http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-yglesias2aug02,0,2911324.story?coll=la-opinion-centerD.C. elites want you to shush on Iraq
Be afraid when the same centrist consensus that has a lousy track record on the war lashes out at partisans.
By By Matthew Yglesias
August 2, 2007
snip//
It's true. I, for example, write a blog where I have criticized Clinton frequently and Obama on occasion, just as Slaughter warns. But what of it? There's a presidential campaign underway, and they're both running. What better time is there to pillory someone than when they say something you think is wrong?
The urge to urge calm is hardly limited to the Washington Post. Monday saw a perfect storm of anti-partisan elites, as Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, both scholars at the liberalish Brookings Institution, complained in the New York Times that "the political debate in Washington is surreal" and that "the administration's critics" -- who, unlike Pollack and O'Hanlon, have not had the privilege of recently taking a guided tour of Iraq organized by the very officials conducting the policy the two scholars are defending -- "seem unaware of the significant changes taking place" there.
O'Hanlon and Pollack are both Democrats, so their endorsement of current policy and "sustaining the effort" in Iraq indefinitely are examples of the sort of razor-sharp thinking we can expect from Washington if we all just stop and submit ourselves to soothing bipartisanship.
Of course, those of us who read Pollack's celebrated 2002 book, "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq," and became convinced as a result that the United States needed to, well, invade Iraq in order to dismantle Saddam Hussein's advanced nuclear weapons program (the one he didn't actually have) might feel a little too bitter to once again defer to our betters.
Meanwhile, the very elites we're supposed to trust can't seem to get their stories straight. Ignatius says everyone's looking for the exits in Iraq, and we should just calm down. O'Hanlon and Pollack want us to stay put. And as TPM Media's Greg Sargent pointed out Monday, the optimism of O'Hanlon and Pollack is at odds with the conclusions of Brookings' own Iraq Index project. It reported July 23 that "violence nationwide has failed to improve measurably over the past two-plus months," and that -- contrary to their enthusiasm about the provision of electricity and other essentials -- "the average person in Baghdad can count on only one or two hours of electricity per day," far less than they had under Hussein. More ironically still, the person in charge of the Iraq Index is none other than Michael O'Hanlon!
Citizens who have come to fear letting the powers-that-be sort things out from above have some sound basis for their anxiety -- the bipartisan elite turns out to have a fairly awful track record on Iraq. Indeed, one might begin to suspect that the real agenda here is to try to stifle political debate lest it risk displacing current elites from their cozy positions in favor of some new experts who've shown better judgment.
That, though, would be shrill and partisan. Better to not complain and just assume it'll all turn out for the best.
Matthew Yglesias blogs for the Atlantic Monthly. matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com
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