Ocelopotamus

Tom Tomorrow had a great “special edition” cartoon up on the Huffington Post last week, revisiting some of the things that pro-war pundits had to say at the start of the war. Here’s a small excerpt from the cartoon.

That’s just the first four of 12 panels — click on the cartoon excerpt to go see the whole thing, and Tom’s commentary on it. Believe me, it gets better.

What’s fascinating about these quotes is that during those heady first few weeks after the initial “victory” in Iraq, the neoconservatives and their apologists in the media were clearly gearing up to rub progressives’ faces in the dirt for being wrong. They just couldn’t wait to start telling us how wrong they thought we’d been for suggesting that taking over Iraq would be harder than they thought. There was clearly going to be no greater crime than having been wrong about the glorious victory in Iraq. They were going to make us eat helping after helping of crow pie for years and years and years because we had been so nana-nana-boo-boo wrong.

And then, oops, the shoe turned out to be on the other foot. Turns out it was the neoconservatives who were wrong about how the occupation of Iraq would go, just an eensy bit, so guess what? All the crow pie got covered with foil and put back in the fridge. Nothing to see here, move along. Why make a big deal out of who was right and who was wrong? We all make mistakes. Let’s not dwell on ancient history — it’s so petty and unseemly. The important thing is to figure out where we go from here.

And the best people to figure that out? Why, all the neoconservative pundits who were wrong about what would happen in the first place, of course.