Appeal Over Years

Nobody who was right about the war will ever be forgiven for it. See Kevin Drum, or much more annoyingly, Megan McArdle: 

This has not convinced me of the brilliance of the doves, because precisely none of the ones that I argued with predicted that things would go wrong in the way they did.

I don't know who she was arguing with. But it wasn't Digby:

I predicted a week ago that the neocon hawks would not give up this fight and they certainly have not. They are zealots and they will do whatever is necessary to advance their cause. According to the Washington Post that includes lying to the President and the public about intelligence and military preparedness.

This is the most dangerous thing I believe we've learned recently. They are underestimating the costs, both financially and militarily, to accomplish their goal of overthrowing Saddam and completely ignoring the subsequent costs of occupation. This betrays a form of magical thinking that will lead this country into graver trouble than we have ever seen. It's one thing to coldly and pragmatically propose an invasion. It's quite another to rely on wishful thinking to accomplish the task.

These people are starting to believe their own lies.

That (1) there was a lot of neocon bullshit being thrown around, and (2) the occupation was being utterly ignored or discussed in fairytale scenarios was always pretty damn obvious. Yeah -- it was all "magical thinking." This wasn't hard to figure out, really -- it's just that pretty much the only people saying this back then were really shut out of public debate to an extreme degree. Hell, there was never any "debate" about the merits of the Iraq war. There was just madness, and a hideous sense that the war was on, no matter fucking what. One of the nadirs of American history.

The key point though, is that the case for war never made any sense at all.

Also, Atrios was probably right that Digby needed to get a blog.
 

Comments

[Interrobang]

Is Digby another Eschaton alumna/us? Good grief, how many blogs is that guy responsible for?

If the phenomenon whereby a server goes down due to a huge increase in traffic from an incoming link from a large site is called the "Slashdot Effect," maybe people taking up blogging because they like to read other people's blogs should be called the Atrios Effect.

On topic, I wish Megan McArdle had been arguing with me. I had this all figured out years ago. Even deep in the throes of mononucleosis, I knew on September 11th, 2001, that there was going to be an invasion of Afghanistan, and I was also pretty friggin' sure by the 12th or so that the US government was going to go after Iraq, too. Why? I'm not sure. Maybe it's something I picked up on subliminally from CNN.

[dave]

Atrios was probably right that Digby needed to get a blog.

Yeah, but he was wrong about Digby being a dude. So everything he says can be ignored.

Advantage: wingnutosphere!

[PC]

Man, back in '02 and '03 I identified as a fucking conservative and I knew invading Iraq was complete horseshit.

[K. Ron Silkwood]

But, did Digby get a blog for the right reason?

[Phila]

Here's another quote from Digby, dated 3/22/03 .

Despite the public relations value of the term “shock and awe,” even if the United States completely levels Iraq in the next week, it will not have the same effect. Throughout the Middle East are excited and outraged young Muslims animated by the idea of fighting the foreign “occupiers.” Does anyone seriously believe that the al-Jazeera pictures of massive bombardment and American ground invasion are not being seen in the exact same context as Israeli troops in Gaza? And the pictures in the coming days, of American troops rolling through cities– even if many of them are being greeted with smiles – are far more likely to evoke the more recent images of Lebanon rather than scenes of European liberation in WWII. (This should have been one very good reason to have engaged in the Israeli Palestinian crisis before last Friday.)

By invading Iraq, virtually alone and with the disapprobation of the vast majority of the world, we have emboldened these jihadists to step up the fight. It should not be forgotten that al-Qaeda believe they were responsible in large part for destroying the Soviet Union.

Seems pretty prescient to me....

[Phila]

It might not be a bad idea to compile all the correct lefty predictions we can find at OBI, come to think of it. Classified under headings, perhaps.

Got a meeting in the AM but I think I'll work on that later in the day.

[Marion Delgado]

I go quite the other way. Megan MacArdle, predictable.

Kevin Drum is a worthless whorish assclown and no sane person should ever bother reading him again.

I would relish a quiet no more Drum movement, actually. Make the prick work for a living.