{"id":1055,"date":"2004-09-01T11:41:49","date_gmt":"2004-09-01T19:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/09\/01\/to-be-respected-youd-better-be-wrong-on-iraq\/"},"modified":"2004-09-01T11:41:49","modified_gmt":"2004-09-01T19:41:49","slug":"to-be-respected-youd-better-be-wrong-on-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1055","title":{"rendered":"To be respected, you&#039;d better be wrong on Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been meaning to link to this <a href=\"http:\/\/slate.msn.com\/id\/2105434\/\">Tim Noah piece in Slate<\/a> for quite a while.<\/p>\n<div class=\"snip\">&#8230; the oddest outcome concerns not those who were wrong about Iraq, but those who were right. The political mainstream shuns them. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Not long ago, I spoke with a Democratic moderate about the war in Iraq. He said he considered support for the Iraq war to be a necessary prerequisite to assuming any powerful role in the party. It showed that the person in question was willing to project U.S. force abroad. But wait, I asked. Do you still think the Iraq war was a good idea? After some hemming and hawing, he admitted that he&#8217;d rather we hadn&#8217;t gone in. Then why make support for a mistaken policy a litmus test? Because, he repeated, it shows that the person in question is willing to project U.S. force abroad. I should emphasize that we weren&#8217;t talking about whether troops should be withdrawn from Iraq, which is an entirely separate and vexing question that speaks to our responsibility in a country whose previous government we destroyed. What this man was saying was that it was better to have been wrong about Iraq than to have been right. That&#8217;s the prevailing (though not always conscious) consensus in Washington, and it&#8217;s completely insane.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"http:\/\/atrios.blogspot.com\/2004_08_15_atrios_archive.html#109302832880467555\">Atrios<\/a>. Also, <a href=\"http:\/\/demosthenes.blogspot.com\/2004_08_22_demosthenes_archive.html#109329511300281754\">Shadow of th e Hegemon <\/a>has an interesting post on the subject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been meaning to link to this Tim Noah piece in Slate for quite a while. &#8230; the oddest outcome concerns not those who were wrong about Iraq, but those who were right. The political mainstream shuns them. &#8230; Not &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1055\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}