As the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIL) slaughters Shias in Iraq, Christians flood out of the Middle East, and Egypt hands down carte blanche death sentences…
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I hope you’ll pause to recognize the real victims as of late: Neoconservatives.
No, they haven’t experienced war or suffered bodily harm or even been without air conditioning recently. But they have been shocked and awed by some scathing press coverage.
On Fox News, Megyn Kelly said to Dick Cheney’s face: “Time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well in Iraq.” The next day, Kelly also grilled former Bush United Nations ambassador John Bolton. CNN’s Chris Cuomo put the screws to the terminally wrong Paul Wolfowitz. And The Atlantic’s James Fallows recommended that the Iraq war architects “shut the hell up on this particular topic for a while.”
That was a bit too strong for some. The Federalist’s David Harsanyi decried the “sanctimonious griping” against neoconservatives. He noted that other pundits who have been proven wrong, like economist Jared Bernstein who authored the bogus stimulus jobs chart, are still taken seriously. Few things would be more constructive than a national movement not to take Jared Bernstein seriously.
But Harsanyi’s greater point is worth pondering. How should we address Iraq war supporters who are once again opining on Mesopotamia?
A good starting point would be if neoconservatives admitted they were wrong about deposing Saddam Hussein. You can’t change your ways without genuine repentance, as any Catholic schoolboy knows. But most hawks seem genuinely untroubled by the events of the Bush administration.
In his interview with Megyn Kelly, John Bolton elided over the entire Iraq war, calling it “irrelevant to the circumstances we face now.” Instead Bolton and company are hell-bent on blaming President Obama for ISIL’s rise.
This has proven difficult to do without descending into self-parody.
Take Elliott Abrams, who wrote a piece for Politico Monday attacking President Obama’s Middle East policy. He barely touches George W. Bush, beginning his jeremiad’s chronology at the start of the Obama administration (neoconservatives once toyed with the idea that history ended in 1989; now they seem convinced that it began in 2009.)
Abrams—a member of the Project for the New American Century—accuses Obama of “hubris.” Abrams—who supported a war that killed 500,000 people—says “the humanitarian result” of Obama’s leadership “has been tragic.”
And there’s the rub. The Iraq war wasn’t just another failed tax credit. It was the single biggest foreign policy debacle in American history that killed half a million people and cost between $4 and $6 trillion. Nearly every one of its rationales turned out to be fantastical nonsense, from the elusive WMD stockpiles to the roving biological weapons labs to Ahmed Chalabi’s impeccable résumé.
Why should we hold in high regard the authors of this disaster when they refuse to acknowledge it was a disaster in the first place?
The onus is on them, not on us.
Not all Iraq war supporters seem so naïve. David Frum, former speechwriter to President Bush, is treating ISIL far more delicately than he did Saddam Hussein. “The government in Baghdad in not an American friend, and action against ISIS will not advance U.S. interests,” he wrote at The Atlantic.
But Frum is only being cautious because he’s thinks America’s real enemy is Iran. Let ISIL slaughter Shias because we’re obsessed with damaging Tehran—it’s a deeply cynical calculation and in a way even more delusional and hawkish than fighting ISIL outright.
Frum has been celebrated as a moderate because he enjoys sneering at the Tea Party. To disabuse yourself of that notion, take a stroll through his preposterously titled book An End to Evil, co-written with Richard Perle in 2004. It’s a lunatic treatise packed with belligerent prescriptions for nearly every troubled spot on earth. Among other things, it accuses South Korea of appeasement for not wanting war with North Korea. Urgency electrifies its pages—action must be taken “now,” “and fast,” because “we don’t have much time.”
This attitude pervades modern neoconservatism.
It’s how so many hawks can skewer the president for not funding the ISIL-allied Syrian rebels, then skewer him again when an empowered ISIL invades Iraq, then skewer him again when Iran gets involved.
Per Frum’s book, neocons see us at war not with a terrorist group or rogue state, but with evil generally, and wherever evil manifests itself—Sunni or Shia, dictator or militia—America must respond.
Fortunately, with Iraq back in the news, this mentality is being properly questioned.
It’s an inspiring trend.
Political punditry is an inherently unaccountable business. Talking heads get things wrong all the time, but usually dash to the next news story before anyone notices. Now, finally, after years of hearing Bill Kristol touted as a foreign policy expert with no trace of irony, those responsible for the biggest policy error of our lifetimes are being called out.
Harsanyi is right. The Iraq architects shouldn’t be silenced. But seeing as they’ve learned nothing from the disaster they created—they should be confronted, challenged, derided, and defeated.