Brooks 5/11: "It's still too soon to declare the Iraq mission a failure"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/11/opinion/11BROO.html

For Iraqis to Win, the U.S. Must Lose
By DAVID BROOKS

Published: May 11, 2004

This has been a crushingly depressing period, especially for people who support the war in Iraq. The predictions people on my side made about the postwar world have not yet come true. The warnings others made about the fractious state of post-Saddam society have.

It's still too soon to declare the Iraq mission a failure. Some of the best reporting out of Iraq suggests that many Iraqis have stared into the abyss of what their country could become and have decided to work with renewed vigor toward the democracy that both we and they want.

<snip>

We didn't understand the tragic irony that our power is also our weakness. As long as we seemed so mighty, others, even those we were aiming to assist, were bound to revolt. They would do so for their own self-respect. In taking out Saddam, we robbed the Iraqis of the honor of liberating themselves. The fact that they had no means to do so is beside the point.

Now, looking ahead, we face another irony. To earn their own freedom, the Iraqis need a victory. And since it is too late for the Iraqis to have a victory over Saddam, it is imperative that they have a victory over us. If the future textbooks of a free Iraq get written, the toppling of Saddam will be vaguely mentioned in one clause in one sentence. But the heroic Iraqi resistance against the American occupation will be lavishly described, page after page. For us to succeed in Iraq, we have to lose.

<snip>



Where and how does he come up with this aweful shite ?
Horrible, absolutely horrible stuff. I think I can smell
it from where I'm at. There is a consistent
absence of logic in this column and he has got to be on the
Shrubco payroll.

If he were alive in the 30s, he'd be part of the "FDR is a dictator!" crowd for sure...

"We went into Iraq with what, in retrospect, seems like a childish fantasy."

A fantasty Brooksie neglects to mention he helped shovel down our throats. He was the child, he was the fantasist. Now its "we."

Millions upon millions of people marched against your fantasy, Brooks.

I can hear the cries throughout the corridors of media power:

"Reputation, reputation, reputation! O! I have lost my reputation. I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!"
- Othello

Globe and Mail, who had been a "liberal" apologist for the war:

"I'm in the middle of the largest moral and political gamble of my adult life" he said. "Everything I've said and believed since I was 18 is on the line."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040508/DOUG08/TPFocus/

Their reputations went off to war, and they'll be coming home shattered.

:nopity:

Did I miss something? Who exposed him as a progagandist? Or do you just mean he's been swept up in the general neo-con discrediting?

I really want him FIRED from the Times for the lying PNAC spokesmodel he is.

This lying POS has somehow made it into the NY Times, NPR and PBS. Shouldn't they have to examine the absolute SHILLING that he does for PNAC and whether he in fact told the TRUTH to the best of his knowledge in his writings? Because he LIES constantly in the NY Times.

And tell us at what point you'll be willing to admit Iraq is an unmitigated failure of this administration and the neo-cons who foisted it on to the world.

I'd just like to know how far away we are, in terms of suffering through your inane ramblings and delusions of reality, column-wise.

how this little weasel sees things that military higher-ups don't see. How long can and will these people be told to spin what amounts to a gigantic clusterfuck?

is just about to turn the corner.

He writes crap every time out.

According to his bio he's still with the Weekly Standard. So he is still an employee of William Kristol. He is a mole, a paid shill for PNAC.

When we evacuate the US embassy staff by way of the roof.

He's setting up the excuse in advance - "we have to let them win"

You're right. He is the ombudsman, softening up the ground for the other wingnuts to walk on. When you consider the amount of deaths(american and iraqi) the amount of money spent, the level of destruction, the long term animosity engendered, the destabilization of the area..it seems like Chimp and Co(this includes Brooks) could have found an easier way to win the hearts and minds of the arab world.

This will be the talking point. This is a variation of the "more bombings mean that we are being succesful" nonsense the wingnuts peddle. You see, Chimp and Co will not be totally successful until the U.S is driven out of Iraq. Being driven out of Iraq is the ultimate expression of the "bad news is really good news" that the neo-cons are so fond of.

Yes, Brooks, America is so strong, so noble, yet so misunderstood, that inevitably all other nations would hate you. Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.

What complete bollocks. This dog turd pressed between the pages of the New York Times is one of the most offensive self-justifications I've seen for Iraq.

"clearly an intellectual failure"; yes, you were monumentally dumb - let's call a spade a spade.

"failure to understand the consequences of our power"; no, a failure to use power responsibly. Instead, it was a violent, reckless invasion and occupation. Bremer himself is on record as regarding Iraq as a colony.

"They resent us for our power and at the same time expect us to be capable of everything"; no, they resent us for killing a lot of them, and torturing more. They resent us for caring more about the oil than Iraqis.

"Far from being blinded by greed, we were blinded by idealism"; no, the greedy ones knew exactly what they were doing; they were opening a source of oil and profits for Halliburton et al (maybe the few members of the public who saw it as a way of lowering gas prices were blinded by greed). The 'blind' were the jingoistic masses who thought they were taking revenge for 9/11. It was hurt, hatred and racism that blinded the majority of Americans.

"We went into Iraq with what, in retrospect, seems like a childish fantasy"; no, we went in with a carefully constructed series of lies about WMDs and links to al Qaeda. The fantasy is pretending that we ever went in to install freedom and democracy.

"We expected to be universally admired when it was all over"; no, the USA expected to be universally feared. The neocons said it was a strike at the heart of the region; that it would get other Middle Eastern countries to fall in line, for fear of being the next on the list of evildoers who must be annihilated. Look how they cheered when they said Libya had been cowed into giving up WMD (although the reality was that those negotiations had started before the invasion of Iraq, and were because Gaddafi wanted to produce oil freely with no sanctions). "We frightened Gaddafi into it", they said. They never claimed that Gaddafi suddenly saw the freedom and democracy that Iraq had got, and thought "I want that too".

"We didn't understand the tragic irony that our power is also our weakness"; boo-fucking-hoo, it's a bit late to set yourself up as the hero from a Shakespearean tragedy. There was nothing inevitable about invading Iraq; the UN, the Vatican, the responsible part of the EU, were screaming at the US and UK not to invade. This wasn't an outcome beyond the control of all the participants; it was a deliberate use of power for cynical profit and future power, in the secure knowledge that the other side was too weak to prevent it.

"In taking out Saddam, we robbed the Iraqis of the honor of liberating themselves"; oh yeah, I see a lot of concern for the honor of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib.

"If the Iraqis do campaign this fall, then at their rallies they will jeer at us. We will still be hated around the world. But we will have succeeded in doing what we set out to do." Christ. And I mean that. Brooks really thinks that the USA is going to take the sins of the world upon itself. That it has to set itself up as a pantomime villain, twirling its mustache and cackling evilly, so that the benighted heathens can think they've achieved a victory.

Here's a different analogy: it's like excuses for beating your children. "It'll do them good"; "they'll learn to be men"; "it's the only language they understand"; "this will hurt me more than it will hurt you"; "they enjoy it really".
It's child abuse, on an international scale. And Brooks shows himself to be an enthusiastic cheerleader. What a pile of vomit.

Superb response!!!!!!

I can add nothing, your post is totally dead on! Brava!

:yourock:

sw