The WaPo’s David Broder said something on Meet the Press the other day that reminded me, oddly enough, of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Russert: David Broder, is it possible for official Washington — the president, Democratic leaders, Republican leaders — to arrive at common ground, a consensus position on Iraq?
Broder: It’s possible, Tim, but they won’t get there by arguing about who did what three years ago. And this whole debate about whether there was just a mistake or misrepresentation or so on is, I think, from the public point of view largely irrelevant. The public’s moved past that. The public wants to know what we’re going to do next in Iraq.
It’s a common sentiment. Never mind the debate over pre-war intelligence and manipulation, the argument goes, what’s done is done. Let’s look foward.
To the extent that a discussion about the events of 2002 and 2003 won’t save any lives or resolve the ongoing crisis, the point is accurate. But in terms of a basic standard of accountability, it’s seems wildly irresponsible to say that whether the White House intentionally misled the world about a war is no longer a question worth asking.
Which leads me to Python. In one classic scene, John Cleese’s Sir Lancelot storms a castle, sword in hand, murdering most of a wedding party based on the mistaken intelligence belief that someone was in desperate need of a rescue. The castle owner, anxious to curry favor with Lancelot, encourages the survivors of the attack to let bygones by bygones. As the castle owner tells his guests, “Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed whom….”
The let’s-not-worry-about-2002 argument is effectively making the same kind of pitch. Let’s not bicker and argue over whether the president intentionally launched a war under false pretenses and manipulated intelligence to bolster a decision he’d already made; what’s done is done. That’s in the past. It’s irrelevant now. The important thing is to look forward.
It’s not that I’m against a plan for the future; it’s that the questions about the recent past deserve answers. Is it unreasonable to think we might be able to do both, applying some standards of accountability for what’s happened while also crafting a plan for the future of Iraq?