice. It’s like blasphemy against the Holy Spirit for the Christers. No forgiveness in this life or in subsequent ones.
murbella
i changed my nic so i could post again. i was stopped in mid-rebuttal to one of our current resident illibertarians spin-posts.
like all my nics, murbella has meaning.
Ghani was neutral…..murbella has chosen the darkside.
murbella
just to be helpful, today is the day the Iraqi political blocs decide on America’s kind offer to stay and “protect” them.
The dinar traders are the only people i see following it.
Now who remembers who Muqtada al-Sadr is?
FYI he got Maliki relected and drove the Brits out of Basra.
Somehow i do not think al-Sadr is a “yes”.
;)