The Washington Independent - U.S. news and politics - washingtonindependent.com: Comments by Jay B.

Jay B. — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:45:03 GMT

This is from a Slate article from 2002 during the rush to war. Johnathan Schwartz had cited this on his Tiny Revolution site in October of 2007:

There is not sufficient space…for me to refute some of the arguments made in Slate over the past week against intervention, arguments made, I have noticed, by people with limited experience in the Middle East (Their lack of experience causes them to reach the naive conclusion that an invasion of Iraq will cause America to be loathed in the Middle East, rather than respected)... gotta love that last part. It should be put on his gravestone
The administration is planning today to launch what many people would undoubtedly call a short-sighted and inexcusable act of aggression. In five years, however, I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality.

—- Jeffrey Goldberg

It’s hard to not get extraordinarily enraged at this. The condescension toward anti-war critics. The catastrophic wrongness. The smug assumptions.

The amount of things he got wrong in two paragraphs is staggering. And now, nearly six years after he wrote this, he offers a tepid, “who could have guessed” mea culpa in Slate. Nice work Spencer.

Jay B. — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 06:25:41 GMT

Here’s him from a Slate piece in 2002:

The administration is planning today to launch what many people would undoubtedly call a short-sighted and inexcusable act of aggression. In five years, however, I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality.

Sounds like he nailed it! I can only hope he is secretly haunted every day. But I’m not that naive.
(h/t) Tiny Revolution on the quote

Jay B. — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:25:04 GMT

Saddam intended to kill off the Kurds , re-invade Kuwait and use nuclear weapons against Israel if he ever had the chance.

Assertions such as these, well, are idiotic—especially without a link to back them up in some way.

If Saddam had gotten free it is very likely that he would have killed more than the were killed by US actions. There are very good arguments against the war , but the moral argument isn’t one of them.

What? “If he had gotten free”? The moral argument isn’t based on your paranoid fantasies. It’s based on what actually happened, in real time, and is currently happening to the Iraqi people.

I think it was quite obvious that Stalin had no significant ties to Hitler. FDR built an entire illegal and immoral war where over 500,000 Americans and untold millions died on the lie that somehow a Stalin-Hitler Pact was dangerous to the United States.

I love the right wing. They fuck up even the simplest historical analogy. Dear genius, please explain in as many words as you’d like, with whom the US allied with once war was declared on the US. You’ll never guess. Hint: We DIDN’T GO TO WAR WITH THE SOVIET UNION.