RW Columnist Jonah Goldberg Admits: Invading Iraq Was a 'Mistake'

[sabra]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003285233

Columnist Jonah Goldberg Admits: Invading Iraq Was a 'Mistake'

NEW YORK One of the those fervent defenders of the Iraq war -- and critics of those who questioned it -- faced up to the setbacks in that conflict today in his syndicated column.

"The Iraq war was a mistake," Jonah Goldberg states near the start of his column today. He reveals, "I've never said it before. And I don't enjoy saying it now. I'm sure that to the antiwar crowd this is too little, too late, and that's fine because I'm not joining their ranks anyway."

He elaborates: "I must confess that one of the things that made me reluctant to conclude that the Iraq war was a mistake was my general distaste for the shabbiness of the arguments on the antiwar side.

"But that's no excuse. Truth is truth. And the Iraq war was a mistake by the most obvious criteria: If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq in 2003."

He continues: "The failure to find weapons of mass destruction is a side issue. The WMD fiasco was a global intelligence failure, but calling Saddam Hussein's bluff after 9/11 was the right thing to do. Washington's more important intelligence failure lay in underestimating what would be required to rebuild and restore post-Hussein Iraq. The White House did not anticipate a low-intensity civil war in Iraq, never planned for it and would not have deemed it in the U.S. interest to pay this high a price in prestige, treasure and, of course, lives.

[bluestateguy]

1. But of course, "we can't ever leave; we're there and we have to stay..."

Blah, blah....

[Binka]

2. Too Late Ya Fucking DipStick

Why didn't he sign up if he believed so fervently? COWARD!

[warrens]

3. Bwahahahaha

That miserable little punk is finally eating shit. I'm enjoying this. What's happened is, you can no longer support the war and think it's a good idea and be accepted as sane, even by the right wing. Only the bushbots support the war, and a lot of them are getting queasy.

[InternalDialogue]

4. This line doesn't fly:

"If we had known then what we know now..."

RWers who are finally folding their cards can't lean on that excuse. The truth they either deny or knowingly obscure is that if they had not been so proud/afraid/jingoistic/sycophantic/greedy/vengeful, they would have seen then what a lot of us knew, and would have spoken out to save our country and innocents in Iraq the horror of the invasion and occupation.

In other words, we DID know then what we know now -- some of us just chose to ignore it.

[riderinthestorm]

5. "Shabbiness of the anti-war crowd's arguments"?!

Ya stupid fucker!! Shabbiness??!!!

We've been proved right, you asshole pond scum. It gives me no joy to see you eat shit now that your shabby side has killed and maimed a million or more Americans and Iraqis. Took you long enough. What made you wake up? The fact that you are drenched in blood, awash up to your eyeballs??

[ProfessorGAC]

6. Well, Mama's Boy Finally Realized Something

That guy makes me want to puke. Another guy with no discernible skills with a place of prominence because of his mommy.

The Professor

[Zomby Woof]

7. He is an ignorant shithole

So is anyone who denied that our invasion would completely and utterly disrupt Iraq to the point of unbridled chaos. That includes every major media outlet in print and broadcasting, every asskissing "reporter" whoring for their check, and every fear-addicted American who creamed in their flag for it.

I recall arguing with some wingnuts I worked with at war's beginning that it would be a mistake, mainly because the Bush regime has NO UNDERSTANDING of the sociology of Iraq, its ethnic and religious divisions, and the enormity of rebuilding when it was NOT part of the plan, and we would NOT be welcome to extend our stay by even the most sympathetic of Iraqis. Wolfowitz touted himself as an academic Middle East 'expert', but he had the ivory tower too far up his ass, and drowned us all in a big pitcher of neocon Kool-Ade.

So fuck you, Goldberg. Now that torture is sanctioned by your favorite WASP frat boy, maybe we should consider detaining you in solitary - with the occasional conjugal visit from Christopher Hitchens, who is really angry with you now for admitting the war is a failure, but thinks you look really pretty...

[kenny blankenship]

8. you stupid fuck. if you had any decency you'd just shut yr fucking mouth.

The Iraq war was a mistake by an even more obvious criteria: it stood out as a terrible trap to be avoided based on what we knew then (let alone what we know now).

How fucking stupid do you have to be--how racist and arrogant--to believe that a Muslim country and an Arab country would JUST LET YOU RULE IT after the bitter experience of European colonialism ? How fucking stupid and ignorant do you have to be to believe that you can march into a part of the world utterly different than your own, a land shot through with tribal loyalties that compete with nationalism for priority on an equal footing, which happens to be the world epicenter of the centuries-old conflict between the two branches of Islam, and just invert the relationship between dominant and subjugated groups without a fight breaking out? The spiritual center of Shia Islam is in Iraq. That's Iraq with a -Q. Sunni and Shi'ite have battled for control of Iraq down through the centuries, off and on, ever since Mohammed's grandson Hussayn died in battle there, trying to uphold the right of Mohammed's bloodline to the leadership of Islam. Iraq's population is majority Shia, long the underdog and outgroup due to the historical regional dominance of Sunni empires. Next door, there is the world's only SHIA Islamic Republic--a place where all Iraq's prominent Shia leaders have at one time or another sheltered, or studied, and whose government is officially dedicated to spreading Islamic theocratic rule in Muslim lands by revolution. That country, Iran, has been regarded as an enemy to some degree or another by all US administrations since the 1979 revolution that created it.
Did you have NO SENSE that something bad could happen by destabilizing Iraq, invading it, and trying to turn it into a lackey state, energizing the Sunni-Shia conflict there by flipping their relationship?

Mr. Goldberg, either you are the kind of psycho asshole who gets people killed by the thousands because you embark on HIGH RISK adventures without bothering to research the most basic circumstances and details of what you propose to do, OR you are ONE DUMB FUCK who, although well intentioned, needs to be kept far, far away from power or any public platform from which you can influence other ignoramuses like yourself.

I suspect you are both stupid and an incurious murdering asshole like your beloved George W. Bush.

[zbdent]

9. Fucker - "If we had known then what we know now"

BUSH DID KNOW THEN WHAT WE KNOW NOW!

[Javaman]

10. Another tool trying his best to deflect his overburdened conscious

from the nightmares of the neo-con pipe dream.

This line gets me: "The failure to find weapons of mass destruction is a side issue."

Sorry, no, that was the whole reason this failed excuse for leadership* built it's entire case upon.

Then he goes on: "The WMD fiasco was a global intelligence failure, but calling Saddam Hussein's bluff after 9/11 was the right thing to do."

How many times from how many mountains to we need to scream that saddam had nothing, zero, nada, zip to do with 9/11.

He's another apologist who's caught between a rock and an hard place and is now trying to jump on the anti-war wagon to save he soul.

Sorry, sir, but you are filthy with blood. And this is one spot you will never wash out no matter how many times you say you were wrong. The point you are missing is: we knew all along you were wrong and had the facts to prove it, yet you chose to happily sail down this river with the ship of fools*. Telling us you are less of a fool now does not make you fool any less.