Ten years on, you hear a few mea culpas from the people who were wrong, but you don’t hear much from the ones who were right. It’s almost like we don’t exist.
Many of us were right about Iraq from the get-go. For that monstrous crime, some of you had your lives threatened, some had your livelihoods or career prospects damaged, some were assaulted, and most were certainly pilloried and abused. All of us had our patriotism and love of our country attacked.
We were attacked by own government. It was galling enough to have my honor and patriotism impugned by the white feather brigade, but to have it questioned by erstwhile friends, but to have it questioned by men with whom I’d served? I know that some of you out there who were right from the beginning on this issue also were questioned by your employers. I for one am certain that I got a negative NCOER and missed a promotion in the National Guard because of it. I’m somewhat less certain, but I’m pretty sure my truck was vandalized during a drill weekend in the armory parking lot as well.
Two things have not ever happened to my recollection, and they most likely never will.
The vast majority of the people who attacked us will never say they are sorry. Whether they, like Dick Cheney, suffer from delusions of adequacy and believe that their behavior was correct, or they just don’t want to get too deep into the self-examination and admission game, they won’t say “I’m sorry I wronged you.” That would require more than a sense of having been wrong. It would require a sense of guilt or shame. That’s not something one finds in abundance in politicians or reporters or other public personages. Or conservatives as a group, for that matter.
The vast majority of the people who attacked us will never ever ever admit that we were in fact right. Your blog host is a notable exception on both these fronts. One guy with whom I served has told me that I was right and he was wrong. You will not see Phil Donohue, Ashleigh Banfield, or Keith Olbermann back on MSNBC. You will not see Eric Shinseki held up by Congress for accolades for being right about the number of troops or the time-frame it would take. See Guilt or Shame, lack of sense of for that. For most of them, their previous advocacy of the war and their concommittant ugly behavior is well down the memory hole.
You know what happened? I was proved fucking right.Post + Comments (192)