Wingnut Fun House Mirror

by digby

Sen. James Inhofe” U.S. involvement in Iraq has been incredibly successful and developments there have been “nothing short of a miracle,”

LIEBERMAN: The situation in Iraq is a lot better, different than it was a year ago. The Iraqis held three elections. They formed a unity government. They are on the way to building a free and independent Iraq. Their military — two-thirds of their military is now ready, on their own, to lead the fight with some logistical backing from the U.S. or stand up on their own totally. That’s progress.

Norman Podhoretz: I must confess to being puzzled by the amazing spread of the idea that the Bush Doctrine has indeed failed the test of Iraq. After all, Iraq has been liberated from one of the worst tyrants in the Middle East; three elections have been held; a decent constitution has been written; a government is in place; and previously unimaginable liberties are being enjoyed. By what bizarre calculus does all this add up to failure? And by what even stranger logic is failure to be read into the fact that the forces opposed to democratization are fighting back with all their might?

Surely what makes more sense is the opposite interpretation of the terrible violence being perpetrated by the terrorists of the so-called “insurgency”: that it is in itself a tribute to the enormous strides that have been made in democratizing the country. If this murderous collection of diehard Sunni Baathists and vengeful Shiite militias, together with their allies inside the government, agreed that democratization had already failed, would they be waging so desperate a campaign to defeat it? And if democratization in Iraq posed no threat to the other despotisms in the region, would those regimes be sending jihadists and material support to the “insurgency” there?

The new Podhoretz article (via Henry Farrell) is fascinating stuff. Farrell entitles his post “Dead Enders” and I think that pretty well covers it. But Podhoretz has nailed himself to Bush’s cross so completely, I honestly don’t see how he can ever crawl down. In his view every Bush misstep is actually prudent or canny, every criticism of him is petty and wrong. Bush has played every hand brilliantly — even more brilliantly than Ronald Reagan played his hand (which Podhoretz only sees in retrospect having criticised the Gipper at the time much as the youngsters are criticizing the Codpiece.)

Keep in mind that Norman is responding to the criticisms of his fellow neoconservatives in this piece, not the crazed hippy left. Indeed, he ruefully admits that he actually agrees with the crazed hippy left in its assessment that Bush has not given up on the Bush Doctrine — needless to say, he’s quite happy about that while the CHL is not.

In Norm’s view, the Bush Doctrine has not only been validated by the great success of the Iraq and Israeli military actions, it will stand us through the next several decades of WWIV (I wish they’d decide on a number and stick to it) and will eventually save the world:

It is my contention that the Bush Doctrine is no more dead today than the Truman Doctrine was cowardly in its own early career. Bolstered by that analogy, I feel safe in predicting that, like the Truman Doctrine in 1952, the Bush Doctrine will prove irreversible by the time its author leaves the White House in 2008. And encouraged by the precedent of Ronald Reagan, I feel almost as confident in predicting that, three or four decades into the future, and after the inevitable missteps and reversals, there will come a President who, like Reagan in relation to Truman in World War III, will bring World War IV to a victorious end by building on the noble doctrine that George W. Bush promulgated when that war first began.

How nice for him to live in a time of epistemic relativism where he can look back on his life and claim vindication despite the fact that everything he ever said was demonstrably wrong. How sad for the rest of us that his fetid philosophy has come to full flower just as he’s shuffling off his moral coil and won’t be around to share the “victorious end” when it finally comes, decades from now. I don’t think J-Pod has his father’s gift for delivering elegant, self-serving absolution for decades of misguided bloodlust.

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