MR. MURPHY: Yes. Absolutely. Nixon’s spinning in his grave. We used to be the very competent guys that run wars. Now I—my view is, our magnificent military and the Bush administration won the war, the Iraqi people have lost the politics and the peace, and now we’ve got to figure out a way to protect American interests and move on. Very big...Shrum legitimizes Murphy's despicable claim by using similar language, framing Iraq's collapse as the result of its peoples' irresponsibility--not the fruit of U.S. invasion and occupation. But don't hold your breath for hawks to own up to these fatal mistakes. What matters most to them is preserving their own reputations; admitting fault and accepting defeat is politically out of the question.
MR. RUSSERT: You’re blaming the Iraqi people?
MR. MURPHY: Yeah! I think it’s the truth.
MR. SHRUM: I mean, they don’t keep the troops there.MR. MURPHY: No, but the troops are there for security so they can grow up and have a democracy, and that’s what they’re horrible at.
MR. CARVILLE: Are we—but, Mike, are we surprised that we found Iraqis when we went there?
MR. MURPHY: The war is...(unintelligible)...they light up.
MR. CARVILLE: Were we shocked when we found Iraqis when we went to Iraq? We didn’t know there were going to be Iraqi people there?
MR. MURPHY: No, no.
MR. SHRUM: Some of them don’t like us occupying their country.
MR. CARVILLE: They’re intelligent.
MR. MURPHY: Well, yeah, but we didn’t feed them the democracy, and that they’re having trouble.
MS. MATALIN: Well, what all Americans do not like is Democrats saying or anybody in this country saying, even those who are anti-war, do not like when Democratic leaders say, “This war is lost.” We are determined people. We cannot believe that this enemy that stones women and sends 12-year-olds out to behead innocents are people that are better than us.
MR. SHRUM: Mary, we’re going to stay and stay and stay and stay.
MR. CARVILLE: Correct.
MR. SHRUM: And when is it going to, when is it...
MS. MATALIN: You’re going to stay on Iraq.
MR. SHRUM: Give me some indication...
MS. MATALIN: What is your...
MR. SHRUM: Give me some indication of when persisting in a failed policy is going to yield success.
MS. MATALIN: Give me some indication of what your foreign policy positions against this 21st century enemy, what is the Democratic plan?
MR. SHRUM: Mine would be, mine would be a lot closer to the current secretary of defense who said we got to draw down the troops next year...
MR. CARVILLE: Right.
MR. SHRUM: ...to send a very clear message to the Iraqis that they have to get their act together, they have to make the government work.
It's this hubris that paved the way for the despicable "blame the victim" strategy. I wrote about it last November, as did Thomas Ricks & Robin Wright from WaPo. Since then, the argument has reared its ugly head much more frequently. Too few are defending Iraqis and placing blame where it's due.
Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi lays it out:
As Juan Cole put it,I can do without having to listen to American journalists, as well as politicians on both sides of the aisle, bitch and moan about how the Iraqi government better start "shaping up" and "taking responsibility" and "showing progress" if they want the continued blessing of American military power. Virtually every major newspaper in the country and every hack in Washington has lumped all the "benchmarks" together, painting them as concrete signs that, if met, would mean the Iraqi government is showing "progress" or "good faith."
"President Bush will not support a war spending bill that punishes the Iraqi government for failing to meet benchmarks for progress," was how the AP put it.
"Among the mile markers that should be used to measure Iraqi progress is a finalized revenue-sharing agreement on current and future oil reserves," was the formulation of the Savannah Daily News.
Still other papers, like the Baltimore Sun, cast the supplemental as a means of exercising "tough love" with the lazy and ungrateful Iraqis, who to date have failed to show interest in governing their own country. "The talk around Congress," wrote the Sun, "was of putting together a bill with (probably nonbinding) benchmarks, designed to hold the feet of the Iraqi government to the fire -- or at least near the fire."
"I see. The US invaded their country, abolished their army, gutted their civil service, occupied their cities, and now it is the Iraqis' fault."
1 comment:
word. in other news, i posted new something on my pitiful excuse for a blog.
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