Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and one of the chamber’s more reliable “loyal Bushies,” had an interesting letter to the editor published in the New York Times yesterday. It was a fairly predictable rant about how much safer we are thanks to the president’s counter-terrorism measures, but it included a gem in passing.
While I agree that we had the wrong plan for three years, we now have the right one, and the right man to lead it.
Is that so. The same Bush administration that Bond is praising also happens to be the administration that’s had “the wrong plan for three years.” Now he tells us.
Unfortunately for everyone, most notably the U.S. troops fighting in Iraq, Bond neglected to mention to anyone that he was dissatisfied with Bush’s failures. Indeed, Glenn Greenwald wondered exactly how often Bond had spoken out against the “wrong plan” since 2003. Take a wild guess.
[W]e just spent the last three years waging war with the “wrong plan.” But no worries, because now — Bond assures us — we have the right plan.
That being the case, one would expect that Kit Bond spent the last three years protesting our war strategy, lamenting our lack of progress, and demanding that we change course. Needless to say, he did exactly the opposite. While he now claims that the last three years were a failure because we had the wrong strategy, Bond — like the vast, vast majority of the Republican Party and war supporters generally — spent the last three years telling Americans that we had the right strategy and were winning in Iraq, while attacking and demonizing those who suggested otherwise.
What a surprise.
I’d argue that there seems to be a new consensus emerging, even among the 28-percenters who want to see the war continue indefinitely: U.S. policy on Iraq was a disaster from 2003 through 2006. But, the Republicans argue, now there’s new hope, so let’s not dwell too long on the tragedy of the war’s first three years. We should let bygones be bygones; it’s all just water car-bombs under the bridge.
I hope the right will understand that this is hardly a persuasive pitch. For one thing, while Democrats were arguing that the administration’s policy in Iraq might need improvements, Bond, his GOP colleagues, and the far-right base insisted Dems were not only dangerously misguided, but aiding and abetting terrorists by pointing out the flaws.
And now Bond, Voinovich, and others, all of whom enthusiastically endorsed failure and condemned anyone who dared to disagree, have become a collective Rosanne Rosanna-Danna, saying, “Never mind.”
No. Sorry. That’s unacceptable. We were right; Bond and his cohorts were wrong. They backed a policy that has cost America dearly — and now they want a free pass for failing. Worse, they insist they deserve to be taken seriously about war policy, despite having been wrong about the entire policy from the beginning.
Glenn concluded:
At its core, the history of the Iraq War has been authored by an indescribably deceitful and very intellectually limited political and media elite, perfectly symbolized by Kit Bond. These are people who spent four years hailing the Great Progress the Leader was making in Iraq, claiming we were “clearing and holding” neighborhoods of all the Terrorists, that Freedom was on the March, that anyone who questioned any of this was either brainwashed by the war-hating media or a Friend of The Terrorists.
And now, four years later, with the War plainly having been a failure, and their assurances all exposed as false, what are they doing? Hailing the Great Progress the Leader is making in Iraq, claiming we are “clearing and holding” neighborhoods of all the Terrorists, that Freedom is on the March, that anyone who questions any of this is either brainwashed by the war-hating media or a Friend of The Terrorists. Nothing ever changes. It just plods along with the same idiot slogans and the same people spouting them. And they do it with no shame, no acknowledgment of their own past behavior, and no loss of credibility.
Bond can take an important step towards rebuilding his tarnished name by sending a written apology to the Democratic National Committee, 430 S. Capitol St. SE, Washington DC 20003. Somehow, I have a hunch he won’t bother, but it’d be the right thing to do.