Oliver Willis

There has been some interesting blogging by Michael Cohen of Democracy Arsenal in response to Atrios pointing out how dumb some liberals still are in continuing to act as if pro-war liberals like Will Marshall of the DLC were somehow right about the decision to invade Iraq and giving them a pass for never having acknowledged how monumentally wrong they were (and are).

As I stated in the comments there, while the ultimate policies involved in invading Iraq are the handiwork of George W. Bush, he would never have been given a free hand were it not for liberals and Democrats who did the dirty work for him. This includes the think tank and pundit crowd like the DLC, Peter Beinart and The New Republic, as well as congressmen and senators like Dick Gephardt, John Edwards, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, etc.

The decision to invade Iraq was a stupid one. Next to the Vietnam War, it probably ranks as one of the three or four worst foreign policy decisions in the history of the United States. Millions of us knew it was a bad deal. Back in 2002 and 2003 we somehow had this figured out while the Democrats and liberals in Washington were busy giving away our security and the political power of the Democratic party away in a mad dash to look tough. While the country was wishy-washy on the war, those of us in the base of the Democratic party were deadset against it. In my case it was because I believed after 9/11 the primary mission of the government and our military was to apprehend and kill every last member of the Al Qaeda network and whoever chose to aid them. I supported the first Gulf War, I supported U.S. aid to forces who wished to topple Saddam’s regime, but the invasion and occupation of Iraq, right at the same time we were tasked with fighting a global war against Al Qaeda seemed to be a recipe for failure.

Sadly I was right. Millions of us were right. The most important foreign policy decision of maybe the last 30-40 years and us dumb dumb regular Americans had a lot more clues than the guys and gals who wanted to prove just how tough they were.

Fast forward 4 years post invasion, and there are thousands of Americans dead in Iraq, thousands more Iraqi civilians dead, our reputation seriously marred in the rest of the world (somehow the same country that tamed the Nazi regime and the Japanese empire can’t handle one country with any sort of competency), and oh, Al Qaeda is growing like a weed. Yet, especially in the liberal pro-war camp, for many of them they still remain on the side of angels. Sorry for them, but the game doesn’t work the way it used to. You don’t get to go an entire season batting .000 then get called up to play in the World Series. They were wrong, many of them have not conceded any mistakes on that decision, yet seek to continue to lecture the rest of us like we don’t know dick.

That is like taking lessons on ethics from Tom DeLay.

(By the way, Cohen sounds just as weasly as Bush here when he claims that the UN Security Council’s findings against Saddam made a “defensible” case for war. Except that when President Bush floated the idea of getting military action through the UN he realized it would fail. Because of the administration’s inability to use diplomacy like every other administration has in the past, the vote “whip count” was a failure. The UN would not go to war, that’s why we went in alone and that’s why the whole thing got screwed up so badly. And bitching about name calling? Really? Really?)