I’ve noticed that even the use of the spin doctored prefix ‘not in full blown’ to pretend that Iraq is not in Civil War has been quietly dropped in the last couple of weeks by magazines like the Economist and people like Kissinger.
At the same time, people who supported the war in Iraq, such as Matt Drudge, the Economist and nearly all of the red blooded (now red faced) war bloggers are now desperately clambering all over each other to make sure the shit doesn’t stick to them.
They don’t want to be on the losing team, there is nothing in it for them to continue to support Bush over McCain or even the Democrats – except loyalty and integrity.
People who witnessed Murdoch switch his support, overnight, from the Tories to New Labour, in the UK, will not be surprised if even Fox News flips allegiance as its ratings drop. Expect freak shows like O’Reilly to be canned next year. Fox will only follow ideology if ideology happens to be in power and roughly in line with its bottom line.
To help its own switch, in a sleight of hand that doesn’t appear to be a switch at all, the Economist defends its original support for the war and blames Rumsfeld. This seems plausibly pragmatic till you consider that Rumsfeld was one of the only pragmatists on the Bush team, leaving them in self-contradictory pragmatic support of the crazy neo-con ideologues.
You can’t pretend to be pragmatic when you are choosing the ideologues over the realists. And its mighty convenient to use Rumsfeld as your scapegoat when nobody likes Rumsfeld anymore.
What if the decision to go to war in the first place was wrong?
What if old fashioned military tactics had been used and the outcome was even worse?
Here’s a thought. It may just be that Rumsfeld was the only competent person in the Bush administration.
That would leave the Economist, Drudge and the war bloggers to be wrong in the first place, unapologetic about it, and now guilty of absolute cowardice and hypocrisy by blaming the execution rather than the decision to go to war.
A year or so back, after the Iraqi elections, and a glimmer of hope, War Bloggers asked that those who were against the war follow Andew Sullivan’s lead, apologise, and admit that they were wrong.
Now its their turn.