Brooks makes, what I hope, are some career-ending admissions in today's New York Times:
"Nearly everybody agrees that the momentum is with the insurgents these days. Chaos is spreading. Sunnis are jumping on the terrorists' bandwagon. If anything, the images of car bombings on our TV screens don't convey the full horror of the situation."
Interesting. And only two months after the U.S. election. Here's Brooks in June, 2003:
"...with all the advantages Bush has--incumbency, victory in Iraq, the huge fundraising lead--Democrats simply have to roll the dice and behave radically."
Those nutty radical Dems said the war was misguided. So did that liberal media:
"...This defeatist tone in the press simply proved unsustainable day after day as the coalition forces seemed to be bungling their way straight into Baghdad. Iraqi crowds sometimes grew exuberantly pro-American as the Baath secret police vanished. An Iraqi civilian in Najaf exulted, "Democracy! Whiskey! And Sexy!" giving the war its first great slogan. Members of the commentariat began to realize that once again they'd gone off the pessimistic deep end."
Also, If you were opposed to the Iraq war because it might turn out very badly, you hated Jews. Here's Brooks in February '03:
"Anti-Semitism is alive and thriving. It's just that its epicenter is no longer on the Buchananite right, but on the peace-movement left...I mentioned that I barely know Paul Wolfowitz, which is true. But I do admire him enormously, not only because he is both a genuine scholar and an effective policy practitioner, not only because he has been right on most of the major issues during his career, but because he is now the focus of world anti-Semitism.
And you were a loser, too, if you didn't like American corpses:
"But a hard core within the [Democratic] party never did, and never will, support the [Iraq] effort. And this group is getting more alienated, insular and vituperative each day.... Eighty-five per cent tell pollsters the war is going very or moderately well, and this figure has barely wiggled in the past two weeks. Polls show a willingness to absorb casualties."
Along the way, some pinkos apparently lost that hunger for American blood.
Whither Brooks today? He still sees a bright and shining opportunity for Iraq: fundamentalist theocratic Shiite dominance.
" [The Shiite clerics'] commitment to democracy is real, the product of a genuine intellectual revolution. The Sistani-backed slate will probably lead the coming vote....they have embraced political freedom and one person one vote.
This, of course has nothing to do with the fact that the Shiites are an overwhelming majority of the population.
Here's one for the ages, though.
"The U.S. tried to hand a new Iraq back to the Iraqis. We failed"
What's this "we" shit, white boy?
hack n.
1. David Brooks