Hawks Eating Crow - The Nation

[dArKeR]

STOP THE PRESSES by Eric Alterman

Hawks Eating Crow






Print this article
E-mail this article
Write to the editors
Take Action Now!


he Bush Administration has not made it easy on its supporters. David Brooks now admits that he was gripped with a "childish fantasy" about Iraq. Tucker Carlson is "ashamed" and "enraged" at himself. Tom Friedman, admitting to being "a little slow," is finally off the reservation. Die-hard Republican publicist William Kristol admits of Bush, "He did drive us into a ditch." The neocon fantasist and sometime Republican speechwriter Mark Helprin complains on the Wall Street Journal editorial page--the movement's Pravda--of "the inescapable fact that the war has been run incompetently, with an apparently deliberate contempt for history, strategy, and thought, and with too little regard for the American soldier, whose mounting casualties seem to have no effect on the boastfulness of the civilian leadership."


Most of the regretful hawks blame the Administration for its failure to execute what they consider a noble endeavor. But it is a noble endeavor only in the way it would be noble to give all your money to one of those deposed Ethiopian princesses who fill your inbox with pleas to send them all your money for a guarantee of future riches. In other words, yes, while it might have been nice to liberate Iraq from Saddam's clutches, it was a lot more likely that under Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Co., we would end up arresting innocent people, holding them without trial and systematically torturing and sexually humiliating them; all the while saying, as the Daily Show's Rob Corddry so brilliantly put it, "Remember, it's not important that we did torture these people. What's important is that we are not the kind of people who would torture these people."

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040607&s=alterman

[donhakman]

1. Priceless

"Remember, it's not important that we did torture these people. What's important is that we are not the kind of people who would torture these people."

[pearl]

2. Absolutely

I love that Daily Show quote, it re ran last night.
Thanks for the summary about the hawks.

:headbang:

[donhakman]

3. it whats for dinner

[Miss Authoritiva]

4. The neocons I can understand, but the others...?

"These are the men not just the neocons but self-described progressives and human-rights advocates believed capable of carrying out the delicate and difficult mission of bringing democracy and modernism to the Arab world...."

Why would progressives (self-described or otherwise) and human-rights advocates think that the creators of the civil liberty-corroding Patriot Act and the proponents of creationism would be the best people to bring democracy and modernism to any place on the planet?

[Jack Rabbit]

5. What is so hard to understand about this bunch?

These are the men not just the neocons but self-described progressives and human-rights advocates believed capable of carrying out the delicate and difficult mission of bringing democracy and modernism to the Arab world, while safeguarding the security and good name of the United States. Excuse me, but just what was so hard to understand about this bunch? We knew they were dishonest. We knew they were fanatical. We knew they were purposely ignorant and bragged about not reading newspapers. We knew they were vindictive. We knew they were lawless. We knew they were obsessively secretive. We knew they had no time or patience for those who raised difficult questions. We knew they were driven by fantasies of religious warfare, personal vengeance and ideological triumph. We knew they had no respect for civil liberties. And we knew they took no responsibility for the consequences of their incompetence. Just what is surprising about the manner in which they've conducted the war?