Past Performance is Not Necessarily Indicative of Future Results

Many people, me included, have wondered why the media continues to give prominence to the pundits that got the war wrong rather than those who got it right. Jonathan Chait disagrees with this. He makes the argument that although he and others were wrong abut the war, it doesn't mean people should stop listening to them:

We can't surrender to the doves, by Jonathan Chait, LA Times: I don't want to accuse American doves of rooting for the United States to lose in Iraq because I know they love their country and understand the dire consequences of defeat. But the urge to gloat is powerful, and some of them do seem to be having a grand time in the wake of being vindicated.

Radar magazine recently published an article bemoaning the fact that pro-war liberal pundits have not been drummed out of the profession for their error. In it, lefty foreign policy guru Jonathan Schell sniffs, "There doesn't seem to be a rush to find the people who were right about Iraq and install them in the mainstream media."

Being right about something is a fairly novel experience for Schell, and he's obviously enjoying it immensely. But before we genuflect to Schell's wisdom, it's worth recalling that his own record of prognostication is not exactly perfect. ...

What's even sillier is judging someone's foreign policy insight solely based on his or her stance on the last war. Over-learning the lessons of the last war is a classic foreign policy blunder. Yet many liberals want to make the lessons of the Iraq debacle the central basis of American foreign policy. The story in Radar is of a piece with this growing impulse.

But this is the flip side of the same impulse that got us into the current mess. Because the doves made so many bad predictions leading up to the Gulf War — remember the mass uprisings in the Arab world and tens of thousands of U.S. casualties? — many of us ignored warnings this time that proved more prescient.

There are many lessons to be absorbed from Iraq. We'd be foolish not to absorb them; only the most dense war supporter has come away from the experience unhumbled. But the failure of a criminally negligent administration to carry out a highly challenging rebuilding task in the most hostile part of the world does not teach us everything we need to know about the efficacy of military power.

Of course we'll learn lessons from Iraq. I'm worried that we'll learn too much.

Sorry Jonathan, maybe we don't drum you out of the profession -- there aren't simply two extremes where we listen fully or don't listen at all -- but we are going to pay less attention to what you have to say. That's how it to goes when you are wrong about important things. And unlike the parade of polar extremes presented to us in your argument, there are people who have been generally correct all along and I prefer to give more weight to their views than to those who have been so spectacularly wrong.

Update: Spencer Ackerman adds:

never mind what you said, it's what you're buying, by Spencer Ackerman: Jon argues that we shouldn't ignore Iraq hawks because Iraq doves have been less than wise themselves. I agree.

The trouble is that Jon's focus is misconstrued. Using Jonathan Schell as his foil, he writes, "it's worth recalling that his own record of prognostication is not exactly perfect," and proceeds to list some bungled predictions. But predictions are not the issue: the thought process that goes into someone's positions is. ...

That's a more important consideration than someone's record of predictions: the rationale that leads them to such predictions. Remember Al Gore's September 2002 Commonwealth Club speech against the war. Gore was certainly right to oppose the war, but his premises included the desirability of deposing Saddam Hussein -- only this was to occur short of war somehow -- which introduced an element of incoherence to what was, in top-line form, a correct case. By contrast, Richard Clarke had the right argument against the war...

What would make Jon's case a lot clearer would be if he specified what he thinks the lessons of the Iraq war actually are. He says there are several. Sure. But if he says we should learn only some things and avoid learning others, it would be nice to know which is which. Otherwise, one fears that the thinking that led Jon into his support for the war is still alive and enslaving the mind of a really great guy.

Comments

[ECONOMISTA NON GRATA]

It a tragedy. I feel so sorry for those who were wrong on this issue. Aw Chucks those poor commentators who did not get it right... The consequences they must be paying are so severe... It's so unfair....

Now we have those who project that if we leave Iraq that there will be a regional war that will threaten our national security as a nation.... Really...? I don't think so....? Those who have the gift of prophesy should be preaching to the converted.

Anyway it doesn't matter, it is what it is.... and it is a DISASTER, anyway you look at it.

Best regards,

Econolicious

[Peter Schaeffer]

Pat Buchanan and Teddy Kennedy opposed the first Gulf War and this one. The first war was a success and this one has failed. A stopped clock is right on occasion. The only people I would take seriously are those who supported the first war and rejected this one. Who does that include?

[Peter Schaeffer]

The article mentions Al Gore as someone who got both wars right and Kerry as someone who got both war wrong.

[maria]

I would stay focused on THIS war which is the one that has been the disaster. Not supporting the first war was hardly any crime. In retrospect it too might have been a mistake. Please tell me what disaster would have followed had Saddam joined Kuwait to Iraq. The main difference being that the first war had international support and was a "success."
The reason these stupid warmongers for Bush are still around is that the media that employs them don't want to admit they were stupid and very wrong. What can the capitve US TV audience do about it? Little except not watching them, and lots of Americans are so starved for passive entertainment they will watch anything TV offers them.

[maria]

Chait in the New Republic, 9/18/03:

"I was (and remain) a supporter of the war in Iraq."

He was one of the gullible, duped warmongers who got it wrong too, so of course he doesn't want them treated (too) harshly.

[supersaurus]

chait is somewhat knocking over a strawman here. I don't condemn all those who supported the war beforehand just because of that, but I really don't pay much attention to those who have been wrong over and over before, during and after the war began. stack up everything bill kristol (or your favorite right-wing talk show pundit) has written in the last three years and see how it balances against this speech from just before the war started.

[dissent]

The Bush Administration has made me look like a foreign policy genius - hardly a compensation for a human and political catastrophe. But I don't have special access to info, I am merely a somewhat knowledgeable observer. So the real question for the country is what is so wrong in our media and govt that such (historically, politically, and culturally) ignorant analysis could drive us to war?

The pundits who shreiked in the Republican chorus are obviously part of the problem. (Go away, Jonathan Chait.) The failure of State and the CIA to resist political ramrodding is another. The general ignorance of our country about the world outside our borders is another.

I think part of the problem is the Republican ideological wave that has engulfed more and more of the country over the last 30 years. It was always founded on attack rhetoric, morally pretentious (and bogus) hectoring, and fundamentally dubious ideas. As the Republicans consolidated a hold on power, the test of their ideas in the theatre of the real world came to dominate. Things were easier for them when it was just Rove dispatching domestic enemies - just politics. But with the arrogance that comes from success, they went for higher stakes. What has come out in the wash is not just a policy mistake, but a fundamental failure in ideology.

[anne]

http://www.africanamericans.com/MLKjrBeyondVietnam.htm

April 4, 1967

Beyond Vietnam
By Martin Luther King

Riverside Church, New York City

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together, Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement, and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path....

[Movie Guy]

This matter of looking back has nothing to do with looking forward and determining what should be done next, next, and next.

The chestbeaters can waste time and energy looking back until the Sun burns out, but that doesn't change what should considered going forward.

And, yes, there is much more to be worried about going forward.

[Peter Schaeffer]

Maria,

“Please tell me what disaster would have followed had Saddam joined Kuwait to Iraq”

This is meant to be funny, right? Wow, a new international order based on war for conquest. Sure, Iraq takes Kuwait. Brazil get Uraguay and then Argentina. We take Alberta and then the rest of Canada. Russia get Eastern Europe. Germany starts with Austria…

The other disaster is described in detail over at Iraq's Programs to Make Highly Enriched Uranium and Plutonium for Nuclear Weapons Prior to the Gulf War. Iraq would have tested its first bomb by the middle 1990s and amassed a sizeable arsenal by 2000.

[anne]

Yes; there is more to be worried about going forward as Martin Luther King understood in 1967. What is to be worried about is that we continue to needlessly occupy Iraq, when there has been and is so simple a solution.

The solution to the tragic lunacy of occupation would be to leave Iraq immediately. This was the solution almost 4 years ago when the government of Iraq was deposed, and each year and month and week and day since. Simply leave Iraq.

Simply leave the killings, the physical and psychological and moral woundings, the insane was of resources. Simply leave. Remember when John Murtha called for leaving Iraq and was called a cowardly cutter and runner in the House of Representatives almost before the call was ended. Simply leave.

[anne]

Remember how easily, how quickly we entered Iraq. There was no time, Iraq was a mushroom cloud threat bent on mushrooming Cleveland. No time, and we entered and with never a further thought, even when we understood as we should have understood before that there could have been no mushrooms, even when the government was deposed, we chose to occupy Iraq as though Iraq was ours to occupy. Cleveland was safe, but there was more to do and there were so many lunatic reasons to do more and we occupied Iraq and tragedy followed tragedy.

Still, we wonder all this time later what are we to do, what are we to do. Leave, there, leave is what to do. No more viceroys, remember the viceroy, no more surging, no more fantasy mushrooms. Cleveland is safe, even from the dread shudder Iranians. What to do? Leave. How to leave? Ships. Leave.

[calmo]

My Sunday hooting starts with thisHe makes the argument that although he and others were wrong abut the war, it doesn't mean people should stop listening to them: Right. It's not that I'm singing a different tune from everybody else who claim that I'm "off". (I can get over this Setser gem in time people. There is beyond 'right' and mere agreement: there is captivation and Beauty.) Just concentrate on my dissonance and marvel at my sagacity later when it becomes clear to you that the others were merely lucky in the short term.

I'm not going to make it through to the comments at this rateOver-learning the lessons of the last war is a classic foreign policy blunder. Alright stopitrightnow Jon with this "over-learning". Piling it higher when the wagon is full is bound to get your boots full too...shoot man, another paragraph is all the "over-learning" I can take from one so learned. Have you no mercy on your dear reader before you who is dressed only in sandals?

And Mark's merciful summation-- there aren't simply two extremes where we listen fully or don't listen at all -- but we are going to pay less attention to what you have to say. hints at the blinkered spectrum of opinion that we (ok network listeners) have before us. That doesn't include Chomsky, but more importantly, doesn't include anyone without, to borrow the President's word, "aspirational" views. Being 'right' is so yesterday.
"Off" in fact, especially when I consider I have not read my learned colleagues' comments.

[cm]

"Told you so" is different from gloating, which in turn is different from ill-wishing. (That's not to say they cannot occur in combination.) Anybody using the cheap and tired totalitarian rhetorical device of conflating them and molding them into the generic enemy image deserves to have their opinion discounted.

And of course listening to somebody and taking them seriously are different things too.

[calmo]

I am somewhat shaken by the coincidence of dissent's overview and my own. This bitBut I don't have special access to info, I am merely a somewhat knowledgeable observer. paints the canvas the appropriate shade (It is inappropriate to come here with the other view: private insider glow-in-the-dark irrefutable Knowledge; it is also inappropriate to listen to Chait et al as if they were not somewhat elevated, somewhat privy to inside information, somewhat responsible and trustworthy.) So we are trained to be "merely". (Before it was publicly announced by shortie, the word was "humble", but that utterance made it instantly archaic.)
So punishingly slow to grind away with dissent's post, but it is not often I find such a similar focus:So the real question for the country is what is so wrong in our media and govt that such (historically, politically, and culturally) ignorant analysis could drive us to war? Yes, in that order: media and govt. And that is where the Information Age lives: not disseminating the latest advances in science but cultivating the publics opinions. Not really a scientific new age but a political new age that bears a strong resemblance to Orwell's 1984.

[maria]

Looking back has everything to do with "going forward" since it is important to learn from past mistakes. The US didn't do that re Vietnam and it needs desperately to do so with Iraq. The "don't look back" idea is a copout for those stupid enough NOT to have learned from Vietnam to excuse their stupidity and mendacity re Iraq. The last thing these contemptible idiots want is to be held accountable.

[maria]

Peter, it is so easy to be Pentagon-hysterical. So Iraq eventually gets a nuke. So what. Israel has nukes. Nukes are a defensive weapon, not offensive. They protect a nation from what has just happened to Iraq. That is why Iran probably wants them and why N. Korea worked to get them. They have attacked nobody. But the US is sure not attacking N. Korea. It has never attacked a nation with nukes. And if the takeover of Kuwait began a process of Arab unification, so what again. You think a unified Arab nation of Syria, Jordan, Arabia, the minor Gulf states and Iraq would be the end of the world? I think you are probably Israel-hysterical as well as Pentagon-hysterical. Like Americans were communist hysterical for years during the Cold War and thought Russia would conquer the world.

[calmo]

cm, who I read, and listen to, and respect (when I'm not tolerating him) draws those respectable distinctions (between "Told you so" [which I used to consider, gloating], "gloating" and "ill-wishing" [which I presume is short for "you are entitled to your own depraved opinions", but I can be redirected]) and consequent variations and conflations....decides that those who do not make these distinctions in squashing their adversaries are guilty of casting their opponent generically, totalitarianly and deserving of an opinion discount...ie summarily dismissed as boors, as uneducated buffoons unable to make the most primitive distinctions that a priori distinguish the learned from the unwashed. (the unwashed with clubs as their a priori.)
I could be conflating cm's post somewhat, but seriously, this is not about Mr Chait, but his employer.

[maria]

I might add that Israel has nukes as a defense. Even I don't think Israel will use them offensively. If Israel can have nukes as a defensive weapon, why not Iraq or Iran? Or are you in favor of invading and occupying these nations? As we have already done re Iraq BECAUSE it did not have nukes.

[Peter Schaeffer]

Maria,

Saddam invades and annexes Kuwait, builds his nuclear arsenal and then conquers the rest of the Gulf (plus Jordan and Syria). What happens then?

We all live happily ever after?

Almost every country in the world supported the first Gulf War including Iraq's former allies (France, the USSR, Brazil, etc.). Now you want to convince us that really Saddam was a nice guy and should have accommodated. Wow.

[Peter Schaeffer]

Maria,

Perhaps you are forgetting that Saddam launched two unprovoked wars of agression against his neighbors.

[anne]

Imagine, the ghost of Iraq past is risen to haunt us forever more. Wooooo. Beware the ghost of Iraq past, be afraid, be very afraid. I am so afraid. The ghost of Iraq past has risen. Sort of like Jesus only in reverse, I suppose. Remind me to find my cross, any cross. Wooooo.

[slink]

to me

the two gulf war votes can not be sensibly compared

the flat out dead wrong second war is easy
no basis to vote that one into existence

but the first
was not a vote on the right of iraq to annex little K
ted et al were for rolling back the iraqi occupation

like the majority of americans
-- prior to old bush drawing his time line in the sand---
teddy siad try negotiations first
was that non authorizatuion of attack mode
wrong in the way authorizing
the second war's attack mode was wrong??
i'd say no

no yesor no
on the first war's strike vote
was not something
one can evaluate in retro spect
the same way
this occ bog
can be evaluated

with or without a dead saddam
with or without
seized weapons of mass destruction
this yes vote was
WRONG
from the get go

where as the road not travelled in 91 might well have led
to a saddam withdrawal
in fact i'd bet on it
if we got a mulligan

[slink]

file this under
priceless irony:

"the failure of a criminally negligent administration to carry out a highly challenging rebuilding task in the most hostile part of the world does not teach us everything we need to know about the efficacy of military power"

on the surface
totally over loaded statements
like this one

leave me wondering why they got stated
in the first place

but then i realize

oh
he's saying
we could-ha won this one
and
with dutiful smart management
we would-ha

and furthermore
me should-ha

[anne]

"But the failure of a criminally negligent administration to carry out a highly challenging rebuilding task in the most hostile part of the world does not teach us everything we need to know about the efficacy of military power."

Joseph Heller, where are you now that we need you? We are ridden with lunacy.

[anne]

"I don't want to accuse American doves of rooting for the United States to lose in Iraq because I know they love their country and understand the dire consequences of defeat."

Notice the parallel construction:

"There's some good people in our country who believe we should cut and run. They're not bad people when they say that, they're decent people."

- President George Bush

[anne]

Notice then, we know doves are not really rooting for the United States to lose in Iraq; not really rooting; surely doves would never so root, would they, no never, would they, no, well, no?

There's some good people in our country who believe we should cut and run. They're not bad people when they say that, they're decent people. Well, we think they're good and some even say they're decent, though who can tell really, but they must be good and decent, really, they must, must they?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/opinion/l18iraq.html

The Relentless Tragedy Called Iraq

To the Editor:

"Insurgent Bombs Directed at G.I.'s Increase in Iraq":

I can't help but compare your headline with President Bush's bizarre remarks on Wednesday: "There's some good people in our country who believe we should cut and run. They're not bad people when they say that, they're decent people":

"President Joins in G.O.P. Attacks on Democrats About Terrorism".

You better believe I'm a decent person — and a decent mother whose 19-year-old United States Marine son is being deployed to Iraq next month to face a deadly, targeted anti-American insurgency that has nothing to do with the "war on terror."

Why should my son, or any other mother's son, be sacrificed in a mounting civil war because it's not politically advantageous for the Bush administration to admit that its Iraq policy has failed?

My decency is suffused with bitterness.

Donna J. Anton
Hayle, England, Aug. 17, 2006

[cm]

calmo: I don't think those are very subtle distinctions. And I did not imply any notion of commentators being unwashed or uninformed. Nonetheless, branding factual disagreement or pointing out the failure of previously criticized policies as gloating (i.e. there is an element of malicious glee), i.e. morally reprehensible, is a well-known rhetorical device of the sort as which I characterized it.

[calmo]

I B wooed by both slink and anne, but first the update, Mark's edition of Ackerman:Otherwise, one fears that the thinking that led Jon into his support for the war is still alive and enslaving the mind of a really great guy. Now that is so....collegial, downright near friendly, damn near intimate. We may have differences of opinion, but that is only because you are enslaved by madness...it can happen to anyone (just not me, ever).

So beware that madness people. Yes, wooooooooing, like anne says.
Were you woooooed by anne? Very woooey I thought.
Right now I wish I were otherwise engendered to cultivate anne's post rather than smother it. So I'll be quick and hope the damage is minimal: fear is incubated after you have enjoyed the comforts of your mother's attentions. The men have let it be known: fear. The women (ok through anne who could be a cross-dressing poser but carries this little flame valiantly nonetheless) remind us: hope and sustenance.

[ken melvin]

For your listening and viewing pleasure:

http://www.ericblumrich.com/thanks.html

Watched Jill Abramson, Bob Woodward, Gretchen (Fox), … discuss how it was that major media got it so wrong at the onset on CSPAN. Abramson: Knight Ritter got it right because they didn’t have insider access to the administration. Big media got it wrong because they did have access.

Many who weren’t editors, experts, … got it right because they didn’t have a horse in the race. In fact most well informed who didn’t have an agenda on Iraq or Israel got it right.

[ken melvin]

From Josh Marshall:
(January 14, 2007 -- 02:37 PM EST // link)

TPM Reader PS chimes in on our man Fred Kagan ...

Just a note on Fred Kagan – the guy is not an expert on insurgency, civil war, or stability ops. He has a Ph.D in history, with a focus on the 19th century Russian military. His major scholarly book is on Napoleon from 1801-5. From what I can tell, he has no serious background studying the issues that are at the core of his “surge” plan (his AEI bio page is below). So I am completely baffled by the extent to which the media has given him credibility as a “military expert”; one imagines how the surge would have been received if Kagan was accurately identified as “an expert on Napoleon and the early 19th century Russian army.” His CV reveals no publications in refereed history or political science journals in the last decade. Basically the intellectual architect of the surge is an oped/Weekly Standard writer whose only substantive expertise is on Napoleon. Great. . . .

And it gets better.

BelgraviaDispatch notes that Kagan seems to have trimmed his necessary number for the surge from 80,000 to 30,000 over the three and a half weeks from early to late December. They've got him kowtowing so bad you'd think the White House were a tenure committee.

And if he's a Napoleon expert, what does he say about the Peninsular War.

Late Update: TPM Reader SR speaks up in Kagan's defense: "Your downplay of Kagan as a military expert is baseless, he stayed at the Holiday Inn last night."
-- Josh Marshall

[js paine]

ken m
love it

[maria]

Bush finally admitted he was a drunk (alcoholic), so what is keeping him from admitting he is a screw-up as President who has lost a war? How long did it take him to admit his alcohol addiction? Maybe that will be how long it will take him to admit the failure of his war and his administration. Anybody know?

[DILBERT DOGBERT]

Jonathan Chait and others like him are smart, they see the handwriting on the wall and are preparing the ground for the next battle when the helicopters are removing personnel from the green zone.
It will all be the critics fault and he will be proven right.
Watch the ground being prepared over the next two years. It will get interesting.

[maria]

Yeah the 'surrender monkeys' and 'weaklings' "lost" Vietnam and that will be the lesson lots of similar types will now take away from Iraq.

says...

anne - "Imagine, the ghost of Iraq past is risen to haunt us forever more. Wooooo. Beware the ghost of Iraq past, be afraid, be very afraid. I am so afraid. The ghost of Iraq past has risen. Sort of like Jesus only in reverse, I suppose. Remind me to find my cross, any cross. Wooooo."

How can a college graduate, let alone an elist university graduate, write such childish gibberish?

[anne]

Actually, I was rather pleased with the riff and need to try another. When the spectre of Iraq threatening America was raised, you see, now there was gib gib gibberish, but we listened and never a laugh and gibberish is gibbering still. Notice how intimidated I am.

We must leave Iraq, immediately.

[anne]

Remember, we are near the birthday of Martin Luther King and though we do not have King to speak to us tomorrow, he spoke for us when he could and we know of what he would be speaking now, likely even of what he would have spoken on this birthday.

[anne]

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmountaintop.htm

April 3, 1968

I've Been to the Mountaintop
By Martin Luther King

Memphis, Tennessee

And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you. You know, several years ago I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?" And I was looking down writing and I said, "Yes."

The next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured you're drowned in your own blood; that's the end of you. It came out in The New York Times the next morning that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died.

Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheelchair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the president and the vice-president; I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the governor of New York, but I've forgotten what that letter said.

But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at the letter and I'll never forget it. It said simply, "Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School." She said, "While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze."

And I want to say tonight, I want to say tonight that I, too, am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed , I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they are sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy, which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in interstate travel.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent.

If I had sneezed, if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation and brought into being the civil rights bill.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.

If I had sneezed,I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great movement there.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze....

[anne]

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmountaintop.htm

April 3, 1968

Well, I don't know what will happen now; we've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life - longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight , that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy tonight; I'm not worried about anything; I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

[anne]

Funny, I have to think that Martin Luther King being happy that he didn't sneeze was preaching such as has rarely been heard since there was preaching. So, we can think of King not sneezing and what he did after now sneezing and think of where he might be leading now and follow at least a little.

[evagrius]

I don't know what Kagan is thinking.

There's a difference between the Little Corporal and "Chimpy"- something known as intelligence, ( even if the Little Corporal made a final last mistake-it was a real gamble, made on real grounds. Chimpy's a gambler but he bets just to bet).

[Noni Mausa]

movie guy said:

"This matter of looking back has nothing to do with looking forward and determining what should be done next, next, and next." Nope, nope and nope.

There's a difference between "fighting the last war" and learning from experience.

By and large in similar situations people will militarily and politically behave exactly the way they did in previous situations. This goes for small-scale and large-scale situations. Unless they are saints or monsters or there is some hidden factor to change the balance, people's response is as sadly predictable as actuarial heart attack rates.

The pivotal part is knowing which situation you're facing. To do this requires good intelligence, accurate memory of what has gone before, experienced advisors, and the willingness to look at what's really there and act accordingly.

Which earthly virtue would that be -- prudence, isn't it?

The current US administration might have a), but b), c) and d) seem a little lacking.

Noni

says...

"Anne" - stick with urban vermin and Vanguard spam. Your immature actions ruin this board.

[Richard]

During Gulf(1) I said nothing, though I had a bad feeling about it. It turned out better than I expected.

When we went into Afghanistan I felt the move was overly aggressive, but I said nothing about it as well.

When Gulf(2) was in the all-too-obvious planning stages I took to the streets, protesting in D.C. and Chicago.

This would seem to make me a foreign policy expert without parallel in the U.S. Senate. With a record like that I should consider office.

Yet my criteria was quite simple:

Gulf(1) involved a violation of international law, a united security council and a broad concensus worldwide. And while nationalism in the Middle East was a concern, there was evidence at the time that the issues of the Palestineans would be addressed after Gulf(1), so a reasonable policy was involved.

After 9/11 there was again broad support for a rule of law and for intervening in Afghanistan. With broad support and a small number of needed forces, the policy again seemed to be reasonable.

But Iraq was and is different. There was no concensus. Internationally there was enormous opposition, and even within the U.S. support was quite mild. Virtually no credible security council mandate backed the action, the supporting coalition was badgered into it and the evidence provided for WMD was dubious and constantly shifting.

I offer this in the same spirit that dissent did: not because I am brilliant but because the reasons for opposing this war were so mundane, and because, as far as I know, there is not one commentator who was presented who offered such a mundane and moderate analysis. Instead, the most extreme opinions from either side were presented, giving us a nice game of poultry fighting while denying us a modest presentation that might well have been more informative.

And if there is a reason to revisit the early days of the war, it is not to crow about prescient but to insist again on the primacy of political and economic and demographic information, to insist upon the return of real experts in the state department and in front of the TVs and interviewed in the papers. Please, haven't we had enough of the pundits from think tanks?

[calmo]

Anony, just a hint: this isn't a football game where you heckle just to attract attention.
(Please don't construe this as heckling anonymously.)
If you had a speck of a brain cell working for you, you might realize that behind anne's message (Leave Now) is a different voice than the adolescent one (revisit one of your posts) of winning the match, proclaiming some triumph over some adversary...at all costs. It is the little boys at play...at the only game they know.

[CL- Oregon Girl]

The problem wasn't that a pundit or two got it wrong. A shitload got it wrong. And when people mentioned that perhaps this wasn't such a sunny idea we got called traitors, we were helping the tarrists etc...

It made me finally understand how Nazism was possible.

So how do we regard these vaulted pundits now?

[CL- Oregon Girl]

err change "vaulted" to "vaunted"

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=7064&exhibition=7&ee_lang=eng&u=104413,1

Barrow's Goldeneye
Bayard Cutting Arboretum, Long Island.

Thank you, Calmo.

[calmo]

Not that you need my defense anne, but that I need to follow maria's example of exercising the broom on this growing site against newcomers whose maturity is demonstrated by 'anonymous' and whose posts are no more informing than the barking of dogs.

[nonanonomo]

Calmo, your presense is broom enough to sweep away newcomers. anne too does a fine job of disincentivizing return visits.

[Lafayette]

CLOG: “So how do we regard these vaulted pundits now?”

(Vault them over the parapet?

You seem to think that Americans believed them in the first place. He does not disagree overtly, agrees covertly.

Americans were so confused at first that they could have thought that Hussein was indeed bin Laden's best friend. After all, aren't they all same, those towel-heads?

You can't say you weren't warned. Jacques Chirac, President of France, had a long heart-to-heart with Dubya when it was obvious that the latter wanted regime change in Iraq. Chirac warned him of the complexity of the situation (particularly the ethnic strife between the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis).

Dubya deigned not to listen.