06-12-2008, 12:58 AM
Ok, I'll bite, but I dare say I'll regret it...
I've heard of 0/20 foresight, but your rather wistful hope that Iraq will ultimately prove to be a success may be the first example I've seen of 0/20 hindsight.;)
In this case, anyway, foresight was 20/20. The potential for disaster, and the dishonesty of the Bush administration, was obvious at the time. Perhaps what couldn't have been predicted in advance was the criminal incompetence of the Bush administration in managing post-invasion Iraq.
The story is no different than it was before. After 9/11, and -- who knows -- maybe before, the Bush administration was determined to go to war with Iraq. We can speculate about the reasons (and I certainly have my own ideas) but given the secrecy and dishonesty of the administration, we may never know for certain exactly how they made that decision or who really made it. What is clear, though, is that 9/11 gave them the opportunity to use exaggerated intelligence to sell the war to a frightened and angry american public, who was as uninformed as ever (not referring to anyone on the LL, of course:)). The post 9/11 climate of fear, stoked in part by right-wing media, drowned out the political and public opposition to the war to a degree that is frightening in itself. (It was way too late when Powell resigned, or now when McClellan writes his kiss and tell, long after the damage has been done: I have no sympathy for those people.) One would like to think that things like the internment of Japanese-Americans or McCarthyism were things of past, but the current "war on terror", of which the Iraq war (a real war) is one sideproduct, shows that fearmongering is a political evergreen.
I guess, for most americans, invading Iraq was pretty much the equivalent of getting into a fight with their wife, going to a bar, and punching the guy sitting on the stool next to them. The same irrefutable logic that apparently convinced much of the US public that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 ("We were attacked on 9/11, and we're attacking Iraq, so Iraq must have attacked us") probably would also convince them that it was the guy on the stool who was having an affair with their wife. And even if it wasn't, they sure felt a lot better after punching the guy out.
Any suggestion that the Bush administration was "misled" by false intelligence into going to war has it completely backward. It was perfectly clear during the build-up to the war that they did not care about the truth (in this as in many other things) and only wanted the intelligence that would support their case, whether or not it was reliable
Also wrong is any suggestion that the Iraq war was the right thing to do, it was just managed badly. The fundamental mistake was invading Iraq in the first place. When you invade and it turns out to be a disaster, you cannot argue with a straight face that hindsight shows the invasion could've been a good thing if it had been done differently. I don't know how gung-ho chearleaders for the war, like William Kristol or Douglas Feith, or Paul Wolfowitz, can continue to appear in public and pontificate on their views. If I'd said or done what they did, I'd crawl into a cave and never utter another word in public again.
The Iraq war is a disaster created by the Bush administration, and it's all the worse because it should never have happened. It was an unnecessary war planned by people with no conception of the possible human costs of war. As a result hundreds of billions of US dollars (probably trillions, but there's no need to inflate any estimates when it comes to the costs of the Iraq war), thousands of American lives, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives have been flushed down the toilet. Add to that tens of thousands of severely injured Americans, who knows how many injured Iraqis, millions of Iraqi refugees, the destruction of the educated Iraqi middle class, and probably a lost generation of Iraqi children.
And none of this is over yet. Bush will go back to his Texas ranch and clear scrub under the watchfull eye of the secret service, no doubt as certain as ever that he did the right thing for the country under God's watchful eye, leaving this train wreck behind him.
Quote:Rather than branch an already tortured thread, I thought I would reply to eppie here.Hindsight is 20/20. From before the war began up to this second, most of the people who were against it will believe, and will always believe the war to be a failure.
I've heard of 0/20 foresight, but your rather wistful hope that Iraq will ultimately prove to be a success may be the first example I've seen of 0/20 hindsight.;)
In this case, anyway, foresight was 20/20. The potential for disaster, and the dishonesty of the Bush administration, was obvious at the time. Perhaps what couldn't have been predicted in advance was the criminal incompetence of the Bush administration in managing post-invasion Iraq.
The story is no different than it was before. After 9/11, and -- who knows -- maybe before, the Bush administration was determined to go to war with Iraq. We can speculate about the reasons (and I certainly have my own ideas) but given the secrecy and dishonesty of the administration, we may never know for certain exactly how they made that decision or who really made it. What is clear, though, is that 9/11 gave them the opportunity to use exaggerated intelligence to sell the war to a frightened and angry american public, who was as uninformed as ever (not referring to anyone on the LL, of course:)). The post 9/11 climate of fear, stoked in part by right-wing media, drowned out the political and public opposition to the war to a degree that is frightening in itself. (It was way too late when Powell resigned, or now when McClellan writes his kiss and tell, long after the damage has been done: I have no sympathy for those people.) One would like to think that things like the internment of Japanese-Americans or McCarthyism were things of past, but the current "war on terror", of which the Iraq war (a real war) is one sideproduct, shows that fearmongering is a political evergreen.
I guess, for most americans, invading Iraq was pretty much the equivalent of getting into a fight with their wife, going to a bar, and punching the guy sitting on the stool next to them. The same irrefutable logic that apparently convinced much of the US public that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 ("We were attacked on 9/11, and we're attacking Iraq, so Iraq must have attacked us") probably would also convince them that it was the guy on the stool who was having an affair with their wife. And even if it wasn't, they sure felt a lot better after punching the guy out.
Any suggestion that the Bush administration was "misled" by false intelligence into going to war has it completely backward. It was perfectly clear during the build-up to the war that they did not care about the truth (in this as in many other things) and only wanted the intelligence that would support their case, whether or not it was reliable
Also wrong is any suggestion that the Iraq war was the right thing to do, it was just managed badly. The fundamental mistake was invading Iraq in the first place. When you invade and it turns out to be a disaster, you cannot argue with a straight face that hindsight shows the invasion could've been a good thing if it had been done differently. I don't know how gung-ho chearleaders for the war, like William Kristol or Douglas Feith, or Paul Wolfowitz, can continue to appear in public and pontificate on their views. If I'd said or done what they did, I'd crawl into a cave and never utter another word in public again.
The Iraq war is a disaster created by the Bush administration, and it's all the worse because it should never have happened. It was an unnecessary war planned by people with no conception of the possible human costs of war. As a result hundreds of billions of US dollars (probably trillions, but there's no need to inflate any estimates when it comes to the costs of the Iraq war), thousands of American lives, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives have been flushed down the toilet. Add to that tens of thousands of severely injured Americans, who knows how many injured Iraqis, millions of Iraqi refugees, the destruction of the educated Iraqi middle class, and probably a lost generation of Iraqi children.
And none of this is over yet. Bush will go back to his Texas ranch and clear scrub under the watchfull eye of the secret service, no doubt as certain as ever that he did the right thing for the country under God's watchful eye, leaving this train wreck behind him.