Elisberg Industries
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Products
    • Books
    • Movies
  • About Elisberg Industries
    • Our Corporate Board
    • Information Overstock
    • Elisberg Industries Entertainment Information
    • Elisberg Statistical Center of American Research
    • Consultancy Service
  • Contact
    • How to Find Us
  • Kudos
  • Good Things to Know
    • The BOB Page
    • Sites You Might Actually Like
Decent Quality Since 1847

Quote of the Day

3/21/2013

0 Comments

 
"I think that is not a reasonable question." 
-- Richard Perle, architect of the Iraq War, to NPR's Renee Montagne question whether it was worth it.

So, let's see, there were 4,500 Americans killed, 32,000 Americans officially wounded, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead or wounded. And at a financial cost of $1.7 trillion (according to U.S. News and World Report) from an original Bush Administration estimate of $60 billion and maybe 6 months, which turned into eight years.

Y'know, honestly, in fairness to Richard Perle, if I was him, I wouldn't want the question asked either.

And further, the thing is -- I agree with him.  It's not a reasonable question.  Given 4,500 Americans killed, 32,000 Americans wounded, and $1.7 trillion spent for a war whose mission from the very first was to find Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and end their nuclear weapons program -- and it was determined subsequently that no WMDs existed, no nuclear weapons program existed, and the Bush Administration created a lie that pushed the U.S. into the war, it is not a reasonable question to ask if the Iraq War was worth it.  It's a given that it was not worth it.  The reasonable question is whether the architects of the Iraq War and the Administration officials who participated in the infamous 16-word lie and then helped to out a CIA spy should be tried for war crimes.

Mind you, I'm not saying they should be found guilty -- or that they should be acquitted.  Just that that's the reasonable question.  Not "was the war worth it?"

But then, that wasn't the most egregious and self-serving thing that Richard Perle said.

In his very next sentence Richard Perle said -- "What we did at the time was done in the belief that it was necessary to protect this nation."

With all due respect -- (sorry, no, without any due respect) that's no defense.  And it's especially no defense of lying a nation into war, and even more especially lying a nation into an unprovoked war.  The Spanish Inquisition was done in the belief that it was necessary to protect the nation.  The South fired the first shot in the Civil War to protect slavery because it was their believe that it was necessary to protect the nation.  (Or in their case, divide it.)  There are White Power militia groups throughout the U.S. who are arming themselves in the belief that it is necessary to protect this nation.  Doing something unilaterally purely because you think is necessary is not the standard for defensible action.

If you're going to act in the belief that what you do is necessary to protect this nation, then your action is only defensible if the actions to take to ensure it is necessary must be done with diligence, honesty, insight, accuracy, inclusiveness, decency, fairness, oversight and within the limits of the law.  Mistakes happens, life occurs out of our control.  But when you have done all the groundwork required to meet the highest, necessary standards, then you can defend your actions.

When you haven't done that, you're in deep trouble.  And how deep trouble is Richard Perle in on that account?  Later in the interview, interviewer Montagne asks Mr. Perle if it ever occurred to anyone whether Iraq's deception about its chemical weapons might have been an effort to deceive its historic enemy, Iran (with whom it had fought an eight-year war) and not the U.S.  And what was his response?  "I'm sorry to say that I didn't achieve that insight."

Side Note:  No, that doesn't meet the "Due Diligence Standard."  Mind you, I don't mean the standard necessary for an architect of war, I mean the standard that you'd expect of an eighth-grader on his homework.

For what it's worth, I'm sorry he didn't achieve that insight, too.  I suspect so are the families of the 32,000 dead.

But the thing is...that's not the most t egregious and self-serving thing that Richard Perle said, either.

That's because in his very sentence after that, Richard Perle said -- "You can't, a decade later, go back and say, 'Well, we shouldn't have done that.'"

I'll wait a moment while you collect your breath.  Okay, ready to continue?  Fine.

Because that, ladies and gents, is the ultimate damning proof that undermines any shred of substance to a single word Richard Perle says about the Iraq War.  Or perhaps, anything.

The Bush Administration always loved saying, "History will have to be the judge of..." fill in the blank, whenever they had some major policy disaster -- knowing full-well that the history they were talking about would be long after everyone involved was gone.  But here, Richard Perle isn't even going that far.  He's saying that history shouldn't judge, ever.

This is the equivalent of the NRA and Far Right gun advocates saying after every gun massacre that "this is not the time" to deal with the horror of the deaths and talk about gun control.  It's never "the time" to deal with the problem for them.  (Of course, in one sense they're right -- the time to deal with gun control is before the massacres occur.  Just as the time to have dealt honestly and openly with starting the war in Iraq would have been before we went.)

But according to Richard Perle you can't go back after a war and analyze whether it was done properly.  But of course, that's exactly when it should be done!  Exactly when it's always done.  Because it allows you to keep from repeating your mistakes.

This is about as basic as it gets.  It's why football coaches run game film on Monday.  So, you can watch and analyze every single thing you did and say, "Well, we shouldn't have done that."  By the way, I'm not talking about pro football coaches.  I'm talking about pro, college, high school and pee-wee.  Richard Perle doesn't make it to pee-wee.

It's worth noting, incidentally, how further egregious and self-serving his sentence is -- "You can't, a decade later, to go back..."  That devious phrase, "a decade later," sounds so profound.  But he's disingenuously chosen the starting point of the war, not the end date.  No one analyzes what went wrong with a full war (or anything) right after it starts.  To do a complete, in-depth analysis of the whole freaking war (or anything)...you wait until after it's finished.  Which was about a year ago.

This is exactly the time to do it.

But then, in the end, listening to Richard Perle's assessment of whether a question is "reasonable," whether what he did was "necessary", and whether you can "go back" to analyze something is an exercise in idiocy.

After all, Richard Perle is the man who said Saddam Hussein had ties to Osama Bin Laden (there weren't any), that the Iraq War would require only 40,000 troops (it was over 1 million), insisted that Saddam Hussein was "working feverishly" to have nuclear weapons, (they didn't exist), and said Iraq could finance its own reconstruction (they can't).

Man, talk about Perles of Wisdom.

So, adding that to how wrong he was about everything else about the Iraq War, why in the world would anyone ask Richard Perle about anything?!

It isn't reasonable.

Well, as I said, at least he was right about that.

But in the end, the thing is, for all the things that Richard Perle said here - this isn't about Richard Perle.  It's about all the architects of the Iraq War in the Bush Administration who, 10 years later, are trying to Neocon the American public into believing that what happened didn't happen. 

Neocons may believe they can create their own reality, as Ron Suskind wrote, but reality has a way of biting you on the butt.   It's why God created videotape.  And caskets.  Lying a nation into war earns you that very special place in hell.  Trying to convince people that it didn't happen, that gets you to the chewy nougat center.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Picture
    Elisberg Industries gets a commission if you click here before shopping on Amazon.
    Picture
    Follow @relisberg

    Author

    Robert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. 

    Elisberg is a two-time recipient of the Lucille Ball Award for comedy screenwriting. He's written for film, TV, the stage, and two best-selling novels, is a regular columnist for the Writers Guild of America and was for
    the Huffington Post.  Among his other writing, he has a long-time column on technology (which he sometimes understands), and co-wrote a book on world travel.  As a lyricist, he is a member of ASCAP, and has contributed to numerous publications.



    Picture
           Feedspot Badge of Honor

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Categories

    All
    Animals
    Audio
    Audio Land
    Books
    Business
    Chicago
    Consumer Product
    Education
    Email Interview
    Entertainment
    Environment
    Fine Art
    Food
    From The Management
    Health
    History
    Huffery
    Humor
    International
    Internet
    Journalism
    Law
    Los Angeles
    Media
    Morning News Round Up
    Movies
    Music
    Musical
    Personal
    Photograph
    Piano Puzzler
    Politics
    Popular Culture
    Profiles
    Quote Of The Day
    Radio
    Religion
    Restaurants
    Science
    Sports
    Technology
    Tech Tip
    Theater
    The Writers Workbench
    Tidbits
    Travel
    Tv
    Twitter
    Video
    Videology
    Well Worth Reading
    Words-o-wisdom
    Writing

    RSS Feed

© Copyright Robert J. Elisberg 2023
Contact Us    About EI    Chicago Cubs
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Products
    • Books
    • Movies
  • About Elisberg Industries
    • Our Corporate Board
    • Information Overstock
    • Elisberg Industries Entertainment Information
    • Elisberg Statistical Center of American Research
    • Consultancy Service
  • Contact
    • How to Find Us
  • Kudos
  • Good Things to Know
    • The BOB Page
    • Sites You Might Actually Like