Check out Paul Krugman’s column today, brought to you by Greenpagan. It is brilliant. It begins:
Shortly after U.S. forces marched into Baghdad in 2003, The Weekly Standard published a jeering article titled, “The Cassandra Chronicles: The stupidity of the antiwar doomsayers.†Among those the article mocked was a “war novelist†named James Webb, who is now the senator-elect from Virginia.
The article’s title was more revealing than its authors knew. People forget the nature of Cassandra’s curse: although nobody would believe her, all her prophecies came true. And so it was with those who warned against invading Iraq.
Just for fun I looked up the “Cassandra Chronicles,” which was published 4/21/2003. IT begins(emphasis added),
AREN’T YOU PROUD of us? For most of this past week, as an overwhelmingly successful, lightning-quick Anglo-American military assault liberated Iraq’s capital city, and ordinary Baghdadis poured into the streets to kiss our GIs and stomp on pictures of Saddam Hussein, THE SCRAPBOOK has remained the soul of magnanimity and restraint.
Here in our office there’s this giant archive of newsclips, transcripts, and Internet postings we collected in the months preceding the war, wherein a world community of jackasses confidently predicted that the events lately unfolding on our television screens could not and would not ever take place. And you can imagine the temptation, we’re sure: A lesser SCRAPBOOK would throw open the file boxes and run through the streets with treasures like these, laughing hysterically.
I’m sure there were a few who predicted that U.S. troops could not roll into Baghdad in April 2003. But a “world community”? I doubt it. The truth was (we now know) that, even as the Weekly Standard giggled about the triumph in Baghdad, seasoned military professionals were already worried. I’m reading Thomas Ricks’s Fiasco now, and he quotes a Col. Johnny Brooks (ret.) saying, on the very day that Baghdad fell, “The hard part is yet to come. We can easily win the fight and lose the peace” (p. 134). On that and the next page, Ricks quotes a number of military and intelligence experts who warned after the fall of Baghdad that the war was far from over. It wouldn’t be long before the “victors” who wanted to stay safe were confined to Saddam’s old palace complex in Baghdad — the Green Zone.
The truth is that the real jackassess — the staff of the Weekly Standard — had no idea what we were saying before the war, because they weren’t listening to us.
I remember about that time some cyberstalker sent me photos of the famous toppling of the Saddam statue with a message along the lines of what do you say to THAT, leftie scum? I don’t remember if I answered or not, but I doubt that I did. The fact is that the Saddam statue episode was utterly irrelevant to my objections to the war. And I doubted the cyberstalker had enough brain cells to have understood that.
I do kinda wish I had kept his email address. I could have sent him a photo of the Baker Commission.
Back to Paul Krugman:
At best, they were ignored. A recent article in The Washington Post ruefully conceded that the paper’s account of the debate in the House of Representatives over the resolution authorizing the Iraq war — a resolution opposed by a majority of the Democrats — gave no coverage at all to those antiwar arguments that now seem prescient.
At worst, those who were skeptical about the case for war had their patriotism and/or their sanity questioned. The New Republic now says that it “deeply regrets its early support for this war.†Does it also deeply regret accusing those who opposed rushing into war of “abject pacifism?â€
Now, only a few neocon dead-enders still believe that this war was anything but a vast exercise in folly. And those who braved political pressure and ridicule to oppose what Al Gore has rightly called “the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States†deserve some credit.
Unlike The Weekly Standard, which singled out those it thought had been proved wrong, I’d like to offer some praise to those who got it right. Here’s a partial honor roll:
You can read the honor roll at Greenpagan.
I am on a jury now, and spent most of the day listening to testimony. Now — must … have … nap …
One of the primary reasons why Bush refuses to talk to Iran is because it’s scheduled for “regime change” during his administration. The neocons have been pushing it for years so, since their judgement has been so stellar in the past, Bush will buy it..
Bush will probably readily nod approval as his handlers convince him that it will, if nothing else, divert everybody’s attention from Iraq, Of course the timing has to be such that by the time the Iran “project” is headed for the tank, Bush will be out of office and, yet again, not responsible.
The conundrum which should be at the forefront of all discussions is why can’t we get rid of this menace.
I’m not familiar with The Weekly Standard, and I can see here what a boon that is to my life. What’s with this “SCRAPBOOK” shit? Scraps are the diet of curs.
A great quote from an editorial in Le Monde about the Iraq Study Report:
“The sole question is no longer “winning the war.” Mr. Bush, who is likely to be remembered by history as the American president who, in response to a triggering event, September 11, changed the world for the worse, would be well-advised to take some inspiration from these recommendations as soon as possible.”
The rest can be found at the following website:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120806G.shtml
The editorial is below the first excellent commentary by Laurent Joffrin.
There are times when saying, “I told you so” is not appropriate. However, I think we need to be shouting “I told you so” from the rooftops, mountains, whatever.
I just wish a member of the press would ask the President, “Why does he think more Americans should die for his cause (whatever the hell that may be)?”
Ain’t that what Cindy Sheehan was getting at?
As a Class of 2003 cheerleader (for war) who spent lots of mental effort “debunking” the anti-war arguments only to later realise that I was the one who was mistaken, I have spent some time thinking on this exact issue. Please forgive any rambling.
I’m sure there were a few who predicted that U.S. troops could not roll into Baghdad in April 2003. But a “world communityâ€?
Actually Maha, there were probably more than you think. I remember reading quite a few predictions that an invasion would simply make Iraqis rally around Saddam. Some people patting themselves on the back now were actually quite wrong about nearly everything except “America won’t succeed”.
However, I should also admit that I can;t remember how many were written by Americans vs. Europeans. The European left tends to be more, um, “anti-American” than the American left (duh) and, frankly, much more in love with variouis “theories” that they believe allow them to predict the future without actually knowing important details. I wouldnt be suprised if most of the unrealistic predictions came from Europeans.
“Does it also deeply regret accusing those who opposed rushing into war of ‘abject pacifism?'”
I cant speak for TNR but the run-up to war was not my finest (or smartest) hour. I agree with a blogger (I forget who) who said “We so much time debunking the stupid anti-war arguments that we completely missed the intelligent anti-war arguments.
Amen to that! For some reason, I spent more time thinking about the agenda of ANSWER than I did thinking about the actual war itself and what was actually likely to happen. I dont know why. ANSWER is nothing – why I spent my time worrying about their agenda, instead of the agenda of people with the hands on the levers of power … I still cant say.
I suppose I could be a wuss and blame ANSWER and their ilk – claim that their left-authoritarian radicalism “drove” me to the other camp and blinded me to the authoritarian radicalism of this Admin – but I just can’t bring myself to do it. They are what they are, but I control my mind and body and no one made me do anything but me. Besides, they did not reflect the majority of anti-war opinion, and so blaming them would still be avoiding the main lesson: dont take a position merely to oppose people you dont like – judge it on the merits.
So what you’re really saying in your self-described “rambling,” rd, is that you are trying really hard not to blame the filthy hippies for your own moral failing (i.e. supporting an illegal, imperialist war). God knows it must have been tough for you, what with all the “left-authoritarian” radicals who were controlling our Republican-led government and our corporate media.
Well, maybe this will help you clarify your hindsight: I TOLD YOU SO.
Keep in mind that Bush lied aggressively to the American people..so the case for or against war ( invading Iraq) wasn’t all that clear cut. Remember Colin Powell’s speech before the U.N.? The majority of our nation had the wool pulled over their eyes by Bush and his minions.Shouldn’t the question be..at what point did we realize we had been played instead of whether we are for war or against it.
I won’t ramble, but I compliment r4 for honestly appraising the process that led to the mistaken conclusion – the war was a good idea. I hated Saddam; there is credible proof he was a tyrant; I was not convinced he was a threat but when facts are mixed with propaganda, it’s not always easy to distinguish the two. You get first prize if you saw the risk from the outset, but second prize should be awarded to those of us who saw the ‘liberation’ turn into something evil and changed our position. Third for those who still don’t see it and last prize for those dishonest souls who changed their mind and won’t admit they were fooled.
Actually Maha, there were probably more than you think. I remember reading quite a few predictions that an invasion would simply make Iraqis rally around Saddam. Some people patting themselves on the back now were actually quite wrong about nearly everything except “America won’t succeedâ€.
The problem with quantifying “a few,” “quite a few,” or “a world community” is that the Noise Machine (i.e., American news media) is really good at giving false impressions. What was happening behind the scenes is that conservative think tanks and media outlets were scouring the universe for the most extreme and (possibly) ridiculous anti-war opinion they could find, and feeding it to journalists, so that it would be publicly debunked. And they’d repeat the same few criticisms over and over to give the false impression that such criticism was more common than it actually was; “a few” was made to seem like “a lot.” More reasoned and responsible arguments — far more plentiful — were ignored. If you were getting most of your news from television and radio at the time, you might not have heard it at all. Only those of us digesting big volumes of print media from around the world were seeing the full spectrum of criticism.
Amen to that! For some reason, I spent more time thinking about the agenda of ANSWER than I did thinking about the actual war itself and what was actually likely to happen. I dont know why. ANSWER is nothing – why I spent my time worrying about their agenda, instead of the agenda of people with the hands on the levers of power … I still cant say.
That’s because that was the story the Noise Machine wanted you to hear. I remember it well. It was damn frustrating, because (in New York City, anyway) ANSWER was only one of many factions and organizations that showed up at demonstrations, but to listen to the righties you’d think ANSWER was the entire antiwar movement.
ANSWER is, in fact, an offshoot of an extremist Marxist organization called the Workers World Party. Their modus operandi for some time has been to insinuate themselves into causes popular to liberal-leaning Americans in order to seem a respectable liberal organization. For example, they’ve been known to show up at Free Tibet rallies and pretend to care about Tibet, when in their own literature they actually side with China against Tibet. When the Iraq War came along they hustled to get out in front of the antiwar movement, and they showed up in force with big ANSWER signs and banners at antiwar rallies and demonstrations. They organized and sponsored (or co-sponsored) demonstrations as well. Co-sponsor status allowed them to dictate terms of how demonstrations were to be conducted, but by last year (finally!) other antiwar organizations like United for Peace and Justice got so fed up with them that all ties were severed.
Anyway, of the demonstrations and marches I attended personally (in New York City and Washington) ANSWER was only one minority contingent, albeit a loud and visible contingent. Most people who participated were not members of ANSWER and were not there to support ANSWER’s agenda. ANSWER’s importance to the antiwar movement was blown way out of proportion in news media. If you are old enough to remember the Vietnam era, you should have recognized Richard Nixon’s game plan.
While you were being led to believe ANSWER was behind most opposition to the war, in leftie alternative news media, leftie journalists and commentators like David Corn, Todd Gitlin, and Michelle Goldberg, among many others, were issuing dire warnings about ANSWER and what a mistake it would be to allow ANSWER to be the face of the antiwar movement.
In fact, I believe ANSWER is one of the reasons public demonstrating against the war has been subdued — a great many people against the war stayed away from demonstrations because of ANSWER. Even a lot of prominent leftie bloggers essentially said that the cause would be better served by not demonstrating, as long as ANSWER was associated with the demonstrations.
Yet the rightie news media used ANSWER to smear and discredit the entire antiwar movement. And you fell for it.
“When facts are mixed with propaganda” INDEED.
I remember the “Terrorism experts” on the various talk news shows. How did I know thay were terrorism experts? Why, it was written directly under their image, and the “authorities” would NEVER lie. We are bombarded with B.S. daily as evidenced when my daughter, then three and securley strapped into her child seat blurted out “Double A, MCO”, sure enough, we just passed the transmission shop.
Remember the copycat anthrax (Faux) mailings or the dipshit that hijacked the greyhound bus and slit the throat of the driver all shortly after 9/11?
I refused to let my kid go to Disney World in the months after 9/11, and not just because I was worried about a terrorist attack, I was more concerned about a wacked out American pulling some kind of crap.I believe that about 50% of our population forms their ideas and opinions not based on facts or science, but on magical thinking and belief popular at the time ( Nostradamus “predictions”, The Book Of Revelations, daily horoscope, what their “pastor” tells them,National Enquire,David Brooks, Cal Thomas, Rush, what they see on FOX)
As the lead up to the war demonstrates, critical thinking is not respected but held in contempt.
I “predicted” this war was a bad idea, not based on mojo, but critical thinking. I now predict that if we don’t change course right now, the self inflicted horrors that await us are beyond comprehension.
I remember watching TV and 2 Senators/Congressmen? were being interviewed. The plot was that they were two staunch defenders of reason who needed proof that Iraq should be invaded. They just finished a super secret briefing that made them both believers for the need to invade. They were stuttering with fear and pale like ghosts in an effort to convey to the American public the absolute need for an invasion. I remember thinking, what could they have seen or hear in that briefing that could eliminate so thoroughly any reservation to attack Saddam. I fell for the ploy that Saddam was an imminent threat. Trust made me stupid.
“Trust made me stupid”…
Amen to that…I had that problem with a woman for more than 40 years…
Maybe Reagan had it right, afetr all: “Trust, but Verify”…
” I remember reading quite a few predictions that an invasion would simply make Iraqis rally around Saddam.”
And in fact, in a few cases they did – or more specifically, they rallied against the people doing the invading. See for example Tim Pritchard’s editorial in this last week’s NY Times about When Iraq Went Wrong and the Battle of Nasiriya:
“ . . . What’s more, as the marines were drawn into a raging battle in the city center, more and more people came out of ordinary homes to take up arms. One group of young American troops, who became separated from the rest of their unit and were forced to commandeer a house in the middle of the city, found themselves under attack for several hours from what appeared to be armed civilians. They had been expecting to fight Iraqi soldiers. Instead they found themselves shooting at old men, women, even children.
Of course, there were fanatical Sunni Saddam Fedayeen troops, as well as some desperate foreign jihadis, who fought that day. But untold hundreds of those who picked up weapons were simply civilians intent on defending homes against foreign invaders. . . .
[Bit about Marine tanks becoming mired in a marsh due to limited knowledge of the terrrain, as a result of poor intelligence and planning]
. . . At one stage, in a “friendly fire†incident, Air Force planes fired at marines on the ground, killing up to 10. Radio communications repeatedly failed. Units lost contact with each other. Faced with an increasingly determined enemy, Marine commanders thought they might just lose the battle.”
If Saddam had been just a little more popular, more competent, and less encased in a late-stage-dictatorship bubble – to say nothing of actually being in possession of any sort of (chemical or biological) WMD arsenal – well, we still would have won, but . . . .
I wish I had written more about this at the time, to see what I was thinking without the distortions of hindsight bias. I definitely was concerned about the scenario I just described – not so much that I thought it was certain or very likely, but that we didn’t seem to actually know it wasn’t, and seemed unprepared for that possibility. I know I expected us to end up in a long, drawn-out occupation, faced with a stubborn and destructive fish-in-the-ocean insurgency which would eventually and inevitably result in American atrocities (or even just defensible mistakes) which would further fuel the insurgency and spread general chaos, on top of post-dictatorship ethnic violence and corruption (although I way underestimated just how bad that part would be).
I wish the Weekly Standard crowd could still be jeering at us. But I don’t think I wish it anywhere near as hard as those – American and Iraqi – who’ve had to bury their loved ones as a result.
Anyway, exactly how various predictions rate on the Cassandra scale isn’t the point. One didn’t even have to know all that much about Iraq, besides ambient background info – though it helped. The things that were like a giant big red flashing WARNING! sign for me were entirely domestic – the absurdly confidant predictions, the out-of-control jingoism, the dismissal and hate-filled mockery of even the mildest dissent or disagreement, whether coming from Joe Schmoe or General Shinseki, Dixie Chicks CDs being steamrollered, the fantastical rhetoric (Iraq-terrorists-9/11-Saddam-[repeat until war]), the obvious presence of classic groupthink, the known – even then – cases of deeply uncertain intelligence being presented as certainty, and almost certain falsehoods being presented as fact . . .
It was pretty clear that if anything at all went wrong in the flowers-thrown, popular US-friendly gov’t installed, entire Middle East democratized plan, we were entirely unprepared to handle it.
And yes, it did help to be reading the Nation – available at the chain bookstore where I was working at the time, right on the magazine rack – and Common Dreams and Alternet and of course blogs – available to anyone with access to an internet connection – sure. But lots of people managed without these. A sense of history, that might have been more important.
I remember reading a letter in the Philly Inquirer by some guy saying, well, I don’t know, but we have to trust our leaders, they know things we don’t and they wouldn’t lie to us . . . and knowing, with a kind of perfect and fearful clarity, that we were totally, utterly, fucked.
r4d20 and Swami, thank you for your honesty in helping us understand how this thing worked. These are important lessons for the next time.
“why I spent my time worrying about their agenda, instead of the agenda of people with the hands on the levers of power … I still cant say.”
The Noise Machine aspect surely has a lot to do with it, but I think there’s more, involving fear and rationalizing and . . . don’t know he word – some sort of social cognition thing that you sorta touch on with “don’t take a position merely to oppose people you don’t like.”
It continues to amaze me, though, just how many people never heard/ managed not to hear any real arguments against at least rushing to war. What could we have done?
Oh, and the bit in italics starting [If Saddam . . .] isn’t part of Pritchard’s editorial, just bad html on my part . . .
What totally convinced me in early 2003 that we were being sold a bill of goods about Iraq were two happenings of significance which were ignored, spun desperately [I thought], and then out-shouted by the war-mongerers. Both happenings were incidents of Saddam complying with U.N. demands.
In late November or early December of 2002, Saddam actually delivered an 11,000 page listing about the Iraqi ‘WMD’ program. That report was grabbed by the Bush team, and ‘edited’ before being handed over to the U.N. Security Council. That ‘editing’ seemed awfully suspicious to me.
The second and more relevant happening was that Saddam did comply and allowed WMD inspectors into Iraq. The work was proceeding on the exact inspection compliance requirements which had been trumpeted as so important at the U.N. – and most to the point, no WMD were being found!!! Even the dumbest vegetable bulb could surmise that a neo-con hidden war agenda was in serious jeopardy if these inspections, which was already proving our ‘intelligence’ wrong, were to be allowed to continue.
What was happening behind the scenes is that conservative think tanks and media outlets were scouring the universe for the most extreme and (possibly) ridiculous anti-war opinion they could find, and feeding it to journalists, so that it would be publicly debunked. –maha
You’re right…and, like you said, I fell for it. Honestly, I knew that ANSWER was NOT the majority of the movement, but I fell for the idea that the non-ANSWER folks were being “useful idiots” who fell for their propaganda. It turns out I was the useful idiot.
The Noise Machine aspect surely has a lot to do with it, but I think there’s more, involving fear and rationalizing and . . . don’t know [t]he word – some sort of social cognition thing that you sorta touch on with “don’t take a position merely to oppose people you don’t like. – Dan S.â€
I think “rationalization” was a big part of it. I rationalized away the lack of evidence for WMDS based on the potentially valid principle that “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence – especially when it comes to things you can expect to be hidden if they do exist”.
The principle is valid but, in retrospect, many of us gave Saddam and his regime WAY too much credit in this regards. Hiding an entire WMD program is very difficult and we were too quick to believe that he was almost superhuman in his ability to pull the wool over the eyes of the inspectors.
“…an overwhelmingly successful, lightning-quick Anglo-American military assault liberated Iraq’s capital city” . . .Why was it necessary to call it an “Anglo-American” military?
Pingback: The Heretik : Cassandra Update
The only people who could have been swayed were Americans, because of their blind trust of their own government. People in the rest of world have a bird’s eye view of the US Govt.’s record in countries around the world; most are fully aware that the US pursues its own objectives ruthlessly and despite all its pious preaching about democracy and freedom, ignores such wonderful things whenever they don’t help attain the objectives of those who control foreign policy – large US corporations. I am by no means a leftist or marxist. Indeed, I am capitalist and believe in truly free markets. I loathe communism and communists. But none of this blinds me to the fact the US foreign policy is ruthlessly oriented towards attaining the objectives of US corporations. It has absolutely nothing to do with freedom, justice and democracy. F, J and D are used as a cover whenever convenient. Outside of Maoist China and Stalinist Russia — the most monstrously bloodthirsty regimes of all time — the US government (mostly unknown to Americans) has been responsible — directly or indirectly, by acts of commission or deliberate omission — for the greatest number of human deaths in the world.