When Neo-Cons Attack
By Callimachus | Related entries in General Politics, In The News, Smart Things Said By Smart People, The Plame Game, The War On TerrorismNorman Podhoretz, the arch-Neo-Con, pushes back against those who would turn the Fitzgerald probe into an indictment of the rationale for the Iraq war (i.e., “most Democrats”). He lays the cards on the table, both about Joe Wilson’s Niger adventure and the state of pre-war WMD intelligence. It’s not so much a constructed argument as a litany of facts and quotations that the other side finds it inconvenient to remember.
His conclusion throws down the gauntlet:
In his press conference on the indictment against Libby, Patrick Fitzgerald insisted that lying to federal investigators is a serious crime both because it is itself against the law and because, by sending them on endless wild-goose chases, it constitutes the even more serious crime of obstruction of justice. By those standards, Wilson�who has repeatedly made false statements about every aspect of his mission to Niger, including whose idea it was to send him and what he told the CIA upon his return; who was then shown up by the Senate Intelligence Committee as having lied about the forged documents; and whose mendacity has sent the whole country into a wild-goose chase after allegations that, the more they are refuted, the more they keep being repeated�is himself an excellent candidate for criminal prosecution.
And so long as we are hunting for liars in this area, let me suggest that we begin with the Democrats now proclaiming that they were duped, and that we then broaden out to all those who in their desperation to delegitimize the larger policy being tested in Iraq�the policy of making the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracy�have consistently used distortion, misrepresentation, and selective perception to vilify as immoral a bold and noble enterprise and to brand as an ignominious defeat what is proving itself more and more every day to be a victory of American arms and a vindication of American ideals.
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November 10th, 2005 at 6:31 pm
Podhoretz is equating a lie to a Grand Jury with a lie to the press or the country. I don’t think he really wants to go down that road. The cost of prosecuting every politician who lies would bankrupt the country.
Lying to the people is not a crime. Lying to a Grand Jury is. I can still hear the echo of all those loud Republican assertions on that point — when it was being applied to Bill Clinton and a bj. Bill Clinton lying about sex is a crime, Scooter Libby lying about outing a CIA agent is not. Sorry, but the GOP burned their bridges on this one.
Of course there is one big difference: there was no underlying crime in the Clinton case. Not just no provable underlying crime, but no crime period. In this case there is an underlying crime alleged, and that crime is of a reasonable degree of importance.
If the alleged crime were child molestation, and we had evidence that a person suspected of that crime was misleading investigators and perjuring himself in front of a Grand Jury in such a way that it made proving the underlying crime impossible, would we not prosecute? Would we have Podhoretz desperately theorizing away in an effort to pooh pooh that sort of perjury prosecution?
November 10th, 2005 at 8:06 pm
Is it possible — just barely possible — that Bush, like nearly everyone else who was seriously trying to read what was going on in Iraq, thought there was a very good chance that the intelligenct that suggested Saddam had a WMD program and an arsenal of banned weapons was more likely correct than the intelligence that hinted he didn’t? In other words, that Bush didn’t lie, since lying involves deliberately saying the opposite of what you know to be true? Which is a main thrust of NP’s article.
November 10th, 2005 at 8:53 pm
Yeah, I’ve never adopted the “he lied” approach. In fact, before the election in my earlier blog I was screaming for Dems to drop the line — it was unprovable, probably false, and in any case politically ineffective. I was promoting the “incompetence” line of attack early, and it’s still what I believe.
What the Bushies should have done is take Wilson on simply and directly. Instead they (allegedly) went after the man’s wife. Then (allegedly) lied to a Grand Jury about going after the man’s wife.
Bush and his people have a core contempt for the little people. So did his father, incidentally, but 41 had that Brahmin gentility thing working for him, softening the edge of his condescension. Don’t forget Jim Baker’s pitiful explanation of Gulf War 1 as being about “jobs.”
W’s sneer is more blatant, and less well-earned. He’s not as smart as his father, not as experienced, not as wise, and not, incidentally, a war veteran.
W’s justification for this war was dishonest — it was always about remaking the middle east, in my opinion — and he simply did not trust the American people with that rationale. I think W pushed the WMD line because he thought it likely to be true, and because, by focusing on it, he could hype that fear and get the public reaction he wanted. Dishonest, contemptuous and manipulative, but not a lie per se.
November 10th, 2005 at 9:31 pm
I’d essentially agree with that assessment. But then I think “remaking the Middle East” is a good thing, in principle, if it is done with some attention and enthusiasm. Good for us, good for them, good for the future of the world. By “good,” in this case I mean “better than the alternative of doing nothing.”
As for a “dishonest, contemptuous and manipulative” justification for war, well, again, that only elevates our current incumbent to the company of Madison, Lincoln, and Wilson, which he does not deserve.
“Incompetent” would have worked much, much better on me than “lied” or “blood for oil” did.
November 10th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
I agreed with the neo-con, Tom Friedman, “remake the M.E.” idea. My anger comes out of the incompetence of the execution. There was nothing wrong with the idea, but you need to get the people behind you. If they feel like they’ve been bs’ed they’ll abandon you if things go badly. The voters are a bit less naive than they were in 1812, 1860 or even 1918. The voters have Vietnam in their DNA now. They should have been given the whole story. If they had been, and had made the decision to go forward, they would have been solid as rocks.
I’ve noticed that the Dems have drifted to the “incompetence” attack line over the last few months. They couldn’t manage it earlier because the Left needed an angrier message. They confuse passion with effectiveness. They enjoy being angry to no real purpose. One of the reasons my party has lost the House, the Senate and the White House.
November 10th, 2005 at 10:36 pm
Whether or not you believe that Bush lied is irrelivant in this situation, and I don’t understand why the Rep’s keep defending the reason for going to war. The Libby thing really has little to do with the war and more to do with defending the reasons they gave for going to war. It doesn’t matter if they thought they were correct in their intelligence assesments, just that they lied about what they said and to whom. Which of course makes you question why they had to lies, hence the question of this administration’s credibility. If you don’t want people to think you lied, then don’t lie, or at least don’t get caught lying. About anything.
November 10th, 2005 at 10:44 pm
Michael’s first post is right on the money. Wilson may have lied, but that was no crime.
Cal, I don’t know if you ever read my rant when you posted a week ago saying that Plame had it out for Bush when she was at the CIA. Regardless, it was a five star rant, and I still don’t know why Wilson’s or Plame’s credibility is relevant at this point in time. Libby still lied. Saddam didn’t seek uranium from Niger. Wilson’s credibilty has no effect on the cases against Libby and Rove. Why do you keep attacking Wilson and Plame’s credibility at this stage in the game? Why does it matter?
Also, thanks for the Larry the Cable guy warning. That helped alot.
November 10th, 2005 at 11:06 pm
Huh?
Saddam did seek uranium from Niger.
That was established, among other places, in the Report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction and in The Privy Counsellors’ Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction (the “Lord Butler Report�). The links are to the relevant excerpts.
It was typical of the Bush administration that, when it went out in public to say this, it managed to cite the one forged document on the matter. That doesn’t make the case wrong. There were plenty of other legit sources on the contact between Iraq’s ambassador to the Vatican and the Niger government, and they’re outlined in the links above.
Lying to a grand jury is a crime, and that’s why I’m eager to see Joe Wilson testify under oath to all the BS he’s been spewing.
I didn’t say if Plame had it out for Bush or not. I have no idea. But I think it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
Libby may well have lied, but that doesn’t mean Wilson’s credibility is not an issue. Why the false dichotomy?
There are those who want to leapfrog over Libby and make this a Nuremberg Trial of the Bushies.
Michael, if the Democrats are going to move on to “incompetence,” that’s a sort of evolution.
But it seems they’re doing it without resolving the split in their base, over whether the war was the right move, competence or not, and whether to keep arguing about that or to just accept it as a fact of life. That’s going to pull the rug out from under “incompetence” as a political rallying cry.
Here’s an example. The other challenge they have is building a positive message on the negative cry of “incompetence.” You can get a certain distance on simply pointing out your opponent’s faults, but you really need to give the people something to convince them you can be less incompetence, otherwise you’re just asking the voters to trade one set of stumble-bums for another.
But how can the Democrats do that? They’d have to “own” this war. They’d have to embrace it, and make it their own. Did John Kerry want to enter the White House and devote four years to being the clean-up crew pushing the brooms behind GWB’s visionary idea? Who would go down in history as a great president for that?
With so much of their base rooted in hatred of the very idea of this war, the Democrats, I’m afraid, would be about as good at a competent Iraq strategy as Bush’s inner circle would be at teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution.
November 10th, 2005 at 11:10 pm
To spare you a lot of link-whoring, here’s the relevant conclusion from the Lord Butler report:
November 11th, 2005 at 5:54 am
Whoa there!
Whatever else you say, this part seems to have a problem:
— and that we then broaden out to all those who in their desperation to delegitimize the larger policy being tested in Iraqâ€â€?the policy of making the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracyâ€â€?
Are we not supposed to have a democracy here in the US already? I don’t think the average US citizen would be very likely to vote for this policy. By all means add it to the platform for 2006 or 2008, and then we can find out. But until then, it is not possible to delegitimize something that has not been legitimized in the first place.
BTW PODHORETZ (if you read this): You KNOW this already. Don’t you have problem with writing something you know is fallacious, just to influence people who are not as smart as you? Is it different from bullying somebody just because you are stronger? Is that OK for you too?
November 11th, 2005 at 6:45 am
Callimachus:
If you’re waiting around to see me defend the rationality, conistency, or even political prospects, of the Democratic Party you’ll have a long wait.
November 11th, 2005 at 9:56 am
-With so much of their base rooted in hatred of the very idea of this war, the Democrats, I’m afraid, would be about as good at a competent Iraq strategy as Bush’s inner circle would be at teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution.-
Cal- the question isn’t whether the Dems would be good at cleaning up Bush’s mess. The question is how could they do worse than Bush? Even conservatives are starting to concede that Bush has mishandled this war, and if you don’t want me to Blame Bush, I’ll close my eyes and spin around at most anyone in his administration. This war is a catastrophe, and whether you think the reasons for war are justified or not, the fact remains that Bush and friends are the root cause of this problem? Or is that Kerry’s fault for questioning the war? Or maybe Clinton’s fault for not creating the need for this war 6yrs ago. When will Bush or his league of supporters, apparently you included, Cal, take responsibility for the handling of this War?
This then questions, What’s wrong with the war? Insufficient troop strength to prevent the large insurgency that people (outside this administration) expected. Failure to equip the troops properly body armor, and vehicle armor. Cronyism in rewarding millitary contracts, and then the mishandling of those contracts so that even today, some people in Iraq spend most of the day without electricity, if they don’t have their own Generater. It’s been 2-1/2 years after the end of Major Combat. Saddam had power back up two months after the First Iraq war (Go ahead blame Saddam for letting the Power system go into disrepair). That is the failure of this war, that they were so anxious to get into this action, that they did not take time to properly prepare for war. Saddam’s threat was not Imminent!!! Even not knowing that there were no WMD. Saddam was not buddies with the terrorist like the Righties want to try to portray, and if anything compared to the rest of the middle east (particularly Bush’s family friends the Saudi’s), Saddam had nearly no connection to terrorism. So with no imminent threat to this country, why the rush. Perhaps because their reasons for going to War were not strong enough, and if they waited their reasons would become weakened with actual proof that could have been discovered through time? Thus the reason why they kept on rotating, switching, offering up other reasons for the NEED for this war. If they waited, they would have lost popular support for the War, and hence the need to rush into this war.
November 11th, 2005 at 11:27 am
So why do people rip on Joseph Wilson’s credibility?
I said that his credibility is irrelevant to the Rove/Libby case and you didn’t dispute this. Beyond that, he is only relevant to the Niger uranium issue. I said that Saddam didn’t seek uranium, when I should have said that Wilson is only relevant to the issue of whether the administration should have believed the documents that claimed that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger. The fact that the basis for that alleged purchase was phoney is undisputed regardless of Wilson’s credibility.
So, Wilson is a liar. Why would it matter at this point? What issue does his credibility have bearing on?
By the way, I concede that there is credible evidence that Iraq sought uranium from Niger.
November 11th, 2005 at 11:57 am
John,
In a word, poppycock.
Let’s see: Saddam’s army defeated and dispersed, all of Iraq liberated in a few weeks, the dictator overthrown and awaiting trial. Fewer battle casualties than in a single bad day of WWII. I’d say the war was a glorious success.
The insurgency is a major problem. The administration’s post-war planning was weak and insufficient. The degree of social and material degradation in the country wrought by years of Saddam’s rule and sanctions was underestimated. Some people in the administration as well as out of it wanted to see more troops in combat from the beginning.
But please inform me of exactly which people outside the administration said, before March 2003, you’ll need more than 150,000 American troops to keep the country pacified and prevent an insurgency? That’s the typical retro-triumphalism that drives NP and me nuts in this case.
I’d call that a case of not realizing the troops would have dire need of such things until the need arose, and then moving with bureaucratic slowness to rectify the problem. But that’s not unique to this war. It’s true of all of them.
Exactly how many companies in the world are capable of fulfilling such large-scale contracts, and then find one of them that is not entwined politically with the American leadership class? You can’t let Ben & Jerry’s handle dam reconstruction.
I’m not even going to bother after this point. You want to blame Busie and Halliburton for the lack of electricity, without reference to the insurgent rockets that blow up generators and power plants and pipelines on a routine basis. Everything is America’s fault, always, right? Simply has to be. Chomsky and Moore told you so.
In other words, that they didn’t haul out crystal balls and tarot cards and accurately see the future and prepare for every evolution of it.
I’ll agree the reconstruction has been botched worse than it need be, and that the administration has a stunning propensity for gaffes. Same was true of the American Civil War. But you so far overstate the matter, in a hell-bent effort to make “Bushies” and “Righties” the sum of all evil and the war to overthrow Saddam a decision that only a criminal or a lunatic could make, that your position veers into parody.
Is it possible for you to even conceive someone who didn’t vote for Bush in 2000, and only reluctantly did so in 2004, who supports this war?
Socks, thank you for your non-admission admission that you were wrong.
November 11th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
Thank you for your series of evasions, misdirections and non-answers. You’re more slipperly than Wilson himself.
November 11th, 2005 at 1:11 pm
Cal:
Sorry, but this was is not a glorious success. Afghanistan was. (Though success was bought in part by allowing the country to become a narco state.)
Iraq was only the illusion of success. The strategic goal was to occupy and reform Iraq, not just to topple Saddam. The planning should have looked beyond the initial battle. It didn’t. Brilliant invasion followed by incompetent occupation does not equal success. Not when the failure of part B invalidates part A.
Some problems with the theory that we’re doing well:
Right now, because of this mess we have less credibility in the region. I don’t mean diplo-speak, mush-word “credibility,” I mean the ability to scare the Iranians and the Syrians with the credible threat of military force. Iran and Syria can see for themselves that we are militarily overcommitted. They know full well Bush can’t launch another invasion. The same is very much true of North Korea. Rather than terrifying our enemies, we showed them our limits.
We displaced Al Qaeda from much of remote, impoverished Afghanistan and gave them a new home in centrally-located, potentially wealthy Iraq. Terrorists are getting far superior training now, and in far larger numbers. At the same time they are learning that we are not ten feet tall, that we can be killed.
This war can still be a success if the Iraqis put together a stable, pro-western government and avoid civil war, and avoid a Kurdish secession, and manage to get control of their borders, and manage to neutralize Iranian influence, and keep the Zarqawi group from exporting terror. (Oops, too late.) Right now, though, because of the administration’s utter incompetence in prosecuting phase 2 of this war we have lost the strategic initiative and are left to hope that the Iraqis rescue us. We are left dependent on the performance of a country that hasn’t done anything right since Babylon freed the Hebrews.
November 11th, 2005 at 2:06 pm
Cal-
Glorious success? Are you so blinded by your own incapability to question what happened regarding this war to see the truth? Why did we rush to war? Because they knew that their case for war was weak. Why did they try to vehemently discredit anyone that dare oppose them? To defend their weak case. I’m saying that if they did not have tunnel vision on this matter, and a gross indifference for others opinions, the administration would have went to war with the army they needed not the army they had! The invasion, I agree was a great success, and you have never heard me compare this War to Vietnam, It is not. However, If they had done some planning beyond let’s get Hussein we can kick his ass, We could have liberated Iraq, quelled the insurgency, and got the hell out, within 5 years. This is so fucked up, we will be there at least 10 years, defending this gov’t that only looks like a puppet gov’t because we have to be there for at least 10 years. This is not a success, it had the potential of success, but Bush and Crew dropped the ball. Minimize death tolls all you want, but I’d rather Bush had waited 1 year to plan, supply, equip, and train troops for a war he was going to wage regardless. If the death toll was 1000 less young men and women dead it would have been worth it. Now civilian wise, if it were 30,000 less I would have been happy. 30,000 is a lot of people, that if this administration would have planned beyond the invasion itself could have kept from dying. Now we have a country in shambles, no end in sight, and the middle east is more divided, millitant and confrontational than ever. Your glorious success seems to be based on the ousting of Saddam Hussein. If that’s what you consider success, then you got it. Meanwhile I’m waiting till Bush is gone, so we can fix this mess that he and you refuse to acknowledge.
November 11th, 2005 at 4:28 pm
You all are conflating “war” with “reconstruction.” Both Iraq and Afghanistan were spectacularly successful wars. The reconstruction in both cases has been plagued by problems. In part because this administration only reluctantly took on that job and had no idea what it would take. If we had never invaded Iraq, we’d be having this same brawl about Afghanistan.
I said, and wrote, before the Iraq invasion that it would be 20 years before we knew if it was a good idea. We’ve got 17 and a half to go.
November 11th, 2005 at 4:55 pm
Cal -
I’m sorry, but that’s pitiful. You’re going to try and go with the “mission accomplished” time line? First comes war, then comes reconstruction — during which time we still have lots of fighting and dying?
This is a terrific, smart blog, but on this Callimachus, you are not remotely convincing.
It’s as if the Japanese had defined December 7th as “the war” and announced it a success. “War” is the whole thing, from invasion through victory or defeat. The issue of victory or defeat is not yet decided. The war is on-going. What you are calling a war might properly be called an invasion, but not every successful invasion becomes a successful war. The Germans did a lovely job invading Russia, but did not win that war. Ditto the Japanese in China, the Russians in Afghanistan, and so on.
November 11th, 2005 at 6:44 pm
So, um, when did the American Civil War end? Apparently, by your rules, the answer is “never.”
November 11th, 2005 at 6:57 pm
First comes war to overthrow Saddam, then comes reconstruction AND insurrection/terrorist infiltration aimed at undermining the reconstruction and the new government.
No, it isn’t. They hadn’t invaded an inch of American soil and Roosevelt was still president.
Saddam still might win?
But never conquered it, never took Moscow or overthrew Stalin. It would be as though the U.S. invasion of Iraq was turned back at the gates of Baghdad.
and ditto the “never conquered it.” And the Sino-Japanese war is counted as a different war that rolled into World War II, or else we’d be starting WWII, in our history books, in the mid-30s. Wars are not the discrete entities you want them to be.
November 11th, 2005 at 8:28 pm
And the Germans and and the french, Cal. I’m sure you hate them, but they were fighting an insurection during their occupation. They did conquer them as much as we have conquered the Iraqis. You are shitting on Reynolds argument which is as nonsense as your own. We overthrew Saddam, by your standards, that’s it. We could have left? War over? That’s ridiculous, and so is your argument. A war is not over until there is no resistance (WW1-WW2), or you leave (Vietnam). Any thing else is, ummm poppycock. Who talks like that?
November 11th, 2005 at 8:46 pm
Cal:
I’m sorry, but your argument is absurd. Are you actually maintaining that the Iraq War is over? That’s your position? That it is over? Do you think anyone buys that? Do you think the 130,000 American soldiers and Marines over there buy that? Even President Bush doesn’t make that kind of claim, on the contrary, he continually reminds us that we are in the middle of a war. Not a reconstruction, a war.
You are torturing language and logic in a doomed attempt to justify your position. Rather than back off ill-chosen language you’re digging the hole ever deeper.
The war is not over. I know it, you know it, the military knows it, the Iraqis know it, the administration knows it. To continue to push the notion that the war has somehow ended and can now be assessed as a completed event, is to sacrifice all credibility.
I really like this blog, Cal. And I would far rather see you back off and admit that you’ve taken an untenable position, than leave this standing this way. We all find ourselves blundering into intellectual dead ends at timees, and the only thing to do in those circumstances is to say, “You know what, I was wrong, I’ve rethought this.” I did it many times. No one burned me at the stake for it.
November 11th, 2005 at 9:05 pm
John:
That’s it. I’m officially done talking to you. Good riddance.
Michael:
OK, there’s no need to devolve into scholastic absurdities. My concern was that my statement, way back up there, that
was being misunderstood by you and some others to mean “the entire American experience in Iraq,” when I meant “the war (er, sorry, battle/chapter/campaign, what you will) to defeat the Iraqi military and overthrow the Saddam dictatorship.”
I hope that makes things more clear.
It means nothing to my positions on anything except the desire not to be held accountable for thiongs I do not say.
Historians don’t have a consistent working definition of a “war” with beginning and end points, therefore the streams of battle and conflict over time are randomly regarded as one war or many.
A series of titanic wars between Athens and Sparta, punctuated by treaties and even cooperative periods, is lumped together as the Peloponnesian War, while a similar series of conflicts between Rome and Carthage is regarded as a plural: the Punic Wars.
The bewildering and continuous series of wars and insurrections and mutinies and insurgencies that characterize the British conquest of India are not considered a single war. The separate conflicts in Korea and Vietnam are regarded as individual wars in one sense, and as aspects of the Cold War in another.
What we call the Seven Years’ War is also, correctly, the Third Silesian War. An episode in a larger conflict, not a discrete war.
In the American Civil War, the North militarily defeated the South, then imposed a regime on it that the South resisted, through a period of extreme violence, Klan insurrection and Union League counter-insurgency, and eventually the North gave that up. Former Confederates returned to control of their states and reimposed the old social codes on the South. Yet history only acknowledges one Civil War, which ended in April 1865. Yet you could perhaps forgive African-Americans for seeing that as just one incomplete campaign in a long, violent struggle.
And so forth. I have no idea whether future historians will regard the American experience in Iraq as two wars, one war, two wars and an insurrection, or some other combination. Let them decide. Come back in 50 years and we’ll see who’s right.
I don’t think my reading of it is illegitimate. But if it to be persistently misunderstood, I’ll drop it here.
November 11th, 2005 at 9:21 pm
Sorry I pissed you off Cal, but let’s face it you have no problem trying to run over everyone else with your ideas. I at least expected some sort of convaluted explanation to how there is no parallel to the Germans occupying France. But I suppose walking away is easier.
November 12th, 2005 at 7:31 am
I like it when we all kiss and make up. You know, in a totally macho, virtual, non-sexual, platonic sort of way.
Good point actually about the US Civil War. I woke up today prepared to make a different case: that what the capture of Jeff Davis was analogous to the capture of Saddam, but what we lacked in this war was the genuine surrender of Lee and other commanders. But you’re right, the Klan and similar groups did carry on armed resistance for a while, though Lee and the professional army wisely refused to countenance any such thing. It’s an imperfect analogy — historical analogies always are — but worth thinking remembering.
October 30th, 2007 at 7:07 am
hello…
will read it later…