I was interested in reading why Paul Berman won the coveted Julian Casablancas Award for High Wankery over at Eschaton today, so I cruised over Slate and was pleased to see that the award was fully justified.
There are a couple points to note about Berman's article. First, ever since the Iraq war went tits-up (early summer, 2003), liberal war hawks have been wearing sack cloth and ashes, trying to justify their support for the biggest single cock-up/war crime in American history. Except for Christopher Hitchens, of course, for whom the kind of serious self-reflection such would entail might prompt him to attend AA. What amazes me more than anything is that these folks sold their souls to the devil, and now want to tell us that, in fact, it is the devil's fault they will spend eternity in hell, because the devil, to them, committed false advertising. Alas and alack, this is not true at all - all of these folks knew exactly who George Bush was, what his Administration represented, and no amount of rewriting their own history can change the fact that they snookered themselves in to believing that somehow, in some way still to be identified, some kind of silk purse could be made out of this train load of sow's ears.
What makes Berman's article worse is the fact that he is a lying sack of crap. His self-justification in Slate includes no references to anything he actually wrote four years ago, because, if he did, he would be forced to admit that, like every other booster for the war, he has been wrong from the get-go. Matthew Yglesias has the take down.
So, Berman was wrong then. Berman is wrong now. Berman lies about what he said then, and is caught at it. It is almost not even commenting about, except these liberal hawks consider themselves so politically and moral superior to the anti-war crowd. Yet, they are a bunch of lying, self-promoting hacks who, as I wrote above, have sold their souls to the devil, and cheaply at that. While some who supported the war, like Josh Marshall and Yglesias, have repented, the folks listed by Berman in his Slate piece have yet to admit that they managed to become intellectual whores for the most criminal regime in our history. The only one I excuse is Hitchens because, being drunk most of the time, he is not responsible for his actions.
BTW, this will probably get another "Who freakin' cares?" comment from Marshall Art. While he always denies that my calls are correct, in the post where he denies my prescience, he goes on to prove me right, so let's see, eh?
Virtual Tin Cup
