Because profound incompetence combined with no sense of self-awareness means never having to apologize, Paul Wolfowitz is once again posing as a foreign policy expert.
I think reasonable people can disagree about foreign policy and we need to have a debate that includes a wide range of opinions. But Paul Wolfowitz should not be part of the debate. His lies and incompetence in Iraq have cost hundreds of thousands of lives and injured America's moral standing worldwide. Giving Wolfy any respect in the foreign policy debate is like putting Michael Vick in charge of a program to protect dogs.
But, because mocking the contemptible is fun, here is a symphony of the foreign policy expertise of Wolfy and his friends:
Paul Wolfowitz is an absolute master of looking straight into the camera and appearing honest while saying things that are just not true. Before I deal with his current article, let's go through a couple of Wolfy's greatest lies:
There has been a good deal of comment — some of it quite outlandish — about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army — hard to imagine.
-House Budget Committee testimony on Iraq 2/27/2003
For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.
-5/28/2003
Q: The fact that there hasn't been substantial cache of weapons of mass destruction -- is that an embarrassment?
A.
Wolfowitz: No. Is it an embarrassment to people on the other side that we've discovered these biological production vans, which the defector told us about?
- Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense CNN Interview
5/31/2003
My favorite:
I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq. Those who want to come and help are welcome. Those who come to interfere and destroy are not.
-7/21/2003
Paul Wolfowitz confidently told the entire world that we were going to Iraq for reasons that were untrue. He then confidently made a lot of predictions that turned out to be wrong.
This isn't some trivial screwup; governments made decisions and too many people believed these lies (if you don't like the word lie I have two responses: (1) Wolfowitz lied repeatedly. (2) If Wolfowitz actually believed everything he said then he is the stupidest person that ever lived. I think he'd rather be seen as a liar than as the stupidest person that ever lived.). The consquences of these lies are enormous: 4,334 Americans are dead. We don't know how many Iraqis are dead, but scientific estimates range from 92,000 to over a million. Each dead person is a human being - someone's mother, father, brother, sister, daughter or son. They died because of Wolfowitz's lies. I'm sorry, but Wolfowitz can not pose as an expert on foreign policy.
Wolfowitz begins his current article by writing:
This is not the place to reargue the Iraq war. So let's stipulate that the issue here is not whether to use military force to promote changes in the nature of states; it's about whether -- and how -- to promote such changes peacefully. On that issue there is a genuine debate between realists and their critics. And a desire for pragmatism should not be confused with a specific foreign-policy doctrine that minimizes the importance of change within states.
You know what Paul, that's not how the world works. When you fuck up you lose trust and credibility. When your fuckup is epic, you lose all credibility and people no longer listen to your opinions. Just as Bill Clinton and John Edwards are not qualified to lecture anyone on keeping it in their pants, you are unqualified to lecture anyone on foreign policy.
Our current President said it best:
I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
Paul, to paraphrase our President, I don't oppose all Republicans, I oppose dumb ones. STFU. Forever.