Premature Jubilation

by

By Edward

Update: cross-posted on Liberal Street Fighter

What is it about NeoCon supporters that causes them to party like it’s 1999 over the most precarious of victories? Revenge of the high-school wallflowers syndrome? Seriously, from the "Mission Accomplished" embarrassment; to the decorating of Tenet, Franks, and Bremer; to the currently spreading canonization of Paul Wolfowitz, it’s as if they have a warehouse bursting at the seams with streamers and helium balloons they can’t hold back. "Puh-le-e-e-e-aze, let’s us dance now…we’ve learned the Macarena!"

Let me back up here, though, before anyone concludes that this is about sour grapes. Back when it was first becoming apparent to me that the invasion of Iraq was less about WMD and more about Wolfowitz et al.’s desire to test their social re-engineering theories, I acknowledged openly and frequently that perhaps one day he would be heralded as a genius in our history books. In fact, I truthfully said I hope so. But the cart is being shoved out ahead of the horse all over the place where Wolfie’s concerned.

In a column stuffed with the sort of sentiments normally reserved for love-struck teenagers’ diaries, David (I really am the NYTimes’ most transparent hack) Brooks is nearly panting with adulation for the man he says has "always been an ardent champion of freedom." But, as usual, Brooks gets it exactly backwards:

Let us now praise Paul Wolfowitz.

[…]

It’s not necessary to absolve Wolfowitz of all sin or to neglect the postwar screw-ups in Iraq. Historians will figure out who was responsible for what, and Wolfowitz will probably come in for his share of the blame.

So, according to Brooks, criticism (you know, the feedback that could lead to constructive corrections) is something for future historians, when it will serve our men and women fighting in Iraq no good. The time for praise, on the other hand, is apparently during the conflict, when innocent civilians are still being blown to bits daily and our own casualties are climbing steadily. Brooks goes on:

To praise Wolfowitz is not triumphalism. The difficulties ahead are obvious.

They are? When did the difficulties become obvious? They apparently were not obvious in April 2003:

The war in Iraq was hardly a month old in April 2003 when an Army general in charge of equipping soldiers with protective gear threw the brakes on buying bulletproof vests.

The general, Richard A. Cody, who led a Pentagon group called the Army Strategic Planning Board, had been told by supply chiefs that the combat troops already had all the armor they needed, according to Army officials and records from the board’s meetings. Some 50,000 other American soldiers, who were not on the front lines of battle, could do without.

In the following weeks, as Iraqi snipers and suicide bombers stepped up deadly attacks, often directed at those very soldiers behind the front lines, General Cody realized the Army’s mistake and did an about-face.

They weren’t even close to obvious back then, but Brooks claims they are now. In a region of the world where peace agreements often last no longer than your average romantic comedy plays in the local cinema, the difficulties ahead are obvious? Is he smoking crack? Nothing about Iraq is obvious except for the fact that Wolfowitz and the other architects of the invasion sorely under-planned for an insurgency.

What Brooks is really doing here is sticking his tongue out at the left:

Let us look again at the man who’s been vilified by Michael Moore and the rest of the infantile left…

"Nah-nah, you were wrong, and I was right."

Well, let me try this in language Brooks might understand:

It’s OK Davie…you’re "cool" just the way you are…really…don’t worry about what those other kids say. Just don’t let Wolfie off the hook so easily, please…there are people still dying in the Middle East who need him to keep working harder.

39 thoughts on “Premature Jubilation”

  1. Definitely too early for jubilation (doesn’t that take 50 years?) Signs are positive, but really they are positive for the first time in about 16 months so like I said before, we shouldn’t freak out.

  3. Jeez, Edward, why would you want to cite David Brooks on anything? “Hack” doesn’t begin to describe his nonsensical stuff; which seems to defy the odds by getting worse and worse every month! Fer crynoutloud, even Tacitus had a better post (along much these same lines, and way more from the heart) to re-launch his blog today, and when Tac’s stuff starts to compare favorably with New York Times Op-Ed regulars, I really start to wonder if there isn’t something to all those criticisms of “Mainstream Media” after all.
    Thank said, under all of Brooks’ flowery prose, I still catch the reek of desperation for good news out of Iraq.
    The “spreading democracy was the real reason for it all” meme seems like the final refuge for the pro-war crowd, save for the old stand-by of “objectively pro-Saddam”, and the flag-waving jubilation over relatively minor stuff like the Saudi municipal elections (petty and limited) and the latest Egyptian “reforms” (window-dressing at best) strikes me as being far more of clutching at straws. Only in Lebanon have there really been any moves anywhere in the Middle East to anything like a real “democratic” movement, and (pace Walid Jumblatt, it is only tangentially related to US actions).

  4. This is about neo-con myth-making, which substitutes for actual policy analysis by them.
    The screed that things are more positive is in that category. Move the goal posts in the dark of night, and then wake up happy because you think you scored a tounchdown.

  5. Thanks for getting me to break my vow not to read Brooks any more, she scowled. — My favorite bit was this knee-slapper: “he has usually played a useful supporting role in making sure that pragmatic, democracy-promoting policies were put in place.”

  6. “Is he smoking crack?”
    The symptoms make me think MDMA.
    Which would mean its more likely that there are lasers and smoke machines in the warehouse than balloons and streamers.
    But you still can’t stop them dancing.

  9. And tales of tyranny’s demise are perhaps also premature:

    Nearly 500,000 pro-Syrian protesters waved flags and chanted anti-American slogans in a central Beirut square Tuesday, answering a nationwide call by the militant Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group for a demonstration to counter weeks of massive rallies demanding Syrian forces leave Lebanon.

    I certainly hope they had to pay those people, but, again, Wolfie & Co still have LOTS of work to do.

  12. I certainly hope they had to pay those people, but, again, Wolfie & Co still have LOTS of work to do.
    At least someone is doing the work. That alone is cause for celebration.

  13. It’s OK Davie…you’re “cool” just the way you are…really…don’t worry about what those other kids say. Just don’t let Wolfie off the hook so easily, please…there are people still dying in the Middle East who need him to keep working harder.
    Good grief, Edward, what are /you/ smoking? The healthiest thing imaginable for the Middle East and for US foreign policy would be for Wolfowitz and his ilk to be as far removed from any position of influence as possible.
    When creates a huge problem due to incompetence and wishful thinking, you don’t look to them for the solution.

  14. At least someone is doing the work. That alone is cause for celebration.
    Puh-leaze. It took 9/11 to make Bush realize he had to do something. Don’t go rewriting history, Mac.

  15. The healthiest thing imaginable for the Middle East and for US foreign policy would be for Wolfowitz and his ilk to be as far removed from any position of influence as possible.
    Perhaps, Catsy, but that ain’t happening for another 3 1/2 years at least, so, working with what we have, what’s the best way to move forward?

  16. Puh-leaze. It took 9/11 to make Bush realize he had to do something. Don’t go rewriting history, Mac.
    Who is rewriting history? It took 9/11 for the nearly everyone to realize that 100 years of failed policy had to change. Good for those who pursued the change, shame on those who embraced the contrived security derived from other people’s oppression.

  17. It took 9/11 for the nearly everyone to realize that 100 years of failed policy had to change
    100 years of failed policy? why must you blame America?

  18. of course, we all know why the neocons are celebrating: it’s cuz Chimpy McShrubhitler and his gang of stormboot fascist jesusfreaks have finally staged their putsch, and are just marking time til they shut down the congress and sell off the building to Halliburton for a gulag and call it Abu Ghraib West!
    (Not really, of course, but I just didn’t want Sulla to have to go away unhappy!)

  19. Who is rewriting history? It took 9/11 for the nearly everyone to realize that 100 years of failed policy had to change.
    I thought it was the Left, that would blame America for 9-11?

  20. 100 years of failed policy? why must you blame America?
    Don’t forget the British, French, Soviets and few others.

  23. I don’t think 9-11 changed the ME for the better, at all. The same belief system that was running foriegn policy before 9-11, is still as out of touch as it has always been.
    Breeding Grounds
    By fubar
    Reagan (1982):
    In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan without provocation and with overwhelming force. Since that time, the Soviet Union has sought through every available means, to assert its control over Afghanistan.
    The Afghan people have defied the Soviet Union and have resisted with a vigor that has few parallels in modern history. The Afghan people have paid a terrible price in their fight for freedom. Their villages and homes have been destroyed; they have been murdered by bullets, bombs and chemical weapons. One-fifth of the Afghan people have been driven into exile. Yet their fight goes on. The international community, with the United States joining governments around the world, has condemned the invasion of Afghanistan as a violation of every standard of decency and international law and has called for a withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Every country and every people has a stake in the Afghan resistance, for the freedom fighters of Afghanistan are defending principles of independence and freedom that form the basis of global security and stability.
    Then:
    The notion of jihad, or holy war, had almost ceased to exist in the Muslim world after the tenth century until it was revived, with American encouragement, to fire an international pan-Islamic movement after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. For the next ten years, the CIA and Saudi intelligence together pumped in billions of dollars’ worth of arms and ammunition through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) to the many mujahideen groups fighting in Afghanistan.
    The policy worked: the Soviet Union suffered such terrible loses in Afghanistan that it withdrew its forces in 1989, and the humiliation of that defeat, following on from the crippling cost of the campaign, helped to undermine the Soviet system itself. But there was a terrible legacy: Afghanistan was left awash with weapons, warlords and extreme religious zealotry.
    For the past ten years that deadly brew has spread its ill-effects widely. Pakistan has suffered terrible destabilisation. But the afghanis, the name given to the young Muslim men who fought the infidel in Afghanistan, have carried their jihad far beyond: to the corrupt kingdoms of the Gulf, to the repressive states of the southern Mediterranean, and now, perhaps, to New York and Washington, DC.
    Now:
    Islamic terror groups are becoming increasingly active in Germany and coordinating with militants across Europe to recruit fighters to join the insurgency in Iraq, equipping them with fake passports, money and medical supplies, security officials say.
    …
    “They try to recruit and bring potential suiciders — potential terrorists — together and they will send them from Germany to Iraq to fight against the allied forces under the leadership of the United States.”
    There’s only sketchy evidence that any of the recruited radicals have returned to Europe from fighting in Iraq, but that remains a top fear, Tophoven said.
    “The big threat is that they will eventually come back to European countries and they will come back with an image, with a reputation as heroes who fought the unbelievers, as it was in the war against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan,” he said.
    “If they do, they come back from Iraq trained, they know how to fight, they know how to do an ambush, how to make a bomb, and so on, and intelligence is afraid of these developments.”
    More:
    http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1182

  26. Edward, I’m waiting for the segue to the “Arab Street”. Will I have to wait long?

  27. Timmy,
    If I save up 100 or so coupons from the back of Ann Coulter books can I send in for a decoder ring for your comments? I’m willing to do it (so long as I don’t have to actually read the Coulter books).

  28. Funny how one of the signs at the Hezbollah-sponsored pro-Syrian rally in Beirut read “no to foreign interference”. I guess Iran doesn’t count as “foreign interference” even though they subsidize Hezbollah (which is on the State Department list of foreign terrorist organizations) to the tune of $100 million a year. And I guess Syria doesn’t count as “foreign interferene” even though they’ve effectively ruled Lebanon since the 1980s. My one big question is, how much did this rent-a-mob cost Hezbollah?
    As for Brooks, funny how liberals are so exceedingly harsh on ex-Democrats. To me, it’s premature to be giving Wolfowitz big-time accolades, but you have to like how the Middle Eastern democrasunami is unfolding.

  29. Lebanon has been more or less democratic for quite a while now. It didn’t suddenly become a democracy because of anything we did. If lebanon becomes MORE democratic, it will be when the currently disenfranchised or underrepresented groups–the Palestinian refugees and the Shiites–get fair representation in their government. I’m not arguing that Syrian troops should stay–of course not. But it has nothing to do with how democratic the country is.
    It isn’t so much a matter of premature jubulation as exaggerating the degree of responisbility we have for positive events.

  30. “Lebanon has been more or less democratic for quite a while now.”
    That would be more less right? But I will say that it is nice to see that non-US occupation forces can stay for decades and control the government for decades without it effecting the democratic status of the government. If only the US were as humane and understanding as Syria I bet we could pull it off in Iraq.

  31. You don’t have to be sarcastic. If Syria controlled the Lebanese government, the Shiites wouldn’t be locked in to a electoral system that under-represents them. Also I doubt that the Syrians, if they really cotrolled the government , would keep the Palastinians in limbo as non-citizen refugees. Also, Isreal has occuped part of Syria for quite a while, so the mere presence of soldiers doesn’t mean control over a government.

  32. As for Brooks, funny how liberals are so exceedingly harsh on ex-Democrats.
    Compare and contrast with how forgiving and welcoming Republicans are with whats-his-face over at Media Matters. In fact, go ahead and do that while I retrieve my eyes, which have rolled right into the back of my head.

  33. I recall listening to a speech by Paul Wolfowitz before the war. I’m not sure, but I think it was this one, to the Commonwealth Club.
    I got the definite impression that he is sincere. Of course, his predictive powers are somewhat unreliable — the most glaring example is his Congressional testimony about Iraq being able to pay for its own reconstruction.
    Dr. Wolfowitz is a mathematician by training, though his Ph.D. is in Poli Sci. This brings to mind a story…

    An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are all staying at a hotel one night when a fire breaks out. The engineer wakes up and smells the smoke; he quickly grabs a garbage pail to use as a bucket, fills it with water from the bathroom, and puts out the fire in his room. He then refills the pail and douses everything flammable in the room with water. He then returns to sleep.

    The physicist wakes up, smells the smoke, jumps out of bed. He picks up a pad and pencil and makes some calculations, glancing frequently at the flames. He then measures exactly 15.6 liters of water into the garbage pail, and throws it on the flames, which are extinguished. Smiling, he returns to sleep.

    Finally the mathematician wakes up. He too grabs a pad and begins furiously writing; glancing at the flames; and then writing more. After a while he gets a satisfied look on his face; entering the bathroom, he produces a match, lights it, and then extinguishes it with a bit of running water. “Aha! A solution exists,” he murmurs – and returns to his slumbers.

    [p.s., Phil, great image!]

  35. Lebanon has been more or less democratic for quite a while now.
    Democracy isn’t the metric, lily. Freedom is. Lebanon is not a real democracy. Just go down the list. In terms of civil liberties and political rights, Lebanon is not free. As for press freedom, it ranks 87th, right behind Uganda. Lebanon’s economy is mostly unfree, again right behind Uganda. As for corruption, Lebanon has the dishonor of being tied for 97th with the likes of Algeria, Macedonia, Nicaragua and Serbia-Montenegro. All of this thanks to 20 years of de facto rule by Syria and the Assads.
    Compare and contrast with how forgiving and welcoming Republicans are with whats-his-face over at Media Matters.
    The difference, Phil, is Brooks wasn’t a self-professed liar before or after switching to the other side. Brock already soiled his bed on the Republican side, then he left he hasn’t stopped soiling since.

  36. As for press freedom, it ranks 87th, right behind Uganda
    Interesting link. Lebanon comes in ahead of Afghanistan (97th) and “United States of America (in Iraq)” (108th). Obviously, US intervention is needed to take them down a notch or two.

  37. “Also I doubt that the Syrians, if they really cotrolled the government , would keep the Palastinians in limbo as non-citizen refugees.”
    Hmmm. My Lebanon history isn’t super-great, but I’m pretty sure that the Syrians don’t get along with the Palestinians at all except when they are fighting Israel.

  38. As for Brooks, funny how liberals are so exceedingly harsh on ex-Democrats.
    I never knew Brooks was an ex-Democrat. Believe me, this is about how he grates on my nerves, not his biography.
    And if you think this is exceedingly harsh, wait until you see my next post on Faithless Joe Lieberman, and he’s only an “ex” Democrat in his voting, so far.

  39. Hmmm. My Lebanon history isn’t super-great, but I’m pretty sure that the Syrians don’t get along with the Palestinians at all except when they are fighting Israel.
    This sounds like the US & Iraq against Iran, the Kurds and the Soviets.
    Then it sounds like the US & the Kurds against Iraq & Iran.
    It also sounds like the US & the mujahadeen against the Soviets and Northern Alliance.
    And then the ex-Commies and Northern Alliance against the mujahadeen.
    Wow, now I know what “YANKEE GO HOME” means.

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