What do you mean "we"?

What is it with conservatives and collective responsibility? A few weeks ago, it was Fouad Ajami's deeply embarrassing New York Times op-ed, where he bemoaned how much "we" had gotten wrong about Iraq. "We" had been naive, "we" had been over-optimistic, "we" didn't understand Iraqi society, and on and on. And all that those of us who had been and done none of those things, and had been ridiculed and abused by people like Fouad Ajami for exactly that reason, could only ask "what do you mean 'we', Fouad?" Who exactly is this mysterious collective "we" who made all of these mistakes? Because from where I sit, it looks an awful lot more like "you" screwed up, not "us."

And now along comes Mister Consistency himself, Chris Hitchens, arguing that Abu Ghraib is really all of our faults. Why? Because, you see, "Many, many people must have fantasized about getting Osama Bin Laden into some version of an orange jumpsuit and then shackling him for a while to the wrong end of a large pig. It's not very far from that mass reverie to "Hey, Mustapha, you're gonna get to really know this porker" and similar or worse depravities. So in a distressing sense—of course you can all write to me if you like and say that you never even thought about it—we face something like a collective responsibility, if not exactly a collective guilt."

So again, I ask, what do you mean "we", Chris? Those were your porkine fantasies, not mine... and this is an earth-pig born talking here. That was you arguing with all your heart and soul for this war, ridiculing all who disagreed, not "us."

I thought conservatives were supposed to believe in individual responsibility and accountability... right? I thought that the problem with Arabs was that they always blamed others for their own failings, right Fouad? No, no, silly aardvark.

It all reminds me of a classic Simpson episode, the one where Homer and Barney are competing to be an astronaut. At the end of the competition, the NASA guy delivers this immortal line: "In a very real sense, you are both winners. But in more real sense, Barney is the winner."

So spare me the reflections on how we are really to blame here. Maybe Chris, and Fouad, and the rest of the merry band who cheerled us into Baghdad, want to believe that in a very real sense, we are all to blame. But in a more real sense, they are to blame.

Comments

[War Department]

One of the very, very few outright examples I've seen so far of any distinction between pro-war "us" and anti-war "them" is this NRO article from around February 2004 : http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37043

I found this while googling for "Scott Ritter" + Vindicated, which turns up a quite disturbingly low number of hits [588]. If you search for "Scott Ritter vindicated" you turn up a grand total of .. two. The smears about this man - surely one of the most direct descendants of Smedley Butler-esque "tell it like it is" style marine-ism - massively outnumber the reports of his complete and total vindication. For example, references to "scott ritter" + arrest - refering to his sealed court records - still turns up 11,600+ hits. Unfortunately for Mr. Ritter I think historys' view of him has already been written.

As nice as it would be to watch the pro-warbots choke on their crow pies, I think we're unlikely to see much more of it than we have already. To expect any of the clown-squad to take responsibility for their words and actions assumes far too much about their respect for honour or just stating the plain truth - if they'd had any regard for these in the first place, they wouldn't have written or said the things they did in the first place, now, would they?

Many thanks for your excellent blog - I wish the work you're doing here was more widely known of.