George And Dick's Excellent Adventure Bogus Journey

One of the big right-wing talking points about war critics is that we want the U.S. to lose- that we hate George W. Bush so much we hope and pray for our troops to be killed and defeated in the field of battle in order to prove him wrong. Understandable; as I noted yesterday, these sort of arguments are all they have left. It is, of course, an insulting charge. It's also the charge that is scaring Democrats away from actually giving any honest speeches on the war (and those who do speak pull their punches and say soft words like 'misled' instead of 'lies').

It's easier for Bush's supporters to blame the left and direct their anger there than it is to accept reality. It's all our fault; it's all the media's fault (as if the media wasn't an equal cheerleader in launching this war). These attacks worked for a long time, but times have changed.

The real truth is this- War critics never wanted to start this pointless war. War critics were not the ones who threw around pre-war accusations they had been told were dubious at best. War critics were not the ones who thumbed our noses at the rest of the world. War critics were not the ones who pressed forth with a failed policy, allowing the country they invaded to descend into civil war on our watch while we were too busy defending torture/murder and smearing those who wanted to see our troops brought home safely and soon. We didn't send our troops into battle with angry civilians without body armor or a plan. If the Republicans and Democrats had listened to war critics in 2002/early 2003 (about the dangers and cost of the war, the obviously fishy intelligence, etc), they could've stopped the war from ever starting and we wouldn't have to have this debate today.

We don't want the war to fail. We didn't the war to begin. And we want it to end now.

On this note, I wanted to reprint an email that Andrew Sullivan received on his blog. I was reading it this morning over there and thought it really explained why so many have a legitimate ambivalence about the outcome of Bush's little adventure-

"I've never been a Bush supporter, and could easily be counted as 'anti-Bush.' But I'm not anti-Bush just for the thrill of it. I have what I believe to be good reasons, among them many that you yourself have noted over the course of the last couple of years. What has scared and outraged me perhaps more than anything else about Bush is the extent to which he has followed a 'narrative' that is simply not supported by any empirical evidence and, more importantly, that he has apparently not been particularly interested in empirical evidence or expertise, period. It's as if the discussion about the Iraq war, and how to wage it, has been a private conversation between Bush and his Maker (with Rumsfeld and Cheney chiming in). I really don’t care what Bush's religious beliefs are, as long as he doesn't run the country and wage wars according to those beliefs alone, unencumbered by empirical facts or the opinions of experts. But that appears to be precisely what he's done.

Now, tens of thousands of deaths and billions of dollars later, Iraq is on the verge of civil war. And so, I've found myself actually ambivalent about how this war turns out. On the one hand, of course I want the United States to succeed. The potential consequences of losing the war in Iraq are horrendous. But on the other hand, I worry that if we finally do succeed in Iraq, Bush and his 'base' will conclude that, yes, if they just 'listen to God,' (and no one else), things will turn out just fine. And that conclusion, I fear, could be worse for this country than losing this war. I feel like I’m weighing two great potential catastrophes – one, a failed state where Iraq used to be; and the other, a United States 'cut loose' from its traditional basis of rational assessment and empirical evidence, 'guided' by a president who thinks the rest of us should just 'trust him,' since God is whispering directly into his ear. I honestly don't know which is the greater catastrophe. Hence the odd ambivalence about how the war ends."

I feel the same way.

And anyone who disagrees should recall this- King George brought this on himself. If we can pull out some success from this (big 'if' at this point), it will be in spite on the failed leadership of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal. Our saving grace would be that the soldiers in their command are not as incompetent as they are.