Michael Ratner: No Forgiveness for Bush’s 'Useful Idiots,' the Liberal Hawks Who Led Us into War

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Michael Ratner

No Forgiveness for Bush’s 'Useful Idiots,' the Liberal Hawks Who Led Us into War
The liberal establishment willfully payed along with the preposterous claims that led to the Iraq War.

March 19, 2013 |


Ten years ago, between January and April 2003, it is estimated that an unprecedented 36 million people around the world took to the streets in protest against the Iraq War. They believed the war unjust, the evidence of a threat flimsy, and the costs, in terms of lives and otherwise, potentially astronomical. Worldwide protests, from Rome to Manhattan, brought together hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions to collectively voice opposition.

In any just government, these astounding numbers would give pause to the war-wagers in power. In a truly democratic America, these sentiments should have been represented in Washington. And surely this moment should have been the cue for our “liberal media” to echo the cautionary cries of our protesters to deafening levels. Instead, our reliably bellicose Republican congressmen were joined in support by an overwhelming majority of our so-called liberal representatives, and war went ahead as planned.

Even more alarmingly, in the months preceding the start of the war, the pages of the New York Times would greet us with more banging of the drums: a demand by Thomas Friedman that France be kicked out of the Security Council for its refusal to join up, or a startling piece of war propaganda by then soon-to-be executive editor Bill Keller, fantasizing about the impact of a one-kiloton nuke detonated in Manhattan – 20,000 incinerated, many more dying a “gruesome death from radiation sickness.” But make no mistake: although the New York Times has a shameless history of supporting war after war, other prominent mainstream journalists and intellectuals were eager to ride the bandwagon. These names include George Packer of the New Yorker, Newsday’s Jeffery Goldberg, the Atlantic’s Peter Beinart, Fareed Zakaria, Andrew Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Paul Berman to name a few.

The late Tony Judt sized up this whole lot most aptly with the label “Bush’s Useful Idiots.” The “useful idiots,” he said, were those from within the liberal establishment who, either through a misguided attempt to project strength, willfully played along with preposterous WMD claims, or simply allowed themselves to get carried away with the imperialistic fervor surrounding a new call to war, abdicating the responsibilities upon which liberal ideology is based. Instead, they aligned their positions with the neo-conservative architects of the Iraq War. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/no-forgiveness-bushs-useful-idiots-liberal-hawks-who-led-us-war

[DonCoquixote]

1. The elephant in the room

Is that many Zionists made damned sure to support anything that involved killing Arabs.

Now, I did not say Jews, because Zionists, as much as they think they do, do not represent all Jews, or even a majority of Jews. But sadly, America listens to them.

[idwiyo]

2. K&R

[Comrade Grumpy]

3. Thank you. And don't forget craven Democrats.

[rhett o rick]

4. If any "liberal" Democrats voted to kiss Bush's ass, they lose their liberal status.

We must face the fact that a significant number of Democrats are conservatives.