[lbo-talk] wrong to be right

Shane Taylor shane.taylor at verizon.net
Sat Dec 6 06:19:06 PST 2008


[Tony Judt, writing of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, but the same reasoning comes from true believers of self-regulating markets:]

[Thomas] Friedman is seconded by [Peter] Beinart, who concedes that he ‘didn’t realise’(!) how detrimental American actions would be to ‘the struggle’ but insists even so that anyone who won’t stand up to ‘Global Jihad’ just isn’t a consistent defender of liberal values. Jacob Weisberg, the editor of Slate, writing in the Financial Times, accuses Democratic critics of the Iraq War of failing ‘to take the wider, global battle against Islamic fanaticism seriously’. The only people qualified to speak on this matter, it would seem, are those who got it wrong initially. Such insouciance in spite of – indeed because of – your past misjudgments recalls a remark by the French ex-Stalinist Pierre Courtade to Edgar Morin, a dissenting Communist vindicated by events: ‘You and your kind were wrong to be right; we were right to be wrong.’

<http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n18/judt01_.html>



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