We're on the eve of war with Iran, and if the rhetoric all sounds familiar, it is because many of the same characters are back on our screens, telling the same tales and making the same promises. One of this nation's more fundamental modern problems, in media and politics both, is that even decades of catastrophic incompetence will not get you kicked out of Expert Club. Decades of catastrophic incompetence are in fact a core requirement of membership: Administrations and media columns are not often staffed with people whose predictions and strategies were proven successful. They are staffed with ideologues willing to consistently advocate for the same moves over and over—people incapable of reflection, much less learning, who will toss all of reality aside to insist that the Real Problem Here is that none of us did the wrong things wrongly enough last time around, but it will work this next time.
If prior bombings did not result in nations thanking us for bombing them into freedom, for example, that means we need to bomb them twice as hard the next time around. What, they write on the very same opinion pages, could possibly go wrong?
Here is George W. Bush administration national security adviser Stephen Hadley, writing on The Washington Post op-ed page that a drone strike killing a top Iranian official is alarming, to be sure, but also "opens doors to diplomacy." His argument is worse than irrelevant. Stephen Hadley is responsible, in his advocacy, for the deaths of roughly half a million people and the formation of ISIS. He is among those most directly responsible for a decade of Middle East unrest. He is, literally, among the Americans least qualified to be piping up with military advice on the eve of this new conflict. And his presence on the page even now, still unashamed and still feted by a press with the collective attention span of a fruit fly, is precisely why there will almost certainly be a new conflict.
Hadley also makes over $300,000 a year working for the defense contractor that helped build the drone that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. This went unmentioned in the Post.
If Hadley is not your cup of tea, or if you prefer that your news analysis be given to you in dead-eyed talking head form rather than in print, Fox News has you covered. Paul Wolfowitz is one of the Bush officials most responsible for the most incompetent military planning in a generation, a doctrine that continues to be followed now, as Trump's collection of neoconservative paste-eaters return to the theories of "preventative" military actions and anti-internationalism that brought us the Iraq not-war our nation remains not-mired in to this day. Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld are three names now synonymous with catastrophic military incompetence—it is only a matter of time, no doubt, before we hear from the other two.
It is not just Republican ex-officials who are returning to their old roles. Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller is also now available to "provide analysis" on whether we will soon be bombing Iran for the key strategic reason of neoconservative hawks really, really wanting to. In her Times role, Miller did exactly what the Times is now (in)famous for: credulously published leaks by anonymous "senior" administration officials that bolstered administration positions on reports that Bush administration officials then referenced as evidence. See: aluminum tubes.
The problem here is that our nation's betters are absolutely incapable of learning. It is not a thing. In the halls of power you are important because you are important, and you are important if you ever were important, and you can cause catastrophes that will literally be studied by historians for generations to come and still be invited to the same cocktail parties and green rooms, because that's show biz.
Maybe we could just skip it this time. If it is going to be this brazen, I can suggest a method that would be far less work for each media program and op-ed page. Take the interviews and op-eds from prior to the Iraq War, both the ones about "weapons of mass destruction" and the ones about a "quick resolution" and "liberators" and "will pay for itself," dub in Iran for Iraq, and call it done. There: Everyone gets a long weekend now, and not a stitch of damage is done to the nation's war machine.