Barnes: Being right = being weak

October 7, 2007

I’ve been enjoying pearls of wisdom from The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes for quite a while, but this might be the single most entertaining thing he’s ever said. (via Atrios)

On the October 6 edition of Fox News’ The Beltway Boys, co-host and Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes claimed that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is “not in quite as strong a position on the war in Iraq as he really thinks he is.” He explained that when Obama delivered his 2002 speech against going to war with Iraq, “it was back in a time when the entire world believed Saddam Hussein in Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that he would probably be willing to use them himself at some time or pass them along to terrorists who would use them. And yet, Barack Obama was against going to the war at that point.” According to Barnes: “I don’t think that shows that he is very strong on national security, which he needs to be.”

It’s almost impressive in its absurdity. In 2002, Barnes was wrong about Iraq; Obama was right. That Obama didn’t follow the mistaken judgment of the DC establishment, Barnes said, necessarily means that Obama isn’t strong on national security.

What’s more, Barnes believes this insightful criticism of Obama’s accurate judgment would be “used against him… by Republicans in a general election,” should he win the Democratic nomination.

Oh, things one learns from Fox News….

Ah, yes, when guessing Right is worse than Appearing To Have Heeded The Warning.

Of course, it’s not like we have a President that didn’t Heed A Warning, eh?

9-9

  • What is it with conservatives named Fred? Is there some sort of nomenclatural reaction between conservatism and the word “Fred” that makes a person go screaming hysterically over the cognitive abyss? Somewhere in undergrad-land, there is a student contemplating this as the topic for a thesis. I will gladly serve as that student’s thesis advisor….

  • I’m pretty sure that Republicans will indeed try to make those claims against Obama, should he win the nomination. Since when has the Bush party been grounded in reality?

  • The the unspoken assumption in the Barnes argument is that Obama believed with the rest of the yahoos that Saddam had WMD. Therefore his vote did not indicate superior judgment. It represented a lack of will in face of danger. The dog whistle set will get this.

  • Brain…EXPLODES.

    Because “Life is a Campaign”, that’s why.

    The largest and most powerful institutions that have dominated American life for centuries– business, government, press, religions– have become so completely corrupted by the ALL BULLSHIT, ALL THE TIME culture, that they have become as illegitimate and broken and ready for collapse, as those of the Soviet Union (“all propaganda, all the time”).

    Jon Stewart is right (in re: Matthews). George Carlin was right in 1999 when he did his “American Bullshit” routine. The problem with this country is that the people in power– in every aspect of society– are so stunningly full of shit, that they aren’t even trying to be coherent anymore. Bullshit has become the means, the end, the whole thing. They’ve become ridiculous.

  • Obviously this says much more about this Fred guy than it does about anybody else.

    He can’t get it through his skull that there were people back then who were WISE enough that they weren’t buying the rush to war ideas. Even if there was some doubt about SH having WMDs or not having them, there were people who saw that there were other, better, ways to proceed besides rushing into a war. There are other countries that we KNOW had DMVs back then, and still have them, and we didn’t feel compelled to rush to war with them. The whole situation smelled bad even then to those who were paying attention and are able to think for themselves.

  • Fred says “it was back in a time when the entire world believed Saddam Hussein in Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that he would probably be willing to use them himself at some time or pass them along to terrorists who would use them.”

    Sorry, Fred, but I didn’t buy it, and I’m just a nobody here in Idaho. It was clear after Gulf War I that Saddam wasn’t even a paper kitten, much less a paper tiger. And after 12 years of oppressive sanctions he was a threat to nobody, and any honest, thinking person either knew that, or should have known.

    What’s with it with these stooges like Barnes and Kristol? At least you can understand what the players like Cheney and Bush have to gain from this madness. The military-industrial complex did very well with Iraq, but what do these idiots get for carrying water for this crowd?

  • ***Being right = Being weak***

    This would explain the madnesses of the administration then. If NCLB can be viewed as “being dumb = educated,” and “being patriotic = being a felon,” then I suppose that “being wrong makes you strong.” We might even put a great big sign over New York Harbor—right next to the Statue of Liberty. Something that would make the neofascists feel right at home:

    AEBEIT MACHT FREI….

  • First, what goatchowder said. Head explodes.

    Second, the beltway bobbleheads must really hate people who did the ten minutes of homework it took to see through Bush’s bullshit.

    And third, I guess their position is that “Obama can’t be a good President because he’s smarter than we are.” In that case, I guess they’ll be supporting Fred Thompson.

  • I remember Juan Cole being in a public blog debate with some neocon (forget which), in which the neocon made exactly the same point: “It was too dangerous to wait around and see if you liberal academics were right about Saddam; we had to act.”

    Translation: I am more right in being wrong than you are in being right.

    Now, how is it that these same people accuse the left of moral relativism and not having a standard for what’s right and wrong?

  • Well, in the 50’s people who were right about Hitler and Franco early on were called “premature anti-fascists,” meaning of course that they were commies for recognizing the evils of fascism before the Powers that Be did. Now I guess it’s “premature Iraqi WMD doubter.”

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