danajohnhill.org

Why is the Washington Post publishing op-eds from William Kristol? He has been wrong about everything. The fact that a man who said that the Iraq War has been among the “best planned” in history is still being paid to write for any mainstream media organization is proof that there is no “liberal media”. This makes the Washington Post look like a joke.

How dare Kristol dismiss last week’s assessment that nothing in Iraq is proceeding according to expectations as a “meaningless benchmark”. By what standards are we supposed to measure progress in Iraq? Ought we have no objective criteria? Kristol, apparently unhappy with the overwhelmingly negative analysis of the war’s execution thus far, now believes that “the odds are finally better than 50-50 that we will prevail”. That’s super! How delightful that a bloody struggle which has now lasted longer than America’s involvement in the Second World War is finally going well enough–to Mr. Kristol, anyway–to postulate that we will probably win.

Forgive me, then, for spoiling his victory party and pointing out that:

• Over 3,600 Americans have died (not including any of the untold numbers of private mercenaries in our employ)
• Over 26,550 Americans have been seriously wounded (again, not including guns-for-hire)
• Iraq is now mired in a civil war
• Approximately 70,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed
• The United States has thus far spent over $443,459,000,000
• Every stated rationale for this war was false

Look, it’s one thing for a TV talking-head to occasionally be wrong in their prediction of who will win a sporting event or an election. It’s another thing entirely for someone as spectacularly incorrect as Bill Kristol to be printed by a respected newspaper, or allotted time on television or radio. Any publication that prints him is insulting its readers. The man simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and his obviously flawed logic and false rhetoric are beneath us as Americans.