World News Trust: When "Oops" ISN'T Enough (Mary Lyon)

[Tace]

Mary Lyon, From The Left -- World News Trust

Erich Segal, the author of "Love Story," once put the phrase "Love means never having to say you're sorry" into the official collection of favorite American catch-phrases. Up until very recently, we've had to suffer under a latter-day perversion of that: "The 'War on Terror' means never having to say you're sorry." Now, however, comes a series in Slate -- http://www.slate.com/id/2186757/ -- called "Why Did We Get It Wrong," five years after the start of the Iraq War/ Invasion/ Occupation. Slate invited what it called "the best known 'liberal hawks' and others" to weigh in on that question, five years after they were roaring and stamping their feet to go get Saddam. The compendium makes for some ironic and even sadly amusing reading.

One by one, they come with their mea culpas and their tails between their legs, explaining themselves, voicing contrition. Thus they attempt what nobody in the White House or the American Enterprise Institute or among the armchair warriors in the GOP (or in some corners of the Democratic Party) has yet been grown-up enough to do: admitting they were wrong. And I'm left wondering how to react. I probably should try to be forgiving. I probably ought to "take the high road" (which, in politics these days, seems to me to be the road that takes you straight over a cliff). I probably should open my arms to these prodigal sons and accept them back into the family with great love and generosity, putting all that nasty stuff and misguided behavior from the past behind me.

But a large part of me doesn't want to. Yes, I know, it's hard to fess up, especially in public, particularly when you put yourself out there loudly and vigorously, trusting your president and his many mouthpieces and advocates. We heard all the excuses -- about how the administration and its neocon friends obviously saw or knew or had heard more than we mere civilians did. We were told to trust, to give them the benefit of the doubt, never to second-guess Our President who knew better and was pushing this for all the right reasons. After all, we were repeatedly and falsely assured, he himself was dragged kicking and screaming into war -- a war of last resort. We should celebrate all these sorrowful schnooks and make it easy on them now that they've stopped drinking the Kool-aid. Allow them to go gently into that good, conscience-assuaged night, free as birds.

I'm sorry, too, because I'd like for some of these gentlepeople to know -- it's not enough just to say you made a mistake, and to assume by doing so that you still get to pass "Go" and you still get to collect your 200 dollars -- AND a free "Get Out of Jail" card. That's the easy way that allows you good folks to go skipping off to another carefree day of shopping and other assorted superficialities -- the remedy George W. Bush once prescribed to a nation desperate to recover from the shock and awe of September 11th.

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http://www.worldnewstrust.com/commentary/when-oops-isn-t-enough-mary-lyon.html

[Richard Steele]

1. K&R

[Tace]

2. Thnx

: )

[calimary]

4. Cheers, dicksteele!

Glad you liked it.

I wanted to start making notes and naming names.

[Richard Steele]

6. After these last 7 years...

..."taking notes and naming names" could take a lifetime. :(

[calimary]

9. Well, I must tell you I wrote a column about that one day awhile back.

It was simply a list of all the things that suffered under bush/GOP. The list went on for eleven pages. ELEVEN PAGES!!! And that was nowhere near comprehensive. And that was just the first round. I did one a year later and it was even longer. I'm still keeping track. AND STILL, I KNOW I WILL HAVE MISSED SOMETHING!!!!


Unbelievable. Un-Frickin'-Believable!!! Nobody has the Reverse Midas Touch like this jerk.

[calimary]

3. Kick!

Thanks, Tace!

[calimary]

5. Hey! Whoever gave me the 5th rec, Thank You!

Hugs!

:hug:

[JeffR]

7. K & R!

This piece really nails the mealy-mouthed jerks in the Slate piece, with their pathetic pseudo-apologies and self-serving excuses for being so clueless.

[calimary]

8. They do ring hollow, don't they.

That's a whole bunch of "but... but... but... " and I DID want to nail them all (or at least three of them).

Because DAMMIT, THEY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!!!! ESPECIALLY considering how well-connected they are, SURELY they had access to sufficient information to give them a fuller picture of what was going on. SURELY they had enough political savvy as well-established veteran members of the pundit class, to know how to research and explore a candidate's background - hell, ANYBODY's background - to know what kind of loser bush was going to be, and the quotes that were out early-on from the other people AND bush too about wanting to beef up the power of the executive, and "finish what we started" in Iraq, "only doing it 'right' this time" :puke: !

I mean, I still go back to - "Well, WE knew what the score was! WE knew what was up. WE knew or strongly suspected what they were about and what they were up to and what they really meant when they said or inferred stuff." WE DID! WE knew enough not to turn our noses up at Hans Blix and Scott Ritter and the rest of the Great Ignored on Iraq. There is NO excuse whatsoever for this!!!

I have no pity for these people. They should have known. There's no excuse. I'm just glad SOME of them have seen the light, to whatever extent they have. Andrew Sullivan, for one, sounds like he's soured on the ENTIRE republi-CON apparatus. About time they woke up.

Thanks for the K&R, JeffR!

:yourock: - Nance, too!

[JeffR]

10. All of us who were paying attention, despite our lack of access

to "confidential" information, knew better. You certainly did. Even I did. Kudos to you for pointing to the absurdity of those who were in a better to position to assess the situation and didn't say, "HELL, NO." Keep fighting. Keep raising your voice as well as you do. We need it.:patriot:

[calimary]

11. Thank you!

It means a lot coming from you!

And it still boggles my mind how FEW people were paying attention, especially those with the greatest resources and access. They just did not give even half-a-fuck. They just didn't care!

I posted on a thread in LBN about that "mistake" involving the warhead fuse sent to Taiwan - how there's been barely even a peep of outrage out of anybody about that. DAMN!!! Don't they care? Is bush THAT MUCH of an untouchable??????

Unbelievable.

[DCKit]

12. They are unforgivable.

Many of us with far less access and information knew we were being lied to and the people who were supposed to be educated and cynical on these matters were, instead, the main cheerleaders of "Teh War on People with Oil who don't deserve it 'cause we want it".

"I was wrong", "I was misinformed" and "I was lied to (like everyone else)" doesn't cut it when such dire decisions are made and the resulting known and wholly predictable consequences are - or should have been - unacceptable to any civilized society.

[Orsino]

13. You reading this, Sully?

Your conversion is so far unconvincing.