Imagine if the Bush administration had gone into Iraq, found a nuclear arsenal, the ponies had a appeared, happy fun time Democracy spread through the Middle East like wildfire, 6 months and a few billion bucks later we mostly got the hell out of there, having to wade through piles of rose petals on the way out, and a grateful Iraqi population lived happily ever after in their secular pro-Israel, pro-US Democracy.
Just imagine.
Now imagine just how marginalized all of the war opponents would have been? Imagine how none of these people would've ever appeared on the teevee again, having been proved so fucking wrong that none of them were ever welcome back as participants in our mainstream public discourse again.
Oh wait, that part isn't hard to imagine, because even though they weren't proved fucking wrong it's already the case. Despite being proved fucking right, and I don't mean Judy Miller fucking right, those people still disappeared from the teevee. No Charlie Rose for you dirty fucking hippie, we must hear from Ken Pollack again! Their temerity to poop in the punchbowl of the very serious people who failed their country made them rather unwelcome. That marginalization happened anyway. They're nowhere to be found.
Instead, war skeptics are still represented by all of these very serious people who spend more time gazing at their own intellectual struggle (yawn) trying to convince themselves that even though the hippies were right they were wrong, and who even now try to stop any effort to actually end this war. They're trying to maintain their stature and status even though they failed in their self-appointed obligations, and even now, over cocktails with Max Boot, desperately rail against the dirty fucking hippies who live under Joe Klein's bed.
It's a dangerously absurd state of affairs, and it has to change somehow.
