Way back when, after 9-11, Charles Krauthammer objected to calls for a national debate and, if necessary, a Declaration of War before invading Iraq. “Navel Gazers,” he called the patriots who supported the Constitution.
Well, Dr. K has been contemplating his navel a lot lately. His crystal ball had gone haywire long ago, when his fondest dreams regarding Iraq went crashing on the rocks of reality. Now, the way neocons work is very similar to the Carville-Begala technique of defending Bill Clinton’s serial crimes: “Deny, Deny, Deny — Hey, that’s old news!”
The “old news” is that the Iraq War was lost years ago, alas, and that our country is in the abyss because of the Bipartisan Culture of Profound and Perpetual Prevarication that the war has bequeathed on us. In 2006 and 2008, the voters threw out those they held responsible — miscreants who opened the door wide for the Sainted Holy “O” to waltz in. But Bush, Cheney, Rice, and the entire retired peanut gallery gamely bragged of their pride in their “success” — and yes, of course, they would torture again.
But the secret, hidden reality reeked of failure, and Krauthammer and his pals have been looking for years for someone onto whom to fob off their failures. Finally, Dr. K’s darkened visage lights up anew — It’s Obama’s fault! Obama lost the Iraq War! Obama is the “unserious” malefactor who drove the Iraqis into the arms of the Iranians! Obama was the one who went to the United Nations, not the Congress, nine years ago for a seal of approval of the moral legitimacy of the war. It was Obama, not George Bush, who negotiated the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq’s “Democratic” Government in 2008, the terms of which require U.S. troops to leave Iraq by the end of next month.
There you have it: The Iraq War is Obama’s fault! Down is Up! After all, the dialectic allows all the lies that can fit, but underneath it all lies the sole truth that neocons consider eternal and unchanging: You always have to blame somebody else.
2:10 pm on November 4, 2011
