Deja Voodvard
Pity some poor Rip Van Winkle-like long term coma patient who just woke up in time to see Bob Woodward on 60 Minutes Sunday night.
The last thing this guy could remember before ramming his car into a wall thirtysome-odd years ago was that the U.S. was bogged down in a no-win war of insurgency; that the White House was in total denial about it all, constantly evoking a non-existent light at the end of the tunnel; Henry Kissinger was master-minding the whole sordid affair. And a journalist named Bob Woodward was threatening to bring the whole show to a halt.
What's changed? Get me back on life-support!
I haven't gotten any advance copies of Woodward's book and can rely only on printed excerpts and Sunday's TV interview. But it's hard to not be grabbed by what Woodward is saying. And it certainly sounds like we have another Nixonesque state of denial enveloping the White House, poisoning our policy and bringing us general ruin.
The revelation that Kissinger is now Bush/Cheney's best friend if of particular morbid and historical fascination. Until now, Dr. K has been able to keep a political distance from the stench of the Bush administration, allowing many to believe that as a foreign policy "realist" he (along with acolytes like Brent Scowcroft) was quite upset about and maybe opposed to the war in Iraq.
There's no real contradiction here. You will remember that Kissinger knew his own Vietnam war was also a lost cause, but nevertheless let it drag on for several more years so that American "credibility" could be preserved. That's apparently the brilliant counsel he's now giving the Bushoids i.e. it was probably a bad idea to invade Iraq but now that you've done it, and even though there's no clear path to winning, you have to play to win.
Sorry, I can't resist translating this into poker terms. When you're holding a busted flush draw and you've put your opponent on a staight, you can't win by folding or even calling. Your only option is to go over the top, push all your chips in, cross your fingers and pretend you've got the nut flush.
What we're talking about in Iraq, however, aren't a few stacks of chips and your vaunted "table image." At stake are the lives of our sons and daughters, the Iraqi people and our future relations with the rest of the world.
Not that Woodward's revelations are likely to have much of a political impact. With or without his book, the folly of Iraq can easily be glimpsed by anyone willing to read a newspaper. At this point those who are "supporting" the war, those who want to stay the course, are likely to be about as unresponsive as my fictional coma victim. Their pro-war position is but a product of preconceived ideology. The facts be damned.
October 1st, 2006 at 10:07 pm
It can’t get any worse… Well, it probably can.
But your old pal Hitchens is going to have a hell of a time with this one. What in gods green earth is Hitchens going to say about this one! WOW.
It is also ON TAPE. Cheney talking about Kissinger. So Hitchens cannot pull a bait and switch like he has on WMD.
This war has failed and so has my old hero Hitchens.
October 1st, 2006 at 10:35 pm
“Until now, Dr. K has been able to keep a political distance from the stench of the Bush administration ….”
Not quite true. If Dr. K. had any single star protege, it was L. Paul Bremer. From 1989 to 2000, Bremer was Managing Director of Kissinger Associates. And that was just a late chapter in a long relationship. He was an assistant to Kissinger from 1972 to 1976, after postings in Kabul (then rather sleepy) and Malawi (likewise a snore.) Dr. K gave Paul a real start on his career, and sustained him for several decades. Some interesting quotes from Paul (”Voice of Doom”) Bremer while he was Managing Director of Kissinger Associates can be found here:
http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/Paul_Bremer
If anybody is Dr. K’s sock puppet, it’s Paulie Boy. As somebody who plausibly *could* have died at Ground Zero (the offices of his company were at WTC 2, luckily he wasn’t), I suppose he had an extra “in” with an administration not otherwise well-stocked with foreign policy realists at the time–he could get along with Rummy as someone who had also been in the crosshairs. They had him sit with Ed Meese to come up with a plan for Homeland Security, then it was off to Baghdad to save the world from terrorism–a job for which he was supposedly ideally prepared.
Dr. K has been with us all along, just through proxies.
October 1st, 2006 at 10:44 pm
“What we’re talking about in Iraq, however, aren’t a few stacks of chips and your vaunted “table image.” At stake are the lives of our sons and daughters, the Iraqi people and our future relations with the rest of the world.”
You forgot: the oil. That’s quite a stack of chips, and there are guns under the table.
October 2nd, 2006 at 12:55 am
And the most horrifying part about the news that Dr. Evil….er….Kissinger is Dick Cheney’s new best friend, is not merely that Henry is cheerleading energetically (and tragically) for “staying the course” in Iraq but that, in not so coded terms, he’s pushing hard for military action in Iran.
October 2nd, 2006 at 5:50 am
The Kissinger connection probably means that they have run out of any other advisors who will tell them what they want to hear. Sort of like going to a quack doctor when you don’t believe what all the real doctors are telling you.
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:15 am
Well, actually, it’s still K-speak, at least as of about a year ago:
“I’m not recommending it but, on the other hand, it is a grave step to tolerate a world of multiple nuclear-weapons centers without restraint. I’m not recommending military action, but I’m recommending not excluding it.”
http://www.cfr.org/publication/8255/kissinger.html
I guess until he made up his mind, he was not recommending not excluding it. However, I wouldn’t recommend not excluding the possibility that he has recommended not excluding that the White House say it was not excluding it when in fact it was including it. Or something like that.
I suppose Pakistan could be described as one of the “multiple nuclear-weapons centers” but *under* restraint–didn’t we just hear recently that Armitage had threatened Pakistan with bombing if it didn’t cooperate in the GWOT?
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:28 am
“The Kissinger connection probably means that they have run out of any other advisors who will tell them what they want to hear.”
Nah. He’d been saying stuff they didn’t want to hear for quite a while. Like, make Iraq some kind of U.N. protectorate. Now, he’s a stay-the-course guy, because it’s past the point of no return–some positive (or not too negative) outcome is necessary, or it’s just too much of an embarrassing setback for them. When it comes to what to salvage from the situation, it’s more like they realize they *have* to listen to some outside voices, sometimes.
Condi was big on Bremer. With regard to nation-building in Iraq, she said “If anybody can do it, Paul can.” So she’s probably big on Kissinger as well. Woodward’s book reveals an awful lot of tension between State and Defense. Kissinger might have been brought in partly as a shuttle diplomat between the two.
This administration is not monolithic, even post-Powell. We like to imagine them as some cozy coterie, chucking and rubbing their hands in glee, backslapping. The reality seems to be that cabinet members thunder at each other from respective mountaintops, and dispatch hailstorms on each other’s parades. ‘Twas ever thus.
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:38 am
We might have known something was up when they tried to put Kissinger in charge of the 9-11 panel. I look forward to seeling the book’s charges about The White House manipulating said.
The unlearning of the lessons of Vietnam was a slow, sad process. I actually believe that circa 78 a decent consensus had formed. The decline from what Bush One called “a statute of limitations on Vietnam” to that statute’s ultimate fruition (electing his bonehead son, who cheered on Vietnam while dodging the draft and then openly embracing the right winger’s supremem idiocy: “politiicians didn’t let us win”) was a road to hell paved with Cheneys, Rambos, and too much polite silence on the left.
Indeed, when Hitchens justified the Swift Boaters by blaming Kerry for destroying the consensus that had emerged over Vietnam, you could get some sense of our odd and demented moment. Yes, some republicans who lauded our “noble effort” no doubt knew the tawdry soul of that nobility. There was never any reason to assume this was true of the deferment warriors at the Bush White House.
Prodded by a genuine sympathy for the lousy treatment afforded our Vets (and endless show biz types who promoted themselves as their champions) a lot of good people also started kidding themselves about Vietnam.
That’s why we are treating ourselves to “Dr. Strangelove: The Final Mission.”
October 2nd, 2006 at 8:13 am
I gotta agree with Josh Legere. Hitchens must be going through cognitive dissonance hell right now.
October 2nd, 2006 at 8:36 am
After they’ve completely destabilized the Middle East, wrecked our reputation in the world dismantling our own freedoms and squandering our lives and treasure in the meantime, they’ll finally be exposed for what they are, leaving us with the pieces to pick up.
The only question is: will they meet their fate head on with an unrepentent snear or with their tails tucked between their legs while checking themselves into alcohol rehab like their coreligionist and fellow patriot, Mark Foley?
October 2nd, 2006 at 8:53 am
What is apparent is that most Iraqis never trusted us, knowing (somehow) that we would do some half-aaaa…job. But this time around, the factions knew they had a chance to take advantage of our laziness, incompetency, and greed when we took over. Last time, we really did cut and run and look what that brought us…a war ten years later. Can’t say sticking around does much better though. I wonder what would have happened after the First Gulf War if we toppled Saddam and just left. No one would blame us for the violence that ensued. Except the stirring up the hornet’s nest would still of course be blamed on us. I wonder if the UN interferes in Darfur, people will blame them for occupation…of course Sudan has killed more than Sadd…oh wait….
October 2nd, 2006 at 11:09 am
I’ll add just two points to the comments here that really say it all. (is there anything left to say on this fiasco – sorry mr Ricks):
The last two Woodward books were well received in the WH. They even gave copies of them as gifts. Now even the “Court Stenographer” has turned against them and they cry fowl and “Libral Media” to no avail. Another addition to the “Five Foot Shelf” of recording the sheer incompetence of the guys and gals who make Bush Jr the candidate for “Worst President Ever”
(I’ll stick with James Buchanan as worst. He after all did dither while a Civil War broke out and Shrub hasn’t done that yet!)
Chris Hitchens is getting hammered here so why not pile on. When he arises from his alcoholic haze he will have to reconcile the fact that his favorite war criminal is now a key advisor to his Champion of the West’s battle against “Islamofascism.” The word “Ironic” isn’t strong enough here,
Almost like Mark Foley authoring anti- internet stalking laws!
October 2nd, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Since my computer’s CPU fan is fixed, I can laugh at you again Marc:
“At stake are the lives of our sons and daughters, the Iraqi people and our future relations with the rest of the world.”
Let’s put in Vietnam above and we get: after the Dems are elected in1974, and pull the plug to end US support for the corrupt, cowardly, puppet regime allies in Vietnam, the N. Viet commies take over and, AFTER surrender, some 600 000 are murdered.
“constantly evoking a non-existent light at the end of the tunnel”
The problem with your Left, is that all the US had to do was keep ENFORCING the peace accords Henry got signed (and got Nobeled for, along with a N. Viet liar), and at most 15 years later the US, and S. Vietnam, “win”.
The tunnel was 25 years long from 1964 – 1989. Maybe it’s 25 years for Iraq.
If we leave before there’s a stable Iraq, there will be another huge bloodbath. Of course, Leftists will blame Bush for that, too — just like most Leftists blame the Reps for the N. Viet murders that followed, very predictably and in well-publicized predictions, from the Dem cut and run policy of Vietnam.
The hypocrisy about “caring” about the Iraq people is pretty disgusting. Leftists who want the US out of Iraq don’t care any more about the Iraqs that they cared about the S. Vietnamese after 1974, or about the Cambodians; or the Rwandans; or the Darfur Muslims being murdered by the thousands every month. (240 000? in some 24 months is about 10 000 month).
It’s war or genocide, hard choices, and the anti-war folk refuse to acknowledge what the alternative means.
So they talk about the corruption, imperfections, and lousy speeches of the Reps.
Obviously with Foley, but others too (and not just Reps), it can truly be said: politicians suck!
October 2nd, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Richard, those of us who saw it coming a decade ago know booze is no excuse.
Now that Woodward’s flipped, he is surely the White
House’s one guy left to lie to.
October 2nd, 2006 at 2:07 pm
Isn’t it nice to know that in an otherwise unsettled world Liberty Dad is a true fixed point on the compass. So once again we are told how the craven, cowardly Democrats “Sold out” the Freedom loving people of South Vietnam and now want to “cut and run” from the brave Iraqis yearning to breathe free! I guess the title of Woodward’s latest book made no impression on him as a state of denial seems to go with the territory.
I’d like to know where the 600,00 “Murdered in Vietnam” comes from. From the way things are going in Mess-O-Potamia that number should be reached soon in the Fertile crescent as the fun-loving Shia and Sunni settle scores with us as bystanders.
By yhe way Liberty Dad maybe you saw the polling data from USIA that indicates 60% of Iraqis want us DEAD. Not out – Dead!
Ingrates!
October 2nd, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Hmmmm…. I’ll bite, Liberty. Let us, for the sake of arguement agree for a moment that the American Program in Iraq is not going very well. That maybe we want to see if we can widdle these 25 year wars true Americans like are willing to commit to to say, 10 or 15 years.
Since programs of attempting international cooperation in chasing down the dangerous are obviously the notions of bed weting cut and runners; what sort of national program we you be willing to support to improve things? Three Billion a week instead of two? A national draft? A national service program for everyone; with some sort of program to snuff out violent Islamic Fundementalism made a priority for every American? Gas rationing? More taxes for rich people? More taxes for poor people? What?
I have to laugh when republicans pull out the old “Negitive, you have no program” stuff on Dems. No program as opposed to WHAT? More of the same HUMILITATING defeat we are suffuring in Iraq? We now have a policy measured by abstration. “Well, it may look like War, but you never know, in twenty years it we may see that it was really growing pains of a GREAT peace?” Liberty, are you really enough of a total Fing Fool to buy that bill of goods?
October 2nd, 2006 at 4:50 pm
I could comment on how Liberty Dad’s knowledge of history could be put in a flea’s navel, but instead I’ll ask why anyone is surprised that Henry the K is hanging out with the Aptly Named Dick Cheney in advising George W. “The National Guard is for Rich Cokeheads” Bush. Why wouldn’t war criminals stick together?
October 2nd, 2006 at 5:10 pm
Wall:
you said:
“Since programs of attempting international cooperation in chasing down the dangerous are obviously the notions of bed weting cut and runners..”.
Forget the name calling of “cut and runners”, do you or anyone else here expect Middle Eastern countries to help us at the level we need? What do we have to offer them (other than awful wars that show how stupid we act?) I am at a wit’s end as to what to do; attacking Iraq isn’t the right answer (assuming links to Saddam don’t amount to anything of the level of Iran’s collaboration with Hizbollah), but the only regimes/militias willing to help us – namely the Kurds, the Afgans (run by progenators of the Northern Alliance and former rulers before the warlords), and Iraqi secularists trying to run the country – are willing to be our friends because they are underdogs in the Middle East.
The big fish – Iran, Northern Pakistan and the ISI’s unsavory foggy bottom, and Saddam would never help as not only are we antagonistic to their own imperial goals, but to ther backward thoughts on why they are ordained (laugh at similarities to GW) as leaders of not only their Islamic purees but as leaders of the Islamic parties of the entire Muslim world? They simply don’t want we have to ffer them. Assuming we act diplomatic for the long hault, we surely can expect them to harbor Islamic terrorists, and we will have nothing to offer the leaders to turn them over when, for people like Ahmadinejad, playing to their ideals helps their rule?
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:19 pm
“Not that Woodward’s revelations are likely to have much of a political impact. ”
If it forces the Republican party to play defense for a week or so and puts a crimp in their fearmongering, it does have some impact. It might not change many minds but it can get the talking heads taliking and slow down Rove’s machine.
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:22 pm
Ryan, thanks for steping in, and of course my “cutting and running” comment was sarcastic.
” Expect the Middle Eastern countries to help us at the level we need?” That’s pretty loaded. Do you mean, do I expect them
to allow us in to kill anyone we decide, for instance, is dangerous? No. For a moment, let’s talk about what WE might do. We reject “cut and run.” We reject the Bush approach, a system which really only asks scarifice from those who, for whatever reason, voluntered for the Military( while in fact doing everything possible to make the most comfortable elements of society more comfortable).
This leaves us with the option of designing a national program of service, based on attainable goals and mutual sacrifice; to make the world as safe from murderous religious fanatics as possible. Come on down and get your orders, you may be serving next to Tiger Woods or Ashton Kutchner.
Crazy? Maybe. But if you’re going to look at this thing honestly; you need to admit the diference between the two camps is “cut and run” and “cut and bleed”; the latter being more expensive in terms of money and lives. But it’s still “cut” and it always was, because it’s still Rumsfeld’s war on the cheap.
Beyond that; we must note the unforgivable squandering of post 9-11 goodwill in the international community; AND the fact that we no doubt ruined the chance all progressive elements in Iran, and go back to square one and start being more not stupid. You can’t believe in the area of diplomacy and intellegence we can’t deal ourselves a better hand.
It’s a little long, but you could fit it on a bumper sticker. Dems 06: START BEING MORE NOT STUPID.
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:34 pm
Is anybody else pissed at the Woodward revelation about the July warning to Condi about an impending terrorist threat that nobody even bothered to mention to the 9/11 Commission? (Bush, of course, also had a July meeting after which he told the “messenger” that “okay, you’ve covered your ass.” )
What kind of people are we dealing with ?
Okay, I know. I know. But somehow the more we learn about them there appears to be less and less of any sense of complexity and more evidence of sheer mendacity and incompetence.
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:42 pm
This link should take you to an interview with Marc’s buddy, David Corn and Isikoff from Newsweek about their not-to-be-overlooked book on BushCo mendacity, Hubris. Skip to the 30 minute mark.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7292279546899698502&q=bob+wright
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:43 pm
That’s a Charlie Rose…
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:47 pm
Reg,
I am. I’m equally pissed at the fact that Rumsfeld said on 9/9/01 that he would urge the president to veto a defense appropriations bill if money wasn’t diverted from anti-terrorism programs to the missile defense system and that Ashcroft on 9/10/01 sent a budget request to OMB that made no virtually no mention of counter-terrorism except to eliminate $65 million for counter-terrorism equipment grants and “did not recommend the budget enhancements requested by the FBI for ‘Foreign Language Services,’ ‘Counter-terrorism Field Investigations,’ and ‘Intelligence Production (Field and HQs Intelligence Research Specialists),’ totaling $57,814,000?”
This was, of course after the 8/6/01 PDB. It took 9/11 for them to take terrorism seriously. The very definition of dereliction of duty.
October 2nd, 2006 at 9:16 pm
Apparently the Apparently the 9/11 Commission did know about that briefing but didn’t make it public – Drum has some info on this, albeit a bit murky.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_10/009609.php
October 2nd, 2006 at 9:42 pm
Is there a pattern of GOP behavior that runs from the White House dealing with 9/11 and Iraq to Denny Hastert dealing with Foley that’s about not taking responsibility for anything when you or your people ahve screwed up, denying whatever one deems necessary and politicizing absolutely everything from intelligence reports to congressional misconduct. FOX apparatchik Tony Snow is actually proving to be a bigger menace to society than that poor klutz he replaced – his breezy dismissal of the Foley scandal, calling the emails “naughty”, is pretty disgusting. He also recently appeared at a Family Research Council confab that turned into a hate rally against gays.
These folks have no shame…
October 2nd, 2006 at 10:13 pm
If anything, Stanky Hanky can tell Bush and Dick (what a vulgar yet apropos diad!) what life is like after selling your soul. They will learn, like Pinoshit, that there are certain locales that they can travel and some where they will face the hangman’s gallows for war crimes.
They will learn how to intectually fortify thier walls of denial which they will find equally helpful at both speaking engagements and dinner parties when confronted with thier crimes against humanity and the irreparable damage which they did to the US.
Hopefully, Hank will have some tips for Bush and Dick on how to exorcise the ghosts of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, tens of thousands of Afghanis and tens of thousands of American that they sent to the Next world – a world full of anxiety for George Jr and Sr,. Richard and Hank, who no doubt occasionally and sometimes ponder the veracity of thier tenuous religious beliefs.
In short, these scum who have risen to the top are not immune to the same self-doubt and loathing (if they’re susceptible to such moments of clarity) as we are – ONLY GLOBALLY SO!
Dis-subscribe from the confluence of the ideology of greed and the curse of privelige and your road to enlightment will be a bit easier than Hank’s, Dick’s and Bush’s…
October 3rd, 2006 at 7:49 am
Wall:
good one. For all my tough talk it is just that. I haven’t lifted a finger to lift a gun or anything – yet here I am. I remember during WWII how baseball greats left everything to serve…today, it’s the poor college hopefuls. The main reason I hate Bush now is because he runs the war the way he does and with the vulnrable people that we see so gung-ho’ed in the Army commercials.
The level of discipline in the military with the industrial-complex as it is is very high, yet the command-and-control from the executive branch has basically left the building after WWII because the military is so complex, not to mention our enemies.
October 3rd, 2006 at 7:53 am
But there’ only a handful of post-9/11 goodwill that I regret being squandered. For all of France & Germany’s great peace talk, the Oil-for-Food Scandal and Saddam’s lucrative contracts with them showed the French, while loving peace and liberty, are just as greedy for a buck as a oil cowboy. The people I regret squandering are people in the Middle East who aren’t in the camp as those who cheered on 9/11 and don’t think the US is the Great Satan. We really could’ve used a double-switch from the manager to get Colin Powell in hot seat.
October 3rd, 2006 at 8:12 am
As far as the level of help we need, if terror recruiting is to decline, we need governments over there to do what we would do. I highly doubt they will.
October 3rd, 2006 at 3:44 pm
What is really appalling here is the idea that Henry the K is stroking the fires of revisionism and revanchism in Bush and Chaney by refighting the Vietnam War. We were iressolute there so lets do it right this time. And now Bush and Chaney get to “Atone” for their cowardice 30 plus years ago by sending someone eles’s young people to the meat grinder.
October 11th, 2006 at 7:49 am
I still don’t comprehend why Nixon doesn’t get credit for pulling the majority of US troops out of Vietnam within 18 months of his inauguration!! Or for ensuirng that a pro like Abrams commanded the remaining forces and avoiding the immediate invasion of the South by Russian-armed troops!!
I think he had courage and some cojones in dealing with the Joint Chiefs of Staff!
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