Abu Ghraib --- the spa
Shorter Chris Hitchens: Abu Ghraib is better now than under Saddam.
Hitchens continues his war against various strawmen. It really no longer matters whether we were "right" to invade Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a chafing sore in the region. Iraqis of most stripes were suffering under him. Those really aren't the issues.
The issue then -- in 2002/3 -- was not whether Saddam Hussein was a bad man. The issue then -- and what has been borne out with an efficiency remarkable for the Bush administration -- was whether the crew in charge of the planning and implementation of the invasion could actually pull it off.
And what cost failure?
As usual, Digby is thinking -- and writing more eloquently -- along similar lines, as he takes to task the "liberal hawks" who now find themselves "surprised" at the mendacity and incompetence of the Bush administration. The mendacity and incompetence of that crew were on stage as early as the Republican primaries in 2000, on into the stolen election, followed by the immediate disavowal of any and all campaign promises that had been delivered with a wink and a grin as their campaign contributors nodded approvingly.
As for Hitchens, he sees the failure not as some real-world issue of blown-up Humvees, lack of electricity in Baghdad, raw sewage in the street, warlords forming militias throughout the "country." No, the failure is that the Bush administration, so deserving of admiration for boldly entering Iraq without a plan, is simply unable to voice why it's such a good thing for having done so.
Now, I enjoy a good drink now and then, but unlike Hitchens, I usually avoid making abstract policy recommendations when deep, deep in my cups. But the seriousness of this can't be ignored. Hitchens lumps all who opposed the war into a single vessel. We are all defeatists. Those of us who opposed the war, not because we felt Iraq should be ignored, or that we supported the Hussein regime, or that we felt American force can never be justified, but rather because we saw an administration hell-bent on invading a country and depending on faith-based post war plans. In Hitchens's depraved view, we were all wrong then because, dammit, Hussein had to be (in Pat Robertson's glorious words) "taken out." No matter the practical consequences of, you know, the actual invasion and occupation. By doing so he provides intellectual support to an administration that otherwise has no use for intellectual arguments. And in referring to the "sob-sister Cindy Sheehan circus" he unmasks himself as a proxy warrior for them. And a particularly shameful one at that.
LET ME BEGIN WITH A simple sentence that, even as I write it, appears less than Swiftian in the modesty of its proposal: "Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad."
I could undertake to defend that statement against any member of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and I know in advance that none of them could challenge it, let alone negate it. Before March 2003, Abu Ghraib was an abattoir, a torture chamber, and a concentration camp. Now, and not without reason, it is an international byword for Yankee imperialism and sadism. Yet the improvement is still, unarguably, the difference between night and day. How is it possible that the advocates of a post-Saddam Iraq have been placed on the defensive in this manner? And where should one begin?
Hitchens continues his war against various strawmen. It really no longer matters whether we were "right" to invade Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a chafing sore in the region. Iraqis of most stripes were suffering under him. Those really aren't the issues.
The issue then -- in 2002/3 -- was not whether Saddam Hussein was a bad man. The issue then -- and what has been borne out with an efficiency remarkable for the Bush administration -- was whether the crew in charge of the planning and implementation of the invasion could actually pull it off.
And what cost failure?
As usual, Digby is thinking -- and writing more eloquently -- along similar lines, as he takes to task the "liberal hawks" who now find themselves "surprised" at the mendacity and incompetence of the Bush administration. The mendacity and incompetence of that crew were on stage as early as the Republican primaries in 2000, on into the stolen election, followed by the immediate disavowal of any and all campaign promises that had been delivered with a wink and a grin as their campaign contributors nodded approvingly.
As for Hitchens, he sees the failure not as some real-world issue of blown-up Humvees, lack of electricity in Baghdad, raw sewage in the street, warlords forming militias throughout the "country." No, the failure is that the Bush administration, so deserving of admiration for boldly entering Iraq without a plan, is simply unable to voice why it's such a good thing for having done so.
Now, I enjoy a good drink now and then, but unlike Hitchens, I usually avoid making abstract policy recommendations when deep, deep in my cups. But the seriousness of this can't be ignored. Hitchens lumps all who opposed the war into a single vessel. We are all defeatists. Those of us who opposed the war, not because we felt Iraq should be ignored, or that we supported the Hussein regime, or that we felt American force can never be justified, but rather because we saw an administration hell-bent on invading a country and depending on faith-based post war plans. In Hitchens's depraved view, we were all wrong then because, dammit, Hussein had to be (in Pat Robertson's glorious words) "taken out." No matter the practical consequences of, you know, the actual invasion and occupation. By doing so he provides intellectual support to an administration that otherwise has no use for intellectual arguments. And in referring to the "sob-sister Cindy Sheehan circus" he unmasks himself as a proxy warrior for them. And a particularly shameful one at that.
posted by John at 10:41 AM
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