Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by DougJ| 90 Comments
This post is in: David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute, Military, Assholes, DC Press Corpse, Decline and Fall, Even the "Liberal" New Republic, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?, Our Awesome Meritocracy, Our Failed Media Experiment, Our Failed Political Establishment, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All, Shitheads, Sociopaths, The Decadent Left In Its Enclaves On The Coasts, The Dirty F-ing Hippies Were Right
This will never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever happen, but it’s a good thought (via):
I have a fantasy. It’s that every politician and pundit who goes on TV to discuss the Iran deal is asked this question first: “Did you support the Iraq War, and how has that experience informed your position?”
Comments are closed.
Tommy
John Oliver hit it out of the park yesterday. He played all these clips of Republican saying we should have gotten a better deal.
It was at this point Oliver said I wonder why Kerry didn’t think of that. Just demand something and the Iranians will bow before us. Cause you know that is how negotiations work.
Tommy
That second graph of the article you linked to hits home, because well that was me:
I kick myself often over this, because my Republican father, who kind of wrote the textbook on the use of air power while teaching at the Army War College, told me this invasion was stupid.
You’d think I would have learned by my late 30s my dad is right almost all the time and I would listen to him. But alas I didn’t and I was proved to be wrong on like every front.
Roger Moore
This must be a different set of talk-show hosts from the ones I’m familiar with.
Tommy
@Roger Moore: Or why can’t a news program have somebody from Iran on when talking about Iran? Iran has problems. I won’t come out and yell Iran, Iran, I am pro-Iran.
But what I have issues with is it is kind of a first world nation. They have a pretty college educated public. Infrastructure even with all the sanctions. It is not Afghanistan.
Also a very, very young population.
I am a child of the cold war. Military brat. I was always told that if we could get the Soviet Union to listen to rock music, want a Big Mac, and wear Levis we’d win.
And guess we kind of did.
Why the opposite approach to Iran?
mainmata
TV talk-show hosts aren’t actually interested in policy discussions; they’re interested a) in the horse race and b) flamboyant ranting and posturing (e.g. Grandpa McGrumpy and Huckleberry Butchmeup). Talk-shows are about entertainment – albeit of a pretty surreal nature – and nothing more.
JPL
Joe found the Presidents comments about the Iran deal, arrogant and deeply offensive to foreign policy thinkers.
I picked the wrong time to stream Morning Joe.
Mike Huckabee is going to make a statement soon about his comment about the oven door.
Mustang Bobby
@JPL: If President Obama praised cupcakes, Joe would find that arrogant and deeply offensive to cookies.
Tommy
@Mustang Bobby: LOL but in a sad way because it is true. I can praise cupcakes and also really like cookies.
White Trash Liberal
@JPL:
Huck will double down. My money is on “existential crisis” and him getting angry at political correctness trying to stifle his corn pone truthiness.
JPL
@White Trash Liberal: He doubled down.
TheMightyTrowel
@Mustang Bobby: This is an aside because I’m a real sad sack and I feel like other people should have the chance to mock: I have very serious capital-O Opinions (of the negative kind) about cupcakes and what the cupcake trend says about selfishness and the breakdown of social cohesion. I won’t rant it out here, but just so you know… some of us care deeply about cupcakes and see them as a symptom of late-stage capitalist social breakdown.
JPL
From the article..
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in 2002 told Congress that “There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is … advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons” and that “If you take out … Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” can appear on Sunday show after Sunday show smugly lecturing the host about the state of Iran’s nuclear program and the Iran deal’s implications for the Middle East without having his earlier comments read back to him.
It would be educational for MSM showed Netanyahu’s comments about the invading Iraq along side his comments about Iran.
Mustang Bobby
@TheMightyTrowel: Yes, but what does David Brooks have to say about it?
TheMightyTrowel
@Mustang Bobby: I’m not sure but it probably offends me.
debbie
@JPL:
What did he say?
schrodinger's cat
@Tommy: Then why is your father still a Republican? Is it Republican policy of tax cuts for the wealthy, their misogyny, racism or xenophobia that is more attractive or is it something else?
DougJ
@Tommy:
It’s interesting to me how many people like your dad there were out there. At the level of media and military “elites”, party affiliation was not that good a predictor of opinions about the war.
schrodinger's cat
@TheMightyTrowel: Are you against cup cakes or all bite sized baked goods? What is your opinion about petit fours?
Kylroy
@Tommy: For the same reason it took us two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union to normalize relations with Cuba: Iran’s leadership defied and humiliated us.
Kathleen
@Tommy: Yesterday afternoon I caught Oliver’s previous week’s show, and he was suggesting that the critics actually read the agreement before they criticize it. He showed a clip of Lindsey Graham admitting he hadn’t read the agreement after he attacked it.
JPL
@TheMightyTrowel: Sometimes a cupcake is just a cupcake. Personally I prefer a good muffin.
Tommy
@TheMightyTrowel: That is pretty darn funny. I was never a cup cake guy. Cookies 24/7. Then my brother married into this huge family.
Emily is about 16 now. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but what she bakes I could eat until I get sick.
I almost want to seed her money for a store ….
gene108
@TheMightyTrowel:
Cupcakes are, in their own way, egalitarian.
There’s no quibbling over, who got the larger piece. There’s no attempt to “game the system” by telling the cake cutter where to cut to try and get a bigger piece. There’s no “she got the flower decoration icing on her piece and I want one too”, when in fact there are no more flower decorations left to give, when it came to cutting your piece of cake.
Everyone gets one cupcake and they are all basically the same size, with maybe a choice of different icing on top.
JPL
@debbie: I’m trying to find the exact quote but there was no apology.
someguy
I have that fantasy too. Anybody who did support the war in Iraq should be permanently discredited. That includes Cole.
And Hillary.
Kathleen
@DougJ: I remember Brent Scowcroft, who worked for Bush Sr, opposed the invasion.
From Wikipedia:
He was the United States National Security Advisor under U.S. Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. He also served as Military Assistant to President Richard Nixon and as Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He served as Chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005 and assisted President Barack Obama in choosing his national security team.
BTW, Doug, great title for the post. It so perfectly encapsulates my contempt for the mainstream media.
Tommy
@Kathleen: Exactly. I am a reader. I read everything that comes in front of me. I often read bills and I am not an elected official.
When I hear this Senator or House member didn’t read the bill they are talking about, and it happens a lot, I want to fucking scream. It is your job.
schrodinger's cat
The case for war against Iraq was flimsy from the get go. People who supported the war chose not to see through it, they just wanted to teach someone a lesson. It didn’t matter that it was a country that had nothing to do with the initial attacks on September 11.
gene108
@JPL:
A lot of liberals assume everyone shares their opinion that the Iraq War was and is a disaster and people should be held accountable for the fuck-up.
I think there’s a large contingent of VSP, who feel the Iraq war was a “good”, no matter what, and would still be good, if Obama had not screwed things up.
Therefore the thought expirement in the OP comes from a flawed premise that assumes the VSP also think the Iraq war was and is a bad thing, like the rest of the public.
OzarkHillbilly
@someguy:
You seem to have ignored the follow up question: “What did you learn from it?” But then, maybe you aren’t too big on learning from mistakes either?
JPL
@debbie: Msnbc just repeated the statement .. I’m not great on transcribing but this is the jest.
What is ridiculous and sad is that President Obama does not take the situation seriously……….Huck will stand with Israel to prevent another Holocaust .
Tommy
@schrodinger’s cat: I was for the Iraq war and I honestly years later can’t really explain why. I knew Iraq wasn’t a threat to the US. They didn’t have anything to do with 9/11.
I’ve thought about it for countless hours and I can’t really place why. If I am honest with myself I think I believed Bush to a large extent and kind of wanted to pound somebody into the ground after 9/11.
That is maybe the sadist thing I’ve ever said about myself, but I think true.
Kathleen
@Tommy: Same applies to media, but according to Chuck Todd it’s not his job either.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodinger’s cat: Um, it’s petits fours, if it’s plural.
/pedant
Patricia Kayden
@JPL: And what more does Huckabee have to say about the “President Obama is killing Jews” comment? So many crazy things are said about the President that Huckabee’s comments don’t even stand out.
NorthLeft12
@Tommy: A few thoughts on the difference in dealing with Iran as opposed to the Soviet Union;
1. The Soviet Union had nuclear weapons. Lots of nuclear weapons.
2. The Soviet Union was a huge country, with a massive conventional military force, a large population, and a large industrial base.
3. The Soviet Union was viewed as an equal, mostly because of the two reasons above.
Iran is still viewed as a third world country [by those that refuse to negotiate with them] that humiliated the US on more than a few occasions [overthrow of the Shah, hostages, role in the Iraq debacle] without suffering any kind of military punishment [besides the Vincennes shooting down a civilian airliner] and just being a general pain in the ass.
The RWNJs will never negotiate with Iran because they will never recognize them as anything like an equal, and you just don’t negotiate with subordinates.
TheMightyTrowel
@schrodinger’s cat: There are definitely places for the bite-sized baked good (though whether the cupcakes of today fit that bill is surely questionable – and I have to insert here that what I object to are the piles of icing and weird flavours sold in specialist cupcake stores or stacked up on trays at weddings and parties, not the little fairy cakes we make for school kids’ birthdays), but petits fours sit in the same world as cupcakes, I might even call them their ideological ancestors! Selfish, bourgeous, conspicuous consumption undermining all the good food-sharing elements of what makes cakes special!!
(yes, ok, i’m a little tongue in cheek here. it’s a monday, I’m at work and don’t want to be).
schrodinger's cat
@Gin & Tonic: Thanks, that’s what I had typed the first time, but I was not sure. Balloon Juice, come for the political commentary stay for the editing and spell check.
debbie
@JPL:
Not even the standard non-apology apology? What a man!
ETA: I guess the only way to be serious about anything is to bomb the hell out of them (while at a safe remove).
schrodinger's cat
@TheMightyTrowel: I know, I was just teasing. Bite sized pastries are perfect to nibble on with tea. Bombay has these wonderful restaurants run by Iranis (Zoroastrian refugees from Iran), they have the best tea, pastries and other baked goodies evah.
MattF
It still boggles me that anyone with a working cerebral cortex supported the Bush II war in Iraq. Or believed Powell’s presentation. Or…
Long ago, I read an essay that pointed out the existence of a ‘War Party.’ When the Commander-in-Chief says we’re going to invade Xyz, the members of the War Party stand up and salute, and that’s that– and anyone who doesn’t go along is a coward and a traitor. That’s just the way things are.
FlipYrWhig
I think Mike Huckabee really wouldn’t like my theory that Iran SHOULD have nuclear weapons, specifically to thwart the craziness and swagger of the government of Israel.
Tommy
@NorthLeft12: Oh all your points are clear and accurate. But kind of the point of my post. If I was not clear, Iran isn’t a third world nation. If we view it as such and attempt to negotiate with it that way, well maybe things are not going to work out so well.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodinger’s cat: I suspected you’d appreciate the correction.
MattF
We’ve got a cupcake shop in my neighborhood (a Georgetown Cupcakes, no less), but my pastry business goes to the local French boulangerie. It’s just amazingly good.
Mike E
@DougJ: I was right about Iraq but wrong about John Edwards… does that make me history’s worst monster?
FlipYrWhig
@Tommy:
Republicans don’t negotiate. They glower and the other side just runs away crying. It’s about the same logic as those Chuck Norris memes from a few years back.
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: I remember Republican God Reagan, negotiating with the Evil Empire.
Tommy
@Mike E: I was wrong about both. Guess nobody should ever listen to me :).
boatboy_srq
@Tommy:
The approach is different because the West won. The war ended. There wasn’t the great Soviet boogeyman to fear, to arm against, and to waste trillions in unneeded defense and intelligence dollars to combat. The winnable conflict is out of vogue precisely because there’s a foreseeable end to it. The new, improved is the struggle of cultures – the great conflict between Xtianity and [extremist jihadi] – which can only be won when all Muslims are converted to the True Faith (either that or dead in the Righteous Xtian carpetbombing). The new approach is designed never to be won: that way the machinery can grind on spying on all of us, spending federal largess on nearly-pointless programs sold as “necessary to Keep Us Safe” and doing everything possible to prevent realization of any Peace Dividend simply because peace is an illusion of the Unwatchful and the Unprepared.
There’s also the plain fact that the Cold War ended in a mercantile whirlwind and military whimper. The only people who think business is sexy are on Wall St; the “sexy” victories involve countless gun-wielding Rambos and fighter-piloting Mavericks slaying the Evil Enemies of
CapitalismFreedom, so the end of the Cold War was unsatisfying to anyone enamoured of Righteous Muscular Ahmurrcan Leadership. Nobody toasted the CEOs of McDonalds or Nike or Levi Strauss when the Berlin Wall fell or when Gorbachev resigned; the link between capitalism and the fall of Soviet socialism was too tenuous, and those dirty Russkies were making money off the changes (albeit as employees of McDonalds, and purveyors of Levis and Nikes). And there were no great military heroes for whom to throw the parades, break out the medals and make the speeches in celebration. The NEXT great campaign has no intention of allowing Those People to make one red cent (this despite the clamor for more-and-cheaper oil, of which Those People’s homes have significant reserves) and has EVERY intention of giving all those Righteous Jeebus-and-Capitalism-Loving Warriors for Freedom™ the chance to knock some heads and come home toendure decades of virtually-untreated PTSDboast about it just like the veterans of Agincourt who stripped their sleeves and showed their scars on St. Crispin’s Day.low-tech cyclist
@Kathleen:
Enthusiastically seconded! I opened the comments just to say something along these lines.
At least Fitzgerald’s fictional Tom and Daisy would have been able to say in their own defense that the consequences of their carelessness weren’t that great – a defense unavailable to our Fourth Estate’s opinionators and interviewers.
JPL
@FlipYrWhig: Iran might need a weapon to thwart the crazy republicans.
boatboy_srq
@Patricia Kayden: “Obama killing Jews” is the new Kenyan IslamoFascoSoshulist Othering: it’s just part of the toxic package. I’m not sure whether Huck actually buys the Kenyan IslamoFascoSoshulist meme and thinks BHO really is out to either Islamify the US or usher in the new jihad, or is simply addicted to the adulation of the wingnut masses who believe that and spouts this stuff so they’ll keep cheering.
MattF
@JPL: This. If the Iranian ayatollahs said anything even approximating the violent threats made constantly by the R candidates, the US media would go nuts.
Gin & Tonic
@boatboy_srq: McDonald’s did not open its first outlet in Moscow until after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
MattF
@boatboy_srq: It’s just possible that Huck stepped over the wrong red line there. But we shall see.
rikyrah
they continue to let Bill Kristol on the tv…
they will never ask this question
FlipYrWhig
@schrodinger’s cat: Don’t believe it. That wasn’t a negotiation, that was just sheer intimidation. See also the wisdom of one Mr. Hank Hill.
low-tech cyclist
@JPL:
Hell, he provided a guarantee. Doesn’t that mean that he’s on the hook if the product was defective?
Since the “enormous positive reverberations on the region” never materialized (in fact, the biggest ‘reverberation’ has been, um, Iranian dominance of the region), I think he owes us for every dime we’ve had to spend in Iraq since 2005, by which time those “positive reverberations” should have allowed us to leave Iraq with the Iraqis peacefully governing themselves.
People who interview him ought to ask him when he’s gonna cough up the dough.
boatboy_srq
From the Atlantic piece:
This is the statement of a conservative who learns. It is the kind of statement that we should expect from a rational conservative movement. That we do not hear this from anyone in the GOTea, and are subjected instead to countless brash statements of commitment to immediate repudiation of every single foreign policy position/agreement/proposal/whatever that reduces global tensions (simply because of Ahmurrcan Ecksepshunulism), should be proof enough that the modern GOTea has no business anywhere near the levers of power.
Kathleen
@low-tech cyclist: I agree. MSM has done so much to enable cynicism and apathy in the electorate (“Both Sides”) feed the divisions between races.
That being said, the NBC affiliate in Cincinnati (WLWT) has done an outstanding job of covering local issues fairly and in depth. National stuff – well they repeat the crap fed to them by newswires of network. We had to tragic incidents in the past 2 months – a police officer killed by a young African American male who apparently wanted to commit suicide by cop according to his FB – and another man killed by a University of Cincinnati cop which has triggered protests and a demand to see the dashcam video. In each case, the station has gone to great lengths to tell “both sides” of the stories, and I mean that in a good way.
boatboy_srq
@Gin & Tonic: Still 18 months before dissolution of the USSR and nearly two years before formation of the CIS.
/pedant
Kathleen
@MattF: Republicans have no wrong red line. They are never, ever called out for their noxious spew. If they had been up to now, Donald Trump would not be running for President.
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig: understandable, but perhaps overestimates the rationality of Israeli decision makers.
Gin & Tonic
@boatboy_srq: Those facts may be true, but I was responding to someone who said upthread “Nobody toasted the CEOs of McDonalds or Nike or Levi Strauss when the Berlin Wall fell.”
Less facetiously, even if one accepts Tommy’s simplistic notion that Levi’s and rock music led to the collapse of the USSR (which I do not,) then at least give credit to Pepsi, which did the hard, hard work of getting into the USSR in the 1970’s, the first well-known Western consumer products company to do so. McDonald’s wasn’t a factor until after things had already changed completely.
Amir Khalid
@Bobby Thomson:
@FlipYrWhig:
What I’d like to see Hillary, or Bernie, or whoever on the Republican side do is pledge to disarm Israel’s nukes. Now that nearby hostile countries have no nukes, it can no longer justify having its own nukes, either.
FlipYrWhig
@Amir Khalid: I can’t imagine any American politician not saying some version of “They’re our best friends in a dangerous region. They can’t take the risk of disarming.” As someone smarter than me once said, there’s much greater diversity of opinion about Israel _in Israel_.
boatboy_srq
@gene108:
There’s a measurable percentage of US citizenry who believe that, in no small part because Rushbo/Beck/BillO/Fauxnews have trumpeted it ceaselessly. Should we be more concerned that the VSPs are agitating for a more muscular US foreign policy, or that a significant part of the US electorate has been feed a load of hogwash to the point that propaganda detox is worth consideration? The signs were there before the invasion when so many old hands came out against it, before/during/after the Fallujah Spring and Anbar Awakening, in the Surge, in repeated admissions by the Shrubbery that the going was tough and would take N more troops and $100xN dollars and in the rise in oil prices as the “sea of oil” Wolfowitz salivated over never lapped onto US shores. It became noticeable to anyone not embedded in sNoozecorp talking points; we’ve seen Beinart, Frum and plenty of others own up to being had by the Shrubbery, and more are coming forward with surprising regularity. Beinart is right: Kristol, Krauthammer and the rest do not deserve respect for their opinions when their earlier prognostications are proven so entirely incorrect; however, until the RWNM is addressed, there’s little chance of confronting them with their earlier failures.
And again this goes to TABMITWH and the Othering of Obama. There is no single action that BHO can take, no statement he can make that is not somehow proof to these volk of his illegitimacy, incompetence and general unfitness. OBL is gone; Bin Laden is gone; AQ is in ruins; the economy is recovering, healthcare inflation is hammered down to the levels of overall inflation; the deficit is more than halved; GM is out of bankruptcy and profitable again; and now Iran is prevented from nuclear armaments and severely inhibited in its pursuit of civilian nuclear power; yet all these things that should be victories for The US and for Americanism are, to the Reichwing, untrue, insignificant or both. How much of the opposition is partisan, and how much of it is naked racism?
boatboy_srq
@Gin & Tonic: Forest/trees, I’m sorry to say. You’re nitpicking without suggesting that the capitalist approach failed, and you’re leaving completely unaddressed the idea that the winning of the Cold War (if such could be said to be achieved) came from business and economics and not from military campaigns (although admittedly the military overspending on both sides was a major factor as well). I wasn’t intending to laud any single enterprise so much as point out that the corporate moguls weren’t feted when that might have been merited; and there wasn’t a grand military victory for Admiral Crowe or General Powell to be celebrated, which would have made advocates of the Muscular Exceptional Ahmurrcan foreign policy moist from the exercise of US military might. And you haven’t touched on the proposition that the West’s success without a shot fired and at the hands of the merchants is what’s driving the new militarism, which was the entire point of the generalized comparison.
Amir Khalid
@FlipYrWhig:
I certainly don’t expect to hear that from anyone running for President in 2016. It seems inescapable to me: if everyone else on your street gives up their firearm, and suddenly you’re the last person with a gun, then you are now the most dangerous person around and the biggest threat to safety. I just wonder what would happen if someone pointed out that logic.
NorthLeft12
@Tommy: I am not saying Iran is a third world country, I am just saying that to me, this seems a major stumbling block in the minds of those who don’t believe in negotiating with Iran. From what I have read, the Iran Deal haters seem to think that the US can just demand whatever it wants and force Iran to accept it……by threat of military action, I guess.
Yes, it is crazy and unreasonable, but that does not seem to matter to those who are saying it or the large minority of your population who support them.
Gin & Tonic
@boatboy_srq: I am not saying that the capitalist approach failed, I am saying it was one part of a complex combination of factors, in which the military spending played a larger part. Primarily, though, I think that USSR-style Communism was untenable in the long term just due to simple human nature. At an elementary level, people want their work to be rewarded in some measure proportional to their effort. Compare agricultural productivity on the collective farms to that on private plots.
NorthLeft12
@Kathleen: I get a little irked whenever I hear the phrase “both sides of the story”.
News events have a story/timeline/facts that are there to be documented and communicated. There are no sides IMO. If there are conflicting eyewitness reports, these need to be noted, with some identified feedback as to which is more supported by the evidence or by logic. If someone is lying, call him on it and include that in the story.
A well covered news story includes all the facts and should be able to allow the reader/viewer to come to a logical and reasonable conclusion about what happened.
boatboy_srq
@Gin & Tonic: True. The event was complex with multiple factors driving the result. But would you not agree that to the conservatist warhawks it was ultimately unsatisfying, and one of the drivers of the current militaristic push is that the last “victory” failed to satisfy their all-bombs-all-the-time war hardon?
Kathleen
@boatboy_srq:
Gin & Tonic
@boatboy_srq: I’m not sure it was “ultimately unsatisfying”, but I am pretty certain that there’s a significant element that is nostalgic for the “clarity” of the Cold War. When Perle and Wolfowitz were babes sitting at the knee of Scoop Jackson it was very clear who was wearing the white hats and who the black.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@gene108:
IMO, one of the strengths of the cupcake is that everyone can have what they prefer if you get the right mix (including gluten-free or sugar-free options if necessary) while everyone is still enjoying the same treat. Cupcakes allow for diversity within treat unity.
But, then, as my husband once said to me, I would punch a baby in the face for a cupcake, so I may be slightly biased.
(Note: no babies have ever actually been punched to obtain their cupcakes, possibly because they see the crazy look in my eye and hand them right over,)
Kathleen
@NorthLeft12: What I intended to relay was that their coverage did not just repeat what the police or city manager said, and did not demonize the young man who shot the policeman or the young man shot by a policeman. Also, reporters interviewed families and people in the community to get their perspective and background information about the community where events occurred. That’s what I meant about both sides. Reporters provided (gasp) context.
I probably should have explained that in my original comment.
Cervantes
Good on Beinart for writing that.
Roger Moore
@TheMightyTrowel:
I’m not certain how I feel about cupcakes in general, but cupcake cakes are an abomination.
BobS
Somewhat (but not entirely) off topic, most of those guilty of misfeasance/malfeasance relative to their support and/or conduct of the Iraq invasion/occupation as well as their criticism of the Iran deal (Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz, Kagan, McCain, Graham, et al., along with their media cheerleaders like Judith Miller, William Kristol, Fred Hiatt, et al.) are the same bunch spinning false narratives and touting a more bellicose policy toward Russia with regard to Ukraine. It would be nice (albeit another fantasy) if the people who were & are correct about Iraq& Iran (e.g. Robert Parry, Daniel Larison, Noam Chomsky (of course), John Pilger, Pepe Escobar, Stephen Walt & John Mearsheimer, et al.) were as visible as the bunch of war criminals who drive the debate.
DougJ
@Mike E:
I’m in the same boat
Gin & Tonic
@BobS: It is possible, of course, to have been right about Iraq a decade ago and to be wrong about Ukraine now, or vice-versa.
BobS
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah, it’s possible, just not very likely when you consider the Always-Wrong All-the-Time All-Star Team of Cheney & friends I mentioned above. And even more unlikely when you consider it’s the consensus view of a roster of folks with a long record of good judgement sitting in the other dugout.
Geeno
I remember having qualms about Iraq, but it was just obvious that Bush was going in no matter what. I just remember thinking, “Well, I hope it works out, because it’s going to happen.”
boatboy_srq
@Tommy: @Mustang Bobby: I put it as: “If Obama made a statement about the goodness of sunshine and puppies, the GOTea and RWNM would whinge that the President hates kittens and is celebrating the CA drought.”
arrieve
I was in Iran for two weeks in April, shortly after reports of the preliminary agreement, and pictures of people celebrating in the streets of Tehran, and I thought, Oh good, they won’t hate Americans as much as they usually do.
The trip was eye-opening in the best possible way — I was lucky enough to meet and talk with many ordinary Iranians, who not only don’t hate Americans but who went out of their way to come up to us on the street and tell us how much they love America (and invite us to come and stay with them — Iranians are very hospitable!) The sanctions have been very painful, on top of years of inflation and high unemployment, and everyone hopes they’ll be lifted, but I was the one who usually brought the topic up. The potential agreement wasn’t the first thing people wanted to talk about.
Interestingly, what several people did mention, with great bitterness, was being lumped into Bush’s Axis of Evil. They felt that they had done Americans a big favor after 9/11, allowing them to use Iranian airspace to attack Afghanistan, and that that one comment had given hardliners in the government an excuse to say, See you can’t trust the United States, and was a factor in the election of Ahmadinejad.
Another very key takeaway is that Iran is nothing like Iraq as a military target. It’s a much bigger country, and more importantly, it’s been a country for 2500 years, and Iranians have a very strong national identity and great pride in their history and culture. They may not like their government, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t rally around it if the country were under attack.
NorthLeft12
@Kathleen: Thanks for clarifying. What you described is a well written news story.
Your “in a good way” comment after the “both sides” was a pretty good tell of what you meant. I just wanted to vent about what is normally meant by getting both sides of the story.
NorthLeft12
@Roger Moore: I’ll mildly disagree with that blanket condemnation. My first grandchild just had his first birthday party this weekend and the cake was made up of cupcakes formed into the shape of the “Hungry Caterpillar”. It was cute and delicious, although I am partial to real cakes myself.
J R in WV
I vote for Naked Racism as the reason President Obama doesn’t get any credit for all the huge successes of his administration. The Obama Hatred is based in his darkness, he isn’t even really liberal from the perspective of a progressive liberal, so it can’t be that.
Of course, they hate Bill Clinton with a white-hot hatred too, maybe it’s because these liberal Democratic leaders are so successful, and the republicans just are not successful, at all. Of course, the reason for their failure is that their ideology is broken, substantially flawed as a tool for moving into the future.
It’s as if they were using smoke generators, when what they really need is bright fog lamps! And they hate Democratic leaders for using those bright lights to see their way into the future! While republican leaders are required by their ideology to use those old oily smoke machines, and can’t see the end of their nose for all that smoke!
That could get painful after a while. Trying to lead a major country without fog lamps, without being able to see where you’re going. While your opponents use fog lamps you can’t use, because they are unpure and non-republican in nature. Really bright fog lamps, like economic research, which shows what works and what doesn’t work, like the Laffer Curve! And political science, which can make diplomacy with enemies work out. But isn’t republican in nature!!
Iran, yes, very much not a typical third world country. Well educated, advanced in many ways past all the other middle eastern countries, could very well develop their own Bomb if left alone to do that work. But to the republicans all middle eastern countries are just camels with fleas and nomads with tents.
Except Israel, which is just like greater NYC except for the ancient history and religious overtones. And the Palestenians.