The awful truth: arrogant America got it right (Aussie lib on Iraq, "I was wrong")

The Age (Australia) ^ | 11 May 2003 | Joanna Murray-Smith

[Consort]

Joanna made the same mistake that so many made in the '60s — she mistook idealism for wisdom. Peace is an ideal; war is real. We live in the real world. Just a thought.

[beckett]

Yuck....as callow and smug a thinker as Murray-Smith is better suited to the other side. Her "re-evaluation" is meaningless as far as I'm concerned, since she lacks the candle-power to make the re-evaluation that really counts, i.e., that her entire worldview is based on one incoherent and false argument after another.

[Ligeia]

Cagle

[Exeter]

Like most elitist liberals, Joanie's admission of having been wrong and her subsequent apology seem as freely given as having healthy teeth pulled. But there was one sentence I found kind of ironic;

"...Australians owe more to their British antecedents than their American amigos."

Actually, Australians probably have more in common with Americans than with the Brits. Australia was chosen as England's dumping ground for the politically and criminally undesirable, the refuse of their society to be swept under the rug. Likewise, North America became Europe's dumping ground for criminals, debtors, religious undesirables, you name it. And from what Europe considered two trashbins of human debris two mighty nations were created and flourished. Aussies, we're your real cousins, because your original parents disowned you long ago...

[OldFriend]

Trouble is.....their generation never grew up at all. Still got their thumbs in their mouths, whining, nagging, and lying thru their teeth.

[b4its2late]

The Lincoln was NOT in sight of San Diego when the S-3 landed. It was about 35 miles away, well beyond the horizon.

Absolutely, positively, 100% correct Travis. Cameras were not "placed" so the shoreline couldn't be seen as some libs are claiming. Only demorats would be bold enough to pull some sort of stunt like that.

If land was in site, does anyone not think that a least one camerman CBS, CNN, NBC, or ABC would've zoomed in on the coast if he had the chance?

[toothseaquer]

Great cartoon!!! Had a good laugh on this one

[walden]

What I heard was 40 miles off. A general rule is that you can see 13 miles away from sea level (in perfectly clear weather), before the curvature of the earth interferes too much. But, they weren't at sea level, of course-- that carrier deck must be several stories high in the air. At any rate, from 40 miles and that height and given the weather, my guess is that the coast was barely visible, if that. Actually turning the cameras would have made the case for complaint more difficult to make, not less so, which is why they didn't do it. ;)

[winner3000]

(We had engendered within us a pervasive sense of the barbarity of war that was (and is) not only intellectual, but emotional.)

Even she admits that her and her brethren's knee jerk reactions are purely emotional. Lady, don't you hate when reality and facts intrude?

[Ligeia]

Great cartoon!!! Had a good laugh on this one

Smushed 'em flat, that he did. I loved it, too.

[edsheppa]

Mz Hyphen-Smith can go to hell. How I wish she and her ilk could live in another universe abasing themselves before the imams and other hustlers while rest of us build a better future.

[justshutupandtakeit]

I thought it was Sweet. Don't you just love it when your enemies MUST admit you are right?

[kesg]

I thought it was Sweet. Don't you just love it when your enemies MUST admit you are right?

Only if they learn from their mistakes -- which they never do.

[marron]

My generation grew up inside the recriminations about Vietnam,

Viet Nam was a war led by cynical men, and lost by cynical men. The absolute cynicism with which it was conducted scarred a generation. The men leading it never believed in it, and never believed it could be won.

This is one of the outcomes of this war. Having seen what is possible when your leadership is committed to victory, who has not wondered what might have happened had the Viet Nam War been led by moral men, committed to victory?

This is the price of electing empty suits to positions of leadership. Does anyone not notice that they were Democrats?

And liberals... had to ask themselves if in the end American hypocrisy mattered enough to outweigh the actual result - if confused and cynical motives (oil, presidencies, imperialism etc) could diminish the simple humanitarian triumph.

Why does she imagine that her confusion is ours? We didn't awaken yesterday to discover Iraq on our map. This day has been coming for a long time. I was aware of Saddam since the seventies, and I have been expecting bad things from him for decades, I have been wondering how we would ultimately confront him. I have never doubted, since the seventies, that we would eventually have to confront him. And I am nobody. This is not about oil, this is not about presidential politics, this is not about imperialism (try and locate our fantasy empire on the fantasy map and let me know what you find). This is about a mass killer with dreams of grandeur.

I have heard friends say "This isn't about saving Iraqis, we don't care about them"... And the truth is that the person speaking doesn't care about them, but others have been aware and looking for a way to settle this thing for a long time. We finally did it. Events and personalities and circumstances have finally come together in a way that has allowed it to happen. I make no apology for wanting this day to come, or for believing that this day had to come.

I only wonder why it is that the intellectual elite are always confused, and always way behind the curve on these things?

[dighton]

Far from a mea culpa, this is self-congratulation while giving the finger.

[NH Liberty]

"In social situations, we all laugh about Bush and his marionette vacant-eyed performances, "

Oh, puh-leeeze. Imagine that; Euro-Coms laughing at an extraordinarily successful American conservative president. What's wrong with that picture?

While the Euro-Coms (+ one leftover-from-the-sixties Red Aussie) laugh at Bush and his successes, American liberty-lovers double over and guffaw at the blissfully-ignorant "laughers" for all their naive underestimation of him.

[MEG33]

I agree..she is insufferable.

[katana]

in sight of San Diego

I don't believe this is accurate and is probably an outright lie. My recollection is that the president's flight time from the Naval Air Station to the Lincoln was 45 minutes. At a speed of 500 or so knots, that would make the distance at least several hundred miles off shore and this is one of the reasons a jet was used instead of Marine One. It is a lot safer to fly in a jet over that much water and land in an aircraft which permits ejection in case of dire emergency.

This is one of the most ill tempered admissions of being wrong I've ever read but what more can you expect from a journalism school graduate? One of the dirty little secrets of that profession is that the people who go into it generally would never be able to make it in any real work. Nice try at salvaging a bit of credibility, but the writer remains an ignorant blow hard steaming sack of s**t.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I only wonder why it is that the intellectual elite are always confused, and always way behind the curve on these things?

I have concluded that "elites" are, by and large, merely celebrities. They are experts mostly in the sense that
an "ex" is a has-been, and
a "spurt" is a drip under pressure.

Ex-spurts of that sort herd together for safety in numbers, never daring an independent thought which might--horror of horrors--net them bad PR.

And reporters emphatically belong to that category of ex-spurt. And they all herd together and accuse conservatives of exactly the intellectual sloppiness and conformity of which they themselves are exemplars.

[stands2reason]

the world's most powerful democracy's intolerance of criticism, even (and perhaps especially) from within its own borders.

So when did the Feds arrest Michael Moore? I thought it would have been bigger news....