Andy Sullivan expresses buyer's remorse.

[NNadir]

Paul Krugman (columns, March 10 and March 20) suggests that my conservative criticism of President Bush's policies is a new "epiphany" and "bogus."

I endorsed George W. Bush in 2000, and I backed the Afghanistan and Iraq wars (and still do). But my criticism of President Bush's spending binge began early.

In December 2001, I wrote in The New Republic: "If Clinton was an Eisenhower Republican, Bush looks increasingly like a Nixon liberal in domestic economic policy...

...I even felt forced to endorse John Kerry in 2004. And yet I am the conservative Mr. Krugman now picks on as a Johnny-come-lately?

Mr. Krugman also asserted that he expected no "expressions of remorse" from me. In Time magazine, in an article published before Mr. Krugman's column, I expressed my own "shame and sorrow" for misjudging in advance the competence of this administration in wartime...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/24/opinion/l24krugman.html

Fuck you Andy. You're a cretin.

[Memory Container]

1. "I once said Bush wasn't a very good speaker...

See? -I've been standing up to this administration all along!"

"I've been criticizing Bush ever since he picked that peacenik Colin Powell for Sec. of State."

"Back in 2001, I pointed out that Bush was using a sald fork at dinner... You can't tell me I'm a new critic!"


-Whatever excuse they need.
Let 'em have it.

[BeyondGeography]

2. Sullivan comes off as a confused human being

For the war, but against the paltry levels of troops. "Conservative," but against deficit financing, which has always been the inevitable outcome of supply-side economics (stop reminiscing about Eisenhower, for crying out loud, this is not your grandfather's Republican Party). Republican, but pro-Kerry in 2004...

[TomClash]

3. What spending binge?

It certainly hasn't been on progressive social programs. Most of the money has gone to the Wars on Terror, Iraq and Afghanistan; interest on the national debt; Republican pork. Andrew Sullivan is a fool.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Sullivan supported the war in Iraq and Afganistan, just didn't support

the finance for it. I guess he thought we were going to fight those wars using nitro filled condoms?

[acmavm]

5. L:ike I said in another thread...

I hope he sits this election out. I don't care, an idiot like him is just too stupid (to the point of being dangerous) to really have the privilege to vote. Look what his voting up to now has done to the country.

I keep reading about how we're supposed to wrap our arms around all these schmucks who have seen the light. Screw that. Their blatant stupidity put us in the position we're in today. Them and Diebold. Buyer's remorse notwithstanding, I hope they wallow in the fact that they (as well as the gutless dem reps in the House and Senate) that they allowed the plunder of our Treasury (that had a friggin' surplus), they allowed a lying coward to start an immoral war, they allowed the biggest bunch of idiot thieves to run rampant throughout our government, they allowed them to do so much damage to the environment we may never recover, they destroyed the American military, and on and on and on.

They voted for a guy that they thought the could 'sit down and have a beer with'. What a frigging STUPID reason to vote for someone. And it's not like the facts of what a lying crooked asshole blivet is weren't out there for everyone to see. I saw. Most of the people who are here (and who have gone on to other places) could see it. And they allowed their boy and his criminal cabal to blatantly walk in and commandeer the Oval Office in 2000. Well, they can drop back five and punt now.

NOTE: Changed the first sentence to read I hope he sits this election out.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. self loathing gay: politically confused. shocking. nt.

[shrike]

7. Shut up, Andrew

Your time has come and gone. So sit down, while you're at it.

[megatherium]

8. Your vehemence is understandable, but I think Sullivan

deserves a particle more respect than that.

I think the events of September 11 unhinged Sullivan. He was there in NYC and cannot have avoided a visceral reaction. He changed from a garden-variety moderate conservative to a bellicose and vindictive hawk. I have some sympathy for him on that basis, because when the terrorist attacks happened, I wanted war. When the subject of attacking Iraq came up, I was all in favor of it -- and the reason why I favored attacking Iraq was I expected it would lead to a conflagration that would force us to stop pretending we were at war and actually have a (WWII-scale) war, a war that would end the threat from Islam, a threat that would eventually lead to nuclear terrorism if not destroyed. (I read not just Sullivan in those days, but the odious FrontPageNews.com and LittleGreenFootballs. All of these pages frequently highlighted the atrocious human rights records of the Islamic states, as part of a campaign to portray them as a grave menace to the west.) Now by October of 2002, I had realized that the Iraq war was bullshit, that all the stated reasons for it (WMD, al-Qaeda) were lies. I wrote my congressmen before the vote to authorize the war asking them to vote against it. At this late date, I of course believe we must get out of the middle east, completely and permanently; and we should do everything in our power to get off of petroleum (the true cause of the present troubles, and of the storm that is gathering). We can sit out the apocalypse but only with real will.

Sullivan has made some terrible mistakes in his political opinion writing. He can be an asshole. But we should credit him with some blistering writing against the Catholic Church concerning the priest pedophilia/coverup scandals, and the issue of gay marriage. He is a particularly good writer on the latter issue (his personal hypocrisies aside).

[NNadir]

9. Well, I was against the war from the beginning. I knew it wouldn't work.

So did about 600,000 other people who marched in New York against the war. Presumably many people in that crowd had as much experience with 9/11 as the freak Sullivan. In fact some speakers at the protests were members of families who lost people.

Sullivan is a dickhead. Being gay is not an excuse for being a fool, any more than being Italian is an excuse for being a fool.

I note that Paul Krugman did take abuse for being right, some of it from Andy dickhead.

[megatherium]

10. Good for you! I wish I were that wise, that year.

It took me ten months to get a clue.

You're right about Sullivan trashing Krugman. I remember being irritated by that even then. I thought, while reading Sullivan on Krugman, Krugman might be a jerk, but give it a rest already.

[Cha]

11. I remember sullivan ranting and

raving that bush should be elected in 2000 and Gore was just a bore.

He sure didn't know what he was talking about then.

[bemildred]

12. Sullivan is a self-serving egotist.

And he has not been kind to much of anybody that deserved it. There are a bazillion dead and injured from the debacle that he supported, whether because he had an emotional short circuit over the 9/11 attack or not. He deserves to be ignored and humiliated, and that is about it.

[UpInArms]

13. maybe you should have added a bit a poetry to your reading list

back then (I read not just Sullivan in those days, but the odious FrontPageNews.com and LittleGreenFootballs.

There have been many things that many people have been/were aware of about this cabal for years - it's a shame that your reading preferences were so skewed to the right.

What woke you up? (this is not a flame - truly I am merely curious) Your experience might help to find answers to awaken others.

Glad you are with us now, though :hi:

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Rudyard Kipling

[megatherium]

14. I can't say there was anything in particular that woke me up.

But rather a gradual realization that the Bush people were lying about al Qaeda and Iraq, and the realization that a war in Iraq wouldn't accomplish any good. I wanted to believe that 9/11 was the action of a state or states, but I became convinced that there were and are no such linkages. I recall one of my brothers (pro-war) saying "there must be something frightening the Bush administration knows about Iraq that makes it necessary for us to go to war in Iraq," and at first I agreed. But later it become more and more clear that this wasn't the case. The Bush people went into the war with no convincing reason to do so.

Another thing that helped me realize the Bush people are not to be trusted is their conduct in Afghanistan. They hesistated to put significant numbers of US forces on the ground, instead relying on evil warlords to fight for us. This had the result of allowing bin Laden and company to escape. There was this "oh no" moment when there was a "pause" in the fighting for "negotiations." I thought, we've just lost them. Sure enough, they were gone. It was then the attention was turned to Iraq. I realized the Bush people were incompetent if not insincere.

Probably the most important thing in my coming back around to sweetness and light was my network of old friends back west (I visit back home regularly), who helped me understand what the reality was. I also began to read a variety of books that offered good rebuttals and background for the war. (Imperial Hubris, Sleeping with the Devil, Hubbert's Peak, etc.)

The important lesson I think I have learned is that I have to beware of highly emotional situations -- I cannot assume that my ability to think logically will automatically prevail over my tendency to react emotionally to a situation. 9/11 was obviously meant to elicit such responses. I am unclear who perpetrated 9/11 and exactly why, but the leading theory for me is bin Laden wanted to provoke us into an intervention in the Middle East that he knew, like the Russians in Afghanistan, we could not win. If that was his plan, it was brilliant, because that is exactly what is happening.

Thank you for the Kipling.