Letters to the Editor
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"Acceptable opinion" is not only narrow, it's selective and filtered
Atrios has frequently said that the range of acceptable establishment political opinion in the U.S. spans the suffocatingly narrow gamut from The New Republic to National Review. The substantial body of opinion to "the left" of the pro-war New Republic is excluded as fringe, while there is nothing substantial to the right of National Review. There is no outer boundary on the Right. In exactly the same way, the range of acceptable establishment views on war spans the suffocatingly narrow gamut from faux "war critics" like Gelb, Packer and O'Hanlon to war lovers Richard Perle and Fred Kagan. In the establishment press, anyone outside of that narrow range is Unserious and more or less invisible.
"All those war opponents were such Dirty Fucking Hippies..."
Many of the expert critics were neither on the far left or far right. The problem is that they often counsel diplomacy, talking to Iran and other states in the region, as a means of facilitating the withdrawal from Iraq. That's just not done. Obama comes closest to that. Odom isn't a paleocon and he is a true foreign policy expert in every sense of that term. He's a liberal Eisenhower Republican which puts him in the same spot as a John Dean and others. I'd call him a centrist in today's poltical landscape.
Odom with Amy Goodman, 10/2005.
LT. GEN. WILLIAM ODOM: Well, I’m trying to think like a strategist. And in war, as well as in politics and diplomacy, one has to know when to withdraw and when to attack. And this was a misguided attack, and it requires a strategic vision and moral confidence to turn it around, the earlier the better. But as the evidence piles up, I think my judgment is being borne out.
I said before the war in February that if we invade Iraq, this will serve primarily the interests of two people: Osama bin Laden, because it will make Iraq safe for al Qaeda, and it will allow him to have access to kill Americans, which he cannot do in the U.S. very effectively; the second party that would benefit greatly would be the Iranians. Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, and they fought for eight years, and Iranians hated that regime as much more than we did. Therefore it was very much in their interest, and it is clearer now that a Shiite majority will probably end up in control in Iraq, and it will not be pro-American, and it probably will be an Islamic religious republic.
So that’s—those kind of outcomes were foreseeable, and then I didn’t say anything about it for a year, and pointed out that exactly these things were happening. And I was asked about in August why—whether I thought that journalists were doing a good job in pressing this issue with the President. And the answers you’ve just read are the ones I gave...
LT. GEN. WILLIAM ODOM: Oh, yeah. Look, that’s what happened in Vietnam. I mean, I, for different reasons, I had a similar view in Vietnam. By the way the troops don’t mind you debating the issue back here. I mean, I was in Vietnam. We—a lot of us wondered why there wasn’t more debate. We wondered why mainstream people were not debating it. And they let the fringe left anti-war movement blame us, blame people in uniform. I went over and spoke the other day—you know, I don’t have politics, right or left. I’ve never been a Republican or Democrat. And I have worked in the Carter White House, and I’ve worked in the Reagan White House.
So partisan—this is not a partisan politics issue. Congressman Walter Jones, who can hardly be called a conservative is a very—I mean, a liberal, is a very conservative Republican from North Carolina, who invented the term “freedom fries” to replace the “French fries” label, has now enrolled a resolution to Congress, calling for a withdrawal. And I was surprised to get calls from him, asking me to come over and attend a small press conference that he had, where he has a small group of Republicans and an equal number of Democrats behind this. And the point I made—the only reason I went and joined them was that I would rather see people on Bush’s side and responsible mainline Democrats carry this issue than let it go out to the fringes. And that’s where it’s headed.
http://www.democracynow.org/2005/10/4/ret_army_general_william_odom_u