Through The Past Darkly
By Mitch Berg
Listening to Bush’s final presser last week, I heard the President talk about the regrets he has over his terms in office.
The big one? That the intel about the WMD turned out to be wrong.
At the time, I was upset about the Administration’s focus on WMD in “selling” the liberation of Iraq. There were – as even noted neocons like Nick Lemann in that conservative hothouse the New Yorker noted– four grounds for going to deposing Hussein:
- Repeated violations of UN resolutions re his nuke program and the no-fly zone.
- Repeated, horrendous human rights abuses
- Support for terror (not “Al Quaeda” or “9/11”, but plenty of others)
- Finally, the WMD.
“Why”, I asked at the time “is the Administration not hitting all four of these justifications equally hard?” It was one of my big regrets of the Administration.
And yet at almost six years’ remove, it occurs to me that, for purposes of convincing Congress and especially the world at large, that…:
- Nobody has ever cared about UN resolutions. None are ever worth the paper they’re printed on (except in the odd case of the occasional government figure who takes the UN seriously – like George HW Bush, who obeyed the UN and didn’t depose Hussein in 1991); who would care?
- The people of Haditha were guilty of dying while brown. Western elites don’t generally care about human rights abuses against brown people (at least not those that can’t be used to discredit conservative Western governments – see the 1984 Ethiopian Famine or Abu Ghraib).
- Hussein mainly supported terror aimed at other Arabs, and at Israel. Who cared?
- On the other hand, in 2002 – when the rubble from the World Trade Center had barely stopped smoldering? The next one could hit Cambridge,Tribeca or Berkeley!
Unfortunate, but understandable under the circumstances.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:47 am
Mitch raved: “The next one could hit Cambridge,Tribeca or Berkeley!”
Um, you realize 9/11 hit Tribeca, right? And that you Midwestern wingnuts were and are safe, cause you live in a town that’s not worth bombing?
By the by, President Obama won New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia – the states that were actually attacked on 9/11.
Of course in wingnut memory, 9/11 was a strike on Utah, Alaska and North Dakota, personally ordered by Saddam Hussein.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:11 am
Frankly, hitting all three other points wouldn’t have done much for the conservative base.
The Constitution names the President as Commander in Chief but doesn’t say he can use military force at whim. He needs a declaration of war (or an enabling resolution, which amounts to the same thing). In convincing Congress to authorize him to act, he needs to explain how these actions are a wise use of our military resources.
How would it be in the US best interest to send our military to fight and die to prevent Hutsus from killing Tutus; to prevent Arabs from killing Persians; to prevent Croats from killing Serbs?
Conservatives willingly pay taxes to support the best military force in the world to protect Us from Them, not to protect Them from Each Other.
Is that cold and heartless? Yep. The world is a tough place, money and manpower is limited, we have to look out for ourselves because we know for damned sure nobody else will do it for us.
So the only justification the Base would listen to was pre-emptive strike to remove a threat to the USA. Articulate that threat and we’re with you.
Harboring terrorists? Yeah, okay, it’s thin, but if true that could be a reason to use our military to protect ourselves.
Threatening to hit us with WMD’s. Yeah, that’s better, if credible.
Rape rooms, gassed Kurds, flying where prohibited – those are bad but they aren’t a threat to the security of the United States and therefore are not a legitimate reason to use US military force.
That’s the fundamental difference between conservative willingness to use military force, and liberal willingness. We’re both willing to send our military into conflict around the world, but conservatives only want to use it where we have a national interest at stake, and liberals only want to use it where we don’t.
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January 21st, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Um, you realize 9/11 hit Tribeca, right?
Help me out here; was it the part of Tribeca with the upscale restaurants where Manhattanites gather to talk about how much smarter than red-staters they all are, or was it the part with the HUGE FRIGGIN’ SKYSCRAPERS that, architecturally, socially and demographically, had absolutely nothing to do with the neighborhood itself (according to people who take New York architecture seriously)?
Because as John Edwards said, there are Two Tribecas.
January 21st, 2009 at 1:00 pm
nate-
You’ve hit neatly upon the paleo-con/neo-con divide regarding the current unpleasantness in Iraq.
There was an argument that should have been made in 2002, and that argument would have been that deposing Saddam’s regime and putting in its place a stable, friendlier governemnt was vital to American interests but Bush did not make that argument.
Liberals, however, have nothing coherent to say about the matter at all.
January 21st, 2009 at 4:24 pm
I only know of one Tribeca, Mitch. The one where people were falling out of windows to escape a burning tower, where the apartments had to be evacuated because of human remains and toxic dust. Where firemen, cops, military and the FBI set up disaster headquarters. Where New Yorkers stood along Canal Street cheering emergency personnel and holding up supportive signs. Oh, and it was the same one where people posted photos of family members who would never come home. And the one that New Yorkers rebuilt, cause we’re not fat-assed, lazy, security-obsessed, mouth-breating Midwesterners.
But I bet it was scary on TV for dumb, fat
January 21st, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Oh, Jesus. Have to sack two girls in one day.
So hard to get good help these days.
January 21st, 2009 at 4:53 pm
angryclown said:
“And the one that New Yorkers rebuilt, cause we’re not fat-assed, lazy, security-obsessed, mouth-breating Midwesterners.”
Is that the real reason New Yorkers rebuilt? To “prove” they’re better than other people? I guess I’ll have to take your word for it, but that’s a bit pathetic.
Was the rebuilding therapeutic for you, angryclown?
January 21st, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Not to prove we’re better than other people, Troy. Because we’re better than other people.
January 21st, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I have a question, angryclown: how would you know? I don’t believe you know more than a handful of “Midwesterners”. The way you denigrate the “not us”, I really don’t know if you “know” the ones you’ve met. *shrug*
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:34 am
The World Trade Center has been rebuilt? By New Yorkers, all alone, no help from anybody (especially no taxes paid by fat, dumb farmers in the Midwest)?
Huh, never noticed. Here I though the Empire State Building was still the tallest.
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