David Frum: "I Feel Kind of Silly About Supporting the Iraq War"

UPDATE: Well, let me welcome Robert Stacy McCain's readers to the post! You've come at the perfect time! I've finally been exposed for the total academic blogging fraud that I am!

It turns out this piece has caught the attention of Repsac3 over at American Nihilist, who points out the error of my ways in his post, "Reading Skills." That's right, I've misquoted Frum here on Iraq, and Reppy's absolutely right to call me out, so I responded at the post:

Repsac3: You are not banned from my blog, so you don't have to comment anonymously. I'd prefer you just write your own posts like this one when you want to correct me, rather than pollute my blog posts with your obssessive gotchas.

But you're right here, for once. I misread Frum. So, you got me right in the heart. You win. I'm dead, and that's what you want, and I mean literally. You'd be dancing on my grave after the last shovel of dirt.

I'll post an update to my blog right now. I'm an idiot.

With that, you can declare victory over this stupid unqualified airhead of a professor. You're sleuthing has carried the day.

So, I'll be looking for your final victory post and you can move on to other childish conservatives who need to grow up.

You see, Repsac3's whole gig is to bring me down to size, and he's done it! He's won! I'm a total mountebank!

Perhaps the guy can call it a day and get some help. I mean seriously. Repsac3 needs to put up a victory post on his blog and move on to greener pastures.That's it, he's won the gold for his super-sleuthing! I concede defeat! You've done it man! I'm an idiot who has no business running a blog in the first place.

Think about it: Just yesterday Reppy took issue with my post on gay-male knitting, and he administered a brutal smackdown: "Grow up, professor. It's a new millennium."

So, it's not just my reading comprehension, it's my troglodyte values. You know, to pay penance I'm going to run out to Toys-R-Us right now with my 7 year-old son and pick up some "Barbie Girl Stuff" so my kid will fit in better at school. I mean, those traditional gender roles are so archaic! I have to admit I'm embarrassed sometimes to be an American!

So, yes, this is a turning point for me. I'm tempted, of course, to blame it all on Jim Beam! I really need to read David Frum more carefully! There's just no excuse for me to even entertain the possibility of his turncoat revisionism.

But wait! Hold on a minute there! Frum does have this little thing project going on to blame everybody but himself for the "debacle" in Iraq. It wasn't the strategic conception, it was the execution! President George W. Bush was an incompetent fool:

To David Frum, the former White House speechwriter who co-wrote Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address that accused Iraq of being part of an “axis of evil,” it now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because “the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them.” This situation, he says, must ultimately be blamed on “failure at the center”—starting with President Bush.

Starting with President Bush, eh? Yep, that takes a lot of courage, I know! And Frum's rehabilitation from erstwhile policy advisor the Torquemada of the "new conservative movement" continues at The New Majority, where you'll find a whole six-piece revisionist series on the war, "WHAT WENT WRONG IN IRAQ - THE DEFINITIVE ACCOUNT ..."

So, yes, I admit it: I jumped the gun on that post last night. Yep, I'm down low on my error here, and I'm going to look forward to Repsac3's final victory post at American Nihilist. I am humbled by the superior minds of these people! They have now completely revealed my intellectual bankruptcy.

I'm going to go play with my son now: "The Diamond Castle Playset" awaits!

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE! Hey, I need to screw up more often! Jules Crittenden links! He's related to Frum, so wouldn't you know it!

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I'm pretty much over the whole intraparty Rush Limbaugh debate. Patrick Ruffini summed things up well yesterday when he said:

It's one thing to reject spokespeople with neither egghead credentials nor talent, like Joe the Plumber, or those who are positively cringe-worthy, like Coulter. Rush belongs in neither of these categories. There is value in having provocative voices who know how to string two sentences together with arguments rooted in conservative ideas, not cultural pastiche. And though provocative and sometimes impolitic, Rush's arguments are usually calibrated and thought-out in their own way. Wanting Obama to fail from wrecking a country we all hope succeeds is not something a GOP politician should necessarily say, but is something Rush should be able to say from his perch outside the party.

He should, but apparently that message (so true and uncontroversial), along with all the attention Limbaugh's getting, has some longtime Republicans worried. Case in point is David Frum, who has been campaigning against Rush this last week or so. Now Frum's escalated to Newsweek, with his new essay, "Why Rush is Wrong."

Readers can read the whole thing for themselves (it's a rehash of the blog post at New Majority earlier). For me it's nothing new, so let's paraphrase Frum: The GOP can't let the party be hijacked by a fat, drug-addled, divorced publicity-seeking talk-radio blowhard, who represents not traditionalism but stereotypical ambition and self-indulgence.

Again, that's paraphrasing, and not that much actually (check the link).

What really bothers me here is Frum's discussion of his "bona fides." Yeah, Frum's a GOP insider, so he's presumably got the conservative creds to bash Limbaugh. But this part just sticks in my craw: " I supported the Iraq War ... although I feel kind of silly about it in retrospect ..."

Why does Frum feel silly about it? He was one of the biggest Iraq cheerleaders on the right. Indeed, along with Richard Perle, Frum was the most aggressive "neocon" making the case for U.S. neo-imperial domination. Maybe it's just me, but the war in Iraq pretty much defines one's political identity on what it means to stand up for what's right. Anyone can offer a new policy program for the movement. They say we need to "adapt" conservatism to the 21st century. What does that mean? Bailouts and welfare entitlements as far as the eye can see? Because that's the new "political reality"? I don't think so. Frum's hammering Limbaugh for harking back to Reagan, but we need to go back to Goldwater! I love the Gipper - really, he's the best 20th-century president - but reading Conscience of a Conservative is the antidote for the Obamessianism that's taking over the country.

I'll have more later. But I'll tell you, gaining power and staying in the media spotlight is way more important to folks like David Frum than is sticking to a set of beliefs that identify what it really means to be conservative.

More at Memeorandum.