Replies to post #39881 on Discover GOP Opprobrium

[teapeebubbles]

O’Hanlon Mourns That Obama Was Right On Iraq....

Brookings fellow Michael O’Hanlon continues his abysmal record of staking out the wrong positions on Iraq in an article in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, criticizing presidential candidate and Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s position on the war.

It is puzzling why newspapers print O’Hanlon’s analysis, since he’s been repeatedly wrong in staking out his inconsistent and often incoherent positions on Iraq. As Think Progress has previously noted, O’Hanlon’s record on Iraq policy for the past five years has been radically uneven — at one point in 2004, supporting a timeline for withdrawing troops, and at other points arguing for staying the course for years to come.

Angling for influence is nothing new for O’Hanlon, who tried to position himself in the policy and political debates by in 2004 by criticizing Howard Dean and throughout the past year with proponents for change in Iraq like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

In this electoral year’s article from O’Hanlon, he outlines what he sees as two main problems with Obama’s Iraq position:

1. O’HANLON: “[Obama] seems contemptuous of the motivations of those who supported the war.”

O’Hanlon offers up a thinly-veiled defense for analysts like himself who offered tragically wrong advice in the war in March 2003 — O’Hanlon cannot seem to face up to the fact that he lined up on the wrong side of the arguments on Iraq, and America has suffered serious damage to its national security as a result.

O’Hanlon argued against the war at certain points in 2002 and even outlined a long list of preconditions before going to war in a policy paper he co-published called “Getting Serious About Iraq” (most of these conditions were not met). But then he forgot many of his own arguments and naively accepted the information and arguments presented by the Bush administration on the eve of the war. (He said about Bush’s case for war in the 2003 State of the Union address the president was “convincing on his central point that the time of war is near.”)

It may be that people are contemptuous of those who posture and profess to offer expertise on the right path forward on Iraq like O’Hanlon does, even though their track record is awful. In most professions, there are consequences for bad performance. Doctors face the threat of medical malpractice suits; policy analysts like O’Hanlon get to make mistakes again and again with impunity, as do journalists who quote him and publish his pieces.