There’s No Fun With Analogies When Slaughter Is The Subject

Matthew Yglesias channels Tom Friedman and compares the invasion of Iraq to a football play in the Super Bowl. Okay, Matt is very, very young and trying to find his voice so let’s not dwell on this unspeakable lapse of taste. As readers of my blog know, I have zero patience with anyone who euphemizes or romanticizes war, even those like Chris Hedges, who have the best of intentions and have experienced war firsthand.

But never mind, Matt will grow up and he’ll get it eventually, I’m sure. What is simply inexcusable is that he still holds to the “well, we’ll never know unless we try” argument of the liberal hawks:

That it now looks very unlikely to, in fact, succeed speaks less to the fact that mistakes were made in the course of the venture than that the venture itself was inherently risky. If, by some miracle, thing manage to work out okay in the end, that’ll be fantastic. But it will have to be by some miracle and certainly won’t “prove” that the decision to go in in the first place was a good idea. That some big gambles pay off doesn’t justify placing bets when the odds don’t make sense. [emphasis added]

Um, Matthew? It doesn’t look any more unlikely now that Bush’s invasion of Iraq would succeed than it did before or during the invasion. Many of us absolutely knew from the moment the “new product” was rumored in early ’02 that the idea of invading Iraq was screaming yellow bonkers and couldn’t possibly succeed. Not that it was risky, Matthew. But that it was absolutely impossible regardless of how many troops were deployed, or whether an occupation plan was in place. Or whether George W. Bush was Commander-In-Chief or George Washington.

Now here’s the thing that galls me, Matt. All the guys who were totally mistaken – not you, hell you’re you’re just a blogger, but people with genuine influence in the discourse, even naive Hamlets like Packer who thinks foreign policy is a splendid opportunity for personal growth – still have influential gigs. However, with one or two exceptions (see Hersh, Seymour; Krugman, Paul), there is not a single opponent of this misbegotten war, who knew it was a stupid mistake from the get-go, who said so then, and who now has access to a major media outlet remotely as often as all you naive rubes.

Where is Jessica Tuchman Matthews? Where is Brady Kiesling? Oh, I’m sure someone can dig up plenty of appearances on, say, the public access channel on the Reed College campus, but y’know where they should be, my friend? They should be regular commentators on foreign policy on the major news outlets because they have demonstrated exceptional perspicacity in foreign affairs. Anyone seen either of them two weeks in a row on a major tv channel? Have any pre-war opponents of the Bush/Iraq war been hired recently as pundits in the Post or the Times, or for the Sunday morning funnies? Y’know, they could use the work. And they do know what they’re talking about. Unlike Friedman, Berman, Pollock, Mead, and so many of the rest.

So Matthew, grow up, ok? You made a bad error of judgment but you were just a kid in ’02/’03. But you’re rapidly approaching the age when you need to take responsibility for your opinions. And it is outrageous that you, or anyone else who supported this war still clings, no matter how surreptiously in subordinate clauses and passive constructions, to the utterly dildo hallucination that there was any chance in hell something as insane as the invasion of Iraq could succeed.

(Slightly edited after the original posting because passion overwhelmed my grammar.)