JOHN TIRMAN
December 2
Purging Jane Harman: Why Stop There?
One reported reason why Nancy Pelosi bypassed Jane Harman to head the House Intelligence Committee is because the Speaker-to-be wanted someone who had been a critic of Bush's foreign policy and the Iraq war in particular. Hence, Silvestre Reyes. This is wise, and it should be more widely applied practice: demoting those who exercised such horrendous judgment on the decision to invade Iraq.
It would be nice to see it applied to the Fourth Estate and the think tanks as well.
Consider the possibilities. All the wise men and women who counseled the invasion and occupation that has left a half million dead and 2 million refugees, two trillion dollars in wasted treasure, a region in turmoil, the Muslim world loathing America. This catastrophe, nearly unprecedented in U.S. history, should have more heads metaphorically rolling. Who might they be?
There are, sadly, many possibilities. I would start with the liberal hawks, the recalcitrant, the outright liars, and others who saw personal advantage in backing a policy that many cooler heads saw as an on-coming disaster. The editorial writers and editors of the major newspapers, the "former" this or that from previous administrations, the posing experts. I recall sitting around a table at AAAS just before the invasion and listening to two oft-quoted chemical weapons experts say with absolute certainty that Saddam had those weapons and would use them against U.S. troops. Have they apologized? Have they resigned? Are they transferring their expertise, like Ken Pollack, to Iran? Are they, like Michael Ignatieff, running for office on the basis of their wisdom?
Public intellectuals, if they advocate committing a nation to war, should pay a price when they're wrong. The news media and other institutions of power in this country exclude those who were right about this (among other things), the Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn and Amy Goodman, but somehow recoil from punishing those who urged the immoral policies that have resulted in such bloody chaos.
F. Scott Fitzegerald's comment that there are no second acts in American life is obviously mistaken: there are nothing but second and third acts. No one ever really suffers for being wrong and self-aggrandizing. If you play by certain rules, then you never really lose favor inside the establishment press, think tanks, and government. That Nancy Pelosi has made one choice--for whatever reasons--that sets a more principled example, is at least slightly encouraging.
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