Comments on: The Five Standard Excuses

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Sat, 07 Feb 2004 02:58:33 +0000

“If you set out to get rid of something, say a unicorn, and it never existed, did you succeed or fail?“—walt

Phrased that way, the answer is “fail”. You didn’t “get rid” of it. Imagine the converse: that you set out to “make” something. Just because it exists somewhere in the universe doesn’t mean that you were successful in “making” it. If the question is phrased as something like “ensure that something doesn’t exist”, then the answer is different.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 08:29:21 +0000

Actually, most of what we get is the Peewee Herman defense: “I meant to do that!”

By: Walt Pohl

Walt Pohl — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 20:11:58 +0000

This discussion raises an important linguistic question, the kind of question that analytic philosophers specialize in. If you set out to get rid of something, say a unicorn, and it never existed, did you succeed or fail? Brian, any insight?

By: Katherine

Katherine — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 17:53:55 +0000

My favorite vulgar phrase is “incompetent plutocrats bent on world domination”. (But I don’t usually use it in public, let alone around conservatives or swing voters—it just doesn’t do much good. You can accumulate all the reasonable, moderate credibility you want, but no matter how much you’ve done that—when you say what you really think of Bush you will be immediately dismissed.)

By: Morris

Morris — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 15:44:31 +0000

But these weak excuses are not the American way. The American way is to deny there was any failure, and to accuse all those who talk of failure of being unpatriotic if not treasonous, and lambast those who raise these painful questions for giving comfort to our enemies.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 15:34:22 +0000

One could argue that the goal of the project was simply to follow and support whatever the American decided to do (the “poodle” brand of national security decision-making). Has it succeeded? Seeing Bush’s approval, I doubt it. We’ll see in November I guess!

By: GMT

GMT — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 15:21:18 +0000

des has kindly provided the money-shot, supra. These people are Lysenkoists, so good luck breaking their loop. The American aristocracy has spent a generation developing a pet intelligencia whereby they can be comforted in whatever they need to believe this week (the masses being along for the ride, mostly) . Bypassing the CIA (again!) has brought this Ph.D. as spokesmodel model into the decision making process, even the war room. American military might is reduced to a strap-on for the pnac. It’s an ourobouros of self-deception, a nauseating display of autofellatio, a hermetically sealed solipsism. In Texas, they now have to preach superstition to women seeking an abortion. Science matters not; that which does not flatter the metaphysics of the customer is “liberal,” “revisionist,” a “conspiracy theory.” See? Impervious. Unassailable.

By: Rob Read

Rob Read — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 15:05:54 +0000

“They were so crazed and so far out and so difficult to reason with – to the point of being bizarre. Dogmatic, as if they were on a mission from God.” He added, “If it doesn’t fit their theory, they don’t want to accept it.” A perfect description of the followers of Marx!

By: Barry

Barry — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 14:58:14 +0000

Conrad Barwa: “(5) is a possibility but then there has to be the selection of who goes and who gets blamed for what. As the O’Neill case shows, there are limits as to how far up the blame can fall without some insecurity and backtracking. Those high up enough to have some inside knowledge might not go quietly without revealing some embarrassing things that no govt would like to come out and those who don’t have this kind of knowledge are most likely too junior or low down the political-bureaucratic hierarchy to realistically be held responsible for such major decision making processes.” It would be fun to watch the administration try to dump somebody like Rumsfield or Wolfowitz (Powell they could sh*t on; that’s his job in this administration). They’ve both got to have extensive, detailed and utterly damning files. In multiple locations. And as Brad DeLong has pointed out, the only people fired from/eased out of this administration are those who told embarrassing truths. Non-embarrassing lies, massive incompetancy, and corruption are not reasons to get rid of something.

By: Barry

Barry — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 14:51:12 +0000

(continuing) I’m sure that there were some who genuinely wanted Saddam removed chiefly for human rights reasons; I don’t believe that any of those people were in this administration, or were listened to for advice.

By: Barry

Barry — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 14:47:13 +0000

Chris, I’m not going after you. I’m pointing out that the neo-cons who advocated this only switched to human rights concerns after the WMD excuse fell through. And that they’ll have no compunction about switching excuses again and again, as needed.

By: des

des — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 14:31:42 +0000

As for the Bushites and neocons: mendacious liars all. Mendacious liars are of course the very worst kind. Is there no end to the Bushite perfidy? Meanwhile, I have been somewhat flashed back to a New Yorker story from last year:

The former intelligence official went on, “One of the reasons I left was my sense that they were using the intelligence from the C.I.A. and other agencies only when it fit their agenda. They didn’t like the intelligence they were getting, and so they brought in people to write the stuff. They were so crazed and so far out and so difficult to reason with – to the point of being bizarre. Dogmatic, as if they were on a mission from God.” He added, “If it doesn’t fit their theory, they don’t want to accept it.”

Although perhaps technically “We just cherry-picked data that supported the conclusions our prior ideological commitments required” isn’t actually an excuse as such.

By: Rob Read

Rob Read — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 13:55:04 +0000

Good to see you’ve spotted that the state bEUrocracy is a terrible way to organise a society! Go Timber Libertarians!

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 13:53:51 +0000

“It occurred before certain important facts were known and could not happen again.” “Jerusalem – A government critic said on Tuesday that Israel was aware before the war against Iraq that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction, but Israel did not inform the United States. “Israel put itself on war footing before the US invasion last year, passing out gas mask kits to its citizens and then ordering them to open the kits, a step that eventually will cost millions, since components would have to be replaced. “But lawmaker Yossi Sarid, a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, said on Tuesday that Israeli intelligence knew beforehand that Iraq had no weapons stockpiles and misled US President George Bush.. . ” -at: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=qw1075852801225B262&set_id=1

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 13:37:01 +0000

Not clear if you’re taking issue with me here or not Barry. Anyway, what I meant to convey in the sentence you quoted was just this: that people like Anne Clwyd supported the use of force to remove Saddam on human rights grounds quite independently of the WMD arguments. From their perpective, so far so good (since Saddam has gone). But, as you say, a nasty civil war followed by repressive dictatorship would suggest that those who backed the war on those grounds were mistaken to have done so. As for the Bushites and neocons: mendacious liars all. They’ll go on to say whatever suits them.