The Four Unspeakable Truths-What politicians won't admit about Iraq

[babylonsister]

http://www.slate.com/id/2161385/fr/rss/

The Four Unspeakable Truths-What politicians won't admit about Iraq
By Jacob Weisberg

When it comes to Iraq, there are two kinds of presidential candidates. The disciplined ones, like Hillary Clinton, carefully avoid acknowledging reality. The more candid, like John McCain and Barack Obama, sometimes blurt out the truth, but quickly apologize.

For many presidential aspirants, the first unspeakable truth is simply that the war was a mistake. This issue came to a head recently with Hillary Clinton's obstinate refusal to acknowledge that voting to give President Bush the authority to invade Iraq was the wrong thing to do. Though fellow Democrats John Edwards and Christopher Dodd have managed to say they erred in voting for the 2002 war resolution, Clinton is joined by Joe Biden and a full roster of Republicans in her inability to disgorge the M-word. Perhaps most absurdly, Chuck Hagel has called Bush's 21,500-troop "surge" the biggest blunder since Vietnam without ever saying that the war itself was the big blunder and that he favored it.

Reasons for refusing to admit that the war itself was a mistake are surprisingly similar across party lines. It is seldom easy to admit you were wrong—so let me repeat what I first acknowledged in Slate in January 2004, that I am sorry to have given even qualified support to the war. But what is awkward for columnists is nearly impossible for self-justifying politicians, who resist acknowledging error at a glandular level. Specific political calculations help to explain their individual decisions. Hillary, for instance, worries that confessing her failure will make it easier for hawks to savage her if she gets the nomination. But at bottom, the impulse is always the same. Politicians are stubborn, afraid of looking weak, and fearful that any admission of error will be cast as flip-flopping and inconsistency.

A second truth universally unacknowledged is that American soldiers being killed, grotesquely maimed, and then treated like whining freeloaders at Walter Reed Hospital are victims as much as "heroes." John Kerry was the first to violate this taboo when he was still a potential candidate last year. Kerry appeared to tell a group of California college students that it sucks to go and fight in Iraq. A variety of conservative goons instantly denounced Kerry for disrespecting the troops. An advanced sufferer of Senatorial Infallibility Syndrome, Kerry resisted retracting his comment for a while, but eventually regretted what he called a "botched joke" about President Bush.

Lost in the debate about whether Kerry meant what came out of his mouth was the fact that what he said was largely true. Americans who attend college and have good employment options after graduation are unlikely to sign up for free tours of the Sunni Triangle. People join the military for a variety of reasons, of course, but since the Iraq war turned ugly, the all-volunteer Army has been lowering educational standards, raising enlistment bonuses, and looking past criminal records. The lack of better choices is a larger and larger factor in the choice of military service. Our troops in Iraq may not see themselves as cannon fodder or victims of presidential misjudgments, but that doesn't mean they're not.

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[azurnoir]

1. I suspect part of the GOP

Reaganite economic scheme is to keep a certain percentage of "disposable youth" that have no other choices other then between a career as a Walmart greeter and the military. No Child Left Behind is part of that plan as is/was Welfare reform.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Personal favorite is no. 4: the USA has already lost in Iraq.

[bemildred]

3. Good piece.

Kick. The war was lost long ago, when Bremer did his "fantasy makeover" of Iraq.

[John Q. Citizen]

4. One item left unstated in the article is the roll of the voters in the "unspeakable truths."

If the voters rejected the double speak, the timidity, the lack of truth telling, then politicians would, in short order, either start being honest and straight forward or be out of a job.

Also, as long as columists such as Jacob Weisberg continue to ignore politicians who do tell the unspeakable truth (such as Dennis Kucinich, whose name goes unsaid in this article) then where's the incentive for other politicians?

[Demeter]

5. K&R For The Sake of Truth! First I've Seen On Iraq in MSM