The Blame Industry

By Larry Beinhart
Created Nov 28 2006 - 8:22am

When things go wrong, someone will be blamed.

It's not a question of should, or if it's right or if it's good. It's what
will happen. Iraq has gone wrong. Someone will be blamed.

It seems logical to blame the people who led the country to war and the
people who led the war into failure.

That's not what happens. Logic does not determine who will be blamed. The
group that seizes the public relations high ground first determines who will
be blamed.

In the Second World War the Germans and Japanese lost so completely that
there was no one left to dispute the tale that the Allies told of their own
heroism and Axis barbarism. The victors wrote the history. It seemed, in
that moment, to be an axiom, automatically true. It's not.

The First World War was different.

The people who lost it, particularly in Germany, were still around.

They, more than anyone else, had a stake in developing and selling a blame
story, one that got themselves off the hook and put someone else on it. The
military, and their right wing backers, seized on the myth that they had
been 'stabbed in the back.' By weak-kneed civilians. You know, liberals.
Cosmopolitans. Jews.

Selling the 'stabbed in the back' myth became a major industry in German
politics. Many individuals and several parties ran on the claim. Eventually,
one of them, Hitler and the National Socialists rose to power.

The First Word War was a long, brutal, largely useless stalemate.

Near the end the British were losing heart. Rather than blame the
government, the generals, the tacticians, or the inherent problems of trench
warfare, the pro-war right wing had to come up with someone else to blame.
One right wing newspaper, The Vigilante, claimed that the English were being
undermined by a vast Lesbian conspiracy which they called 'Cult of the
Clitoris.'

Britain ended up on the winning side. They need to blame faded away. Which
is unfortunate only in that 'Cult of the Clitoris' seems to have disappeared
along with it.

This is true I have not made it up. It demonstrates how desperate and
strange the need to blame is.

The Democrats led us to victory in World War Two.

As a result, the Republicans appeared to be doomed to eternal irrelevance.
They came up with a new theme. The Democrats - the liberals, the
Cosmopolitans - which still referred to homosexuals and Jews - had lost
Eastern Europe and then lost China.

Not 'losing' Eastern Europe would have meant launching our armies at the Red
armies. An orgy of blood-letting that would have rivaled World War II
itself. As for China, it was General Eisenhower, a two term Republican
president, who said "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." Indeed, we
fought the Chinese in Korea. They fought us to a standstill. Fighting them
on their home ground would have been like fighting five Korean Wars at once.
Or perhaps ten.

Nonetheless, the Republicans turned blaming Democrats for failing to fight
into their number one industry.

Then came Vietnam. Democrats got us in. Democrats kept us in. It was ill
considered, ill conceived, ill run and profoundly cynical. Kennedy and
Johnson deserve blame for it. Johnson got it. Nixon tried killing lots of
Vietnamese. And Cambodians. And some Laotians. Then, Nixon finally cut and
ran.

The Republican blame industry leapt into action. Nixon was never mentioned.
Westmoreland, forgotten. Creighton Abrams non-existent. It was the liberals.

The War in Iraq is:

1. A War of Choice. There was utterly no need for it.

2. A Dishonest War. The reason we were given for going into it were false.
Knowingly false.

3. A Fantasy War. This administration had a fantasy about it that bore as
much relation to the actuality as a porno film does to an actual
relationship.

4. It was badly conceived.

5. It was badly run.

6. George Bush lost it. He started it. He ran it. Congress game him a double
'0' number and let him wear is commander-in-chief outfit and he had absolute
carte blanche to run however he wanted. Nobody said no. Nobody said, 'You
can only have 150,00 troops.' Nobody said, 'You have to get in and get out.'
Nobody said, 'Don't have a postwar plan.' Those were his choices.

The Republican blame industry will, when it's over, attempt to blame
Democrats, liberals, cosmopolitans, the media and intellectuals. They will
say the military was stabbed in the back, not allowed to win, fought with
their hands tied, and would have won except that the media undermined them.

Not true. But they will establish it, unless we get there first.

Blame will happen. They need it. Because they're at fault.

If we let them blame us, it will be because we let them get away with it.
Then, we'll only have ourselves to blame.
_______

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson