What I need from the conservatives who were wrong is this:
A statement, a simple statement, that they were wrong and we were right. Period. Not that Bush incompetently executed a terrific idea, but that the idea itself was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. As wrong as you can get. You simply cannot force democracy on another nation at gunpoint. Period.
It doesn't matter that you don't like the messenger, that you wish he or she were less shrill or not fat or not given to making documentaries or standing in ditches or previously criticizing Bush on other issues from the pages of the New York Times. None of that matters. Those messengers were right. You were wrong. Period. Have the decency to say it, once and for all, and we can move on.
It's not groveling that we critics want; we don't want conservatives to face years and years of personal humiliation over this. The admitted emotional satisfaction we can get from that is minor, more appropriate for the schoolyard than the national political stage.
What the right doesn't understand - and why they're screaming that we're meanies over this insistence on an unconditional mea culpa - is that we anticipate a repeat, with a more competent executive in charge, of a scenario that most people with a grounding in Middle Eastern history knew had no chance of success from the get-go. You could put the most efficient, brilliant leader in charge, but if the idea is simply bone-headed and undoable, all you've got is a longer time period before the unraveling becomes apparent, which in some ways presents a bigger danger. A competent executive that marshals a bad idea through its initial stages has a greater ability to hide the signs of an impending disaster. Just ask Enron employees who had their life savings tied up in company pension plans.
I also find it disingenuous that the right claims sole ownership of the "Saddam is a bad, bad man" banner. Please. Compared to the liberal left, they are decades late to that particular party. Progressives were screaming into the void about Hussein's human rights violations, his gassing of the Kurds, his terrorizing of political opponents long, long, long before it conveniently bubbled up into the consciousness of the neocon right. While Donald Rumsfeld was famously shaking hands with and arming Hussein, we were saying: Bad idea. Bad man. This is gonna come back and bite us in the ass.
For this, we were labeled too "sensitive," not reality-based enough to operate in the real world, where sometimes you have to arm a strongman to keep a worse scenario at bay.
Well, shove it. We were right. You were wrong. Period.
And you were wrong because - it pains me to say this - you lost your minds in the aftermath of 9/11.
War critics who did not, in fact, shut off their higher cortex and retreat to the reptilian brain during this period can make it easier for conservatives to admit they wrong - and we need to do this to move this country forward, like it or not - by quit rubbing their faces in it. A horrible thing happened on 9/11. We were shocked as a nation, horrified, terrified, wounded and grieving. It is understandable - completely understandable - that a large portion of this country suddenly was willing to kill people - any people - for any trumped-up reason whatsoever to assuage the bleeding of this national wound. But ... being understandable doesn't make it right. I can understand how a parent reaches a point of slapping a child out of frustration for asking one too many times for a Mr. Goodbar in the check-out line; that doesn't mean I approve the action or want to see it repeated in the future.
But it was then - right then in the fresh, raw, losing-our-minds stage after 9/11 - that the few outspoken critics should have been most honored, that critical speech should have been most strenuously preserved: saying whoa whoa whoa whoa now here, let's slow down. Let's look at the facts. Let's see if a military solution is going to prevent this kind of thing again - or whether it's going to further enrage an already clearly enraged group. That was when it was most vital to hear "slow down the juggernaut and let's examine our options" counsel.
And that's when we were labeled traitors. Fifth columnists. America haters.
We loved our country enough to dig deep down into our courage and speak up in the face of an overwhelming majority that had - to put it bluntly - temporarily gone insane. We loved our country - and its freedoms - enough to bear years and years of being called its enemy, and still continued to speak out.
We believed our gargantuan defense budget should - at the very least - buy us time to simmer down, regain our senses, make decisions from a strategic and rational mindset and not one out of instinctive revenge and over-emotionalism. The fact is, if the defense budget can't serve that purpose, then we've been seriously overfunding it for years.
It's hard to say these simple words, without qualification: You were right. I was wrong. Ask anyone who's been in a relationship. Hell, ask anyone who's been a parent or child or a sibling or a friend. It's one of the most difficult concessions to ever make, admitting complete wrongheadedness, but it's also a sign of maturity and a willingness to move out of the realm of accusations and into the realm of finding workable solutions. It's also the only way one party can be assured that more caution and more willingness to brainstorm is assured in any future horrifying situation.
Few on the left are total pacifists, unwilling to sanction use of the military under any circumstances. Many supported the invasion in Afghanistan. We are realists, and we understand that there are times and situations in which use of military force - or the threat to use it - is necessary for the defense of our country. But it is regrettable, we believe, when it comes to that. It speaks to a failure of imagination on either our part or the part of our adversary, a failure of diplomacy, sanctions, sophisticated intelligent gathering and healthy defense maneuvers.
So here's my final gripe with the once-raving right: When military force is inevitable, it is not an occasion to be celebrated with sleekly packaged shock and awe campaigns, the popping of Pabst Blue Ribbon, fervent flag-waving and a back-slapping binge of red, white and blue macho man international posturing. It is a serious and sorrowful matter, these decisions that kill people, guilty and innocent alike. Gravity and decorum are called for. Somber, grown-up behavior is requested. Flight suit photo ops, raucous bullying cries of "Bring it on!," uber-patriot displays on steroids are unseemly ... and more appropriate for liquored-up frat party rivalries than undertaking the most consequential decision a country can make: who will live and who will die. Vulgarity cheapens even the noblest cause, and once the PR was peeled back on this one - Iraq having no connection with the WTC catastrophe - there was precious little nobility to spare..
In other words, show some class, for crying out loud. It's the least the world deserves from this country.
And what we who criticized the Iraqi invasion deserve is an unqualified apology. We're all ears.
