Death and denial, death and denial...

by Eric Alterman - July 13, 2007

I've studied the neocons pretty closely ever since I wrote my undergraduate college thesis on their origins 25 years ago. But there are still a number of things I suppose I will never understand about how and why they do what they do, and first among these is the amazing ability to simply ignore reality, no matter what the cost.

This proclivity - I almost called it a "talent" - is most impressively displayed with regard to what they have successfully named "the surge, " even though it is nothing more than an escalation of a failed war policy.

In yesterday's Washington Post, not only did Bob Woodward report that the Bush administration ignored the fact that CIA Director Michael V. Hayden told the Iraq Study Group that "inability of the [Iraqi] government to govern seems irreversible," adding that he could not "point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around," but also the fact that Thomas Fingar, the top intelligence analyst in the office of the national intelligence director, argues that "the surge... has not yet had a sufficient effect on the violence, [and levels of violence] have not yet been reduced significantly."

And yet yesterday morning, speaking from the comfort of a Fox News studio with absolutely no access to the information available to Fingar, William Kristol blithely announced, "The truth is if you look concretely on the ground in Iraq, the military situation is better than anyone expected. Better than David Petraeus expected. Better than those of us here at home who supported the surge expected six months ago. ... And we're going to win the war. I think we're going to win this war if we just don't lose our nerve here at home."

He added later to New York-based radio host Brian Lehrer:

"I think the media is understating the military progress that has been pretty astounding, I would say as a supporter of the surge. If you look at the documents that were made to argue for it, that say what could be done in six or seven months, Petraeus has done more actually; pretty amazing. I think the most important political progress has been happening on the ground not in the legislature in Baghdad, which is the flipping of the Sunni tribes in Anbar province and the beginning of splitting Shia away from the Iranian- backed extremists. So, I think Petraeus is doing a pretty fantastic job."

This morning, I see in a column by Kristol's protégé, New York Times neocon David Brooks, that the problem with our Iraq policy is that "Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, is doing everything he can to prevent a bipartisan consensus.."

That's funny. I would have thought the problem was the fact that the policy is being conducted by an administration that has done just about everything imaginable to screw up Iraq, and even a few things that were unimaginable.

They are the kind of people who would prefer to throw good money after bad - or in this case, live soldiers after dead - to save themselves the political inconvenience of admitting a mistake.

After all, not only did they reject the face-saving mechanisms of the Iraq Study Group, we now know that they were informed by the head of the CIA - a general as well - that their ambition was already hopeless.

Still they persist with the combination of happy talk about how well things are going on the one hand as their supporters engage in a campaign of character assassination toward anyone who feels compelled to deal with reality on the other.

On and on it goes. Our president continues to assert against every available shred of evidence that we are fighting those who attacked us on September 11 in Iraq instead of enemies that he, himself, helped create with his foolish policies.

The New York Times reports that this may not be accurate without admitting anywhere in the piece that the newspaper has been helping him make this phony connection, as its new Public Editor demonstrated with this hard-hitting column.

And yet the game goes on. Billions are wasted. Thousands are killed. The chaos grows and grows and yet at home, nothing changes. The president lies; the neocons repeat those lies with even more enthusiasm; and our soldiers pay for it with their lives.

It's like our country is caught on a merry-go-round of death and denial, death and denial, death and denial.