"They're all still lying about Iraq"

This important article in the internet blog Salon is titled:  "They're all still lying about Iraq:  The real story about the biggest blunder in American history -- and the right wing's obsessive need to cover it up."    It was written by Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson, author of several books, including To Make Men Free:  A History of the Republican Party."

I'll do some condensing.   For anyone wanting to read the entire article, the link is:  http://www.salon.com/2015/05/24/theyre_all_still_lying_about_iraq_the_real_story_about_the_..

"Republicans’ verbal gyrations over the Iraq War . . . .  provide an important window into a larger, crucial story. They reveal that Movement Conservatives remain rooted in a worldview that has been outdated for so long it is now delusional."

Richardson then reviews the Megyn Kelly/Jeb Bush interview that started all the "if you knew then what we know now" furor.    Richardson continues:

"But Bush’s first answer was not an error.  It revealed his continuing loyalty to a series of principles to which he actually put his name in 1997. With those principles, a group of elite white men set out to revive the Cold War world that had given men like them control of the rest of humanity. Those principles dictated the Iraq War, and — although they are completely obsolete — they still animate Movement Conservatives. . . . "

Richardson explains the history of the Movement:  Following the collapse of the Berlin wall and the end of the Soviet empire, the bilateral contest between two superpowers shifted to a more multilateral view of world power, with all the complexity we now see in various conflicts around the globe.

At that point, in Richardson's view, Movement Conservatives were left adrift, no longer in a world of easily defined forces of good/evil, us/them -- with the  simplistic goal of wiping out communism.   Instead world power was a complex calculus, with shifting multi-national links and interests -- more in need of skilled diplomacy than of guns and bombs."Movement Conservatives refused to recognize that what they saw as weakness and incoherence was an international adjustment to the realities . . . .  This was not the world Movement Conservatives knew. They wanted back the world they had controlled. . . .

"In [1997], political commentators William Kristol and Robert Kagan launched the Project for the New American Century. . . called for dramatically increased defense spending to . . . 'shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests' . . . 'challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values,' and 'promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad.'   America had a responsibility, the signatories to the statement said. The nation must 'accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.'  Dick Cheney, Francis Fukuyama, Norman Podhoretz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz were among the original signers of the document.  So was Jeb Bush. . . .

"When George W. Bush became president, 10 of the 18 men who had signed a letter urging Clinton to take out Saddam Hussein went to work in his administration. Donald Rumsfeld became defense secretary; Paul Wolfowitz was the assistant defense secretary. John Bolton became an undersecretary of state. Dick Cheney, an original PNAC supporter, became vice president.

"Only eight months after Bush took office, 9/11 offered an opening to effect the new American foreign policy PNAC members so desperately wanted. . . . [A]s soon as he heard of the carnage, Rumsfeld asked his aides to see if there was enough evidence to 'hit' Saddam Hussein as well as Osama bin Laden. When it turned out there was not, the administration created it, cherry-picking evidence or even falsifying it to justify a war in Iraq. So convinced were they that their worldview was right, they refused to acknowledge reality.

"Twelve years later, the war has cost more than $2 trillion and 4,500 American lives. Tens of thousands of American soldiers have been wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died and more than two million have become refugees. The vacuum left by the collapse of Saddam Hussein strengthened Iran and created the conditions for the rise of ISL. By any standard, the Iraq War was an error of colossal proportions. But Movement Conservatives cannot surrender the idea of a Manichean world in which they rule America and America rules the world.

"Rather than recognizing that their misguided attempt to recreate a bifurcated world in which America is preeminent created disaster in Iraq, Movement Conservatives are blaming the Iraq crisis on everyone else. Mistakes were made. . . .  laid directly at the feet of our intelligence agencies. This argument has been demolished by observers and participants both . . . .  The job of blaming bad intelligence got harder . . . when . . . Bush’s CIA briefer Michael Morell said that administration officials had lied about the intelligence the CIA had presented to them.

"With that avenue of excuse closing, Republicans turned to blaming President Obama for the debacle in Iraq. . . .  [T]he problems in Iraq were not 'because of President Bush’s strength, but rather have come about because of President Obama’s weakness. . . .   William Kristol insisted that the war in Iraq was a success until President Obama 'threw it all away. . .'

"This loophole has let Republican presidential hopefuls deny accountability for Iraq while still embracing the same principles that drove the decision to start that war in the first place. . . . 

"And where does Jeb Bush really stand?  He was an original signatory to the 1997 PNAC statement of principles. . . .  That worldview establishes that a small group of elites can simply dictate reality, no matter how out of touch with the real world they are. It is the last-ditch fight of an aging group of white men who cannot accept that their supremacy was not because of their extraordinary worth but because the vagaries of history aligned, very briefly, to make men like them supreme. Those historical circumstances were unique, and they are long gone."

So says Professor Richardson.   But there is a risk.   Still considered by many as the most likely Republican presidential nominee for 2016, Jeb Bush not only was an original member of the Movement Conservatives, but he has named some of the others as foreign policy advisers, including the scary Paul Wolfowitz -- and his own brother, George W. Bush.

Ralph 

PS:   In a comment yesterday, while talking about the need to raise the Social Security retirement age, Jeb Bush revealed that he doesn't even know that it is already up to 66 (not still 65) and that it is already set to go to 67 next year.     So -- don't vote for Jeb Bush on foreign policy grounds or on domestic policy grounds.