Deep Throat
by digby
Something has gone terribly wrong at the Washington Post. And I’m not just talking about pauvre tinkerbell.
To read George Packer’s “The Assassin’s Gate” is to be reminded that the Iraq war is not the product of oil avarice, or CIA evil, but of a surfeit of altruism, a naive compulsion to do good. That entire collection of neo- and retro-conservatives — George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and particularly Paul Wolfowitz — made war not for oil or for empire but to end the horror of Saddam Hussein and, yes, reorder the Middle East.
They were inept. They were duplicitous. They were awesomely incompetent, and, in the case of Bush, they were monumentally ignorant and incurious, but they did not give a damn for oil or empire. This is why so many liberals, myself included, originally supported the war. It engaged us emotionally. It seemed . . . well, right — a just cause.
It would be nice if Hollywood understood that. It would be nice if those who agree with Hollywood — who think, as Gaghan does, that this is a brave, speaking-truth-to-power movie when it’s really just an outdated cliche — could release their fervid grip on old-left bromides about Big Oil, Big Business, Big Government and the inherent evil of George Bush, and come up with something new and relevant. I say that because something new and relevant is desperately needed. Neoconservatism crashed and burned in Iraq, but liberalism never even showed up. The left’s criticism of the war from the very start was too often a porridge of inanities about oil or empire or Halliburton — or isolationism by another name. It was childish and ultimately ineffective. The war came and Bush was reelected. How’s that for a clean whiff?
I detect a whiff of something, that’s for sure. And it’s definitely the good shit.
I suppose you could call Bush an idealist. That whole smoking gun in a mushroom cloud thing was quite the inspiration. It’s right up there with “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
How about this for a new and relevant liberal argument: anyone who supported the war was a fool or an asshole because it was patently obvious by 2002 that this country was in the hands of an insane megalomaniacal Republican machine and the braindead sycophantic mediawhores who gratefully dined on their droppings. Anyone with half a brain knew that it wasn’t a good idea to give a blank check to crazed power mad freaks to start invading, torturing and killing at their discretion. Most of the world agreed. Not complicated. Not idealistic. Plain. Fucking. Common. Sense.
Clearly, Cohen is the model for a “good” liberal at the Washington Post these days. He doesn’t upset the White House or Patrrick Ruffini one little bit.
“Given the present bitterness, given the angry irresponsible charges being hurled by both camps, the nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush.”
What a good boy. He just loves him some Junior.
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