Over the weekend, William Kristol wrote a transparently ridiculous WaPo column praising Bush’s presidency. He began his love letter, “I suppose I’ll merely expose myself to harmless ridicule if I make the following assertion: George W. Bush’s presidency will probably be a successful one.” And sure enough, Kristol was ridiculed relentlessly by those who’ve been conscious over the last six years.
But The Nation’s David Corn’s response was particularly good.
Who knew Bill Kristol had such a flair for satire? How else to read his piece for Outlook on Sunday, in which he declared, “George W. Bush’s presidency will probably be a successful one”? Surely Kristol, the No. 1 cheerleader for the Iraq war, was mocking himself (and his neoconservative pals) for having been so mistaken about so much. But just in case his article was meant to be a serious stab at commentary, let’s review Kristol’s record as a prognosticator.
On Sept. 18, 2002, he declared that a war in Iraq “could have terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East.” A day later, he said Saddam Hussein was “past the finish line” in developing nuclear weapons. On Feb. 20, 2003, he said of Saddam: “He’s got weapons of mass destruction…. Look, if we free the people of Iraq we will be respected in the Arab world.” On March 1, 2003 — 18 days before the invasion of Iraq — Kristol dismissed the possibility of sectarian conflict afterward. He also said, “Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president.” He maintained that the war would cost $100 billion to $200 billion. (The running tab is now about half a trillion dollars.) On March 5, 2003, Kristol said, “We’ll be vindicated when we discover the weapons of mass destruction.”
After a performance like this — and the above is only a partial review; for more details, click here — Kristol, a likeable fellow, ought to have his pundit’s license yanked. But he’s back again with a sequel: W. will be seen as a wonderful president. His latest efforts should be laughed off op-ed pages. But in the commentariat, he’s still taken seriously.
From there, Corn surgically takes Kristol’s nonsense apart, point by point.
But this observation about Kristol’s record is important, not just because it’s amusing (though it is), but also because it speaks to a larger trend.
We’re still engaged in a major national debate about Iraq. If polls are any indication, one side is clearly winning that debate, but both sides are capable of articulating policies with which reasonable people can disagree:
* Get out of Iraq, the sooner the better — The war is a disaster and our continued presence in Iraq is making things worse. For the sake of our national security, we need to get the troops out.
* Keep the troops in, indefinitely — There have been problems in Iraq, but if we withdraw, conditions will deteriorate further.
The problem, which is widely understood but rarely stated, is that those arguing the latter point have been wrong. About everything. Literally.
Every challenge, every question, every assumption, every prediction — Kristol has been completely wrong. So has Dick Cheney, Joe Lieberman, and the vast majority of Republican members of Congress.
Now, just because someone has been wrong 100 times out of 100 tests doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she will get the 101st one wrong, too. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
But it’s worth keeping this in mind because we’re not engaged in a debate in which both sides have equal credibility. War supporters were spectacularly wrong before the war, they were equally wrong during the war, and now they believe their perspective should be taken seriously about the future of the war.
I’m not sure why.
