The Strangeness of the Bush Era
After something happens, it can begin to seem inevitable. The extent to which the actual has its origins deep in the past, and the present-day has been unfolding for decades, becomes clear to us all. On occasion, it’s useful to have a jarring reminder that things didn’t always seem that way. Here, for example, Joschka Fischer, a very admirable and savvy foreign policy thinker and the German Foreign Minister who tried to lead opposition to the invasion of Iraq, recalls how things seemed to him eight years ago:
We thought we were going back to the old days of Bush 41. And ironically enough Rumsfeld, but even more Cheney, together with Powell, were seen as indications that the young president, who was not used to the outside world, who didn’t travel very much, who didn’t seem to be very experienced, would be embedded into these Bush 41 guys. Their foreign-policy skills were extremely good and strongly admired. So we were not very concerned. Of course, there was this strange thing with these “neocons,” but every party has its fringes. It was not very alarming.
Needless to say: Oops.
36 Responses to “The Strangeness of the Bush Era”
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January 16th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Yet, even when it was clear Bush was reckless and neocons were a major danger, you supported the war Matt.
Oops indeed.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
the German Foreign Minister who tried to lead opposition to the invasion of Iraq
Partly incorrect. Putin, Chirac… lots of people were “leading” the opposition. In fact, the US couldn’t even get half of the countries on the UN Security Council on board, including two veto-yielding countries. Even after Powell’s shameless stunt…
But it’s over now; back to normal times.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
I remember being happy when Cheney nominated himself to be Vice President because in the nightmare scenario where the half-wit frat boy actually managed to win the election, there would be a seasoned, pragmatic hand behind the scenes making sure shit didn’t spin out of control.
Fu** Dick Cheney.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
No kidding. Shortly before he left office, I clipped news photo of George H.W. Bush taking questions at a lectern, with Powell, Eagleburger, Cheney, Scowcroft and a couple of others standing behind him, all listening intently. I thought, it’ll be a while before we get a team that good into the White House again.
To me it shows how the lack of balance and leadership can change things.
Oops.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Partly incorrect. Putin, Chirac… lots of people were “leading” the opposition.
Indeed. There were massive demonstrations throughout this great land, and many, many others. Only about half of the U.S. public was for the invasion before it happened. Once it went down, lots thought opposing the war meant not “supporting the troops” (depending on how the question was asked).
And let’s not forget who really sold the war: pussy chickenhawks like Al, who would rather sit at home and anonymously support the demonstrably pointless Iraq invasion but let others do the actual fighting (because they’re a bunch of pussies, natch). Being a paid anonymous Republican shill must be an awesome job.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
It might also be worthwhile to remember how the Washington Post and Michael Kelly –of The Atlantic — responded to Fischer’s attempt to warn US citizens:
http://www.postwritersgroup.com/archives/kell0211.htm
A short excerpt:
“As Berman reported, Mr. Fischer, you rose in public life as an important figure in the anti-American, anti-liberal, neo-Marxist, revolution-minded German radical left of the generation of 1968. This was the left that produced and supported the Baader-Meinhof Gang (or Red Army Faction), which, as Berman wrote, “refrained from nothing,” including “kidnappings, bank holdups, murders.” You were not a terrorist yourself, but you were a good and active friend to terrorists, weren’t you, Mr. Fischer?
In 1976, to protest the death in prison of Baader-Meinhof founder Ulrike Meinhof, you planned and participated in a Frankfurt demonstration in which, Berman wrote, “somebody tossed a Molotov cocktail at a policeman and burned him nearly to death.” You were arrested, but not charged. In 2001, Meinhof’s daughter, Bettina Rohl (who gave those damning photos to Stern) told the press that you were responsible for the throwing of that firebomb. Other contemporary witnesses, Berman reported, said that you “had never ruled out the use of Molotovs and may even have favored it.” You denied it, for the record. ”
———-
Notice that none of Kelly’s article address the FACTS that Fischer tried to raise re Iraq.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
OMG, it’s Mr. Bean!
January 16th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Matt supported the invasion of Iraq? Did he work to sell it? Does anyone recall his stated reasons? Or guess his actual motivation?
January 16th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
It might also be worthwhile to remember how the Washington Post and Michael Kelly –of The Atlantic — responded to Fischer’s attempt to warn US citizens:
And how can we ever forget the Freedom Fries?! That is the kind of things the GOP Congress was worrying about, while the country was being lied into a war, and detainees were tortured to death.
January 16th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Iraq did to Michael Kelly what Michael Kelly has done to The Atlantic.
January 16th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Yes, something went very wrong with Cheney in the late 1990s and we still don’t understand what it was.
In the mid-1990s Cheney was cogently defending the 1991 decision not to roll on to Baghdad on the grounds that a whole bunch of bad thing were likely to have happened, exactly the bad things that did in fact happen after the conquest of Baghdad in 2003.
January 16th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
So here’s a request Matt: who among the Republican power brokers really made a difference when W quietly took a huge early lead for the Republican nomination in 99/early 2000? Are any of them still posing as elder statesmen without having expressed contrition and getting away with it?
January 16th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Re James’ comment “Iraq did to Michael Kelly what Michael Kelly has done to The Atlantic.”
————
Yep. Whatever the flaws of Matthew’s nemesis, Marty Peretz, let it be noted that Marty fired Michael Kelly’s ass from the New Republic.
Whereupon David Bradley hired Kelly to be editor of The Atlantic. David was the guy who also gave Jeffrey Goldberg a pony to come work at the Atlantic. THREE ponies, actually. (I’m not kidding.)
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kelly_(editor) and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_G._Bradley#Publishing
Rumor also has it that Bradley lured a certain rotund blogger to the Atlantic. With a bag of donuts, allegedly.
January 16th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Of course things looked different eight years ago, because OBL hadn’t yet prodded frat boy GWB into having a shit fit, handing the neocons in the Administration their golden opportunity to spend a trillion fucking dollars to show they didn’t know DICK about how to competently run a foreign OR domestic policy.
If OBL had stuck to jacking us around overseas, GWB was likely a one term loser, and we were none the wiser for what COULD have happened.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I wasn’t worried either. I really thought Bush would be under adult supervision. Oops, indeed.
The Onion had it right in 2001:
Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’
January 16th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
So I said to myself, it would be juvenile to disrupt a serious discussion to point out that this guy looks like Mr. Bean 30 years later. Just have to count on somebody else to do it.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Matthew also supported the war.
I noticed Matthew is not anonymous, did admit the error of his ways, and is not a paid troll. Unlike contemptible pussies like yourself, puss-boy.
January 16th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Well, there’s still plenty of clowns left in that little tiny car. Powell and Bolton are gone, but not we have Hillary, who hates Chavez and loves Uribe.
And the chances are pretty good that when the WaPo starts calling Chavez a thug and lauding the ‘democratic’ government of Uribe, MattY and Kevin Drum will be the echo chamber.
And then, at some point in the future, historians will point out that when we supported the Uribe government, which murders trade union organizers, and opposed the Chavez government, which holds internationally-inspected free elections, we kind of made it inevitable that US companies like Coca-Cola would set up plants in Colombia where union organizers would be murdered, and US workers would lose their jobs.
Oh, wait, did I say we’d learn this in the future? You could actually learn this now, because it’s already happened. Whatevers.
And then, about 20 years from now, we’ll all be like “It seems so obvious- pump billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere and it becomes a heavier warmer blanket that heats the earth- why didn’t we realize this and do something about this problem earlier?
And don’t even talk about Haiti. What the Haitians did to us I’ll never know, but the most consistent element in Clintonian policy is that the Haitians shall not have self-government. I’m guessing it won’t be too long before we’re reading a laundry list of reasons why the US has to have soldiers in Haiti spraying crowds with machine-gun fire.
In retrospect, it all seems so obvious.
January 16th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Joschka Fischer, a very admirable and savvy foreign policy thinker and the German Foreign Minister who tried to lead opposition to the invasion of Iraq
Well, he didn’t really do anything substantial to prevent the Iraq war and when the rubber hit the road he caved in totally and facilitated US military operations from German soil, even though this was very likely unconstitutional.
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