Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Iraq Credulity Test
There is an awful lot of heat being generated around the intertubes regarding the Iraq war. I would encourage anyone browsing through the news to apply a very simple test when considering who should or should not be taken seriously while pontificating on the situation we face in Iraq today.
Simply consider the past track record of the person in question. Has that person generally made sense and had their suppositions on the war prove true over the course of time? It just makes sense to apply this very basic test to the war in Iraq, much the same as we would apply that standard to any other aspect of our daily lives. For all sorts of people, from the lowliest weather person to the great and vaunted phone psychic Miss Cleo, a repeated record of incorrect assumptions or illogical opinions would typically disqualify the guilty party from future consideration in a serious way on the issue in question.
Yet after five years straight of an absolutely disastrous record of policy decisions and starry eyed assessments of the war, the President and his enablers are still being given widespread credence in the current debate over Iraq. Not only are these given credence, but their assumptions are often forwarded by the media as unquestionably correct.
Thus it has come to pass that we are witness to the widely admitted failure of benchmark after benchmark set prior to the so called surge in Iraq to gauge it's success. Yet because the influx of American soldiers have temporarily improved security in Baghdad, the entire message trumpeted by the administration and their toadies, and propagated by the media, is about the unqualified success of the surge. Indeed it seems that the widespread perception is that people who discount the results of the surge simply because we took the administration at their word (ha!) when they announced the goals for the surge are being intransigent or defeatist. Wha?!
Thus it is that in recognition of the 5th year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the President holds forth on events as he sees them and his words are broadcast around the world as some sort of noteworthy pronouncement on the results of the Iraq war. At this stage of the game the President's statements on the situation in Iraq are noteworthy only for their invariable deviance from any semblance of reality. The President's determination that the war was worth it in hindsight really can not be given any more credence than the delusional ramblings of a well trained drunken parrot. It is hard to imagine any sane individual being granted the power to time travel from today to 5 1/2 years in the past and actually encouraging or in some other way allowing the President to make the same choice. Yet the President and his enablers still proclaim that they made the right decision and would do it again if given the choice. Not only do the make this absurd proclamation, but they are defiant in doing so.
The people who crow about the worthiness of the effort in Iraq are the very same crowd who trumpeted the certainty that Saddam possessed WMD and was working hand in hand with the very same terrorists who plotted 9/11. These are the people who proclaimed years ago that the insurgency was in it's last throes. They predicted the war would cost a mere pittance and saw to it that the man who predicted the war would cost 200 billion dollars was fired from the administration. They disbanded the Iraqi army and sent greenhorn young Republican idealists to form a neocon government from scratch which, predictably, resulted in disaster. The President was mystified by the revelation that there were two sects of Islam who would be set at each others throats in Iraq, proclaiming, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!” This dunderheaded outlook was echoed by John McCain this week as he repeatedly asserted that the Iranians were training Al Qaeda agents and sending them into Iraq.
It seems to me that anyone who can not be brought to admit the mistaken nature of the entire endeavor, given that the initial reasons for the invasion were proven wrong followed by 5 years of bloodletting and the burning of our national treasure, should be disqualified from serious consideration on the matter. They should be allowed to express themselves, but these folks have proven so consistently wrong for so long that their pronouncements should be greeted with widespread derision, and duly noted for express denunciation when the opinion they are promulgating is proven completely off base after the proof is in.
Simply consider the past track record of the person in question. Has that person generally made sense and had their suppositions on the war prove true over the course of time? It just makes sense to apply this very basic test to the war in Iraq, much the same as we would apply that standard to any other aspect of our daily lives. For all sorts of people, from the lowliest weather person to the great and vaunted phone psychic Miss Cleo, a repeated record of incorrect assumptions or illogical opinions would typically disqualify the guilty party from future consideration in a serious way on the issue in question.
Yet after five years straight of an absolutely disastrous record of policy decisions and starry eyed assessments of the war, the President and his enablers are still being given widespread credence in the current debate over Iraq. Not only are these given credence, but their assumptions are often forwarded by the media as unquestionably correct.
Thus it has come to pass that we are witness to the widely admitted failure of benchmark after benchmark set prior to the so called surge in Iraq to gauge it's success. Yet because the influx of American soldiers have temporarily improved security in Baghdad, the entire message trumpeted by the administration and their toadies, and propagated by the media, is about the unqualified success of the surge. Indeed it seems that the widespread perception is that people who discount the results of the surge simply because we took the administration at their word (ha!) when they announced the goals for the surge are being intransigent or defeatist. Wha?!
Thus it is that in recognition of the 5th year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the President holds forth on events as he sees them and his words are broadcast around the world as some sort of noteworthy pronouncement on the results of the Iraq war. At this stage of the game the President's statements on the situation in Iraq are noteworthy only for their invariable deviance from any semblance of reality. The President's determination that the war was worth it in hindsight really can not be given any more credence than the delusional ramblings of a well trained drunken parrot. It is hard to imagine any sane individual being granted the power to time travel from today to 5 1/2 years in the past and actually encouraging or in some other way allowing the President to make the same choice. Yet the President and his enablers still proclaim that they made the right decision and would do it again if given the choice. Not only do the make this absurd proclamation, but they are defiant in doing so.
The people who crow about the worthiness of the effort in Iraq are the very same crowd who trumpeted the certainty that Saddam possessed WMD and was working hand in hand with the very same terrorists who plotted 9/11. These are the people who proclaimed years ago that the insurgency was in it's last throes. They predicted the war would cost a mere pittance and saw to it that the man who predicted the war would cost 200 billion dollars was fired from the administration. They disbanded the Iraqi army and sent greenhorn young Republican idealists to form a neocon government from scratch which, predictably, resulted in disaster. The President was mystified by the revelation that there were two sects of Islam who would be set at each others throats in Iraq, proclaiming, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!” This dunderheaded outlook was echoed by John McCain this week as he repeatedly asserted that the Iranians were training Al Qaeda agents and sending them into Iraq.
It seems to me that anyone who can not be brought to admit the mistaken nature of the entire endeavor, given that the initial reasons for the invasion were proven wrong followed by 5 years of bloodletting and the burning of our national treasure, should be disqualified from serious consideration on the matter. They should be allowed to express themselves, but these folks have proven so consistently wrong for so long that their pronouncements should be greeted with widespread derision, and duly noted for express denunciation when the opinion they are promulgating is proven completely off base after the proof is in.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
