It is astonishing how many of my commenters and web critics seem to have confused me with someone else. I'm six foot two in my stocking feet and bear a more than passing resemblance to an elf. The one common human experience I have never before enjoyed is being mistaken for someone who looks like me.
So you can imagine my surprise, nay discomfiture, to find that I am suddenly dealing with multiple cases of mistaken identity. Having never dealt with this particular social situation, I blush. I stammer. I search delicately for the correct words. I hope you will forgive me if they are a trifle awkward.
Many of my commenters and those who linked to me, for example, are under the impression that I am every war supporter they ever argued with. To be sure, my cheerful efficiency and whirlwind social life may give the impression that I am several hundred people. But this is a mere optical illusion, like the thoughtful criticisms of Brad DeLong's arguments that seem to be posted in his comments section and then eerily disappear.
I did not call supporters of the war "traitors" or "dirty [censored] hippies" . . . vegetarians who own knee-high leather moccasins rarely hurl those sorts of epithets. I spent most of the winter of 2003 urging both sides to be civil to each other, which as I recall was slightly less effective than urging my puppy to behave. Even if I felt moved to apologize for the unmannered as if I were their mother, it wouldn't make you feel any better, because all the people you actually argued with would remain unrepentant.
I find it slightly harder to understand how people can have confused me with a senior member of the Bush administration. It is true that retail clerks who are not quite looking at me have been known to refer to me as "Sir". I admit it freely. I am tall. I have a husky alto voice. And I am perhaps not overendowed with body fat. These are the facts. But I am mostly mistaken for a fourteen-year-old boy, not the 70-year-old architect of our Iraq War strategy. Clearly, I have not been giving my skin care regimen the attention it requires.
I am obviously brokenhearted that I supported a war which has killed something like 125,000 Iraqis and 4,000 American servicemen, driven perhaps a million more into exile, and destroyed quite a bit of Iraq's already inadequate infrastructure. I did not, however, have more than the most tenuous causal relationship with these deaths. In 2003 I was a freelance journalist and technology consultant writing a blog in her spare time. This left surprisingly little time for driving tanks into Baghdad. And much to my indignation, I was not even consulted by the Bush administration, either political party, any think tanks, or our many national media outlets. It therefore seems slightly odd to ask me how I feel about having slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people. I do not claim that the McArdles are totally above sacking the city, sowing the fields with salt, and leaving the bleached white skulls piled up at the gate as a warning to others. But since Mael Sechnaill the younger was restored to the position of Árd Rí na hÉireann in 1014, we have confined this sort of thing to the annual Thanksgiving Mortal Combat tourney.
It seems even stranger to brush aside my account of the mistakes I made with ever-angrier demands for repentance. Whatever reports you may have heard about me healing the blind and causing the lame to walk, I must be clear: I am not, in fact, Jesus Christ. My tears will not restore a single dead Iraqi back to life. Nor can I die for the sins of the rest of the world.
The only thing I can offer, at this point, is the hope that we can figure out how not to do it again. This being what I've tried to do by outlining how I went wrong.
This is, as I have tried to say in other posts, valuable information--information that opponents of the war are losing as they insist that the thing was obvious. Given that the defense and diplomacy staff of several administrations, a large number of IR scholars, and enormous swathes of the think tank world got it wrong, the one thing it clearly wasn't is obvious.
If you want to be congratulated on getting it right on Iraq: congratulations. But that is only sufficient if we are going to be asked again whether to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein. If we are, I promise to leave the decision entirely in your hands.
It seems more likely, however, that we will face a situation that looks like Iraq in some respects, and entirely different in many other respects. Knowing that "Iraq was a bad idea" or even "Persons X, Y or Z got it right" will not, by itself, much help us. It is extremely risky to rely on genius--for one thing, they might no be around when you need them, and for another, genius is often hard to separate from having the right set of biases to fit the situation. Winston Churchill was a monomaniacal imperialist sot who did his level best to drive England's economy into the ground as Chancellor of the Exchequer. And England would have been lost without him.
Better to rely on process than persons. And that's where those who erred have something to add. The cognitive biases that affected us were not unique, as witness to the fact that many of them are now in prominent display among many war opponents. It is, obviously, also a good idea to listen to those who got it right--and thank God, we don't have to choose, what with this spacious new internet thingie we've got on. But if you had to pick only one, listen to the one who went wrong. They're far more likely to be able to accurately pinpoint their errors than the opponents are to usefully identify their strengths.
The answers you seek are right in here. Can you really not get this? You tell people you're admitting that you were wrong, then you spend several hundred words saying that you weren't wrong, and you take every opportunity to (still!) treat war opponents as though they are the ones who deserve to be mocked and condescended to. See? Who are you extending a mocking, disrespectful tone to, here? The self-same people you claim to be apologizing to, or admitting your failure to. And that's been the case in every one of these posts. You make this big spiel about "mistaken identity" and all this other self-pitying stuff, but you keep ignoring this point. So you're not accomplishing anything. Stop the histrionics and decide if you for real want to admit guilt or not. If the answer is yes, then actually do it. But don't slap me in the face and pretend like its a kiss.
This is a bit of technical advice which I think will foreclose future avenues of pointless debate. Or possibly open them up. But anyway: 125,000 Iraqi deaths is the low-low-lowest estimate around. The highest estimates are triple that or more. The respectable middle estimate I'm hearing is 200,000. 1 million Iraqi refugees, similarly, is a very low count; the figures I have heard are always in the range of 2 million refugees abroad and 2 million internally displaced.
For the purposes of the moral and strategic debates we are staging, it really does not matter whether we adopt the high or low estimates on these numbers. Either one is enormous enough to make the magnitude of the disaster clear. So I would strongly recommend that we generally go with the middle estimates: 200,000 dead, a few million refugees. This will avoid the impression that we are trying to minimize or maximize the claims as part of some kind of propaganda war.
What really rankles is the narcissism.
You guys are missing the real issue here.
'Mortal Kombat' is spelled with a 'K'
M- it's brilliant. Feel a bit better now? You prolly haven't shifted either exteme one jot, they had their fingers in their ears shouting "lalalalala, I can't hear you..." But for a centrist like me, well it warms the heart. Esp. the line about if: we're ever in Iraq facing saddaminsane again.
Stash it away with your needful things, I have a feeling the minute after we swear in the next pres. the chorus to do this or that about iraq will deafen.
That's even IF the dems get swallowed whole by their own extreme antiwar, anti compromise nutters, and had the pres. to the GOP. Right now they don't seem to get the idea that you have to get your party elected, in order to get any of the policies you love in place.
But then, I'm just an indy that might well vote for Bill 'n Opus '08... a dead cat I can surely believe in.
Brooksfoe, I'm one of now probably three journalist in the world with the most familiarity with those studies, as I've just published an article on them in the new edition of the magazine. The iron rule of the studies: the higher the estimate, the worse the methodology. Even The Lancet and Burnham are now backing away from their certainty about their numbers; everyone else I talked to in the conflict epidemiology community is certain that they vastly overestimated. Reasonable estimates now range between 100,000 and 200,000, with the most likely figure centered in the 125,000 to 150,000 range. I'll be posting more about this later in the week.
Freddie, I will mock those who deserve mockery. People who responded to a discussion of my errors with a demand that I grovel before them clearly have an extraordinarily rich fantasy life, but they are not going to get what they want, from me or anyone else. I will say that I was wrong, that I supported a war that was disastrous, and that I clearly made serious mistakes in judgement, as I have. I will not say that I am therefore immoral, moronic, and unworthy. I will not apologize to people I did not wrong. If anyone is owed an apology, it is the Iraqi people, not you, and I don't speak Arabic. You can either accept this as a basis for dialogue, or you can go talk amongst yourselves and mutter angrily that no one listens to you.
Couldn't disagree more. It was obvious. So glaringly obvious. When suddenly, in the middle of Afghanistan, these guys started to pull a hard left toward Iraq, I said to myself, "This is a scam. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Invading is a bad idea to begin with. But this crew? They'll eff it up beyond all reckoning."
As Howard Dean used to say, "If I could figure this out from northern Vermont..."
I sent pleading letters to my Senators. John McCain and John Kyl. And my Congressman. Soon-to-be-felon Rick Renzi. It was hopeless. The whole world poured out in the largest street protest ever. Bush's response? We don't make policy based on focus groups. Just like Cheney's recent, "So?"
It was such an obvious hoodwink. And your longwinded, preening, oh-so-clever sarcasm on the matter is embarrassing at best.
I think you should just let it go. After three posts and probably over two hundred comments across them all, everyone here is just repeating themselves. New topic, please.
Your refugee counts are also high, both because we know a lot of people are returning, and because all of the numbers being bandied about have sprung full blown from the head of some NGO spokesman who hasn't counted. No one has any idea how many refugees there are, but almost all of the conflict epidemiologists I spoke to agreed that the neighboring countries could not possibly be supporting two million refugees without vastly more disruption than they are experiencing.
6ft 2in in stocking feet? Why, your highness....
That, it seems to me is so bloody obviously true that it ought not need to be said. And yet, it seems, it can’t be said often enough,
I think maybe this is a little underspecified. You mean listen to Michael Ledeen? Or Charles Johnson? I honestly doubt that you mean yourself - though I like the honesty with which you take responsibility for your own words, I don’t think you’re nominating yourself as an oracle here. Among the few mea culpas available on this topic, whose do you think are un-self-serving enough and issuing from sources which lead to have confidence in the changed opinions? I’m not trying to be particularly snarky here,
Wow, defensive much?
The real question is why someone like you should even be pontificating on matters that you are clearly not qualified to discuss, especially since you were just a "freelance journalist" writing about technical issues right?
So rather than launching into a diatribe against your (justified) critics, how about a simple, "I was wrong, I am no expert, and well, I should probably keep my mouth shut about things I don't understand".
Being part of the public dialogue means being open to criticism. You seem to get the being a critic part, but are chafed by people pointing out your mistakes? If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Wow, the amount of arrogance that it takes to make a statement like this is baffling, especially when the author is a rather minor figure at the Atlantic rather than someone like Hitchens who we'd expect it from.
Get over yourself.
Look, I'll make this simple: saying things like "I am not a senior member of the Bush administration"
or "Even if I felt moved to apologize for the unmannered as if I were their mother, it wouldn't make you feel any better, because all the people you actually argued with would remain unrepentant."
or "I do not claim that the McArdles are totally above sacking the city, sowing the fields with salt, and leaving the bleached white skulls piled up at the gate as a warning to others."
or "But I am mostly mistaken for a fourteen-year-old boy, not the 70-year-old architect of our Iraq War strategy."
-- these statements have one purpose. And that is to make a joke of what you're saying. You say that of course you weep for the people killed and blah blah blah, but what possible reader could believe that this is anything other than an exercise in belittling and mockery? This is why people are angry with you, because you are making a (multiple post) show of apologizing while making it abundantly clear that you aren't. I mean, this:
If you want to be congratulated on getting it right on Iraq: congratulations.
is explicitly denigrating the people who you are ostensibly saying got it right. You are saying that war opponents are more interested in getting credit than in doing right. And this:
But if you had to pick only one, listen to the one who went wrong. They're far more likely to be able to accurately pinpoint their errors than the opponents are to usefully identify their strengths.
explicitly says that we should continue to ignore war opponents, as they were ignored before the war, because... what? War supporters have the lesson of getting it wrong? We've all had to learn that lesson thank you. But of course, the only operative point is that no matter how many times they get it right, principled war supporters cannot be listened to on foreign policy, because they aren't Very Serious.
The reason all of this matters is because it was precisely this kind of "politics of personality" that got us into this mess in the first place. You claim that you got it wrong because of bad information. But I suspect that isn't true. I suspect that, like so many others, you wanted to distance yourself from the weak-willed pacifists you made out war supporters to be. I suspect that you enjoyed the thrill of mocking "paleoliberals" and the old guard of the left. I suspect that information had nothing to do with it; I suspect that personality did. And thats what makes your continued, unapologetic mocking of the anti-war side so dangerous. Because it simply continues the cycle of the politics of resentment.
The fact is you know why people are mad, and when you write a post like this you know what you're doing. No one with a better than 3rd grade reading level could mistake this for anything other than derogatory towards the anti-war side. Can you really deny that, Megan? Can you read this back and claim it doesn't continue to treat war opponents as a joke? This post has a non-apology, a catalog of the reasons you were right to get it wrong, finger-wagging at those who criticize you, and the assertion that even now its best to trust those who failed so utterly to predict what would happen in Iraq.
And, for all that, you seem to expect sympathy. Sorry. I don't tolerate backhanded apologies from children and I won't from you.
In the spirit of what went wrong and how not to do it again, here is the last paragraph of my comment on your previous post:
When the war finally started, I remember being astonished that we were actually going to do it. I thought at the time, and still do, that it was analogous to what happened in the dot-com bubble: A large number of normally smart, responsible people had become convinced that one signal event changed all the rules, overturned all the lessons of history, and rendered invalid all conventional old-school criticism. If there is one meta-lesson we might all take away, it is that we have to put in place mechanisms for avoiding the same kind of group-think the next time we have such a signal event.
Man, if the anti-war supporters could stop self-congratulating for five minutes maybe they could actually teach someone something. But, when they do that, they generally blow the five minutes on misplaced indignation anyway.
And Freddie, you can complain about the sincerity of her apology all you like. But if nothing other than abject genuflection to the superior intelligence of anti-war supporters will suffice, well, don't expect much. They're not gods, and neither is she.
Like I said before, where in these comments is the discussion of the lessons that can be learned and ways by which similar things can be avoided? All I see are people reiterating how utterly obvious it was to them and how terrible the reign of repression by the pro-war faction was. She's not looking for expiation for the sins of others, she's looking for methodological insight.
The lesson of "I told you so" isn't helpful to anyone.
I will say that I was wrong, that I supported a war that was disastrous, and that I clearly made serious mistakes in judgement, as I have.
Actually, you've never said those things, without surrounding them with hundreds of words that make a joke of them. It's self-aggrandizement masquerading as self-reflection, which is the most juvenile and disingenuous exercise I can imagine.
But if you had to pick only one, listen to the one who went wrong. They're far more likely to be able to accurately pinpoint their errors than the opponents are to usefully identify their strengths.
I still think this is close to completely wrong.
First, to reiterate a point from your spaghetti-building thread: those who opposed the invasion of Iraq are the tall spaghetti assemblages. Those who supported the invasion are the spaghetti assemblages that fell flat. Newspapers that continue to print the op-ed sages who supported the invasion and freeze out those who opposed it are, at best, supporting repentant collapsed spaghetti, rather than proud, tall, successful spaghetti. The fact that one can learn from failure shouldn't lead one to think that those who fail most often and most spectacularly must be the wisest.
Second, and relatedly, I think you discount the extent to which support for the invasion of Iraq was embedded in an entire style of thinking that was ill-adapted to foreign relations -- not so much a set of discrete propositions to be tested as a way of looking at the world. Just as an example, I know of very few people who supported that war who are also able to appreciate how American actions look from non-American perspectives. Farheed Zakaria got the war right because he can do that. Learning how to do that isn't like learning how to do physics; it's like learning a language. You learn by imitating those who are fluent. But American newspapers consistently select against those who, to extend the metaphor, speak the foreign tongue as a native, and for those who speak it, at most, with an accent -- because the ones who speak it like a native make the editors, with their clumsy accents, feel uncomfortable.
I'm not sure I'm getting this across. I just think there's a whole style of thinking that's become incredibly widespread in the US, a style I hear coming from everyone from op-ed writers to US Ambassadors, that's deeply and unconsciously chauvinistic. And to kick those habits of thought, it's not enough to keep listening to chauvinists who are sorry they got this one thing wrong. You have to start listening to people whose instincts run entirely the other way - to people who are inclined to LISTEN to Arab perspectives, as Juan Cole and Zakaria are, rather than dismissing them as benighted and unenlightened.
Megan, I certainly feel your pain as another unrepentant war supporter since the end of Desert Storm. The ouster of Hussein has been achieved, the rest of the goals are still out there. Yet even as I argued passionately against the war critics, many of their dire predictions of death and destruction were ones I refused to rule out. I suppose that's why I have not arrived in the anti-war camp -- and probably never will.
I would have been astonished -- pleasantly -- had any of the positive predictions advanced by the administration during the debate prior to the war come to pass. Instead, I assumed the war would result in death and destruction. Yet so, too, did the failure to remove Hussein at the end of Desert Storm -- not only through his suppression of the Shiites in Iraq, but also through the brutal civil war in Kurdistan, which Hussein also partook in in his normal murderous fashion.
Your fundamental point is right, even if I disagree with your new conclusion that the war was a grave mistake: The war critics can hope for nothing but self-laudatory ego inflation by demanding belated converts bow to their own omniscience. The war was the course chosen and taken, with the results now apparent. There is no evidence that the rosy outcomes promised by the war critics would have materialized just because the US preferred to leave Hussein in place.
The choice for invading Iraq, I think, has postponed a nuclear war in the region for another decade or so. But looking at the Iranian mullah regime, I'm certain we'll still manage to witness that in our lifetimes.
One learns lessons by extracting principles.
A question you might want to ask when you conclude that it was Not Obvious because many, many Serious People regard it as not merely not a bad idea, but a good idea, has something to do with what makes these People Serious.
Or to say it somewhat less sarcastically, one can ask what other characteristics these people share.
The one characteristic that leaps out is the idea that America has "vital" national security "interests" within other country's borders.
The question is not "Will the Serious People correctly assess the next attempt to impose the use of force to impose US will on another country?"
The question is whether they will figure out that this principle begets the problem.
The US faces no enemy, no existential threat, no justification for military bases in Korea, Japan, Germany or some 800 or 1500 other places. There is no reason to have a military force larger than the rest of the world put together.
But if you do have such a force, and you do maintain a principle that US vital interests are somehow more sovereign than the countries they happen to reside in, then you will do this kind of thing again.
That's what people who are angry that the same swaths of people who made this very obvious error of judgment are still regarded as Serious, and that you use their positions as an argument from authority (the weakest of all arguments, btw).
It was absolutely clear to anybody who was paying the least bit of attention, that when Blix and EL Bareidi presented their findings in March that there was no threat, whatsoever, to the US from Iraq. None. And that it was entirely possible, even likely, that there were no chemical or biological weapons.
The administration knew this. That's why they accelerated their invasion plans, leaving a third of their force trapped outside the country because Turkey would give basing rights. They knew the jig was up.
The fact that the threat itself was irrelevant to the Serious assessment of the situation is not a reason to hope that the Serious People learn from their little mistake here. It is a reason to redefine what is Serious, and take the willingness to unilaterally use military force against a nation that represents no threat to the US should be regarded as a reason not to be taken Seriously. Not, as has turned out, a requirement for Seriousness.
Actually, you've never said those things, without surrounding them with hundreds of words that make a joke of them. It's self-aggrandizement masquerading as self-reflection, which is the most juvenile and disingenuous exercise I can imagine
And if not for comically vindicative war opponents who berate her for ridiculous reasons, such surrounding words would not be necessary.
But when people in the comments personally attack her as directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and blame her for the perceived vilification of war opponents, what is she to do?
Just accept shameless vitriol for stuff she clearly had no hand in? You can complain about how her "insincerity" and jocular composition mean her apology is worthless, but given that some people in previous comments were demanding that she stop speaking entirely it seems they think everything she has to say is worthless.
Oh come on. The war was popular. You know, democracy? The American people were behind it. It took no courage to be for it, and most who were for it had little conviction. Most of those who "erred" were simply swept up in the propaganda and lies of the Bush Administration. You will learn nothing about how to deal with the future from them.
In general, if you have a highly popular decision that is later seen to be deeply wrong, then you don't need to ask the winning side how they were wrong. This is both obvious and uninteresting: they went with the crowd. As you did, wrt Iraq.
We are herd animals. Most people will go with the crowd. Of course, unlike other herd animals, humans are also thinking animals. So you can expect to find their instinctive herd behavior to be rationalized. But here's the problem: there's simply no way to separate the always-easy rationalizations from the herd-submission. One can't even reliably do that for oneself. Certainly it is much harder to do it for a stranger.
No, you want to ask the losers. How did they manage to rise above the considerable social pressure and say no? This is interesting, because you know that their beliefs and rationalizations, whatever they were, had to be sufficiently strong to overcome the barrier of unpopularity.
Reasonable estimates now range between 100,000 and 200,000, with the most likely figure centered in the 125,000 to 150,000 range.
Huh. Didn't realize you'd done a piece on this. Cool, I'll take your word for it, and hopefully will have time to read the article at some point this weekend.
Freddie, first of all, I explicitly said we should listen to both; I am making a methodological comment about the best way to learn, not a bid to exclude the war opponents from the debate. I was responding to those who said that we ought to exclude the war supporters from the debate, which is stupid, and remains stupid.
Second of all, yup, I'm mocking the people who have said stupid things to me over the last few days. Not people who opposed the war, a group which includes most of my friends. I am mocking people who are acting like eighth grade bullies. I will continue to mock those people. They deserve mockery. The belief that having opposed the war gives you license to act like a . . . well, I won't use the word, but you know exactly what I would have said if I weren't a lady . . . is the least attractive of the many unattractive ways that the war opponents are making me sorry I agree with them.
Third of all, you can go read what I wrote about the war, and I suggest that you do so before you impute motives to me. I have no need to distance myself from weak willed pacifists or paleoliberals, a word which has not, as far as I know, ever crossed my mind, much less my keyboard. I was respectful towards the people who disagreed with me at a time of very vitriolic debate, and I don't think it is now unreasonable to demand the same treatment I gave. Moreover, I explicitly did not chalk up my errors to information; I attributed them to lapses in judgement.
You, and most of the other people on these boards, seem to be conducting an argument with some monstrous amalgam of every war supporter you ever tangled with, not with me. I understand your rage. But the fact that you were provoked does not give you a right to provoke me. At least I am confining my comments to the people who are actually behaving like . . . well, you know . . . not unleashing it on every person who opposed the war.
I will not now, nor ever, "admit" that having supported the war makes me an immoral moron, and frankly I'm astonished that the war opponents think that there is any possibility that they will wring such a concession from anyone. Do you behave when you are wrong in the way that you are demanding I do? Would you apologize to a girlfriend who has said the sort of things to you that the commenters on other threads have said to me?
What's even more astonishing is that the people who opposed the war wonder why they have been shut out of the discussion. This is why. Many of the people complaining seem to think that a discussion consists of screaming invective.
Awesome, McCardle. Its too bad you had to let the lunkheads know they were getting to you, but you did an excellent job of demolishing them.
where in these comments is the discussion of the lessons that can be learned and ways by which similar things can be avoided?
Indeed, Glorious, where are they? Where does Megan outline these lessons? AFAICT, she is telling us to rely on the very same experts in the very same institutions for the very same reasons as we did the last time. Because even though they had the wrong answer last time, they are the right people to ask, this time.
I did not call supporters of the war "traitors" or "dirty [censored] hippies" . . . vegetarians who own knee-high leather moccasins rarely hurl those sorts of epithets.
But evidently they do publicly wish for people they disagree with to be beaten with 2x4s.
At the outset of the Iraq war, I didn't know one person who didn't hold a vocal opinion about the course of action, and I was in high school. I think its unrealistic to expect a journalist living in New York City not to have an opinion, and voice it. Additionally, Megan did apologize for supporting the war, so lay off. All she is saying here is that personal attacks are unjustified, particularly when they are inaccurate personal attacks.
And Megan as one libertarian to another: just let this one go. Many people honestly see the world as two camps. They will not concede anything. You're a very good writer and make an effort to be correct in the end rather than prove you were right in the beginning I'm satisfied with that, and I'm sure most of your readership is too.
a more than passing resemblance to an elf
Interesting comparison. Must be one of those "wood elves," who spent most of The Hobbit feuding with their natural allies (men and dwarves), torturing detainees (Bilbo & co.), and starting opportunistic wars in order to extract mineral resources.
But certainly not one of the "high elves" of Lord of the Rings, who consulted their allies, recognized that ultimate power could corrupt them too, and used intelligent targeted policies to defeat Sauron instead of throwing everything into military solutions.
"obvious": perhaps not to you, young thing, but it was to me. If it wasn't to the diplomats, think tankers and so on, I conclude that they were imposters who deserved dismissal. It was so bloody obvious that I had to hold my nose at finding myself on the same side as mad mullahs, lame-brain liberals , perpetual anti-patriots and suchlike scum. And yet it was obvious, it really was.
For the purposes of the moral and strategic debates we are staging, it really does not matter whether we adopt the high or low estimates on these numbers. Either one is enormous enough to make the magnitude of the disaster clear.
That depends on what value you place on ending a police state like Saddam's. In other times and places, people have been willing to accept such burdens (as terrible as they are) to be free of brutal tyrants.
Ah, the reason I am not to be listened to is that I wasn't wrong. Got it.
OK, here goes: When Bush was elected in 2000 I thought this would be only a modest glitch in American polity. I thought that there would be somewhat increased measures to transfer public funds to private hands through programs such as missile defense and the selling of federal natural resources to favored buyers at bargain prices, but by and large I expected business as usual.
I was wrong. I was very, utterly, completely wrong. I never imagined that the Bush administration would be nearly as venal, as incompetent, as actively destructive to American interests as it was. I admit this without reservation. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
Is that enough to give me street cred?
"If you want to be congratulated on getting it right on Iraq: congratulations. But that is only sufficient if we are going to be asked again whether to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein. If we are, I promise to leave the decision entirely in your hands."
Spot's not coming out, is it? Well, keep on scrubbin', I guess, but I think that one's a keeper.
the conflict epidemiology community
How many statisticians (all epidemiologists are, or should be, statisticians) are in this community? How much demand is there for it?
It would seem to be a rather specialized field.
Freddie sed:
I happen to agree with her. The constant chorus of "I told you so, now go away and let us run things because we were right and you were wrong" has gotten beyond annoying. Not only do you want credit, you want control. Well heck, who doesn't? But you're not going to get it by endlessly repeating "I told you so."
When you get right down to it, the American people as a whole are to blame for Iraq. Not me, not Megan, not any individual (except for those individuals directly making the decisions). The American people allowed our government to become run by radical ideologues, because those ideologues wanted the power and most of us just wanted to concentrate on our stock portfolios. Everyone knew you couldn't get rich in public service; why waste time arguing with idiots, when you could be closing billion-dollar deals? At base, most Americans don't care about government as long as it doesn't impact them directly. Nobody complains about the DMV until they have to stand in line, almost nobody complains about police brutality until they are bonked on the head. But that complacency opens the door to radicals getting enough control of the machinery of government to actually implement their crazy schemes, and so here we are.
Trace it back and it seems almost inevitable. We got the government we deserved (and that a goodly portion of us dearly wanted).
What's even more astonishing is that the people who opposed the war wonder why they have been shut out of the discussion. This is why. -- MM
That's not fair. The people who supported the war have been at least as horrifically impolitic to those who opposed it; really far more impolitic, on any grading system that can distinguish death threats from mere insults. Yet they're not "shut out of the discussion".
In any case, the thrust of the question isn't why Freddie doesn't have an op-ed in the NYT asking "How did I get the war right?"; it's why Juan Cole doesn't get that op-ed. Not to mention tenure at Yale.
Megan, I like you. I read you on a nearly daily basis and even when I disagree with you (as I do on this subject), I do respect you.
That said, one thing I've noticed over the last several months is that you seem to have a very, very hard time with criticism. You take it very personally and I notice that you seem to feel compelled to reply to it and the more you reply to it the pricklier your replies get.
I think you need to understand that this is the internet which, by itself, tends to generate more noise than signal and that comment sections are particularly bad. People let their worst natures out in these forums and appeals to civility really aren't going to get you very far.
If you're going to have a comments section at all, I strongly advise you to let your commentators fight these things out amongst themselves. If you can not bear to do that, I'd suggest taking out the comments altogether. I would certainly not advise you to keep posting message after message chastising your commentators for failing to live up to standards of behavior and argument that you find appropriate. You're trying to sweep the tide and all that you'll have to show for it is aggravation and a wet broom.
That said, as long as we're going to discuss this particular issue, I think that you do have some fair points which are being ignored, but I also think that you are ignoring some things that your opponents are trying to tell you.
The most significant thing that you seem unwilling to address is the aggravation of the anti-war movement at being summarily dismissed. I appreciate that you didn't do the dismissing in the early and middle parts of the war (and I understand your own frustration at being lumped in with the rabid hawks) but your insistence that the only thing worth hearing now is an analysis of the mistakes (by those who made them no less) is actually quite irritating.
I actually do agree with the contention that understanding where we went wrong is important, but I don't understand why those who opposed the war ought not have a voice in that discussion. I also think that you are systematically undervaluing the worth of looking at the arguments against war and examining what the opponents of the war got right and why their arguments were right.
If you really and truly want a dialog, you can not deny us a place at the table. Honestly, I don't think that it is your intention to do that but the tone and content of your last couple of posts really do lead one to that impression. To be sure, there are some among us who would, in fact, like you to grovel, but there are more of us who are less interested in apology and more interested in being participants in the task of preventing this sort of catastrophe from happening again.
Yeah, what Andrew Lias said. Except that I don't agree Megan should stop commenting in the threads!
Probably deadly for her work productivity, though -- it sure is for mine.
Where does Megan outline these lessons?
In her first post? She outlined how her thinking had changed and some of the lessons she had learned. She even ennumerated them.
Maybe if people weren't so busy conflating her actions and opinions with those of the Bush Administration you might have noticed that.
Ah, don't let 'em get you down, Megan. I admire you. I'd, like, cry if I got the kind of blog abuse you get and yet you just keep going. You are honest- - unfortunately, honest people tend to get their teeth kicked in by life.
Still, better to be honest.
I, too, supported the war and am in no position to go and actually fight it (age, multiple sclerosis - so no chicken-hawky slurs for me, thank you). I think the occupation has been rightly mucked up but I'm still not sure we won't muddle through to something relatively worthwhile. But, will it have been worth it? God, I sure hope so but I don't know.
I wouldn't bother to engage with those sorts - they want to bully you and they think they are getting results. It's obviously not about the innocent Iraqis, because if it was, they'd be there helping out and not getting into blog fights.
Oops, turns out I'm not above the chicken-hawky type slurs myself.
Anyway, good for you Miss Megan!
The choice for invading Iraq, I think, has postponed a nuclear war in the region for another decade or so.
I am a bit curious as to the logic behind this statement. What makes you think this?
But looking at the Iranian mullah regime, I'm certain we'll still manage to witness that in our lifetimes.
I would worry more about the Israelis than the Iranians. They're the ones in the Middle East with all the nukes. Not sure why that hasn't come up at the Security Council yet. Or the Pakistanis? Now there is a stable country. Iran looks positively prosaic by way of comparison.
Really though, even if Iran is working on nukes, I fail to see why people are getting so worked up about it. They aren't going to be any more likely to actually use them than anyone else; don't let your stereotypes about Muslims lead you to think otherwise. The name of the game is still mutually assured destruction when it comes to nuclear weapons. And assured it would be, when you consider the response that could be mustered by countries like Israel with hundreds of undeclared nukes, or the USA, with thousands of nukes - and a history of actually having used them in anger (twice). Iran would never actually use a nuke; but they don't need to. Just having one would accomplish their actual, ultimate, goal - getting some respect from the West in general and reducing the pernicious attempts of Western governments to meddle in their internal affairs.
People in this country need to get over the hostage crisis already. This foolish refusal to forgive what was ultimately a very minor slight (everyone ultimately did come home, except for the few unfortunate folks who died in captivity from natural causes) is only compounding the already deleterious foreign policy in the region. It's not like we didn't depose their freely elected prime minister, or prop up a brutal Shah for decades, and I don't think the Iranian people as a whole have taken it nearly so personally. Hell, if we would have left Mossadegh alone, Iran might have been a rather cosmopolitan democracy today; and isn't that what so many policymakers here in the West claim to really want?
Just for variety, here's someone who sympathizes with your irritation (as shown in this and the previous post).
But I doubt that the people who need to get the message will bother to hear you before posting another diatribe unrelated to what you actually said. Certainly Freddie (among others) didn't.
Allow me to offer you some pseudo-Latin advice: Illigitimi non carborundum
Megan,
I think you are far too generous with the anti-war crowd. They were not far-sighted about how difficult it would be to rebuild, or the lack of WMD stocks. They were against the war because they are against any military action while there is a Republican in the White House. They are like broken watches who churlishly want to be patted on the head for being "correct" twice a day.
I agreed (silently, as I didn't comment much back then) with you when you were for the war and disagree now that it was a mistake. I read you because you write well and use reason.
It seems more likely, however, that we will face a situation that looks like Iraq in some respects, and entirely different in many other respects.
It's called Iran. It's similar, but it's different. Nevertheless, I don't trust this administration or any of its cheerleader-apologies (Bill Kristol et al) to make a good decision there.
I don't pretend to have the answers there. I don't know who does, but I damn sure know who doesn't.
I think we all had opinions on the war and there is nothing wrong with a person voicing that opinion. It's ridiculous for everyone to basically keep their mouth's shut. Flip it to another war, like WW2 or the Revolutionary War, and the idea of silence for a citizen (for or against) is absurd.
One of the difficulties of this war, is that we are arguing against an invisible alternate outcome. We are weighing 4000 plus American deaths, 100-500K of Iraqi deaths, plus numerous refugees, against an alternative that does not exist.
What, pray tell, would the world be like with Saddam still in it? Because in doing nothing, that would be the reality. And there are a certain amount of questions, deaths, tortures, and costs to letting that reality proceed.
As a citizen, I am not much for apologizing, and I do not think the war should have produced the outcome we now have. What amazes is the amount of complete arrogance of Rumsfeld, and his enabler Cheney. That the State department, or a wider circle of experts were largely boxed out shows that this war did not have to function in the manner it did. Bush owes apologies perhaps for errors in judgement, and Cheney and Rumsfeld ought to be in some kind of court.
The central conceit of a quick war, get in-get out, was based on the idea that the public can and will shift with the wind. We do shift.
All those people who supported the war in the past, are now all outraged. Not a one is suggesting ways in which to recapture a better alternative outcome. I recall Biden (I believe) suggesting a focus on the Kurdish areas, and it's these types of "Plan B's" that we need more of now.
Bush's major flaw was to allow the flawed decisions of Cheney to reign supreme, when in fact we needed every part of government and the insight from liberals as well as conservatives to achieve a lasting result.
I don't think the Iraq war was unjustified (given certain agreements Saddam made after the first Gulf War), but nor was it an absolutely necessary war. Since we chose to fight the war, the least we could have expected was better execution by certain high level officials.
In that sense, and going forward, I think liberals need to take a more helpful posture of putting forward many possible alternative plans (aside from merely bringing troops home en masse or pre-war status quo), and conservatives in power ought to listen. And mostly, we probably need a better understanding of foreign cultures, knowing that as proud as we all are of the United States, people feel equally the same pride for their own nations. Never assume allies or opponents will think exactly like you when it comes to their own interests.
Perhaps the best outcome will result in a Democrat in the White House. We will see.
But I will not be apologizing to those who, against the grain, and against the analysis of most Western governments, guessed right. We are citizens and have the right to think or believe whatever we want.
Damn, girl... you ARE good!!!
Megan, I couldn't disagree with you more. We were already waist-deep in a quagmire before Bush became President. The invasion of Iraq was the only possible solution to removing our troops from Saudi Arabia. Clinton's embargo of Iraq and sporadic bombing was the worst solution to the problem of keeping Saddam Hussein in check. Allowing Saddam to punish Shiites and Kurds, having female US soldiers in the Islamic holy land of Saudi Arabia, and Saddam's corruption of the oil-for-food program were, without a doubt, manna from heaven for the al Qaeda recruiters. Nothing showed the weakness of the US more than allowing Saddam to live and do as he pleased.
Sure we talked up the Weapons of Mass Destruction angle, and blathered about UN resolutions. But sitting US troops at the Saudi/Iraq border was the real problem. We were destabilizing Saudi Arabia and Yemen (and now that we're gone, you don't hear about attacks on US soldiers in S.A. anymore nor US Warships being attack in a "safe" harbor).
The whole problem with the Bush-Lied-People-Died is that they refuse to recognize that Iraqis were dying anyway. We were starving them to death for years. But that was okay I guess, because Saddam was bribing the UN, UK and US officials to keep quiet about it.
(The libertarian non-interventionist in me says we should have just withdrawn completely from the Middle East. But then all the same people would complain about how Bush allowed Saddam to re-invade Kuwait and bomb Israel.)
I don't think it's that useful to explore how you went "wrong" any more than it's useful to explore how opponents of the war were "right". It's just a coin flip, after all. I'm among that freakish lot who opposed the war initially and kinda support it now (although it's a bit of a joke to even characterize it that way since wholly non-consequential). As far as I'm converned, I'm being "consistent" since I tend to assume unforseen risks in dramatic change (war!, Stop War!) are high and negative trending (aka: I'm conservative) rather than being a utopian (lib or "con"). Anyway, two comments:
1) I'm a loyal reader grateful for the opportunity of seeing people's nuttiness in response to some fo your opinions I agree with (I liked the bit on taxation crooked timbers a few ?months? ago, even though I will second the recommendation for Mancur Olson, if you've not read him. The attempts at game theory sneering from over there were funny, though). Obviously, I can see why you might not want to provide the service though.
2) People who talk about "human tribalism" tend to be idiots (my tribalism), but y'ever think what a miracle of human ingenuity it is that people can manage to be partisans by gender? Generalization by gender makes sense, but consider how completely contrary to our evolved interests it is to be *tribalistic* by gender (some minor exceptions). So, given that, no shock people tend to be bizarrely partisan on almost any other line that can divide them.
Anyway, just saying I really enjoy the blog and hope some of the opposition isn't getting you down. Cheers.
Megan, you seem to like to pretend that there was some deep, thoughtful, analytical process required to know that the Bush administration was lying about nearly everything leading up to the war and that the enterprise had little if anything to do with GWOT.
Oh no, no, no...all one need do at the time was listen to one's ears and accept the evidence of one's eyes: from the time Bush began to run for office it was clear he was a liar and a fraud; why would he change in office.
And it was crystal clear to ANYONE willing to open their heart that Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. was horseshit. THAT is when I knew with certainty that they were lying, we were fucked, and that the proponents of war were WILLFULLY ignoring the evidence right in front of them.
Once you willfully ignore evidence and choose ignorance over knowledge in a discusion with me, you are forever discredited. The idea that you would then be considered the only one worthy to assess your own dishonesty is an idea beyond ludicrous; it is a perfectly jaw dropping example of your arrogant narcisism.
All best, though.
Ms. McArdle,
at least you admit to your error in judgement about Iraq. You're not like Norman Podhoretz or his ilk at least. Oh, and you shouldn't be so self-denigrating regarding your physical attributes. Believe me when I say you are quite gorgeous, especially with the elvish quality you have. I apologize if this is a bit forward.
Glorious--
Duh.
Thanks.
The most significant thing that you seem unwilling to address is the aggravation of the anti-war movement at being summarily dismissed
Because most of that aggravation has absolutely nothing to do with her. The record has her as a voice of moderation at that time, the mild humor in her writing style notwithstanding.
You say that you understand that she wasn't involved in that, but yet you conflate her current emphasis on what she can learn now as somehow being part of it. That's incoherent.
The people commenting in this threads are clearly taking what they percieve to be her current intransigence as part and parcel of some long train of abuses and vilification that they received at the hands of others. That's not fair, and as long as people continue to conflate the two they'll never receive a satisfactory apology for either.
I actually do agree with the contention that understanding where we went wrong is important, but I don't understand why those who opposed the war ought not have a voice in that discussion.
I can't understand why you think that's what she's saying. Where is she saying that war opponents should be shut-out of anything?
It seems like if she doesn't immediately defer to every war opponent in the most abject manner imaginable that she's not doing enough. This despite some shameless behavior and constant calls that *she* silence herself on this issue.
Like she said, you want to know why a lot of these anti-war voices don't get the audience they could or should? Just take a peak in the comments here.
The march of technology, which always comes out in a weaponized version sooner or later. A thousand years ago, humans had to get practically hand-to-hand to kill foes and adversaries. Three hundred years ago, a person could set off gunpowder and eliminate distant foes with weaponry that an individual could effortlessly transport. A century ago came chemicals that could be dumped on opposing forces, wiping out hordes in a single shot. Sixty years ago, humans obtained the capacity to eliminate a whole city with the payload of a single plane. During the cold war planes became obsolete for delivering this payload.
I'm certain suitcase nukes are on the way, even if they're treated as unthinkable today as suicidal airline hijackers hell-bent on "urban design" were until recently. (And never mind the horizons offered by genetically engineered bioagents and nanotechnology -- rogue individuals have an ever increasing potential for producing mass casualty incidents.)
As humans, we regularly get to see our greatest dreams and worst nightmares come true eventually.
What Andrew L. said. Don't feed the trolls.
With my troll hat on, though, I'd like to see you draw more of a bright line between yorself and the Bill O'Reilly's of this world. It's like your point about looking at what France does and doing the opposite, but in reverse: anything Rush Limbaugh says is very likely to be idiocy, and for a few important years in the early 21st century, sensible people lost sight of this simple fact.
Seriously, though, there's a class of commentator who took their best objective look at the facts five years ago and got their call wrong. This is, to put it gently, unfortunate, but it doesn't make you Satan-come-again.
But there was also a huge element of war-mongers playing to people's baser instincts without considering the evidence at all. And they get a slap on the wrist. Hell, Bill Kristol gets a column at the New York Times. You must be able to see why those who did bother to look at the evidence, and called it right, would feel a little aggreived about this.
The morally indignant tend to rage and that can lead to venom and unfair accusations. I seem to remember a recent case where a blogger labeled (admittedly dumb and selfish) yuppie parents "sociopaths" for not getting their kids vaccinated. There was then an indignant follow-up fact-free and specious "Update" from her on why "sociopaths" was the right term.
McArdle wasn't calling anti-war critics filthy hippies? Fair enough. Well, the insufferable and ignorant parents who don't get their kids vaccinations probably wouldn't contemplate killing those same kids if it served their interest (say, if they wanted to run off with a new lover who didn't want children), which is the sort of behavior actual sociopaths engage in.
In both cases, the morally indignant are slandering those they (perhaps rightfully) disdain.
What's more, we probably should hold the blogger whose name is up top to a higher standard than her anonymous commentators.
Okay then, some amusing shtick in the post (the elf bit and all), but there's also real hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness. McArdle is decrying the same behavior she was engaging in only the other day, no?
Sadly, its true that the march of technology has allowed us to kill more people with less effort than ever before, and its further true that as with most things (your computer, your TV, your VCR), the technology to kill has in a sense become democratized.
But none of this goes to support the assertion that the act of invading Iraq "postponed nuclear war in the region for another decade or so", or even the assertion that nuclear war in the Middle East is even inevitable at all.
L.C.
I think the point is that Megan called those parents sociopaths because of what they did.
Here, people are attacking Megan because of what OTHER people did.
If Megan didn't, in fact, call people traitors, cowards and DFH then it makes no sense to disdain her for it.
It's a fairly obvious distinction...
MarkG, I believe the undersubstantiated part is the part about how this has anything to do with Iraq, and the part where the invasion postponed rather than hastened it.
STC, brooksfoe:
Even allowing for our disagreement on whether or not the Iraq war was right or not -- setting it aside entirely -- I think you would have to agree that it is clear that Iraq is not currently on a path that would lead it to develop nuclear weapons. As the Duelfer Report concluded, there was no such clarity during Hussein's regime.
Glorious,
Sorry, but it's not an "obvious distinction."
It's not a distinction at all.
The more indignant and totally out of line anti-war critics would call McArdle, say, a Nazi because of what she did. Support the war. She was a blogger. Having and then posting opinions are what she does (or, yes, "did").
(Why, they would even argue that someone who voted for Bush was guilty. That someone who didn't speak out against the war was guilty. And the person who didn't speak out was guilty of a much worse crime than, oh say, someone who didn't see to it that her kid got a measles shot. Both cases of someone not doing something, something the speaker insists any decent thinking person would've done.)
Now McArdles's done nothing to indicate she's a Nazi. Likewise, these parents have done nothing to indicate their sociopaths.
Both words -- "Nazi", "sociopath" -- have real meanings. Both are used incorrectly and unfairly to slander those whose actions strike the morally indignant as revolting. In both cases the enraged speaker (or, okay, typer) doesn't want to hear that these words have real meanings that in no way apply.
What is she guilty of? Being wrong? That's not a crime. Do you still think she had something to do with the invasion? Heck... planning started with Bush I.
Claiming to the smartest or most knowledgeable journalist isn't setting that high of a standard...
Freddie... what do you want from Megan? What do you think she owes you? Do you even know her other than as a commentor on her blog?
MarkG: "there was no such clarity" means you felt you couldn't tell whether or not he was building nuclear weapons. Now that we have clarity, we know for certain he wasn't. The invasion may have relieved your uncertainty on that question, but I don't see what evidence you have for the claim that it postponed the building of nuclear weapons.
Freddie, get over yourself. Your comments are worthless.
SpottieOttieDopalicious:
1) You say: ...how about a simple, "I was wrong, I am no expert, and well, I should probably keep my mouth shut about things I don't understand".
Why not look at blogs as some friends trying to have a discussion, trying out ideas and arguments, etc.? Since you're so critical, you must have a PhD in interational relations or something, right? If we held everyone to your standard we would only read books by experts, which would eliminate the entire internet and most books.
2) Nice Outkast reference.
"It seems more likely, however, that we will face a situation that looks like Iraq in some respects .."
So essentially, at least in principle, you are not opposed to invading a sovereign nation and brutally killing its innocent citizens. You just happen to belive that you have gotten it wrong in Iraq.
For your ilk, American imperialism must prevail at any cost.
You are a sad pathetic war monger.
The more indignant and totally out of line anti-war critics would call McArdle, say, a Nazi because of what she did.
We can ignore those, and even with them the difference is that Megan was just a supporter. She didn't actually DO these things or have any political say in it whatsoever.
You can argue about guilt all you like, but this country's foreign policy is not something she has any control over. You can't even begin to compare her relation to it to the relationship parents have with their children.
The real problem is that a lot of serious people are frequently implying, if not outright stating, that Megan's apology is insufficient because she's not contending with the "aggravation" the anti-war movement suffered.
That's what I'm objecting to.
I also get the feeling you are lot more concerned with what Megan had to say about vaccination than anything anyone has said about her and the war in Iraq.
Quoth Megan: "People who responded to a discussion of my errors with a demand that I grovel before them clearly have an extraordinarily rich fantasy life, but they are not going to get what they want, from me or anyone else."
Wow, now I have the image of a 6'2" elven woman groveling before me -- if that's not fodder for a rich fantasy life, I don't know what is.
And I wasn't even anti-war!
"I will mock those who deserve mockery."
Amen to that, Megan!
Oh, and careful when clutching your pearls (e.g., insisting that both sides be civil--for the children). A lot of Republicans like yourself tend to bruise their necks or damage the necklace when they clutch too violently or frequently.
Keep on keepin' on!
It's not arrogance; it's a statement of fact. There are three journalists who have spent any significant time reporting the story recently: me, Jim Giles of the New Scientist, and Neil Munro of the National Journal. I'm also probably one of the nation's leading journalistic experts on bankruptcy, for the same reason: no one writes about it.
Brilliantly written, Megan.
This is deliberately missing the point. In fact, this is trying to generate a whole new set of attack issues - now the people who were right are expected to waste energy defending themselves from these charges.
On the other hand, in a twisted way, this is spot on:
You got it figured wrong, bub. Of course my side wants control, of course we want a bigger say, and we want those who were wrong to have a smaller say. That's the way things should be, in fact the way things normally work.
The non-apology apology is just another way of saying: "Screw you. You're not going to get any more control than you had before, and you're not going to be listened to any more than you were before."
_That's_ what is just a tiny bit grating.
Don't tell me you don't get it.
Glorious,
No, I agree 100% that McArdle is being treated unfairly.
But her post was an extended shtick on a particular phenomena. That's what your missing.
And the phenomena is roughly this: a speaker is totally appalled by someone's actions, views or behavior and then goes on a morally indignant rant where the villain is accused of everything bad that comes to mind, regardless of its validity.
Now for all I know all the non-vaccinating yuppie parents featured in the Times article may be sociopaths and McArdle did, in fact, sneer among her friends at anti-war critics, calling them filthy hippies and traitors. But there's no evidence of either.
You're concerned with blame for Iraq and think ("also get the feeling") I'm concerned with vaccinations or that post. You're mistaken.
(If I was greatly concerned with either, I'd probably ask how many people had died as a result of any outbreak traceable to the non-vaccinating parents in California. Then I'd ask how many people had died as a result of the war she supported. Then I'd point out to you, yet again, that both voting and blogging are actions. But, in fact, I'm pretty sympathetic with her current and past views on both topics. Wrong as her past take on the war were. That's not why I commented.)
I was addressing the post up top and the particular human/blogging phenomena it details. I'm pointing out another interesting example of it! And, yes, a certain hypocrisy and a lack of self-awareness.
McArdles's decrying a phenomena (slandering people whose actions you find evil, unfairly grouping them in with other more egregious people, caricaturizing your opponent, not really acknowledging who they are, etc.) she engaged in mere days ago. And one she defended when it was brought to her attention!
(No, she insisted in her "update", they are sociopaths! It was the "update" that pushed her over the top. And, yes, this over something that has yet to result in a historical disaster with perhaps a million refugees and untold numbers killed.)
Oh, I agree with you and McArdle that she's being treated unfairly. And I agree with her that it's an interesting phenomena (i.e. losing all sight of fact and perspective when someone does something that enrages you.)
It's so interesting, in fact, she might want to check out her own posts this week. She'll find it both played out from other side and defended when it was brought to her attention.
This is deliberately missing the point. In fact, this is trying to generate a whole new set of attack issues - now the people who were right are expected to waste energy defending themselves from these charges.
And the incessant refrain of "we were marginalized and vilified" wasn't a waste of energy? What is Megan supposed to do about that? Console you? She's not responsible for it!
My point is plain, and it doesn't miss anything. There are numerous people here complaining that Megan's apology is inadequate basically because she didn't apologize for things she didn't do.
The non-apology apology is just another way of saying: "Screw you. You're not going to get any more control than you had before, and you're not going to be listened to any more than you were before."
What control does Megan have to give you? I mean, seriously. You accuse me of delibarately missing the point but yet here you are demanding something from Megan she cannot possibly give you.
That, in essence, is the problem with the entire approach of the majority of anti-war supporters to Megan's apology. It's not about what she said, her remarks are just a vehicle to vent about stuff she can't, and thus didn't, apologize for. So long as you vicariously attack other people through her you're never going to be satisfied.
Like she
"Of course my side wants control, of course we want a bigger say, and we want those who were wrong to have a smaller say. That's the way things should be, in fact the way things normally work."
People who want control because others were "wrong" should be able to demonstrate that they themselves deserve that control because they were "right" for some reason other than a blanket opposition to the use of force.
There are those who opposed the METHOD of prosecuting the invasion and overthrow itself, both on the pro- and anti-war sides. They were wildly wrong.
There are those who opposed the METHOD of stabilization and reconstruction (occupation), saying we were not using enough troops and were not taking the appropriate steps. They can be said to have been right.
There are those, such as most of the vitriolic "SAY YOU'RE SORRY, B****!" commenters here, who believe they're right simply because things have not turned out as planned. There's little to connect the dots between their opposition and today's state of affairs in terms of their intellectual reasoning. Some of these people felt we could not maintain security without a proper force. Some felt we couldn't maintain it with any level of effort. Most just felt it was a "bad idea" and "immoral" and generally and gave few specifics as to what they considered the outcome. You might get them predicting a civil war from time to time, but many of the people down that path are NOT people who had a blanket opposition to the GOAL.
The reality is that we don't know how things may have went under alternate timelines. Perhaps we did not invade, Saddam kept murdering people in droves, and eventually his sons - more brutal and imbalanced than even their father - could reasonably be expected to escalate the violence, and eventually through external forces or internal forces civil war could have broken out as well, killing far more people and leaving the country drifting aimless and violent. (Which is far worse than what you may consider it to be now.)
Or perhaps we had sent the 500,000 troops military planners who "opposed" the war as it was kicked off but who did not oppose the goals had demanded. Perhaps we secured the nation early, better protected the borders, quashed the early insurgency, brought up large Iraqi security forces with better training and equipment, and within a few years had produced a stable government, economy and security situation with comparatively vastly diminished violence.
What then? Were you "wrong" and deserving of ridicule for a different outcome based on a different HANDLING of the war and occupation rather than the idea that the whole thing was "wrong" to begin with?
It's easy to say something so large and complex will in some way turn out poorly. You're simply betting on the house. If you're demanding a pound of flesh and "control," I want some evidence that you're more than a passenger on the bandwagon.
A lot of people here are mistaken as to cause and effect of the invasion of Iraq. The war in Iraq has/had nothing to do with 9/11 as such, but everything to do with the GWOT. Once the GWOT was announced, the invasion of Iraq (short of the UN actually DOING something in its lifetime) was a foregone conclusion due to its geopolitical significance.
What 9/11 did was to signal to Bush and others that the American people were ready, after decades of non-response, to actually confront the terrorists of the world. That conclusion was initially right, i.e., in the short term, but has been shown to be incorrect in the mid-term.
I've stated it before and I'll say it again--I actually was surprised when Bush declared the GWOT, because I thought that it would have taken one of our cities being nuked to bring the American people to the same conclusion, which I saw as an inevitable event in the future. Maybe, if we hang on in Iraq long enough to deny it as a safehaven and supporter of terrorists, we will prevent the destruction of one of our cities.
I know you're not that stupid. The fact of the matter is you are deliberately, with a certain end in mind, lying. Specifically, when you said this:
No, people are not saying that; if anything, just the opposite, that getting it right was easy, and didn't take a lot of brains to figure out.
Another lie, you nasty little weasel. Megan can say, quite clearly, that the people who opposed the war were unfairly marginalized. She can note that those same people are still being marginalized, despite that fact that they were right, and deserve more of a hearing than they are getting even now. She can promise to use her blog to publicly call for an end to this sort of marginalization.
That would satisfy me just fine.
By the way, big of you to note that you were wrong again about the motives of certain people, and to apologize for that gross mis-characterization.
But then, it's quite obvious with you that you think this is just another front on the battle-field, and that you'll do anything to keep these sorts of disputes going.
_You_ deserve to be marginalized to the point where you're phoning it in on a 1200 baud dial-up from a 386.
MM,
You miss one point--we couldn't have sent 500,000 military to Iraq as we did to Kuwait. The Clinton cuts sliced our services so thin that 500,000 was no longer a possibility. Just look at how hard it is to keep the number of troops we currently have in country.
And don't think for a moment that North Korea isn't looking closely at all of this. They were seriously prepping to invade South Korea when DESERT STORM ended, and it looked to be touch and go for awhile. They backed off then, but it's got to still be in the backs of their minds.
David, you contend that the anti-war crowd "were against the war because they are against any military action while there is a Republican in the White House".
How do you account for the fact that I, and a fairly large number (I suspect a majority), of those who opposed and expressed reservations about the war also supported the war in Afghanistan? How, indeed, to you account for the fact that one of the prominent objections to the war was that it would distract us from the Afghan conflict and divide our resourses at a time when we were already fighting an enemy which had direct and irrefutable ties to those who had actually attacked us?
I would submit to you, David, that your contention is false and, indeed, symptomatic of a kind of rhetorical laziness that dismises opposition with nothing more more substantial than generalization and stereotype.
I trust that you have better arguments to offer.
So how are we supposed to demonstrate this? A lot of us have already explained our reasoning then, but apparently it's not enough to satisfy.
And apparently people like Clarke and Cole (to name but two public figures) haven't demonstrated this to your satisfaction either. I don't think you can dismiss them as being knee-jerk anti-war whackos.
So it looks very much - as people have said all along - that you're going to be dismissive no matter what, that no matter what sort of bona-fides they present, you still won't concede that they deserve to be heard more than they were before.
So. Let's assume that you are being sincere: is there anyone you could name who was right, and right for the right reasons who deserves more of a say now?
If the answer is 'no one', then I think you'll understand why certain people are just a leetle bit peeved. And why they are distinctly unimpressed by 'apologies'.
As one literary character once said of them, "Apologies are the cheapest coin; give me something that matters."
Another lie, you nasty little weasel. Megan can say, quite clearly, that the people who opposed the war were unfairly marginalized.
Sure. She could. She could say anything.
Why she should, and what on earth that has to do with an apology for *her* opinions and actions, is what's really the point here.
Like I said, this is just further evidence that you are trying to use her as a vehicle to gain satisfaction from a completely different group of people. That's not only unfair, it's ultimately pointless.
Two more points:
I may have missed a few posts, but I sure didn't see anything like that. Do you have any quotes to back that up?
And second:
That's _exactly_ what most of the people who opposed the war in Iraq thought. Note too that there was much stronger international support for going into Afghanistan. Me, if I had credible information that the top bad guys were hiding out in Afghanistan, I'd have taken it straight to the U.N., and said "Here's what we've got. Now, either the nationals can hand him over in 24 hours, or we're going in to get him. We'd appreciate you're help, but, whether we get it or not, we're going in. The U.S. considers this to be a criminal matter, not an act of war."
Then I would have followed through, whatever it took, apologized to the Afghani's, and made some rather handsome reparations.
So, no, I don't think anyone should be able to cavalierly dismiss me as some sort of 'liberal' who is automatically against every sort of war.
But that seems to be what happens in any event.
I agree 100% with David above, and dispute the "war is a failure" assertion. It's far too early to say. Every war has its rough patches.
The Revolutionary War looked lost more times than I can recount here. The War of 1812 didn't go so well either. Nothing like having your capital burned to give the impression you're losing.
The Civil War looked lost in 1863 (mounting casualties, draft riots in NY) and again in 1864; Lincoln expected to lose to McClellan until Sherman captured Atlanta.
WWI was lost by the remaining Allies (Russia having already quit) when the U.S. entered the war.
WWII looked lost from 1940 until D-Day, looked almost lost again during the Battle of the Bulge, and appeared so again after the Battle of Okinawa and the introduction of kamikaze attacks. Both Okinawa and Iwo Jima shook national confidence that we could defeat Japan without unacceptable casualties, and some began to wonder whether we should reach an accommodation with Japan.
(By "lost" I mean failing to fulfill its goal: unconditional surrender. I hope we can agree that would have constituted losing.)
The Korean War looked lost before the invasion at Inchon (Pusan perimeter), and then looked lost again when the Chinese Communists entered the war (Chosun Reservoir).
Vietnam looked lost until U.S. troops became involved, then looked lost again after Tet, when public perception shifted and then it became really lost.
So putting this war into historical perspective belies assertions that it is lost, or was a mistake. That can't be decided for years to come.
Glorious, I could care less what you think. You're quite clearly being deliberately dishonest.
You're free to prove me wrong of course - for example, you could admit you were wrong when you said "You accuse me of delibarately missing the point but yet here you are demanding something from Megan she cannot possibly give you."
But I think what you're actively doing whatever you can to keep those nasty, dirty anti-war types marginalized.
You're free to prove me wrong of course - for example, you could admit you were wrong when you said "You accuse me of delibarately missing the point but yet here you are demanding something from Megan she cannot possibly give you."
So long as you continue to ask that Megan apologize for a marginalization she's not responsible for, I can't honestly do that.
But I think what you're actively doing whatever you can to keep those nasty, dirty anti-war types marginalized.
I can't even conceive how you came to the conclusion that by disagreeing with you in the comments section of a blog that I'm "marginalizing" you.
What is it with you and these stupid, stupid lies:
Don't see anything about an apology there. Not surprising; I wasn't asking for one.
And - a wild guess - you're not going to say that you were wrong or apologize for that one either.
And you know what? Now that you've behaved in such a disgraceful manner, I for one won't bother to see what you have to say about any particular topic; I'll just scroll on past.
Really? Trying to stampede someone into thinking that any such action would be an apology, and they've had quite enough of that, thank you very much, so that no such acknowledgment is forthcoming is not such an attempt?
Do you really think your that much smarter than the rest of us that we can't see through something like that?
What a gift you have for understatement. You're incredibly generous to your own point of view, aren't you? This war isn't experiencing a "rough patch." It was ill-conceived, mendaciously promoted, strategically flawed, and has been disastrous both for us and the Iraqis. The cease-fire adhered to by Sadr's forces for the past several months looks as if it's about to fall apart, meaning that even the modest gains attributed to the "surge" are about to evaporate.
"Rough patch," indeed.
Um... for all intents and purposes, Al Qaeda and the Taliban were one and the same and were running Afghanistan. There was no one to just go in and get.
You would have apologized to the very people who were responsible for 9/11... unless you overthrew their government (who were the bad guys) and then left and I guess you'd have then let the citizens of Afghanistan work out their own differences and come up with their own new government?
I'm sure that would have worked out great.
This kind of thing is why I have trouble taking the anti-war folks seriously.
And thus is entirely typical of every war, mutatis mutandis, which was my point.
It strikes me that your logic is akin to saying it's better to listen to Alan Greenspan about how the economy collapsed as opposed to someone who has been warning of the impending debt collapse, totally ignoring Greenspans ignorance and arrogance over his role in the problem. I'll take Nouriel Roubini over greenspan anyday of the week on this issue.
I think your missing the point about this argument, it should really have nothing to do with whether someone was right or wrong about the war, people on both sides have axes to grind or face to save. It should be about ones ability to legitimently analyse the situation.
Ummm . . . this sort of 'analysis' with absolutely no facts or figures to support it is _precisely_ why I am so dismissive of the pro-war crowd. And why I don't think much of their abilities to get anything right except by coincidental collisions of the current story line with reality.
Just out of curiosity, were you dismissive of quantum chromodynamics too?
What sort of a non sequitur was that? Or are you claiming that the quantum folks just made it up with as they went along with no supporting evidence?
Really, what are you trying to say?
You're 6'2"?? Yikes.
I'm 6 ft....6'2" or so with some rugged shoes.
I guess I won't asking you out on a date. :)
It is arrogance, how can you possibly state that your knowledge of something is greater than all but three journalists in the country as an objective fact? It is literally impossible to prove such a point, not to mention your narrow assumption that only journalists working for prominent publications such as those listed are capable of being familiar with the issue.
I am a journalist. I have read many of those studies. However I don't report on them, neither do I claim that my knowledge is vastly superior to all others just because I have. I'm sure many people, including reporters have read those studies. We are just not all in a position to pontificate on them and make absrd assertions on a high-traffic blog without providing any justification.
I see you have also dubbed yourself one of the foremost journalistic experts on bankruptcy because you cover it. I used to be a financial reporter. My boss was a journalist who used to be a *gasp* corporate bankruptcy attorney. But wait, he didn't specifically write about bankruptcy. So you must know more about the subject than him, correct? I work for the same company as you. I am one of the few people reporting on my arena, which is related to information technology. I also blog for the company. However, when I argue points, I rely on experts in the field to validate my assertions. I don't simply crow that "no one else is writing about this" and therefore, I must be right and an expert. I am a journalist, that's what we do. If you want to be the person quoted, maybe you should go back ang get your PhD or the qualifications necessary to be just that.
Not to mention the very idea that someone without any formal education or job experience as an economist is the foremost expert on ANY economic field, well that is just ridiculous.
SpottedOpie, I have read or skimmed darn near every story on the various available studies of Iraqi casualties published in the English language press and accessible by Lexis-Nexis--hundreds of them. If there are other journalists who know a great deal about the studies, they are certainly hiding their lights under a bushel. Having interviewed many of the major figures in the debate (except for the Lancet team, who apparently will not grant interviews to anyone they suspect will write something critical), I've got a decent sense of who many of *them* have talked to. There are, as far as I know, no journalists who are conflict epidemiologists, a highly specified field, and even if there were, unless they had specifically studied the details, I would know more than them about the studies.
On bankruptcy, I have also read all of the major English language coverage of the bankruptcy reform bill, and the follow ups; from the elementary errors made, I know I know more about the topic than almost all the journalists who covered it. Also, being a corporate lawyer has nothing to do with bankruptcy, which is a specialized sub-field about which non-specialists don't know very much. That's why when you ask your real estate lawyer to fill out a bankruptcy petition, he will refer you to a specialist. That goes double for corporate bankruptcy law, which is insanely complicated, and also, not very relevant to the national discussion of bankruptcy, which aside from the ongoing debate about KERP clawbacks that occasionally breaks into a small box in the business section, centers around the consumer side.
Re: anti-war people's frustration, anger, and (real or imagined) demands:
Bouncing off of an earlier 'what if we had been wrong?' comment by SoV in one of these threads, I want to suggest the following (wildly unlikely, let me add) alt. history scenario -
Background: Gore sworn in as Pres in 2001; 9/11; successful diplomatic negotiation - American led, with widespread bipartisan and international support - leads the Taliban to hand over/execute/drive out AQ leadership, begin moderating its policies (no, I don't think this could have happened). Far-reaching, generally supported policies aimed at ameliorating the root causes of terrorism, and emphasizing international policing.
Next, growing, widespread concern over Iraqi plans and WMD capacities. A widening range of voices insist that action -perhaps even war - must be taken to avoid disaster. Pres. Gore & political/ideological allies strongly, simplistically opposes any such action; plays upon the American public's fears by constantly rhetorically linking intervention in the Middle East to another 9/11 . . . intervention, 9/11 . . . intervention, 9/11 . . . . Gore administration and allies begins massively pushing a range of sometimes-shaky arguments in support of pacifistic non-intervention, with a dump of sometimes questionable intelligence claiming to show no evidence of WMD/-related program activities, horrible risks of intervening, war would be an utter disaster, great benefits of friendly negotiation - 'the road to Jerusalem begins by shaking hands with Baghdad'.
Still, concern continues to grow, in part due to persistent hints to the contrary, and the iffy nature of these arguments. Many nations push for serious actions, with necessary U.S. participation - up to war if necessary - against Saddam, although the UK gov't supports the Gore administration. Anti-pacifism proponents find themselves increasingly edged out of the official public conversation - from op-eds to cable news shows - in a way that respects neither balance nor proportion. Pundit-embraced pro-pacifist views are (misleadingly) presented as overwhelmingly prevalent, and for some inexplicable reason the anti-pacifist voices getting most of the (quite limited) public airing are not from the assorted respected experts, but those of a few actors and celebrities.
Inevitably the anti-pacifist movement's ranks do contain some strongly ideological, predictable, unreliable, or even unsavory members. (Some float ideas about purging or disassociating the movement, but matters are increasingly judged too dire , and time too short, for this). Perhaps partly as a result (but honestly, hard to say how much), the ubiquitous image of the anti-pacifist movement - presented by its opponents from outlet after outlet of public discourse - is one of a motley mix of racists, war-mongers, and militia members just aching to kill them some ragheads and consequences be damned. In reality, much of the movement is ideologically and politically diverse - often moderate and previously not especially warlike - but one almost never sees this coverage of this. The only anti-pacifist arguments that ever seem to get much of a public airing are the very weakest, and those are often caricatured almost beyond recognition. (In coming years some intelligent and fair-minded former peace-supporters will report in puzzlement the effort they put into searching out and rebuttting these near-strawmen, somehow virtually ignoring more sophisticated advocates and arguments).
Increasingly one hears from every direction, from high officials to local letters to the editor, from almost every channel and station, the refrain that anti-pacifists are dangerous fascists, that criticizing or even questioning the Gore administration and its allies in such a risky time is disloyal, and only done by crazed far-rightwingers trying to wreck everything in their hateful and deluded lust for violence. 'So, do you want another 9/11?', peace supporters constantly ask, 'and why do you hate American soldiers so much, that you want to send them off to die?'.
After Toby Keith remarks at a British concert (look, just bear with me) that he's doesn't want this appeasement crap, and is ashamed that the President of the U.S. is from the South, outraged Americans stage a boycott, his music is dropped by many stations (and two djs get suspended for playing it anyway), he's flooded with death threats, and most disturbingly, there's a giant rally where people bring his cds to be crushed by a bulldozer, in a sort of modern musical version of a gleeful bookburning.
British support of the administration leads to bizarre outbreaks of anglophobia, with much-reported stories of people trashing videotapes and dvds of BBC shows, and dumping plates of Stilton in the trash. On Capital Hill current usage calls for replacing "the English language" with "peace language," and pool players start referring to putting a spin on the cue ball as not "english" but "peace." (Sure, it's all a little crazy, but this craziness suggests, at least to some, a deeply irrational, even frightening darkness).
Under intense international and domestic pressure, President Gore agrees to bring inspectors back to Iraq, and insists that war isn't yet off the table. They find not the utter cooperation and clear lack of WMDs/etc. that was promised, but deeply disturbing hints to the contrary. It seems that they may uncover convincing (if not conclusive) evidence of an imminent threat, when they are suddenly pulled back out.
By late 2002/2003, the case for peace is collapsing. One after another, much of the supposedly rock-solid evidence the administration provided to support its pacifistic stance ends up being really questionable at best, based on nonsense, exaggerations, and forgeries at worst. One begins hearing about serious problems with the politicization of intelligence, etc. Much of the rest of the world is deeply opposed to the administration's position, although the other English-colonized nations - and a number of (sometimes ludicrously weak and noninfluential) countries do support its pacifistic stance. Indeed, and somewhat stunningly in these months a not-insignificant portion of the human race all across the globe takes to the streets to beg for intervention, in what appears to be the largest set of mass protests in history, involving millions of people. There are very large protests in the U.S. itself, but coverage appears to be surprisingly dismissive, with mainstream reports consistently underestimating the numbers; again, the (sometimes literal) image (misre)presented to the public is of an almost laughable and disreputable mix of flakes and nuts dressed in ill-fitting cammies. Blogger 'Jane Galt' gets the idea that the ' the scruffier element of Saturday's war rally' may be planning to cause mayhem, and fantasizes about how some New Yorker (a people, she says, deeply frightened about another terrorist attack - perhaps one brought about, as the President seems to say, by warmongering interventionists?) is going to pick up a two-by-four and teach them a lesson. President Gore, when asked about such domestic opposition to pacifism, sighs heavily and compares the hundreds of thousands of protesters to a 'focus group'. (One should add, however, that the people relying on mainstream sources and such weren't going to get this perspective and info, which was perhaps most available (besides online) in small-circulation magazines like the National Review, etc.).
Fast-forward to March 2008 and - well, long story short, it turns out the peace supporters were wrong. Tel Aviv is pretty much gone, with about half the city's population dead [this is using the low rw estimate]; a significant chunk of Israelis have fled and now live as refugees in various European nations. While the agencies tasked with protecting Americans did their best, between Saddam's eager sharing of WMDs with terrorist group and his unstoppable balsa-wood drones, the U.S. death toll surpasses that of 9/11, with thousands upon thousands seriously injured, and many of our non-interventionist allies have also taken real losses.
In the intervening years, there have been revelation after revelation about how manipulative, misguided, and plain stupid the Gore administration was, how weak the case for appeasement really was. There was the former diplomat who wrote about how his fact-finding trip to Africa produced evidence that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger, evidence that mysteriously vanished from the President's speech only to be replaced by the opposite claim. (Said diplomat soon found his wife outed as a CIA agent in an apparent attempt at discrediting and/or retribution). The aluminum tubes which turns out to have been correctly identified by many experts as very likely weapon-related. The inhouse cherry-picking operation that stripped all nuance and dissent and warnings from carefully selected info that was then forcefed down the public gullet. President Gore's false 'decision' to not go to war, which turned out to have been made months before - arguably as far back as right after 9/11 - with all the negotiation and debate that followed just a big kabuki-show. And etc., and etc., and etc.
So, a first question. How do you think the appeasement supporters, the peace-mongers should have reacted, from the private citizens to the widely read bloggers to the - most importantly, the journalists, pundits, thinktankers, and esp. the politicians? How should they feel, how should they act, what should they say?
And furthermore, in this scenario, imagine that a fair number of those politicians are still in power - yes, the '06 election was a victory for Republicans, probably because of anti-pacifist sentiment, and it seems to have finally pressured Pres. Gore to remove one of the most important architects of the disaster from their position;I suppose that's a start - and pretty much all of the pundits (a few even rewarded with bigger and better microphones). All in all, not that much has changed. For the last few years, in this scenario, there's been a credibly growing threat from Iran, and almost unbelievably, the administration and its allies appeared to be trying to repeat the exact same approach (probably unsuccessfully).
On the fifth anniversary of Gore's fateful decision, major media outlets and such run op-ed collections and series and suchlike consisting almost exclusively of former (and former-ish) appeasement supporters going on about 'what they got wrong.' Some of these are insightful and honest, a few almost stunningly self-centered, naive, or dedicated to testing the newest admin spin. Helpful, and no doubt entirely appropriate as part of a balanced historical self-correction including many voices. But, as some people from the anti-appeasement movement object, with things as they are, once again - as has largely been the case, incredibly, for those five years - this apparently serves to marginalize and ignore anti-appeasement voices and views, with likely consequences not just for personal resentment, but national and international politics, for our future .
Already former appeasement supporters have insisted that ok, maybe they were wrong, but they were wrong for all the right reasons, while those DFW (warmongers, that is) mostly just happened to get it right for all the wrong reasons, and there's about as much point in listening to them as trying to tell the time on a stopped clock. Now - turning from the slaughter of thousands and hundreds of thousands to a minor annoyance, but life is made of minor annoyances when its not being brutally ended - a certain former appeasement supporter, blogger, and magazine writer, in response to the above anti-appeasement criticism, has argued that:
'. . . I heard a fair amount of that this weekend. But I think it's seriously misguided . . . Success can be accidental; failure is definite . . . Failure tells us more than success . . . At the decision point where we decided to not go into Iraq, there were two hypotheses we could have tested:
1) Something terrible will happen if we leave Saddam in power
2) We can depose Saddam and leave the world a better place
We chose to test hypothesis number one. So far, it looks like a dud . . .
Since it failed, the more interesting question is not what did you get right, but what did you get wrong . . . The people who failed will also do this. But unlike the people who were right, there is a central fact stopping them from flattering themselves too much: things are blowing up . . . and people are dying. Thus they will have to look for some coherent explanation.. . . To be sure, many of those explanations are wan and self-serving . . . But . . . the honest ones are vastly more interesting than listening to a parade of people say "Well, obviously, I'm a genius, and also, not mean."'
Reactions?
So basically, we should take your word that you know better than everyone else, based on what?
Your education? I'm sorry an MBA and English lit degree doesn't cut it.
I'm sorry, but I will continue to believe the experts. And I'm very sorry that a blog with the Atlantic name on it has devolved to the level of discussion that this one has.
Megan, citing an aggregate figure for Iraqi casualties subliminally suggests that that we are responsible for all of those deaths, and that all those people were innocent bystanders going about their business.
What proportion of those deaths were killed by other Iraqis, and what proportion were opposing forces and/or insurgents, i.e., people we were trying to kill, and who needed killing? We're not responsible for the former, and I for one am not shedding any tears for the latter.
Quoting an aggregate figure is misleading; by the same reckoning, we could say that WWII wasn't worth it either, because of all those Germans, Japanese, Russians, and Jews who were killed.
Megan, you say that you understand "our rage." No, I don't think you do. It is impossible to explain how utterly demoralizing it is to watch your own country march into a disaster. It is beyond frustrating when it is _so_ clear in your mind what the proper course is, yet no one in power, including the politicians you voted for, can see it. It is soul-deadening to watch year after year of lies from the administration and Congress, and watch the established press swallow it and beg for more.
At the start of the war, I felt I was one of the few sane people in a country gone mad. After Bush was re-elected, I seriously questioned whether I was, in fact, the mad one and everyone else was sane.
Rage does not come close to explaining how I feel. I am not sure what the emotion is when you feel that your country has left you. It is frightening, it is confusing, and, ultimately, extraordinarily sad.
Bull's eye.
Remember, it's all about the Megan. Dear me.
My tears will not restore a single dead Iraqi back to life. Nor can I die for the sins of the rest of the world.
Your shutting the fuck up when the next drumbeat to war starts sounding, on the other hand, will have proximate and distant benefits. Even if it doesn't bring another step up the journalistic ladder.
You've done very well out of the war. Stanley Baldwin's observation was not unique.
I would like to thank the anti-war crowd for reminding everyone why they shouldn't have been taken seriously before, and shouldn't be taken seriously now.
The only thing I can offer, at this point, is the hope that we can figure out how not to do it again.
That one's easy. We stop listening to idiots like you. Problem solved.
pittsburgher says "Megan, you say that you understand 'our rage.' No, I don't think you do."
I think Megan actually does, even though its hard to see her understanding because she's looking at it from her perspective. Your rage comes from year after year of seeing a public debate where it is transparently obvious that the public is making the wrong decision, our government marches off into folly, and the terrible disaster that you foresee then unfolds before your eyes, without even a clear recognition and repudiation of what went wrong and how to avoid that in the future. At best you get people who say "mistakes were made," implying that implementation can and should be better next time, whereas your point is there never should have been a last time and there should never be a next time.
The thing is Megan has a pretty libertarian outlook. For libertarians, this sort of thing happens all the time. Lives are ruined, people die, and its all so obviously pointless, and society and government don't even see their tragic flaws.
The rage is subjectively felt. As a result, the rage is the same, even if libertarians a wrong, and what libertarians see as "errors" are actually correct.
The main subjective difference seems to me to really only be different for that small subset of opponents to the Iraqi war who had pretty much got the decisions they wanted in American politics until the Iraqi war started looming. These people have the added frustration of feeling betrayed by a system that they trusted, because it always "did right" before. Libertarians have no delusions that politics will normally or automatically give us what we think is right.
But Tom, that's completely different; libertarians may _think_ they're correct(so do the four old guys holding down the end of the bar Mon - Sat, two to eight p.m.), and they may feel some sort of helpless rage (ditto. In fact, who _doesn't_ feel this way?)
But in this case, there is no subjective component, the anti-war types were objectively, provably, _right_. And they're still being ignored after the most perfunctory of acknowledgments served up with a heaping helping of commentary by those who were wrong determinedly explaining why they were really right. Not only that, when faced with demands that they be listened to in the future, and heeded, they get sneering put-downs like "Well, the next time we invade Iraq, we'll be sure to listen to you."
So the two are not the same at all.
THe ever-pompous David M. Nieporent:
I would like to thank the anti-war crowd for reminding everyone why they shouldn't have been taken seriously before, and shouldn't be taken seriously now.
Who cares what you think? Go scrub the blood from your hands.
Obviously, there are people who were right about the war for the right reasons, and we should examine what their thought process was--not merely the conclusions they came to, but how they got there. Other peoples' opposition was animated by principles that may be right, but aren't really very helpful: the pacifists, the isolationists, the reflexive opponents of Republicans or the US military.
See, here's what I don't get about your position, Megan. I don't understand why your criteria for getting the war right for the right reasons excludes core principles.
Why is learning, for instance, that some war critics held a de-facto position that pre-emptive war should be not be undertaken something that you consider not 'really very helpful'?
Principles can actually be useful. And even 'helpful' in learning why those who possess good ones tend to succeed in various enterprises.
Germany has pretty much made this concession. I think it is generally a healthy thing to do: admit your guilt and move on from there. Grovel when people bring up your previous bad behavior so that they know you are sincerely sorry. It would do wonders for race relations in this country e.g.
How many Iraqis do we need to kill before we are reviled as a nation for generations? Quite frankly this country does way too much killing, and I'm getting to the point where I'm almost completely uninterested in the constant parade of rationale & excuses.