Last updated on June 26th, 2014 at 12:08 am
Human beings’ progress and development throughout history owes a great deal to the intrinsic ability of pattern recognition. One of the benefits of pattern recognition is either recognizing one’s own disastrous actions, or seeing behaviors in other beings that produce catastrophic results to avoid repeating those behaviors as a means of self-preservation and likely success at surviving. The idea of human beings making choices they know are guaranteed to end in catastrophic failure is not only risking extermination, it is the mark of stupidity. The infamous Einstein quote, “Insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results” has never been more prescient than in describing the state of the conservative movement and American mainstream media.
There is no accounting for the insanity of the conservative movement in deliberately repeating past mistakes, except, possibly, the conservative lunacy of never wavering no matter how often the position ends in failure. However, mainstream media has no excuse for repeating gross errors if for no other reason than the historical record they had a hand in documenting in great detail. Still, America’s mainstream media is as apt to repeat failures as conservatives likely due to the symbiotic relationship between corporate media and the conservative movement.
The insanity of mainstream media outlets was on grand display and obvious to any human being with a pulse on Sunday when “Meet the Press” host David Gregory asked one of the architects of the Iraq War what America should do “as a policy matter” to deal with the deteriorating situation in Iraq. Gregory’s question informs the brilliance of America’s mainstream media; ask Wolfowitz, one of the chief visionaries and supporters of the 2003 invasion of Iraq what action America should take to ameliorate the current civil war in Iraq that Wolfowitz and company had a major hand in creating.
It is not as if everything Wolfowitz and other Bush-era neocons purported about invading a stable, sovereign nation that had nothing to do with the terror attacks on 9/11 was completely wrong; including the crippling cost of the war in money and lives as well as the “guaranteed” presence of WMD. The abomination of Gregory’s query to neocon Wolfowitz is not that he did not know precisely what the neocon would say, because he did. Last March in an interview Wolfowitz argued that regardless the neocons got everything wrong about Iraq, including the lies pushed by the Bush administration that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction, he said that if Iraq did not have WMD in 2003, it “might” have got them later. He said, “We would very likely either have had to go through this whole scenario all over but probably with higher costs for having delayed, or we’d be in a situation today where not only Iran was edging towards nuclear weapons but so was Iraq and also Libya.”
Broadcast media is not alone in its insanity to give Bush’s gang of Iraq War instigators a forum and standing as credible voices on what America’s involvement in Iraq’s civil war should be. On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal set aside space for an opinion piece by L. Paul Bremer, Bush’s special envoy to Iraq, who disbanded the Iraqi Army and set the stage for the insurgency that is driving the civil war today. Bremer did precisely as every Bush neocon did leading up to the 2003 invasion and argued that America has no choice but to become militarily involved in the civil war neocons created in 2003. The theme of Bremer’s commentary was that sending in the military was the only American option.
Bremer said, “Of course Americans are reluctant to re-engage in Iraq. Yet it is President Obama’s unhappy duty to educate them about the risks to our interests posed by the unfolding drama in Iraq.” Americans were already “educated” once about the neocons need to engage in a war in Iraq and it is stunning Bremer is insane enough to make the same argument in the Wall Street Journal with an article titled “Only America Can Prevent a Disaster in Iraq.” Bremer, like the rest of Bush neocons know full well that it was their lust for war with Iraq that created the disaster in Iraq in 2003 that continues unabated today.
Bremer has been joined by William Kristol of the Weekly Standard who criticized President Obama over the weekend for “our ridiculous and total withdrawal from Iraq in 2011” despite it was his neocon cohort George W. Bush that negotiated America’s withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. Kristol, a warmonger who never served in the military has spent the past few days calling for sending American soldiers to fight against and protect both insurgent Sunnis and Iraqi Shias to “stabilize” conditions in Iraq.
In April 2003, Kristol declared, like George W. Bush, that “the battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably,” but he wants Americans to win decisively again despite the neocons Iraq war droned on for 8 long years and Americans are still fighting in Afghanistan. Kristol said “Now is not the time to re-litigate either the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 or the decision to withdraw from it in 2011. The crisis is urgent, and it would be useful to focus on a path ahead rather than indulge in recriminations.” Kristol also graced MSNBC yesterday where he argued, again, that America must send troops to get in the middle of Iraq’s civil war.
One expects, on one hand, for neocons to push for another American war in Iraq, and the other, to avoid appearing in the media for fear of reminding Americans they are solely responsible not only for the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds-of-thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, but the current civil war their invasion created. However, it is the media outlets who invite the warmongers as Iraq War experts to repeat the same arguments for going to war in Iraq again that is despicable. It is imperative to remember that the mainstream media contributed to the neocons push for war in Iraq prior to the 2003 American invasion and yet despite the catastrophic results they are repeating the same behavior again. The mainstream media is as culpable for pushing the invasion and 8-year occupation of Iraq in 2003 as the Bush neocons, and by giving the same warmongers a venue to push for another war is beyond irresponsible.
American mainstream media began its rapid descent into incompetence during the lead-up to the war in Iraq, and it should be treated like a pariah now for providing the same venue for neocons to hawk for war. It is bad enough the corporate media is a forum for the conservative mendacity machine, but to repeat the same errors of giving the exact same Bush neocons a venue to push for war in Iraq again is not just insane, it is what Americans have come to expect from the corporate-controlled mainstream media; irresponsible activism in pursuit of giving conservatives the only voice in 24-hour news cycles.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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