They know they were right

The answer is conservation of journalistic brand equity. Power and influence in Journalism are based on hierarchical position and brand building. It takes decades to become a “trusted voice.” Thus, even when showing signs of obvious senility (e.g., David Broder) or stupidity (e.g., Joe Klein), the brand is respected.

Americans have been trained to consume news from brands, and it takes years of disappointment to shake the power of a brand. Conditioning beats reasoning in our consumer culture, because propaganda massively overwhelms education.

Never listen to pundits who believe in the tooth fairy. Alex Tabarrok is one such and is part of the increasingly large group of George Mason libertarians who are given platforms. The NY Times already has three.

I guess Charles Koch’s millions in contributions are yielding the kind of results he’s paying for. $20+ million to George Mason, a few more to Cato, and so on, and pretty soon a fringe view of the world starts to sound respectable.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about:
Koch Family Foundations

Well, people will believe anything if they are told “I have been there”. It irritates the living hell out of me when politicians (or anyone for that matter) uses the “I have been there” line. You know, that line when a country comes up in a conversation and they say “I have been there”. I was listening Bill Maher (yeah, yeah) on my iPod when some or other politician was using this argument that things are soooo much better in Iraq. You know – he’s “been there”. Like he knows something we don’t know. Sorry buddy. You haven’t been there. Going on an escorted trip to some holiday camp isn’t “been there”. It’s just a package deal holiday trip. It’s buying that Disney trip off the travel agent. [link deleted]

I would’ve thought it’s because military whizz-bang is all great, adventurous fun.

Looking into the camera or putting pen to paper and saying I screwed the pooch on this one, OTOH, is not fun at all. You can’t put on snazzy military fatigues and shout to be heard over gunfire, nor can you stand in front of a massive, whooshing American flag which slips away to reveal a strategic map of battalions of infantry advancing through the desert. We all fucked up is not entertaining, exciting or bankable, and you can’t use it to sell sports drinks, deodorants or garden tools.

Further, if this is America we’re talking about, then losers get consigned to the dustbin. Saying I may have made a mistake is a fatal crack in journalistic armour and will not lead to lucrative book deals for Zoiks! How Tom Friedman Stuck His Head Up His Ass, and 101 other minor gaffes. There won’t be any prime-time pundit slots for the penitent.

Finally, We got lots of people killed and lost a major war is a bummer, and every media outlet in the land knows that America loses equals ratings death. It took the conservative movement thirty years to convince the public that they actually won the Vietnam War, morally if not literally. The Iraq war screw-up carries with it the implicit message that America isn’t a land of winners, rugged WWII veterans and patriotic honour… In fact, it hints gently that maybe it’s a nation of gullible fools and gung-ho idiots.

And that, I’m afraid, isn’t mere ratings death.

That’s ratings genocide.

I think that Henry’s right that people fool themselves about their past positions to make themselves feel smarter. But, especially with Iraq, there are 2 extra features:

1. Most Americans did oppose the war before March 2003. They favored it in March through May because everybody loves a winner, but part of the reason that the media coverage in the runup to the war was so unforgivable was that it wasn’t even pandering to popular opinion – I don’t think the war ever had a plurality of support until Shock and Awe had begun. So anyway, it’s easy for people to recall opposing (or at least being skeptical of) the war, and forget about their year or so of support.

2. Along the lines of hh in 2, people don’t want to be jarred by seeing new experts. The middle-of-the-roaders that I describe above thought that the nice, MOR pundits that they believe in know wtf they’re talking about. They believed it before the war, during the good times, and once the pundits started expressing skepticism in the past couple years. Most people think Tom Friedman is not an egregious fool*; if he were still saying the war is a big success, he might be in trouble. But he’s been just negative enough that people haven’t been forced to reconsider their opinion of him (note that this works for all Major Pundits, whatever their position – some millions of people have mirrored the journey of each Pundit, and so each has his audience, even the delusional Pony Crew).

* Yes yes, I know they’re wrong. So be it.

The entire US/UK media were hot for the war, with some very rare exceptions, so why the hell would they want to put the people who were right then and they ridiculed in the spotlight now? By running Serious Editorials by Serious People who were Seriously Wrong, a newspaper like the New York Times can perpetrate the fiction that, you know, everybody believed Saddam had WMD, that liberating Iraq was a brilliant idea but Bush botched it and that they were not blame for the one million dead.

Alex whathisname’s theory is just more of the same; was he for the war before he was against it as well?

Remember: over fifteen fucking million people marched against the war, a month before it started, with several million in the US alone. NO way was the majority of people in favour of this war.

(You’re a smart guy Henry, but you can be slightly too naive or trusting at times…)

Let’s just default to the most sensible answer. The American establishment is hawkish and the media, above all the decision-makers, are part of the establishment. Few of them see any need to pay attention to outsiders and non-experts.

Iraq is to be regarded as a temporary setback, at worst. A significant change in policy or strategy is still unthinkable. Bush’s adventurism, incompetence, and bad luck will be rejected, but nothing else. (Expect to see McCain distancing himself from Bush while Bush smiles.)

The fix is probably still on. McCain is more hawkish than Bush, and Hillary is evasive but has never (to my knowledge) gone beyond the competence dodge. Obama is the only hope, but nobody should hope for too much.

See? Easy. No real thought was required, and I’m almost certainly right.

Well, that’s all pretty depressing. I am heartened, however, to see others bashing the “It Was a Popular War” theme. I share the memory that the war was not popular until troops were in the field and it all looked rosy. Not too long afterward, however, the bloom was off that rose, and the war became increasingly unpopular.

_Who should they be interviewing that was against the war up front that has military planning and strategy chops?_

Scott Ritter would be a good choice, but he was hit so hard when he told the truth about the end of the first inspection program (i.e., that it was, among other things, infested with CIA and that many of the Iraqi criticisms of it were legitimate) that he was not allowed on the air much at all. It’s too bad since he had first-hand experience with the situation, in particular with reasons why Bill Clinton couldn’t be trusted on the subject.

A TV special that could almost be within the bounds of acceptable would be an expose on why Tony Blair and the British were so corrupt and gullible that they fell for Bush’s BS. Of course you can’t say directly to American’s faces that they themselves were fooled, or that they’re really powerless to change things, but indirection might work. Otherwise, you’d have to have an expose on how corrupt and incompetant Bush and Cheney are, and I don’t expect to see that story on TV till I’m senile.

There is an short article in Scientific American this month (March) that reviews brain research that finds that skepticism is actually physically more difficult that going along with whatever the conventional wisdom is at the time. Apparently ‘right’ answers are easier to accept and faster to process than ‘wrong’, ambiguous or unknown answers. The evolutionary root for this as a shortcut to quick action, especially group action, probably goes back a long, long way. Once an answer becomes implanted and, therefore, easy, substituting a new answer takes even more effort than the original. I’m sure someone has done rats-in-maze experiments to prove this out.

So many keystrokes and none closer to the truth. The truth is entropy. America, sometime in the late nineties onwards, made the switch from “going bad” to getting “downright rotten”. A collective failure of a whole people to buck up and set right.

Reap.

Alex Tabarokk,
was on record as denying there was a housing boom, and is still trying to suggest that a significant proportion of the house price increases were rational. I wonder why he has any credibility left at all. Now he seems to be suggesting people have no taste at all for dealing with reality. God help us, if he has a following.

If someone doesn’t open a cupboard door it’s usually because they know that a skeleton will fall out. If someone doesn’t open their credit card bill it’s usually because they know that they cannot pay it. If someone always turns the conversation away from a particular line of thinking it’s usually because they fear where that line will lead.

In the UK the political elite fear an examination of the “special relationship” with the USA. They fear any questioning of the “special relationship” because it is a central part of their world-view and know that many other tough questions would follow on. In the USA the political elite fear an examination of the doctrine of “preventive war” because the belief that the USA can wage war whenever and wherever it wants is a central part of their world-view. Tough questions (about oil prices, access to raw materials, the US economy) would follow on from questioning the doctrine of preventive war. So the questioning is repeatedly turned away from this line of thinking. People who opposed the war from the beginning (because it is wrong to go to war against an enemy that is not attacking you and without a UN mandate) get little air-time because it would put into doubt the legitimacy of this kind of act of aggression that have become central to the world-view of the US political elite.

In the UK, in March 2003, half the population thought that Iraq should only be invaded if there was a UN mandate, a quarter thought that Iraq should not be invaded at all and a quarter thought that the UK should be involved without a UN resolution. This suggests that most people in the UK are aware of international law, one of the issues that is avoided like the plague by MSM discussions on Iraq.

How about this question: why do we still listen to the people who predicted that ozone-layer damage would have a major negative effect on human life in the present day;

In part, because they urged us to take policy action to prevent trouble, and we did.

Were there actually any prominent experts who exaggerated this threat?

“Entropy” is a stupid explanation by people who think they’re smart. “Never explain by conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity”. It’s so Nineties.

Obama did once suggest that we should look at the policy which led us to the second Iraq War, rather than just the details. But he hasn’t campaigned on that.

But #15 is still right. The Iraq War hasn’t been bad enough to shake or replace the power structure and its conventional wisdom. They will make some minimal tweaks and carry on.

Bush didn’t even win the popular vote in 2000, and his 70%+ ratings only lasted a few months after 9/11, and his poll ratings were below 40% for over a year before the media quit calling him “a popular President”. When they had to quit saying that, they started predicting non-existent rebounds and recoveries.

The simple, robust, uncool explanation remains the best.

Something like 55% of those surveyed in January 2001 said they voted for Bush in 2000; my guess is that it’ll be down to 35% in January 2009, should they ask.

The Frontline two-parter on the war was notable for its montage of the war-cheerleading being broadcast in the near-runup to the invasion. I remember flying into the US on the night that the ‘Free Jessica Lynch’ operation was revealed, and seeing Wolf Blitzer’s giant head pronouncing upon it on Detroit airport’s jumbo screens. I left just after the whole stages Saddam statue thing.

The American mainstream media went crackers during the early part of 2003. And even now, as far as the war is concerned, the spectrum of ‘respectable’ opinion runs from The New Republic (Peter Beinart, the mea culpa hawk) to FreeRepublic.com.

Ritter was blackmailed in 2003 on the basis of a sex-crimes charge from 2001. Charges were dropped in the 2001 case and the case was sealed. The judge in the 2001 case, Thomas Spargo, was one of the participants in the riot which ended the Bush-Gore vote count, and was later disbarred for corruption. The 2001 charges were never reopened.

Details at my link.

Ozone depletion mostly affected the Southern Hemisphere, and significant effects were noted in Australia. A decades-long attempt to reduce the problem has had significant results.

It’s characteristic of people who call themselves conservatives to use successful responses to warnings as evidence that there was never anything to worry about in the first place. For another, larger example, the alarmism about the population explosion several decades ago motivated the governments of largest countries in the world, China and India, to change from pro-natalist to rather aggressively anti-natalist policies. (Yes, government action). As a result, the problem is much less alarming than it was, though it hasn’t disappeared.

Many conservatives brand themselves as dishonest idiots right from the start, but that doesn’t mean that they can be ignored, because they can be effective propagandists even so.

Are Martin and Matt talking about *the* Scott Ritter? And if they are, which version? The one who resigned from UNSCOM in 1998 writing in his resignation letter:

The sad truth is that Iraq today is not disarmed anywhere near the level required by Security Council resolutions. As you know, UNSCOM has good reason to believe that there are significant numbers of proscribed weapons and related components and the means to manufacture such weapons unaccounted for in Iraq today…

Iraq has lied to the Special Commission and the world since day one concerning the true scope and nature of its proscribed programs and weapons systems.

The Special Commission of today, hobbled as it is by unfettered Iraqi obstruction and non-existent Security Council enforcement of its own resolutions, is not the organization I joined almost seven years ago.

?

Or the Ritter version 5 years later who, after being out of the intelligence loop and with no access to primary source material, had performed a volte face of truly epic proportions?

If there were many who doubted Ritter’s intellectual rigour and suspected a media whore where you saw a champion of truth, then I don’t think they can be blamed. Far from wondering why Ritter wasn’t all over our screens in 2003, I’m more inclined to question why Ritter was given the time of day by *any* news media organization intent on a serious discussion of the issues. And the fact is, whatever you say about his supposed marginalisation, he *was* a regular commentator.

If I’d been an opponent of the war, I don’t think I’d want the anti-war case made by a former weapons inspector who, at the time he left his work, was convinced Iraq was awash with WMD. It’s the same logic that leads me to conclude the pro-war case could do without the (albeit belated) support of Henry Kissinger, for example.

Thanks, but no thanks.

And the fact is, whatever you say about his supposed marginalisation, he was a regular commentator.

He was not. He was interviewed a few times.

The fact that he changed his mind four years later is hardly damning. At least he didn’t change his mind after successfully using fraudulent arguments to instigate a bloody, unnecessary war.

Yo, Brownie, even a grade a nimrod like you should’ve figured out that, you know, ridiculing Scott Ritter for speaking out against the war on the basis that there were no WMDs is a teensy weensy bit stupid five years after events have proven him right.

The light is on but mr brain has gone out, hasn’t he?

If I’d been an opponent of the war, I don’t think I’d want the anti-war case made by… [yada yada yada]

Am I supposed to care or something?

People should read brownie’s Zmag cite. It doesn’t say what he claims it says.

Brownie has said nothing, so far, except that he doesn’t liek Ritter for some reason.

And why am I being moderated? My earlier post still isn’t up.

“Why is it that only those who supported the war are considered serious experts by the media?”
The shortest answer is that the people who own and run “the media” supported, and support, the “war”, so naturally their possessions reflect that.
It’s not like “the media” is some guy in the next apartment, or the delicatessen worker who makes your sandwich. It’s a product, not a producer.
“The media” is a costume with a mask on, a theatrical figure, a dramatized synthetic being. It talks and gestures, it has opinions, it displays emotions, but it isn’t really there; it has a creator, or a team of creators. As such it will tend to represent the considerations of those creators unless they’re of an extraordinarily noble character. Which in our present case they are most definitely not.
There’s a bizarre and likely artificial naivety at work in the question, because it assumes something like lack of bias, neutrality of information, the infamous “fair and balanced” reporting, in journals which consistently display nothing of the kind.
But admitting that consciously will force you to take the next step, through the who? how? why? door.
And God only knows what you’ll be faced with then.

But Brownie, what about the bit where he says:

I can’t be accountable for what somebody believes. I can tell you what the Intelligence communities of the world were saying. And there was 100% agreement that Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed by 1998.

Where you quote him he is just being ultra precise, presumably in an effort to prevent wilful misunderstanding of irrelevant inconsistencies. Oh well. He goes on to say at least 95 to 98 percent of WMDs had been disabled and the rest were controlled by the most intrusive inspection regime in the world. You use that quote but I do not think it means what you think it means.

The fact that he changed his mind four years later is hardly damning.

In the juvenile pap that passes for American political discourse, it isn’t just damning, it’s suicide.

My God! He changed his mind! Now we can’t trust what he says about anything!

Feh.
.

Don’t try your silly troll games with me, motherfucker.

My work here is done.

[vanishes in a cloud of hops]
.

Ritter was silenced by the scandal less than two months after that 2002 piece came out in the Times.After January, 2003 he was no longer part of the debate.

This is a bit ludicrous. We’ve trying to talk about a bunch of conceited morons who misled this country, but suddenly we’re defending Scott Ritter.

Like I said, the light is on, but nobody’s home.

Don’t try your silly troll games with me, motherfucker. I’ve been dealing with your kind for years, and I’m stronger than dirt. (And don’t go whining to mommy because I used a bad word. Boo fucking hoo.)

Let me guess. You’re 11.

Where you quote him he is just being ultra precise, presumably in an effort to prevent wilful misunderstanding of irrelevant inconsistencies. Oh well. He goes on to say at least 95 to 98 percent of WMDs had been disabled and the rest were controlled by the most intrusive inspection regime in the world. You use that quote but I do not think it means what you think it means.

Well at least Jack is coherent (and presumably not drunk, unlike tough John). As it happens, I agree that there was pretty much a consensus that the vast bulk of Iraq’s WMDs were done for by the late 90s. I don’t think it was ever a Bush/Blair contention that this was not the case. The fact remains that Ritter felt so strongly that there was unfinished inspections business in 1998 that he resigned on principle. Not only was he adamant that there were more weapons to be found, he was scathing about the UN and its inability/unwillingness to enforce its own resolutions.

Between 1998 and very late 2002 there was a 4 year inspections hiatus. Ritter, who had been a civilian since 1998, couldn’t possibly be better informed on the eve of war than he was as part of UNSCOM. Everything he was capable of knowing in 2002 must have been available to him in 1998 but, more importantly, he was privy to intelligence in 1998 that he wouldn’t get anywhere near in 2002. I have absolutely no issue with those who, over the same period, came to different conclusions about the extent of the threat posed by Saddam. But Ritter’s contrasting views were not a difference of emphasis; they differed in substance. He was either talking out of his arse in 1998 or doing so in 2002/2003. The fact that his views in 2002/3 turned out to be nearer to the truth than those he offered from a position of knowledge in 1998 does nothing to rebut the plain fact that by the time the US fleet turned up in the Gulf he was damaged goods.

There is a rather more interesting discussion to be had about the distnction between the political ramifications of no WMD being found and the extent to which this damages the pro-war case generally, but you’ll be gutted to know that I don’t have time for this tonight. Suffice it to say, my position at the time was always that it didn’t matter one jot whether we discovered tons of enriched uranium beneath Saddam’s palaces or tons of camel shit. The fact is that we were entitled to know for certain whether Saddam’s continued obfuscation and obstruction was designed to conceal something or was simply the grandstanding of megalomaniac who couldn’t reconcile himself to his own impotence. He wasn’t entitled to the benefit of the doubt and when Blix (notwithstanding obvious improvements) was still unable to report the full cooperation that 1441 demanded, the choice was to either go home and hope for the best or find out for ourselves once and for all.

The failure to find WMD has political consequences for those who guaranteed their discovery, but it does nothing to erode the logical justification for war. An intellectually honest opponent of war ought to be able to understand this and, believe it or not, many do.

Of course, there’s yet another discussion to be had about the de/merits of war using other measures of success and failure, but the ‘no wmd = illegitimate war’ line is bereft of logic.

For a great many, the debate to commit troops turned on a judgment about whether there was any possibility of learning the truth of Saddam’s WMD capability via other means. I concluded that we could not, and Saddam’s denial of unfettered access to inscpetors even with quarter of a million coalition troops massed in the region was the clincher. It was always possible to believe Ritter’s assessment of the threat posed by Iraq was nearer to the truth than that offered by Washington and London and still support regime change specifically because anything short meant we’d never know for certain. David Kelly, until he died, was living proof of this as his article in the Observer on the eve of war demonstrated.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/aug/31/huttonreport.iraq

I don’t think I’ll ever stop being dumbfounded by the inability of large numbers of those who opposed the war to understand how utterly insignifcant the non-discovery of WMD was.

Didn’t some kinda speech stress concrete evidence of WMD programs as a justification for war?

John,

I think the mother ship just left.

But you see, one of the things Ritter had said before was that the old inspections had been fronting for CIA spying, and that much of the “obstruction” was because of this. When you take that into account, Saddam Hussein’s actions were not nearly so unreasonable.

Leaving aside the fact that, whatever the differences of opinion about the validity of war, there was no-one in the UN who thought Saddam’s actions anything other than “unreasonable” (which is why 1441, giving Saddam a “final opportunity to comply”, was passed unanimously), the question that begs itself is why Ritter thought the wholesale infiltration of UNSCOM by the CIA wasn’t worthy of a mention in 1998? Are you suggesting he knew something as a civilian in 2002 that he didn’t as an inspector in 1998? Fanciful.

Again, you’re confusing what is and isn’t important as regards Ritter’s credibility. Let’s for sake of argument agree that everything Ritter was saying about inspections in 2002/3 was 100% accurate. The fact remains that when he was the man on the ground 4 years earlier, he was singing an entirely different tune. This is what compromises him and why many anti-war types didn’t and still won’t touch him with a ten foot barge pole.

Brownie, what makes you think that your little verbal affectations are going to work here? In what world do you live that has made you confident that your methods of argumentation are convincing? After your fourth iteration, you still haven’t told us why we are we supposed to think that Ritter was discredited.

Are you suggesting he knew something as a civilian in 2002 that he didn’t as an inspector in 1998?

Yes! I think that you’ve figured it out!

First, the situation in 2002 might have been different than the situation in 1998. Second, despite no longer being an inspector, Ritter may have received new information between 1998 and 2002. Either way, he could have changed his mind.

That’s why we don’t think that the fact that he had different opinions on the two different dates is ironclad proof that he was wrong and worthless, especially because in 2002 he was right. (We do not rule out the possibility that he had been wrong in 1998.)

And remember, we were originally talking about a number of prestigious people who were completely wrong, in contrast to Ritter. You might call these people the “topic” of the thread. And seemingly, you are one of them.

Incidentally, have you ever changed your mind about anything? Do you regard that as a sign of weakness? Because you think the same way you did in 2002, when everyone else has taken changed circumstances into account, and you seem to think that Ritter discredited himself forever by changing his mind once.

Brownie, you seem to have some kind of private information about Ritter that you’re not sharing. Private information that is very important to you, so that you are not willing to share it.

Boy! Don’t you just wish that girls went by with names such as “John Emerson” and “Brownie”? Can there ever be a better time to get to say it on Crooked Timber?

CATFIGHT!

Oh! I can. Comment 30 was on why waste so much energy on avoiding to do the right thing? The whole “Way of the West”, at least the Anglo-Saxon version of it, is falling and failing. Your comments on worldviews point out that you feel they are flawed.

My take on all this is; die. Just get the fuck out of the global system. A picture may help you understand why I feel it is hopeless to “correct from within.”

http://bp1.blogger.com/_DZH2cmCoois/R9qICozPCII/AAAAAAAAE2E/KM2hSTdkm6A/s1600-h/tmp.jpg

A.Y. Mous: You’re still not making much sense. What is “the right thing” that you refer to? Are you referring to “invading Iraq”?

As someone who has lived in countries at war, and worked in refugee camps, and seen the damage that conflict does to civil institutions, I cannot accept that starting a war is “the right thing to do” unless the rationale is very clear and the risks adequately weighed up. The constantly-changing justifications for invading Iraq do not convince me. I suspect that the hidden assumptions are a belief in the USA that it is safer if it attacks other countries first, and a belief in the UK that it is safer to unquestioningly follow the USA. I think that these countries would be safer if they got these assumptions out in the open and thought them through.

By the way, John, are you just an Emerson or an “Emerson” Emerson?