Baker: “Let’s not bother listening to people who were right”

This post at Unclaimed Territory (“What rational person would listen to people like James Baker?”) is so precisely on the mark it hurts. Every editor and political reporter in the United States of America should be forced – at the threat of being water-boarded -- to read it as many times as it takes to memorize word for word. It points out the ludicrous composition of the Iraq Study Group and its witnesses: nobody who actually opposed the war in real time, or who advocates withdrawal now. Instead, it was skewed towards those with an overwhelming incentive to hide their horrendous judgment that got us into this mess. Here is a sampler:

The reason it is worthwhile -- actually imperative -- to continuously document what war advocates said in the past is because they have proven themselves to be completely bereft of judgment and insight and, in most cases, lacking any sort of moral compass. And yet, these same war advocates -- and only they -- are deemed even today, as Iraq lies in ruins, to be the responsible leaders who have a monopoly on worthwhile wisdom. Conversely, those who exhibited great judgment and foresight are as mocked and stigmatized as much as ever (just a little bit less overtly, but only a little), and are excluded entirely from the process of determining what we should do now.

This matters for so many reasons, beginning with the fact that the people who brought us into the disaster we are in have not accepted responsibility and, consequently, have not changed their mentality or premises any. Where are the mea culpas for Iraq? With very rare exception, they are nonexistent, because nobody believes that they were at fault for what happened. Virtually all of the people who advocated this invasion have all created their own private rationalizations as to why they were right and other people failed to implement their plan. . . .

From the start, the Baker-Hamilton Commission was a travesty waiting to happen. Its composition ensured that it could be nothing else, for exactly the reason Russ Feingold said. James Baker exhibited absolutely horrendous, amoral judgment on Iraq prior to the war, yet here he is, hauled in as the responsible savior, as though his past was really the opposite of what it is. As a war advocate, Baker is driven by a compelling and vested interest to make this war look like the right choice from the start, not in finding a way to end our involvement in it (and thereby confirming that it was a mistake). . . . What possible rationale exists for listening to someone who urged us to pursue a course that is the greatest strategic disaster in our country's history?

. . . . If you go to a doctor for an operation and he completely botches your surgery and you lose an organ due to his abject ineptitude and recklessness, you don't go back to that doctor for repair surgery; you find another one. If you go to a lawyer who almost destroys your company through complete ignorance of your basic legal obligations, you don't stay with that lawyer in the hope that he will get you out of the disaster he created for you; you retain another one. All of that is just basic common sense.

Yet here we are, revering and listening to and following the same dense, amoral people who could not have been more wrong about everything they recommended and asserted prior to this war, while we scorn or (at best) ignore those who were so right.