New Conventional Wisdom: Iraq the Greatest Error in U.S. History

by on June 20, 2008 20

Just wanted to register the fact that last night on Chris Matthews, former Oklahoma Sen. David Boren, now in Obama's foreign policy kitchen, described Iraq as the greatest mistake in American history. Don't have the quote. Someone else said the same thing the other day. Forget who. But note that Iraq used to be merely the worst foreign policy mistake of the last 40 years, or post-Vietnam, or some such. Which remains my opinion. The latest seems hyperbolic, but a good sign for those of us who long to hear the tumbrils rumbling thru the streets of Georgetown…

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Iraq, US Politics

{ 20 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. samuel burke says:
    June 20, 2008 at 11:18 am

    Phil, i am beginning to see that there is going to be a new criminal category developing among your community..first it was self hating jews and now we have….entirely assimilated young and ever young jews.

    phil are you a criminal ever young jew?
    witty seems to want to tag you with that one.

    It may diminish in the minds of entirely assimilated young (and ever-young) Jews, that don't have children or religious practises, and the requisite shift to affinity.

    jews are afraid to look under the hood of their zionist project because its ugly in there.

  2. Rupa Shah says:
    June 20, 2008 at 2:01 pm

    Senate majority leader Harry Reid told NPR, it was the biggest foreign policy blunder in the nation's history. That was in January 2007. And I have heard him say that again since then.

    January 11, 2007 Contact:
    Emily Lenzner, NPR
    |
    SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID (D-NV)
    CALLS THE SITUATION IN IRAQ
    “THE BIGGEST FOREIGN POLICY BLUNDER
    IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY”
    ON NPR NEWS ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
    TODAY, THURSDAY JANUARY 11
    AUDIO AVAILABLE AT WWW.NPR.ORG

  3. Ozzie Maland says:
    June 20, 2008 at 2:48 pm

    Eight years ago I formed an opinion about historical worst moves in the US — my comment at the NYTimes online started out:

    Hitchens' review of Summers' book on Nixon suggests that Nixon's scuttling of Vietnam War peace talks in '68 amounted to the most
    wicked act in our history.

    Later I read somewhere about John Adams giving a speech to the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa chapter in 1821, in which he said that if the US ever adopted a policy of putting down monsters in foreign countries, it would lose its soul. What shrub did in attacking Iraq was less defensible than Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, because Japan at least picked on a dangerous opponent. Also, Japan had not been the instigator of a United Nations for which the first principle was the avoidance of the scourge of war. The neocons' endorsement of proactive intervention amounted to the policy of putting down foreign monsters which Adams warned against. My vote for worst move in US history goes to shrub, and Adams was right — only a soul-less country would produce a megacultural glorification of a serial killer and then further honor the production with best actor and best picture awards.
    –
    Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego

  4. Charles Keating says:
    June 20, 2008 at 3:47 pm

    Our contractors (who make 6X what a soldier makes for the same job) in Iraq, whom are soldiers trained. are our Hessians.
    But the Hessians were bound by laws, and fealty to their local royalty, and did not come from a land of opportunity like the modern UDA….McCain doesn't want to give our soldiers the GI bill for college unless they've already re-upped. Hold out the carrot to retain the cannon-fodder–no kudos for those original
    patriotic enlistments–no college education for U! How much irony can a simple American take? Some GI's are eating everything in sight to get to fat for the ranks–they can get an honorable discharge for that–and then join the contractors in Iraw, as, say a trucker, or electronic specialists, and ASAP double their net worth overnight….

  5. Charles Keating says:
    June 20, 2008 at 3:49 pm

    Sorry for the typos–blame it on KDR!

  6. Charles Keating says:
    June 20, 2008 at 4:01 pm

    KBR
    Total gigantic rip-off monetarily and in terms of everything
    the USA use to stand for–Impeach–oh, yeah, that's not on the table Pelosi told us….

  7. LanceThruster says:
    June 20, 2008 at 4:38 pm

    Shorter George "Dubya" Bush:

    "We're Number One! We're Number One!!"

  8. Charles Keating says:
    June 20, 2008 at 4:55 pm

    I'm a mess today. The fat GI who gets out with an HD, can turn around and get at least 6X his former net worth as a standard GI…..Gawd, its all so horrific, I'm lucky I can even misstype, as I've done on this thread…

  9. Anonymous says:
    June 20, 2008 at 5:08 pm

    Ozzie, what was done was proactive intervention on behalf of a foreign monster (named Judonia by Martillo). The treachery is so extensive that requires every kind of subtlety to avoid placing responsibilities were deserved, like saying: "the SITUATION in iraq is the biggest foreign policy blunder in the history of our country."

  10. Glenn Condell says:
    June 20, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    The first person of note to come out and say Iraq is the greatest blunder in US history was General William Odom, and from memory the war was still in the joyous 'mission acomplished' stage then. But you don't see him much on the telly, do you?

    There are so many sensible people in your country but they virtually never get their hands on the levers of real power. There appears to be a glass ceiling for decent people with a few brains.

  11. Fanny says:
    June 20, 2008 at 11:27 pm

    Iraq, a failure? Not according to the highly esteemed Washington Post! According to Fred Hiatt, the "surge" has changed the facts on the ground, and if the American people can just exert a little more patience, all the blood and treasure invested during the course of the war will end up paying enormous dividends for the United States and her allies.

  12. MM says:
    June 21, 2008 at 12:01 am

    Painfully I think I gotta agree with the Post: this was the intended outcome of the invasion.

    How many boots are still on the ground 5 years later? How many permanent bases are occupied or under construction? How much sectarian fighting has been stirred up, threatening to divide Iraq into 3 chirping ziofriends?

    And most importantly: How much money has been spent?

    Gotta love it when Jon Stewart and Barry Obama and what passes in Ziomerica for the "left" call Iraq a failure of massive incompetence, a blunder, stupid, unsuccessful… They are (probably unknowingly) carrying water for the warmongerers who've gotten exactly what they wanted (up to an including the clandestine warfare already commenced against Iran and Syria).

    People who think Iraq was actually intended to become a stable, peaceful democracy as quickly as possible, and it just all went wrong, need to send me their DRUGS, right NOW. So that I can do them.

  13. GOD says:
    June 21, 2008 at 1:51 am

    #
    #
    #
    MM YES DRUGS GOOD HOLY SHIT LOVE PEOPLE
    hu
    hu
    hu

  14. peters says:
    June 21, 2008 at 10:02 am

    i agree 100%, mm. it is as plain as day to me but i am not sure they are carrying water unknowingly. stewart probably emotionally favors protection of israel and obama is now in their clutches. i think israel feels the heat and see the two state solution slipping into history, so what do you know? a "truce". the palestinians of course will break it and israelis will have their justification for more torture.

  15. peters says:
    June 21, 2008 at 10:08 am

    i agree 100%, mm. it is as plain as day to me but i am not sure they are carrying water unknowingly. stewart probably emotionally favors protection of israel and obama is now in their clutches. i think israel feels the heat and see the two state solution slipping into history, so what do you know? a "truce". the palestinians of course will break it and israelis will have their justification for more torture.

  16. MM says:
    June 21, 2008 at 11:44 am

    Well peters I don't know the people, haven't had candid discussions with them, so I will assume good intentions. Take Phil, for example. He's parroting the "blunder" meme. Like, "OOPS! Who knew? Oh those neocons–so silly!" I don't think Phil is trying to carry water for the Likud/American militarist alliance, it really doesn't seem like it, but there's a clear disconnect between these peoples' notions of America the beautiful and the actual interventionist hegemon being operated out of D.C. and New York. The rhetorical bullshit about democracy and human rights and the rest is just soul-sothing feel good bullshit, but it's something to believe in, so they can try to see Iraq as an aberration–too bad it's not.

  17. Paul Easton says:
    June 21, 2008 at 2:50 pm

    .
    well i think mm goes to far in thinking bush cheney wanted to destroy us hegenomy. what would they gain? do you really think they are run by the chicoms? a paranoid notion i say.

    bush cheney were simply dumb enough to be conned by the ziocons. really thot they would win and rally the nation and get bases to dominate the mideast. and funnel big bucks to their friends much of which would be recycled back to politics, which latter part absoluely worked.

    you cant believe that anyone could be so stupid? remember both are rapture lovers. how dumb is that?

  18. Steve says:
    June 21, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    The worst in the past 40 yrs? Great!

    The worst in history? Great!

    Only problem is it's absolutely meaningless. Why?

    The House is poised to pass a resolution authorizing the prez to begin a naval blockade of Iran!

    An act of war under international law. Authorized, of course, by a bipartisan congressional consensus.

    Just like last time.

    Based on ginning up a threat of wmd's (the NIE says no nuke program in Iran, but what they hey).

    Just like last time.

    So it matters not a whit, what the historians, or the public says.

    Here we go again.

  19. peters says:
    June 21, 2008 at 8:09 pm

    hmmmmm… this is getting complicated. all i mean to say that anyone who is an apologist for the iraq adventure, whether they say it was a well-intentioned blunder due to faulty intelligence or whether to spread democracy or any other non-israel centered reason, is carrying water. its true i think that many jews cannot face the truth about israel. i can't understand why. if phil is in the camp of the apologist, as intelligence failure, or mistaken good intentions, then i think his emotions have gotten the better of his thinking. that i deem "carrying water". closing one's eyes to the massive insanity, injustice of the war, of our support of israel, and the very structure of israel itself, can be done in a semi-conscious way because of love of tribe. as if someone criticized your father and even though you know he is a jerk , you defend him.
    btw i also think the oil theory is spurious. i know a little bit about the oil industry and this is not their style. they would rather have stable conditions where they can partner with host countries. if anyone holds the global hegemon theory, i want to remind you that it was the neocons who started cheerleading for empire. all the foreign policy experts in the country would condemn grabbing a country by force for their resources.

  20. Charles Keating says:
    June 22, 2008 at 11:47 am

    There is plenty of informatin on the internet that supports Peters's concept that Big Oil would've preferred not going into Iraq with military action. But I don't hear this concept mentioned in the MSM–I imagine that's because, average Americans would then ask, "then why did they attack Iraq?" Even average Americans realize there are plenty of cruel despots in the world, and it was so when Sad Sack of Iraq was still in power… God forbid we look into the OSP, Wolfowitz, Feith, Arams, Pearl et al–Bush we can dismiss as a bible-thumper, Chaney, as an
    opportunist, sunk still in Haliburton profits via contractor "Hessian" profits…

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