Iraq Chaos Talking Points

As usual, the Rude Pundit just cuts through all the bull and gets right to the heart of the matter.

[A]t some point soon, some right wing bag of douche is going to proclaim that liberals are "happy" or "thrilled" by a civil war in Iraq. Liberals can be accused of enabling terrorists by using the dwindling "freedom of speech" we're allowed, and it's a pretty small rhetorical leap from saying the left wants American soldiers to die (which the right has done) to saying the left loves us some civil war. Yes, liberals will be viciously insulted (defamed, even) by conservative commentators, bloggers, Freeper frothers, as if somewhere, in an oh-so-hip underground club, liberals are gathered in an orgy of celebration over the infinite bloodletting in Iraq, chanting gleefully, "Told you so, told you so, told you so" as they toast with cosmos and down sushi.

So let's just say it up front here: over here in Liberalburg, we weren't happy when Ronald Reagan was cozying up to Saddam Hussein back in the 1980s. We weren't happy that the United States was backing a brutal, murderous, raping thug, giving him weapons and such. We weren't happy with the first Persian Gulf War. We weren't happy with sanctions that decimated the poorest people in Iraq. We weren't happy that the President wouldn't allow weapons inspectors to finish their work.

We weren't happy with this war to start with, saying, for instance, that a civil war was the inevitable outcome. We're not happy to be proven right. We're not happy, simply, when people are dying for no good cause, with no good outcome on the horizon, and no good way out. Frankly, oh, dear, sweet right wing, on the whole, we'd've rather been wrong and had tens of thousands of people not killed, tens of thousands of America soldiers not wounded. We'd've eaten the crow and, trust us, wonderful, fair right wing, you'd've shoved our faces in the plate of that black bird.

But since we were right, maybe, just maybe, someone oughta pay a political price for being so goddamned wrong. Instead, though, the right's gonna try to turn it around and blame the left and those who "didn't support the war" for its failure. Which would, for all intents and purposes, finally seal the deal on Vietnam redux.

Read it, learn it, live it baby.