Same. The camp who thinks that Afghanistan and Iraq were totally justified, but the Dems would have done them better, thinks that Dubya just wasn’t smart enough.
TBF some also think that Iraq and Afghanistan were just “regrettable mistakes” or that they might have been crimes, but gee-shucks-oh-well-shrug, that’s just how politics go.
And to be “fair” the orders of magnitude might have been different, but if they look too closely at the process of how the war machine ran, they might have to admit that Democratic presidents have also been war criminals. Like, if they get too uptight about “Bush’s wars”, then right around the corner is the fact that Obama took us from bombing two countries to continuously bombing like seven countries, in the span of a couple years. And similarly for executive authority, domestic spying, deportations, etc.
They can’t afford to be too honestly critical. They just have to pretend that what’s going on right now is different and exceptional, and no: of course it isn’t exactly the same “lesser-evil” choice they’ve demanded you make (or at least accept) over and over and over again for generations!
So IMO some kind of at least vaguely rehabilitative amnesia is actually pretty necessary. It might take a slightly different form with Trump than with Dubya, but it’s still going to have to be there.
Same. The camp who thinks that Afghanistan and Iraq were totally justified, but the Dems would have done them better, thinks that Dubya just wasn’t smart enough.
TBF some also think that Iraq and Afghanistan were just “regrettable mistakes” or that they might have been crimes, but gee-shucks-oh-well-shrug, that’s just how politics go.
And to be “fair” the orders of magnitude might have been different, but if they look too closely at the process of how the war machine ran, they might have to admit that Democratic presidents have also been war criminals. Like, if they get too uptight about “Bush’s wars”, then right around the corner is the fact that Obama took us from bombing two countries to continuously bombing like seven countries, in the span of a couple years. And similarly for executive authority, domestic spying, deportations, etc.
They can’t afford to be too honestly critical. They just have to pretend that what’s going on right now is different and exceptional, and no: of course it isn’t exactly the same “lesser-evil” choice they’ve demanded you make (or at least accept) over and over and over again for generations!
So IMO some kind of at least vaguely rehabilitative amnesia is actually pretty necessary. It might take a slightly different form with Trump than with Dubya, but it’s still going to have to be there.
Oh shit, SSJMarx is back? how have you been, man? I haven’t seen you in months
I’ve been here, on different usernames, but ultimately I couldn’t think of anything I liked more than SSJMarx.