Paralysis of the Mind

It's one thing to forgive mistakes in life. Mistakes happen. Even in politics, and even of the highest order. I can forgive Hillary Clinton, for instance, for her vote on the Iraq resolution, provided that she makes me believe that it WAS a mistake, and not the sort of thing she'd continue to back forever. (Footnote: She hasn't convinced me, to be honest. But she has plenty of time in which to try.)

It is entirely another to forgive mendacity ... which is the nice, upper-middle-class way of saying "a big fat liar." Lying isn't supposed to get you anywhere in life. Then again, neither was being crazy, and you can turn on CNN to see just how much Anna Nicole Smith was a giant of our times.

Yesterday morning, the Wall Street Journal's opinion page -- no stranger to mendacity or even flights of complete fancy -- had a piece from noted "Democratic" warmonger Joe Lieberman. Joe, who's been making the case that victory is important since 2002, that victory is coming soon since 2004 and that victory is just around the corner since '05, is effusive as always in his praise of George W. Bush. Our troops are JUST that close to polishing off a little training and boom -- boom as in suddeness, not an IED -- we'll be out of Iraq and democracy will flourish like bermuda grass.

Joe (who I respect so little at this point, he's lost his last name on this blog) is wholly bought and sold on Israeli concerns, so I can at least understand his desire for a more stable Middle East. I can. And if his blinkered support for our War of Terror in Iraq was a mistake because of that belief, I could both forgive and -- maybe -- forget. Joe's done some pretty OK stuff in his Senate career. And it's not entirely his fault Al Gore picked his nutty ass for VP in 2000. (OK, I lied. That one still hurts.) But Joe has made the amazing leap from "I support this war" to "I support everything the President does as part of this war." It's like a recoving alcoholic making a mistake by succumbing to the temptation of a drink ... and then burning down the bar 'cause it sounded like a good idea, too.

Joe loves the war, but he also loves the way it is going, apparently. And that's just incredible to me. We would not consider the United States stable if even 1 person was dying per day from terror attacks. So how is Iraq "stable" when 100 people die a day? Oh, and by the way, the military is stretched out like a hooker's you-know-what and our soldiers have to keep cycling back to Iraq in what must seem like a horrifying joke. And that's not even going into the monetary cost, which a conservative estimate recently put at "ginormous."

So, when does Joe get the honor of not being taken seriously? And this, by no means, is just a question about him; there's a lot of people who are wrong about everything who continually have their voices singled out in the media choir. But Joe is wrong about the biggest issue in our times, an issue where his side has become both unpopular AND somewhat embarassing. Poor Joe even got ambushed by blogger Glenn Greenwald, who used the cruelest liberal tactic of all ... quoting his own words back at him:

The leaders of America's military and diplomatic forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey and Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, have a clear vision of our mission there. It is to create the environment in which Iraqi democracy, security, and prosperity can take hold and the Iraqis themselves can defend their political progress against those ten thousand terrorists who would take it from them.

Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. . . Mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground in Iraq. The administration's recent use of the banner "clear, hold, and build" accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week.

That was Joe's last foray onto the Journal's Op-Ed page -- in November of 2005. So, seriously, doesn't he have to hand over the keys or something? I mean, if a baseball writer for ESPN continually picked the Yankees to finish last in the AL East and lose 100 games, wouldn't he or she eventually stop being allowed to write in public? And can this principle apply in all cases?

If this is America -- land of the free, home of the brave, and the place where you CAN go from rags to riches -- then why do we allow a virtual aristocracy in our country's punditry? If you're a face or a name, you can say or do anything and you can NEVER lose your position. (Well, short of being a closet Democrat or boffing an intern -- and even then, 60% of the country will still love you.) We hold up media reporters to impossible levels of perfection. By this I mean the right shrieks about how badly the media treat them and their causes, and the left howls as the media bends over backwards to make sure it isn't so. But people like Joe can just go sling any old garbage and it's all fine and dandy. Dick Cheney could write an Op-Ed discussing how the Iranians will greet us with cotton candy and $100 bills, and I'm sure SOMEONE would publish it. And, by 2008, when we're being greated with chemical or nuclear weapons instead, nobody will fault poor old Dick for publishing a piece a few months later about how the Syrians will greet us with caramel apples and glasses of ice water.

And I'm sure after that, Joe will be writing a nice piece about how Iraq can still definitely be won. All it'll take is a new, secret strategy that only he and President McCain know about... and we'll still be quietly forgiving their lies, and making sure we'll be able to read plenty more in tomorrow's paper.

Labels: joey lieberman