Nat'l Review's John Derbyshire:"Apologizing for Iraq-Allow Me To Eat Crow"

[kpete]

June 12, 2006, 5:32 a.m.

Apologizing for Iraq
Allow me to eat crow.

By John Derbyshire

My son is passing through that very annoying stage of development in which a child discovers that language is not so much like a solid landscape of rocks and trees, but much more like a well-equipped theater stage, fitted out with screens, doors to nowhere, trick lighting, turntables, trapdoors, and wires to lift you up into the flies. He has, in short, discovered ambiguity. Asked whether he has finished his homework, he will furrow his brow and say: “Define ‘finished’.” No doubt the lad will make a fine attorney (or opinion journalist) one day. In the meantime we must endure his relentless parsing.

I retreat to that developmental phase myself when friends ask me, as they do on average about once a week, whether I feel embarrassed at having supported the Iraq war. “Define ‘war,’” is the thing I want to say. I don’t say it, of course, exactly because it sounds like an irritating 11-year-old, but it’s really the essence of the matter. Did I support the 2003 invasion of Iraq? Yes I did. Do I support the continuing effort to get civil society going in Iraq? No I don’t, and haven’t for over two years. So do I support the war? Well... define “war.”

Let’s start from the fact that the whole thing, taken in one piece—attack plus follow-up nation-building effort—has been a huge negative for the USA. Is there anyone, really, who is glad we did it? Most of my NR colleagues are still talking up the administration’s Iraq policy. It’s hard not to think, though, that if wired up to a polygraph and asked the question: “Supposing you could wind the movie back to early 2003, would you still attack Iraq?” any affirmative answers would have those old needles a-jumping and a-skipping all over the graph paper.

We are stuck there in that wretched place with no way out that would not involve massive loss of geostrategic face. Getting on for 3,000 of our troops have been killed, and close to 20,000 maimed. We’ve spent untold billions of dollars. For what?

more at:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmYxNjgzMjFkMTQ3MDE1ZTIyYzFlNDc3ZWFlZjY4NzI=

[Greeby]

1. If you like John, I've got a dump truck full of dead crow for you

Let me back it up to the National Review office :eyes:

[Arugula Latte]

57. For dessert, I'll serve him up as many humble pies as he can eat. n/t

[Cha]

64. And the inevitable

omlette on the face.

[sendero]

2. The first step in rehabilitation..

... is admitting your were wrong. The part he hasn't put together yet is the part where once we invade it is and was inevitable that we'd be stuck there.

[warrens]

3. Remember, this is the guy who "HATED" Chelsea Clinton

Back when she was about 12. I got into an email war with the thug, that ended up with him saying he could hate whomever he pleased. I said, yeah, but grown men who hate little girls for no discernable reason other than she is attending an expensive private school have certain mental issues that would best be addressed by years-long intensive therapy in a securely locked ward.

Looks like he finally bought a clue. But anyone who would write such a horrid attack on a child is operating with some major screws not fully anchored. And, like Hitchens, he's one of those Brit transplants who are probably too insane to survive in Britain, but fit right in with Ann Coulter and their other buddies.

[Cocoa]

he didn't just say he hated her

he said she should be killed.

He didn't mean it seriously of course, just "satire." Ha ha. :puke:

[calimary]

26. Yes, one and the same. And he did advocate Chelsea Clinton's MURDER.

His reasoning? You'll love this: He figured that's what we should do to save our country from her following in her parents' footsteps and going into politics. Nice, huh? And he never apologized. I was one of thousands who sent in complaints. We got a lot of tsk-tsk-tsk, "whatza matter, cancha take a joke?" crap, accompanied by the sound of many rolling eyeballs. Wonder how they'd react if anybody here advocated the same fate for the Paris Hiltons of politics - Drunk and Disorderly bush?

Absolutely hideous excuse for a human being, this john derbyshire. Hideous, repulsive, and neither clever nor amusing, or even dryly droll.

[LiberalPartisan]

49. Even in jest

Such a statement speaks to a certain vileness only a Konservative could muster, let alone be proud of posessing.

[KoKo]

77. kick.........

[UpInArms]

46. Derbyshire on Chelsea Clinton:

Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past — I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble — recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an "enemy of the people". The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, "clan liability". In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished "to the ninth degree": that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed, and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed. (This sounds complicated, but in practice what usually happened was that a battalion of soldiers was sent to the offender's home town, where they killed everyone they could find, on the principle neca eos omnes, deus suos agnoscet — "let God sort 'em out".)

[Skittles]

47. yes

I lost all respect for Mr. D as a writer and as a human being after that sickening piece was published

[upi402]

62. sub-animal n/t

[Raksha]

67. Thanks for the link. I was looking for that quotation earlier

after someone mentioned that Derbyshire had a pathological hatred of Chelsea Clinton. I remembered the quotation from Mark Crispin Miller's book "Cruel and Unusual" and leafed through but couldn't locate it.

I just read the essay in its entirety from your link. That is CREEPY! I'd forgotten just how insane hardcore Clinton-bashing could get.

[Cha]

65. ANd look at Chelsa

today..I wonder how she felt about the Invasion and Bombing of Iraq?

[mikelewis]

4. ...massive loss of geostrategic face?

Yeah, that's a good reason to kill someone. No one wants their pride tarnished, that's for sure. It's better to kill than look stupid, I guess.

[Jacobin]

12. Code words for:

"We are a bunch of violent dumbasses and so we have to stay in Iraq and keep killing people to pretend we didnt start a war that we will lose, just like we did 30 years ago"

[gatorboy]

5. He's eating crow because he doesn't think the U.S. was ruthless enough.

That's how the rest of the article reads, anyway...

[Jacobin]

13. Oh gawd, not the Vietnam syndrome again

That one makes my blood boil....."we coulda won if only we had sent more troops and dropped more bombs" bullshit.

Bullshit.

[sandnsea]

25. Biggest lie of that war

I used to let it slide when people went down that path, I don't anymore. Bombing 3 countries?? The North? More bombs than WWII? 2 million dead? WTF??? How much more could we have done? A different strategy perhaps, but certainly not a more ruthless strategy.

[NewJeffCT]

52. He probably has one of those bumper stickers...

"Nuke their ass & take their gas"

I've seen a few of those around here in Connecticut. It kind of makes me shake my head... um, if we nuked Iraq (or Saudi Arabia) into oblivion, the area would be too radioactive to extract oil from for a long, long time, no?

[klook]

21. Exactly.

Says we should've "rubbled" the place and then left the Iraqis to fight for dominance and survival. So that's what "leader of the free world" means. Execute mob hits and leave the surviving victims to clean up the mess.

I think rather than crow, Derbyshire needs to eat shit.

[calimary]

27. I think he already does, at least 3 times a day. That's why his output

is the way it is. You are what you eat.

[Roland99]

6. Wonder how often he and Ledeen meet at the water cooler?

[durrrty libby]

7. God repugs are stupid. Too bad for us that are just so damn

many of them.

Can we just send all these fools to another planet?

[warrens]

17. Derbyshire is a chihuahua crossed with a pitbull

If you cross him, he'll lock the jaws of death on your shoelaces. At least he seems to realize no one takes his drivel seriously. If Ann Coulter printed that she hates Hillary Clinton, she would be on every talk show in the country. Derbyshire could print that he wanted to kill her, gut her and eat her internal organs, and everyone would yawn.

[subterranean]

8. He's wrong about one thing -- we aren't stuck in Iraq.

To be "stuck" in a place you have to want to get out of it. Bush has no desire to get our troops out of Iraq.

[SmokingJacket]

9. Too bad, he made a fool of himself and has to live with it.

There's no cure for stupid!

[BillZBubb]

10. Repug idiot: He was wrong then and he's wrong now.

He was wrong to support the invasion and claims he realizes that now. Then he turns around and makes a claim even more idiotic than supporting the invasion: we are stuck there! These dimwits never learn.

Hey shit for brains: you were wrong about the invasion and you are wrong once again about staying there. You are a rightard, ergo, you are always wrong.

[grasswire]

11. what a bunch of crap that is

I wonder if this clod ever has met the mother of a dead American soldier.

This is shameless, puerile drivel.

[SteppingRazor]

14. This isn't an apology at all...

he's sorry we're in Iraq because he wants to bomb Iran! He says so right in the article. Unfortunately, since we're in Iraq, we can't afford to turn another country into rubble. Oh drat.

Moreover, he's sorry only because of the nation building afterward. If we had just bombed them to rubble and left, he'd have been happy.

Wow. What a nut.

[cali]

16. exactly

His sentiments are disgusting beyond belief. He thinks we should simply have leveled the entire country. Fuck him. Fuck him. Fuck him.

[eviltwin2525]

22. Half-right, for all the wrong reasons

That isn't an aplogy for invading so much as a gratuitous (re-)puke stream directed at "nation-building." The problems with Iraq are A) we invaded it, without just cause, and B) we DIDN'T make any effort to build/rebuild/prevent dissolution into chaos until it was far too late.
Let me be right up front about this: in March 2003 I supported invading Iraq. I confess, I was caught up in drum-beating. In my defense, I was much more exorcized over the "protecting Iraqi human rights from a genocidal madman" argument than anything else. I didn't put much stock in the WMD canard, I was pretty sure the "threat to his neighbors" chant was over-stated, and I never EVER bought the Al Qaeda/9-11 link bullshit. But he WAS and is a really really really bad guy; as long as we quickly rebuilt the place into something better, it could have been a good thing. I thought.
Could an honest "Operation Iraqi Freedom" ever have worked? We'll never know, because it was never honest, it was never about Iraqi Freedom, and we turned the place over to the looters (including the gigantic warehouses of C-4) and dismissed the Army along with their weapons.
The true purpose of Operation Iraqi Freedom was simple: to discredit nation-building. And for that purpose it has been a smashing success. It will be decades at least before another American President dares suggest nation-building, even under the best of circumstances.
So what do we do now? What cards do we hold? Well, we forget we have the biggest trump of all -- Saddam, the one guy EVERYBODY in Iraq is afraid of. We need to get physical custody of him, by whatever means necessary (including kidnapping him from our own puppet regime and whisking him to Diego Garcia), and then make sure everybody in the country knows that if they don't stop the sectarian crap, we'll drive Uncle Saddam through Fallujah and release him to the first person he smiles at. Bet that would get their attention.

[struggle4progress]

61. "So sorry! Let's pull out of Iraq and attack Iran."

Thank you for reading the link, SR

[turbo_satan]

15. Having second thoughts, eh?

Maybe you and Francis Fukuyama can off yourselves in a suicide pact. While you're at it, why don't you take the whole National Review and PNAC crew with you.

[EST]

18. While I applaud this sort of

"come to Jesus" soul baring, I find it smacks too deeply of the "bosom buddies" confessions of a friendly alcoholic on a mild bender. This beknighted opinion hawker has missed the entire dirty foundation of the Iraq invasion.

The shifting sands republican party has kept its classic self labels but transmuted itself into a malignant force, bent on transforming the character and methods of American policy.
The massive machine that constituted American values and personality had proved impossible to shift abruptly, amenable only to long term pressure and undermining; frustrating the impatient purveyors of ill considered selfishness and solipsistic narcissism.

Iraq presented a fantastic opportunity to wave a magic wand of American superiority and seize anything of value, buy friendly support with it, and have it carted off, thus reducing the Iraqi populace in the same penury and indentured servitude that was the goal for this civilization.

All the wmd crap, the democratic nation building and faux concern for intellectual sensibilities were a clumsy cover, a distraction, for the real business of business and cutthroat corporate corruption.

When this rascal demonstrates his ability to dig into the real script and connect the rorschach bubbles, then I might interpret his fifth martini awakening as something of value, rather than a momentary hiccup.

[lilypad_567]

19. bisexual bush

June 4, 2006 -- More on George W. Bush's "Sanctity of Marriage" gay marriage constitutional ban.

George W. Bush's marital problems have just taken another turn for the worse. Apparently, Mr. Bush has not only engaged in an extra-marital affair with a member of the opposite sex who is also a senior member of his Cabinet, but also a member of the same sex. WMR received the following release this morning from Leola McConnell, Democratic candidate for Governor of Nevada (who has been endorsed by WMR). McConnell is a one-time professional dominatrix.

"President Bush's speech to the nation Monday. If he doesn't say he's a gay American or at the least a bisexual one then he shouldn't be making one at all. And the notion that it would be in regards to writing bigotry into our nation's Constitution is reprehensible. Too bad it isn't me doing the rebuttal because in 1984, I watched him perform (with the enthusiasm of homosexual male who had done this many times before) a homosexual act on another man, namely Victor Ashe. Victor Ashe is the current Ambassador to the nation of Poland who should also come out like former Governor McGreevey of New Jersey and admit to being a gay American. Other homo-erotic acts were also performed by then private citizen George Bush because I performed one of them on him personally.

[mnhtnbb]

23. Link?

What story are you referencing? What source?

[debbierlus]

20. Everyone needs to read that article all that way through

To see what a sack of shit this guy is...

Yeah. He is sorry because now the US looks weak. That is the essence of it. Read this tripe:

I worry a lot that the civilized world, of which this nation is faute de mieux the leader, has sunk into an enervated lassitude, a condition in which it is unwilling to act against threatening, or just annoying, barbarians. Every time we defer to some United Nations resolution, every time we offer an olive branch to some thug ruler, every time we declare our willingness to sit around a table with some crazy demagogue, I think of the old League of Nations, which was mighty big on resolutions, olive branches, and sittings-around of tables. Of course, those things are the basic stuff of diplomacy, and we have to do a certain amount of them. There comes a point, though, where they don’t suffice, and a nation must act. Back in mid-2002 I feared that we had no will to attack Iraq, though I said I wanted us to. I really feared that we had no will, no guts, to chastise our enemies the way I wanted them chastised—not with U.N. resolutions, but with bombs, tanks, and artillery shells. When events proved me wrong, I was delighted. (I felt the same delight when Margaret Thatcher, Whom God Preserve, went to war over the Falkland Islands in 1982.) Now we must act, we really must act, against Iran; but we can’t, because of Iraq. (He has really learned, hasn't he the idiot - ready to march right into another war only now we can't?!!)

And, then there is his complete lie of a statement that he doesn't feel ANY guilt over the WMD's lie (either falling for it or Bush telling it because he blames the intelligence community EVEN THOUGH IT HAS BEEN PROVEN THAT BUSH KNEW THE INFORMATION WAS DISCREDITED, INACCURATE, OR HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE when Bush used it to drum up support). Read the following:

I’ve never been able to work up any guilt, either on my own behalf or the administration’s, about the WMD issue. So far as I am concerned, what did I know? Saddam’s behavior sure made it look as though he was hiding something nasty. As an ordinary citizen, getting my information from newspapers and the TV, I had every reason to suppose that the WMD claims were true. Just why Saddam was behaving like that is now a bit of a mystery. Possibly he was a secret fan of classic Chinese literature (or opera) attempting a sort of Empty Fort Strategy. As for the administration: Well, either they knew the intelligence was worthless, or they didn’t. If they knew, then their duty was to assume the worst, and present it to us as the worst. If they didn’t know, then they honestly believed the lousy intelligence. None of this excuses the CIA’s incompetence, of course; but even that incompetence serves the good conservative purpose of driving home to the populace the fact that the federal government sucks at pretty much everything.

What a JERK. He isn't apologizing. He doesn't CARE about the Iraqis. They are barbarians (and we are the civilized ones - what a complete MORON)...

"y attitude to the war is really just punitive, and Iraq was a target of opportunity. I am not a Wilsonian nation-builder. I don’t want to “bring democracy to Iraq.” I don’t, in fact, give a fig about the Iraqis. I am happy to leave barbarians alone to practice their unspeakable folkways, so long as they do not bother civilized peoples. When they do bother us, though, I want them smacked down with great ferocity. Saddam Hussein had been scoffing for years at the very concept of international order, in the belief that we would never pass from words to deeds. I wanted to see that belief confounded, and I am pleased that it has been. If the civilized world is never willing to back up its agreements, resolutions, and communiqués with force, then those fine documents are all worthless and civilization is impotent against its enemies. I am very glad to know that we have not yet reached that sorry pass."

What a bucket of human waste.

IDIOT

[Amonester]

69. Yep. He's speaking about Saddam and he doesn't realize the...

obvious: he would be worst than Saddam ever was (like BU$H is: he doesn't care about neither Iraquis, nor young Americans serving as underfed cannon fodder for the fat cat$' scandalous, bloated retirement packages).

That absolute moron should look in a mirror. 2497 wasted (so far), and 20,000+ handicapped or sick 'til the end.

That idiot is worst than Saddam.

[RobertSeattle]

24. Here's the best snippet

The lazy-minded evangelico-romanticism of George W. Bush, the bureaucratic will to power of Donald Rumsfeld, the avuncular condescension of Dick Cheney, and the reflexive military deference of Colin Powell combined to get us into a situation we never wanted to be in, a situation no self-respecting nation ought to be in, a situation we don’t know how to get out of.

[Rageneau]

28. It isn't "crow" that Derbyshire needs to eat.

It's something else. And after he eats it, he can die.

I was never fooled -- not for one second -- by Bush's Iraq misadventure. Neither were most of the people here. That means there are plenty of people who got this thing RIGHT. Which means there is absolutely no point in ever again paying any attention to people like Derbyshire, who have proven that they can only get things wrong.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

38. He (Derbyshire) wasn't fooled either. He's just holding up the fig leaf of

the WMD lie ("who knew"?) to give himself a little moral cover for indulging in an imperialistic exercise in power.

What a damn rag National Review is. If this is characteristic of the copy in the magazine, and they were publishing idiot plagiarists like Ben Domeneche (the "Red State Blogger" of Washington Post fame), they seem little better than the Washington Times, if at all.

[DoYouEverWonder]

29. Well, if he's really sorry

maybe he should take a trip over to Walter Reed and apologize to all the troops who no longer have arms and legs because of his part promoting Bush's illegal war.

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Rose Siding]

31. He STILL thinks it would have been swell if we'd "rubbled" Iraq and left

"One reason I supported the initial attack, and the destruction of the Saddam regime, was that I hoped it would serve as an example, deliver a psychic shock to the whole region. It would have done, if we’d just rubbled the place then left."

"So why am I eating crow? Because I think it was foolish of me to suppose that the administration would act with the punitive ruthlessness I hoped to see."

He wanted more more destruction- still believes that more destruction was warranted- as an EXAMPLE. -As part of his relentless and exceptionally American drive to edjamacate the world, I guess.

[Amonester]

70. That idiot proves he would be worst than Saddam was.

He doesn't care about all the Iraqis slaughtered by BU$H, nor does he care about 2,497 now dead young Americans + 20,000 injured or depressed who did not have to, to start with, if his criminal neocon junta had not highjacked the US government to get filthy rich at the expense of everybody else (who's honest).

[bluerum]

32. So what. So effing what dammit. Who cares if J. Derbyshire is having

his face rubbed in it. How about thousands of US dead, injured and maimed. For what? So J.D. can sit back in his BMW on the way home at night and enjoy the luxury of being wrong? So what J.D. So god damn what.

J.D. - go be a daddy to the fatherless babies, go be a husband to the husband-less wives, go do something useful with your remorse. But spare me the crocodiles. Thousand and thousands of lives ruined. I wish I could feel sorry for you J.D., but my heart opens to those who truly suffer from injustice - somehow it just fails to feel any compassion for you. Hey - call me cruel.

The only conclusion, as cynical as it may be, that I could reasonably come to after reading your sour tripe was that your publication is having circulation problems and is trying to appeal to a wider reading audience. And you were chosen to fall on the sword.

I must admit - I was a bit surprised when a link I clicked through a DU post brought me to the National Review. My immediate impulse was to navigate away - angry at having been duped into giving your website the traffic. But the cute bit about your son learning about the ambiguity of words drew me in.

It's too bad you and many of your fellow journalists did not learn about ambiguity and outright deception before you jumped on W's bandwagon. I can imagine your smug satisfaction as you sat sipping a premium brew watching CNN broadcast the falling bombs. Bombs that would kill thousands of Iraqi children. Children who will never have the chance to learn about ambiguity. Death is like that.

[LittleClarkie]

33. Was this the publication that supported Lieberman for president?

I keep getting one of the centrist publications and one of the conservative publications mixed up.

[durrrty libby]

34. Someone needs to send him this thread n/t

[liberaltrucker]

39. Proudly done!

:evilgrin:

[SlavesandBulldozers]

35. not a whole lot of crow eating in that article.

except for complaints that Bush is too "multi-cultural".

Yeah. it actually says that. Sounds like they are reverting back to old Clintonian conspiracy of a one-world order if you ask me.

But I guess it's interesting to show that the the real sister-fucking "kill-em-all" Christian dominionists are starting to peel-away from the Corporate tax-break conservatives. But it shows little more than that.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

36. "massive loss of geostrategic face". Repubs will lose "face", while Iraqis

and U.S. soldiers will lose their actual FACES because we didn't leave.

[Divine Discontent]

44. exactly!

it's all about "face" to them, who cares a frick about the actual faces of our people being blown off their skulls every day )($#U%)($#U

great post, and thanks KPete...




www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable <<<--- Check it out!

[grytpype]

37. What an ass.

"I liked the killing Arabs part, but the part about putting their country back together after we broke it, I didn't like because I don't care about Arabs."

[Sapere aude]

40. This guy hangs on to his neocon beliefs yet is sorry that things are not

working out he way he'd like them to.

[svpadgham]

41. This is the part that bugs the shit out of me

So why am I eating crow? Because I think it was foolish of me to suppose that the administration would act with the punitive ruthlessness I hoped to see. The rubble-and-out approach was not one that this administration, or perhaps any administration in the present state of our culture, would be willing to pursue. The universalist dogmas that rule unchallenged in our media and educational institutions have fixed their grip on our foreign policy, too.When the Founders of our nation said “all men” they had in mind Christian Anglo-Saxon men. Our leaders, though, want to bring the whole world under the scope of those grand Lockeian principles.


How dare this piece of human garbage assume this is what the Founding Fathers intended. He's a racist theocratic piece of shit.:grr:

[Hamlette]

42. not to agree or defend Derby

but, it seems to me, if you ARE going to wage war, you should wage it to win. If that means pulling out all stops, that's what you do.

We're seeing what happens if you don't.

He also had a good column last week (the week before?) on how insane the social conservatives are from their position on stem cell research, gay marriage and yes, even abortion. He's in favor of all three.

If we were smart, we'd try to find a way to open a link to people like Derby and Sully instead of knee jerking them when they try to make sense and miss the mark.

Just saying. . . .

[svpadgham]

79. His idea of

"rubble and out" couldn't happen. That wasn't part of the selling of the war. With Afghanistan it could have worked because they were harboring OBL, but not with Iraq because all Saddam was doing was flipping us the bird and talking smack.

The part that irked me was his assumption that the founding fathers only wanted to include Anglo Christian males in the Grand Experiment that is the United States. He may not have meant that, but it's what he wrote. Perhaps what he meant to write was that the founding fathers believed as a nation, which was predominantly Anglo Christian, we should live by the ideal that all men are created equal, but we do not have the right to force that ideal onto other people, but with diplomatic resolve and positive examples, we can perhaps, bring others to our way of thinking. It's still an assumption but at least it's a bit more inclusive.

So either he's a dickhead or he's a bad communicator.

[TexasLawyer]

43. Jane Smiley-- Notes for Converts

For Mr. Derbyshire:

May I recommend Jane Smiley's excellent "Notes for Converts", her advice to "newly-minted dissenters from Bush's faith-based reality."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/notes-for-converts_b_17662.html

"Those of us who have been anti-Bush from day 1 (defined as the day after the stolen 2000 election) have a few pointers for you that should make your transition more realistic."

1. Bush doesn't know you disagree with him. Nothing about you makes you of interest to George W. Bush once you no longer agree with and support him. No degree of relationship (father, mother, etc.), no longstanding friendly intercourse (Jack Abramoff), no degree of expertise (Brent Scowcroft), no essential importance (Tony Blair, American voters) makes any difference. There is nothing you have to offer that makes Bush want to know you once you have come to disagree with him. Your opinions and feelings now exist in a world entirely external to the mind of George W. Bush. You are now just one of those "polls" that he pays no attention to. When you were on his side, you thought that showed "integrity" on his part. It doesn't. It shows an absolute inability to learn from experience.

2. Bush doesn't care whether you disagree with him. As a man who has dispensed with the reality-based world, and is entirely protected by his handlers from feeling the effects of that world, he is indifferent to what you now think is real. Is the Iraq war a failure and a quagmire? Bush doesn't care. Is global warming beginning to affect us right now? So what. Have all of his policies with regard to Iran been misguided and counter-productive? He never thinks about it. You know that Katrina tape in which Bush never asked a question? It doesn't matter how much you know or how passionately you feel or, most importantly, what degree of disintegration you see around you, he's not going to ask you a question. You and your ideas are dead to him. You cannot change his mind. Nine percent of polled Americans would agree with attacking Iran right now. To George Bush, that will be a mandate, if and when he feels like doing it, because...

3. Bush does what he feels like doing and he deeply resents being told, even politely, that he ought to do anything else. This is called a "sense of entitlement". Bush is a man who has never been anywhere and never done anything, and yet he has been flattered and cajoled into being president of the United States through his connections, all of whom thought they could use him for their own purposes. He has a surface charm that appeals to a certain type of American man, and he has used that charm to claim all sorts of perks, and then to fail at everything he has ever done. He did not complete his flight training, he failed at oil investing, he was a front man and a glad-hander as a baseball owner. As the Governor of Texas, he originated one educational program that turned out to be a debacle; as the President of the US, his policies have constituted one screw-up after another. You have stuck with him through all of this, made excuses for him, bailed him out. From his point of view, he is perfectly entitled by his own experience to a sense of entitlement. Why would he ever feel the need to reciprocate? He's never had to before this.

4. President Bush is your creation. When the US Supreme Court humiliated itself in 2000 by handing the presidency to Bush even though two of the justices (Scalia and Thomas) had open conflicts of interest, you did not object. When the Bush administration adopted an "Anything but Clinton" policy that resulted in ignoring and dismissing all warnings of possible terrorist attacks on US soil, you went along with and made excuses for Bush.

<snip>

[yardwork]

56. This is great! Thank you for posting the link.

[BrklynLiberal]

68. Great article. Thanks for the link.

:thumbsup:

[rpannier]

45. Read his article

His apology was so f**king lame. He's only sorry because we didn't do enough damage to their infrastructure, kill more people and then go home. I guess since we weren't bombing him or his family he really doesn't care.

[gatorboy]

50. I don't see why this is on the front page

He's not apologizing for the war, he's just upset that we didn't hammer the country more than we have.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

59. And especially since it's not HIM or his family doing the bombing, getting

bombed, shooting, being shot. I'm sure ALL of Derby's friends are serving emperor shrub in Iraq. NOT.

[ComerPerro]

48. He still gives Bush the benifit of the doubt, though, and never really

attacks.

His point isn't really about how the war was unnecessary and based on lies, but more of "Well, Bush was trying to help, but it was a bad idea because no one is as nice and moral as we are"

[Rex]

51. Hope is the last stage of denial.

The National Review is run by 11 year olds! What a surprise.

[BlooInBloo]

53. Are you posting this as COMPLIMENTARY to the cons? Sheesh.

"So why am I eating crow? Because I think it was foolish of me to suppose that the administration would act with the punitive ruthlessness I hoped to see."

The jackass thinks WE HAVEN'T KILLED ENOUGH IRAQIS. He admits NO MISTAKE IN GOING TO WAR IN THE FIRST PLACE.

OMFG - the things people get compliments on these days...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

54. This fascist makes Heydrich and Himmler sound like humanitarians.

"One reason I supported the initial attack, and the destruction of the Saddam regime, was that I hoped it would serve as an example, deliver a psychic shock to the whole region. It would have done, if we’d just rubbled the place then left. As it is, the shock value has all been frittered away. Far from being seen as a nation willing to act resolutely, a nation that knows how to punish our enemies, a nation that can smash one of those ramshackle Mideast despotisms with one blow from our mailed fist, a nation to be feared and respected, we are perceived as a soft and foolish nation, that squanders its victories and permits its mighty military power to be held to standoff by teenagers with homemade bombs—that lets crooks and bandits tie it down, Gulliver-like, with a thousand little threads of blackmail, trickery, lies, and petty violence."

"rubbled the place", "mailed fist", "a nation to be feared".

Hitler couldn't have said it better.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

63. Of course, if this guy even believes half the crap he writes... the plan,

the neocon plan, was to occupy Iraq as a permanent base, source of oil, and jumping off point for the conquest/influence of the rest of the Middle East all along, so "rubbling" the place and leaving, would never have been acceptable to this lot.

He either chooses to be ignorant of this, or dishonestly ignores it.

[PinkyisBlue]

55. This is a great non-apologetic apology.

And he's so proud of his son for learning the nuances of ambiguity. He wants his son to be a Republican shill some day just like he himself is. If a liberal columnist ever wrote that Derbyshire's son should be murdered to protect the country from a future Republican hack, I wonder how he would accept this.

The difference is that most liberals are decent people and would never threaten a child with bodily harm, whereas right wing conservatives are not decent people. The barbarians he's talking about aren't the Iraqis but himself and other Republicans.

[RJRoss]

58. What an a-hole

He should be forced to work in a hospital in Baghdad, changing dressings, or in the morgue, stacking bodies, or at Walter Reed, changing bedpans.

"They hate us for our freedoms" - no, they hate us because of racist imperialist assholes like John Derbyshire.

[ejbr]

60. Um duh!

I found the author to be quite astute in regard to his present predicament until I read this:

"As an ordinary citizen, getting my information from newspapers and the TV, I had every reason to suppose that the WMD claims were true. Just why Saddam was behaving like that is now a bit of a mystery."

No, it is not a mystery, you are just being a dumb fuck, sir. Saddam had many, many, many, many, many enemies WITHIN Iraq! Why would he admit to being vulnerable to them?

[newyawker99]

75. Hi ejbr!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Swamp Rat]

66. GO TO HELL John Derbyshire!!! ... better yet,

GO TO IRAQ!!!

[Bluebear]

71. 'The lazy-minded evangelico-romanticism of George W. Bush'

Well, you supported him, Johnny.

[Demeter]

72. Since America Has No Face Left To Save, Let's Get the Hell Out of Iraq

of all the stupid reasons not to leave Iraq, that has got to be the worst, followed by honoring the dead by sending more to die there, and the concept of grand theft of Iraqi oil, the concept of Insurrection in the Middle East, and the concept of spreading democracy.

There hasn't ever been a good reason to go to Iraq, and now there are 2500 reasons to get out.

[Philosoraptor]

73. What? Admit Defeat? Not till your son's last drop of blood.

[Prophet 451]

74. Rubble Iraq, out then onto Iran

Perpetual war? Seems someone has read his Orwell.

[wryter2000]

76. What a loathesome individual

He's just mad that we didn't bomb the place hard enough and leave it in rubble.

One reason I supported the initial attack, and the destruction of the Saddam regime, was that I hoped it would serve as an example, deliver a psychic shock to the whole region. It would have done, if we’d just rubbled the place then left.

Later he states that our Founding Fathers were only speaking for Anglo-Christian men. I've seldom read anyhthing more disgusting.

[happydreams]

78. He already eats sh*t, so eating crow

should be a piece of cake.