Want to read a misleading poem about being misled? Click and thee shall find. This is what I heard about Iraq: 25 million oppressed people have been freed, and the torture chambers, rape rooms, and mass graves used by their former oppressor are out of business.
Want to read a misleading poem about being misled? Click and thee shall find.
This is what I heard about Iraq: 25 million oppressed people have been freed, and the torture chambers, rape rooms, and mass graves used by their former oppressor are out of business.
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Okay, remove all of Weinberger’s words from the piece.
What is misleading are the words he quotes.
I’m listening.
If you have time, please take one of the quotes he offers & give us the “proper” context that changes the meaning.
By the way, it’s decent & even-handed of you to post Eliot’s piece.
Putting all those quotes in context would be an incredibly tedious job, and I’d rather just dip my finger in blue ink and share the happiness of the Iraqi people without worrying too much about who gets credit for liberating them, how it was done, and what we learned along the way.
Tony Blair said that Saddam had to be removed from power because Sept. 11th caused the free world to re-evaluate some risks that we used to think were acceptable. There’s a lot of that reassessment going on in Weinie’s poem, but it’s not done in a fair manner, let alone a sensitive one.
I figured you would rather do that.
By the way, name calling is neither fair nor sensitive.
I would also be interested in just a single example, Richard, of a quote that was out of context or misleading. If it is so egregious, it shouldn’t be that hard to find one!
Much of the reassessment going on is not because we finally woke up to the dangers of the world; rather it is because the adminsitration’s use of 911 as a pretext has not be as successful as it would have hoped. It needs to keep “reassessing” and repacking its pretexts to keep an impatient public off balance.
Kim, I thought you were too generous to Richard in giving him credit for posting the piece. Sure, many commentators of his persuasion would have avoiding giving it more exposure, but Richard’s point wasn’t to say “hey look at this alternative view and decide for yourself what you think” (which would have been even-handed); it was “look at this crap and agree with me”.
OK, take the first quote: “In 1992, a year after the first Gulf War, I heard Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, say that the US had been wise not to invade Baghdad and get ?bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq?. I heard him say: ?The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is: not that damned many.?”
At the time, it was believed that the Iraqi people were going to topple Saddam without our help. So the meaning of this quote is really: “Given that the Iraqi people are going to topple Saddam anyway, how many American lives is it worth to topple him a few months sooner? Not very damn many.”
Of course. But we learned that the Iraqi people weren’t capable of toppling Saddam without some outside help, any more than the Colonists were capable of defeating the British without the help of the French. And we copped out on supporting the Shia uprising, so there we were, stuck with this dangerous dictator in place who didn’t comply with the terms of surrender from the first Gulf War, a festering problem.
I also object to Weinie’s tone, all that passive voice like he’s some sort of a child.
Richard: your interpretation of the “real meaning” of the quote is based on recent events. That’s not what he meant in 1992.
Rob: Yes, I know Richard was saying “Look at this crap & agree with me.”
Maybe I was too generous, but I’ve known Richard a long time. Though his Right Wing staus quo leanings bewilder me, the man I knew from 1973 to 1991 is a person of character, generosity, & heart.
No, that was the context and belief at the time the words were actually uttered. It’s only by re-interpretation in light of current events that they look weird.
Speaking of right-wing transformations and stuff, if JFK were alive today, what party would he be closest to? Remember he enacted a huge tax cut, started a war in SE Asia, and damn near started a war with Cuba.
It seems to me that the Dems have turned on the historic roots of liberalism by turning all selfish and isolationist, and the Reps are more like the old FDR liberals of old.
Not so sure about that Repubs/FDR angle.
Hey, I thought JFK prevented a war with Cuba.
I got this quote in the mail:
“You can count on my support for your efforts to revitalize the nuclear weapons infrastructure.”
-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, voicing his support in a recent memo for the strangely Freudian sounding “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator” or bunker-buster bomb, which House Republicans had cut from the 2005 Omnibus Appropriations Bill.
FDR dragged the country into a war in Europe despite the fact that Hitler had no WMDs and was no threat to this nation — he could have been contained in France and Poland after all. In so doing, FDR used some deceptive tactics and spin. We forgive him now on account of the good results, but many Americans wanted us to stay out of that war so they could do business with Hitler – Papa Joe Kennedy was one.
While I do think that Richard attempts to define the context as it was at that time, I think he has still engaged in historical revisionism, coloured by current administration thinking. The context of the quote was not that the Iraqis were expected to do the work and failed, rather it was the work was not worth doing because Saddam did not pose a threat to the US. Invading will only get us the headache of having to govern and it wasn’t worth it for the cost to US lives, and more importantly the political cost to the administration. If Saddam was not a threat in the early 890s, then he was clearly much less a threat in the early 2000s, after almost a decade of sanctions and weapons inspections.
So this quote, in context, suggests that one of two things happened between the 90s and the 00s: 1) the US realised that Saddam was a greater threat later than he was earlier and something now had to be done; or 2) the US realised that Saddam was now weaker and could be taken over more easily to provide control of the oil in the region, using the pretext of 911 for political cover for the US soldiers that would need to die. Since the first possibility is demonstrably untenable (how could a dictator deemed to be not a danger in one year possibly be considered a threat to world security after a decade of being starved into destitution?), then the second explanation is all that remains.
The Weinberger piece is honest and contextually accurate by demonstrating to us that the weakness of Saddam after 2000 changed the cost/benefit calculations of the administration such that it would now be possible (and “worth it”) to take Baghdad, not because Saddam was powerful and it was necessary to protect the world, but precisely because he was no longer powerful enough to extract a high political cost for the Bush administration for doing so.
And frankly, Richard, your comparison of Saddam (a tin pot dictator of a ruined isolated country) to Hitler (a dictator in charge of a an industrial machine with fascist allies around the world) is disingenuous. While both men may have been deranged megalomaniacs, it is simply fantasy to compare their respective capacities for destruction and threats to the world.
And yes, Kim, I sometime do glimpse shades of humanity and reasonableness through Richard’s thin outer veneer of mean-spirited right wing lunancy. It is the only reason I continue to monitor – and comment on – his rantings.
Rob, you’re re-writing history in a vain effort to force the facts into your narrow ideology. It’s been reported many, many times that the Bush I administration expected Saddam to fall immediately after the Gulf War, so you’re doing exactly what Weinberger does – taking statements out of context to support a simplistic and fundamentally false view of the causes and effects of the liberation of Iraq.
Richard, one of the main problems with your accusation that Rob (& Weinberger) is rewriting history (the exact thing he accuses you of doing) is that the “liberation” of Iraq was not at first presented to the US people as a “war of liberation” but as a direct response to the immanent “threat” Sadam posed. The shift to war of liberation can be easily seen by a study of news archives. This shift is not be glossed over, because at its heart lie many of the questions Weinberger, Rob, & I are concerned with. There’s no forcing here, nor narrowness.
The war in Iraq was not justified on the basis of an imminent threat, and to say so is to engage in the ultimate act of re-writing history. In the SOTU in 2003, the president said Iraq was a “grave and gathering threat”, clearly not the same thing at all.
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.
-Andre Gide
I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.
-George W. Bush
The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.
-Thomas Carlyle
To the loved ones of the victims of 9/11, to them who are here in the room, to those of you watching on televison: Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter, because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness.
-Ricahrd A. Clarke
I will never apologize for the United States of America. I don’t care what the facts are.
-George W. Bush
Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them.
-Duc Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It seems to me that the only people who owe us an apology for 9/11 are the perpetrators, or are you suggesting President Bush should apologize for allowing the Iraqis to elect their own government?
What do you mean by that?
And what do you mean by Stalinist blogs?
Sometimes you’re inscrutable, my friend.
The blogs that attacked the Iraqi election as illegitimate often take the Stalinist line, excuse genocide by Communist governments, etc.
I haven’t read any blogs that “attacked the Iraqi election as illegitimate”. I’m sure
they’re out there. Just about everything is.
Genocide under any guise is unacceptable to me. No ideology or rationale makes for an acceptable “excuse”.
I don’t care for mass murder either, no matter what the rationale—be it revenge, saving lives, stopping evil, spreading religion, freeing slaves, opening borders…
The genocide suggested by Coulter (“it would be fun to nuke Korea”) is as inexcusable of the genocide perpetrated by Pol Pot.
Juan Cole attacked the legitimacy of the Iraq elections, and the major left-wing, anti-war blogs praised him for his moral bankruptcy.
And yeah, if Coulter was in a position to make it happen it would be as bad as Pol Pot, but she’s not so it’s just so much BS. I don’t see much point in being all that sensitive about the language people use, it’s the actions that count.
Yep, I agree about actions.
Only aside I have on that point is:
words reflect ideas, ideas direct actions.
Nuff said.
Your posts about people/ideas in the world of science pretty interesting. Keep ’em up.