| This is a very heartening story from the Olympian, the daily newspaper in Washington's state capital: U.S. Rep. Brian Baird said Thursday that his recent trip to Iraq convinced him the military needs more time in the region, and that a hasty pullout would cause chaos that helps Iran and harms U.S. security. "I believe that the decision to invade Iraq and the post-invasion management of that country were among the largest foreign-policy mistakes in the history of our nation. I voted against them, and I still think they were the right votes," Baird said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C. "But we're on the ground now. We have a responsibility to the Iraqi people and a strategic interest in making this work." . . . Baird said he would not say this if he didn't believe two things: • "One, I think we're making real progress." • "Secondly, I think the consequences of pulling back precipitously would be potentially catastrophic for the Iraqi people themselves, to whom we have a tremendous responsibility . . . and in the long run chaotic for the region as a whole and for our own security." The distinction Baird makes is a crucial one, and one that war opponents usually elide. Whether Congress made a mistake in authorizing Iraq's liberation is a separate question from what to do now. Yet war opponents act as if favoring a precipitous withdrawal logically and necessarily follows from regretting the decision to liberate. |
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Neocomrade Dr. Tarantula does not much advance its own Boy-'n'-Party cause by always sayin' "liberation" where I'd say "aggression" and an impartial Martian might maybe say only "intervention." Of course flushin' everythin' before last week down some sub-Orwellian toilet considerably assists Dr. T. and Party of "History is bunk."
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Why? Part of it, we suppose, is a sort of binary simplemindedness: It was bad to go in, ergo it would be good to get out. Real life is more complicated. It may be that it was a mistake to go in but a precipitous withdrawal would compound the error.
But maybe those who argue for withdrawal seek precisely to compound the error. Failure in Iraq would vindicate the position of those who originally argued that the war would be a mistake. Likewise for those who supported the war but later changed their minds--they may be cynical opportunists, but they may also have the zeal of a convert. If America loses the war, they win the argument.
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Ah, the complications of Real Life! Wall Street Bushmonger tarantulas don't even begin to want to know even the half of THAT!
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And defeat in Iraq would vindicate not only opposition to Iraq but an entire worldview--what we've called the worldview of baby-boom liberalism. America's defeat in Vietnam was a triumph for baby-boom liberalism--a triumph that some seem never to have given up trying to relive.
In this respect, it's telling that Brian Baird, though liberal, is relatively young. He was born in 1956 and finished college in 1977, which means that the Vietnam tumult had wound down by the time he reached majority. To be sure, baby-boom liberalism has influence beyond its immediate age cohort (cf Barack Obama, born 1961). But maybe Baird is a tribune of a younger, more sensible type of liberal, one that cares more about doing right than being proved right.
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Womb-schoolin' and Niederdümmung need not be presumed to go on downwards forever like that to suit Big Management Party purposes. A shameless Big Party and Wall Street Jingo agitprop artist like Dr. James Tarantula may think we're all supposed to applaud the lawless GOP vigilantism "that cares more about doing right than being proved right." How can the aggression perps talk like that, I wonder, think just exactly like any wicked "sectarian militia" in the former Iraq?
To rehearse our own traditional position, Mr. Bones, we ourselves always look to Princess Posterity, do we not? To be sure, Her Highness's nod of assent is not quite exactly "being proved right" in any cheapjack here-and-now Big Management Party jingoist and tarantulan sense, for even She Herself might conceivably err. Unless one abandons one's mind to Papism altogether, Mr. Bones. how shall anybody human ever be REALLY SURE?
We ever strive to commend ourselves to Princess Posterity, do we not, Mr. Bones? Demonstratedly incompetent Busheviki and greedy Wall Street Jingos may aim short of that, but never shall we! Our ideal is to ensure that if Princess Posterity ever attends to us humble at all, She will say retrospectively something like "They didn't really do all that badly for mere boondocks primitives back in the year 1428, after all."
Is this a real criterion, then, O Bones? Do we only fake-believe in Princess Posterity as GOP dupers and dupes only fake-believe in ‘God’?
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