Now that we’ve arrived at the ten-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, it’s natural for people to look back and analyze how things were and how things have changed. I’ve noticed quite a bit of self-flagellation from people in the corporate media who were there ten years ago and either did nothing or participated in the fraud. It’s hard to stomach, frankly, because very few of those people are actually asking for forgiveness. None of them are saying, “You know, it turns out that the liberal bloggers were right and we were wrong.”
The blogosphere was birthed by a simple phenomenon. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were consuming corporate media and feeling like they couldn’t believe a word of it, and they sought out skeptical sources which turned out to be a bunch of amateurs in pajamas smacking their keyboards in their parent’s basements while they downed bowl after bowl of Cheetos.
Once enough people discovered that they weren’t alone in thinking that Tom Friedman and Judy Miller were full of crap, they formed online communities. And then they started meeting in real life. And then they started to get organized. And then Howard Dean emerged as someone to rally around.
The legacy of that is seen all over our political landscape, as progressives have asserted themselves and made significant inroads in getting power within the Democratic Party. The media is better than it used to be. Even some of the old fraudsters have tightened up their standards and become less credulous.
Where were you ten years ago? When did you discover the progressive blogosphere, and what site served as your introduction?
Ten years ago, I was on the street because an acquaintance handed me a flyer about a rally against the war. I had been protesting it since Oct, 2012 when I was at the rally with Obama and Terkel at Daley Plaza.
It seemed clear to me that Bush didn’t make the case. Going to war demands more serious cause than the faint wisps of detail that were circulated by the US press. I was also reading a lot of European news at the time (cause US news sucked) and they rapidly debunked things like Powell’s address at the UN with his so called evidence.
I did not become a regular reader of progressive blogs until I started backing Obama for Prez in 2007. I hung out at mydd.com and got to know a couple of solid folks who made some good comments and diaries. I also collaborated with Peter Erickson to create http://www.onemillionstrong.us blog. It served as a more relaxed blog without the noise of dkos and a tighter rein on comment standards. It was good for circulating useful material in favor of Obama.
I guess that is supposed to read 2002, not 2012.
Yup, thanks for the catch.
Today I’m feeling very sad about the horrific destruction our country caused. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, over a trillion dollars gone, thousands of our soldiers.
I do not have any strong hopes that collectively this country learns from it. Very few will remember the cost. Very few will understand the ongoing carnage and upheaval this will cause in the region. The right will flood media with crap like “Is the world better with or without Saddam Husseian in it?” As if that is all that mattered.
This marker is not just a reminder of the lies of the Iraq War architects’. Thanks to this weeks’ disclosures it is the stark revelation of Nixon’s treason.
Without blogs perhaps we would have waited 45 years to determine that Cheney fabricated the entire set of reasons for the Iraq war.
I discovered HuffPo, then articles by Jane and thus FDL. Pieces by Steve Soto and the LeftCoaster, Pessimist, Marcy Wheeler and a crowd of bright, curious minds laid out arguments that were so powerful and yet msm just Judy Miller fawned over Cheney’s version. Hard to overstate where we were and what it took to get heard. There’s alot of people that are heroes.
I came first to dkos in early 2005 after googling “Ann Coulter”. A link from that search opened a whole new world. Shortly thereafter, I came here after reading a BooMan post on dkos. Then, I attended ykos in 2006 and came face to face with all those screen names. It has been an interesting ride.
Same place I am now, teaching in a redneck exurb.
Before blogs.
At Salon’s Table Talk during the impeachment nonsense, with people like Maia Cowen, and Martin Heidt — who did all that FOIA legwork on Bush’s ANG career — and Ferguson Foont and Stirling Newberry and Joel Swadesh. Atrios was there, still Kurt Foster, substitute gym teacher. Joe Conason would occasionally look in. There’s so many others I’m forgetting unfairly.
Plus Media Whores Online, and Rackjite, and Bartcop.
Do you still read Stirling Newberry?
Only occasionally. It’s hard to when he writes stuff like this.
Haha, that’s the exact post I was thinking of when I asked my question.
I’m giving away my age now, but my political awakening came with the Anti-Vietnam protests, civil rights, anti-apartheid, CND, Greenpeace etc. – not to mention Dylan, Cohen and antiwar musicians, writers and poets more generally. So it was hard for me to imagine how soon after Vietnam people could still be taken in by the flimsy patina of lies offered up by Bush, Blair, Cheny, Rumsfeld and Powell et al. Perhaps I feel I have been let down by the generation which followed because we gave up career options in order to be true to our beliefs.
Now we are expected to make do with triangulation, grand bargains, moderation and austerity whilst the planet is slowly destroyed around us and the global financial elite rip everyone off with impunity. 30 years of increased inequality and we are surprised that the elite resort to extraordinary measures to maintain their hegemony? The last 25 years have been an extraordinary failure of democracy, politics, and of popular imagination and we have to make do with a few marginal blogs to keep sane and keep the flame alight.
It’s not much to celebrate, but thanks Booman, for just being around.
I was in Colorado, arguing with people who vehemently believed that Saddam Hussein was behind Al Qaeda. Amazing how that non-official meme spread through the right channels.
Ten years ago (+ about 2 weeks), I was in Cyprus where a number of UN agencies were preparing for the – at that time – inevitable invasion of Iraq. I had not yet discovered the blogs, but was posting on a music forum where I had opportunity to educate a few folks on the lies of the Bush regime. I had been to Iraq a couple of times in the very late 90s.
First discovered blogs in September 2004 during the run up to the elections. First Pandagon, which led me to DK in early October. Registered since I felt I had to comment on Iraq issues.
Ten years ago, I went on the air with my shitty indie radio show and expressed my fears:
I didn’t see much chance of it turning out any other way.
I stumbled across the blogosphere a little earlier than most, in late 2001 or early 2002 I think. My gateway drug, er, blog was TPM. Within a few weeks I was reading the old Movable Type version of Daily Kos featuring Markos, Steve Gilliard (RIP and FtFY, Steve!) and Billmon. I followed Billmon to the Whiskey Bar (RIP) which became my favorite blog ever. I also soon discovered Digby, Atrios, Fafblog and The Poor Man.
I had no idea how good I had it, but then again, the times were so awful that everybody’s minds were focused on undoing the wrongs being done in our names and not on the quality of commentary available for free on the Internet. I miss the sense of community we had then, but I wouldn’t trade the progress we’ve made for it.
As a final note, I don’t think it’s proper to observe the 10th Anniversary without revisiting Billmon’s classic indictment of the Bush Administration told solely with Bush Administration quotes. May we never have days like that again.
There were two looming black clouds in 2002, the upcoming midterms and Bush’s war. Was desperate for voices that viewed Bush’s “case for war” as ludicrous as I did. Was at dKos when Billmon first showed up after the depressing and predictable midterms and was immediately recognizable as a very special voice and writer.
Of course the invasion of Iraq was predictable in 2000 when the SCOTUS decision in Bush v. Gore was issued. It was on Bush’s “to do list” well enough that I used it to convince others to vote for Gore.
If only we could send the bill – the $2 trillion in direct costs and a few trillion more in associated costs – to all the dumbasses in this country that waved their made in China flags.
I still miss Gilliard’s blog…
What I’m looking forward to is May 1, when we can celebrate the 10th anniversary of Bush prancing around in his flight suit on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln. I don’t know if there’s been a more disgraceful spectacle in all of our history.
Ten years ago on the first day of Bush’s war, I was horrified about what was happening. It was the day after my birthday, and I was sad that the date would always be tarnished by the insanity of another war, and one that seemed so wrong.
My husband was at first more politically active than I, but we share the same convictions and so I began reading The Daily Kos and Huffington Post and then went on later to add other bloggers like Balloon Juice and TBogg and Booman. I read Shakesville, too, and in spite of some issues which become hyperbolic, I have learned a lot about privilege and human rights. I am proud to say that I am evolving as I grow older, feeling more strongly about issues like removing the death penalty and establishing more controls of guns.
I sense that my hopes as a liberal Liberal will never be met, but if we keep moving forward, the little hopes will snowball into bigger ones. I won’t ever stop being that hopeful voice in the crowd. I’m grateful more than I can say that there are blogs where I can visit and be restored and informed. That’s huge for me.
It was the worst of times.
I’d found the left wing sites – the term “blog” hadn’t quite gone mainstream – in November 2000. Sites like Buzzflash, Cursor, CommonDreams, MediaWhoresOnline, Daily Howler, and darn few others. Even wsws.org (world socialist web site) was an excellent source for info and links if you could ignore the Marxist jargon.
That was a good foundation to have when 9/11 arrived because at that point the US corporate news media – already having been neutered during the Whitewater/Lewinski/Goring-of-Gore era – under went a complete lobotomy. There were a lot of funny things that happened during the fall of 2001 – I’m sure if I or anyone took the time to read through the day-to-day stories now given the historical context we’d find some real shockers. Basically Afghanistan was going to pay the price for 9/11 and nothing was going to stop that, and no information that might get in the way was going to be let out.
Early signs of the Cheney/Rumsfeldification of the military were available in December 2001 with Amnesty International reports of widespread torture and mass killings – usually conducted by our “friends” in the so-called “Northern Alliance” but usually with American presence on site. All those stories were buried.
By late 2002 a lot of new sites had popped up and the term “blog” had entered the mainstream. Krugman was asked in an interview where he got his info and he referred to Atrios. Atrios and others had blogrolls which were very important to generating traffic back then. At that time I found Daily Kos. For comments he used Haloscan – a thread with more than 20 comments was considered very active. I posted occasionally as “Z”. Other voices, now well known, were emerging – Kevin Drum was building a following as CalPundit – John Marshall was a solo act at TalkingPointsMemo. Then there were the voices that were popular but aren’t any more, like RiverBend.
Using those resources it was quickly apparent that the WMD case was baseless. Well, to be honest there were clues to that fact just from what the administration was saying. What was the infamous Rumsfeld quote? Something like “We know exactly where the WMDs are. They are south of Baghdad, and West, and some in the East, and somewhat North.” And Colin Powell’s presentation was stunning for just how miniscule the actual evidence was once you got past the props and visuals – this was the best they could do after billions spent on spying on Iraq. However, the blogosphere provided links and info that went beyond clues – showing quickly that (for example) the so-called “drones” were actually small balsa wood hobby planes.
When the invasion and occupation began the blogosphere was the antidote to the official propoganda channels – which at that point basically included every TV channel in the US.
It may be that the emergence of the progressive blogosphere actually prevented the follow-on invasion and occupations of other countries, such as Syria. We know that these were on the PNAC roadmap to follow-up on Iraq. If the reality of the Iraq occupation hadn’t been brought home they might have been able to beat the drums for a follow-on invasion – and certainly the right wing types who dreamed this up are very capable of imaging that the cure-all for occupation problems are to expand the occupation.
In the end, though, we need to remember that probably over a million people lost their lives who wouldn’t have without the invasion (for some reason even many of those on the left counted only American casualties – probably assuming that the mainstream Americans would only care about those) and many million others suffered substantial, severe harm.
The lesson of Nuremburg is that War inevitably results in massive suffering and therefore the gravest war crime of all is to start a war unnecessarily. Perhaps the worst result of the Iraq debacle is that previously the lesson of Nuremburg was an important part of the American psyche – oh, we launched a lot of little wars but we always got our justifications lined up – post-Iraq it seems that this has largely been dropped from consideration. When we read discussions of Iran policy rarely does anyone in the maintstream point out that any military action will result in massive suffering. It’s as though we now just accept war suffering the same way we accept 30k dying every year from car crashes in evitable and not worth discussing.
Guess there were many of us on that same path. Unfortunately, the vast majority in this country prefers the super-highway with all the predictable pile-ups.
Sounds like we traveled similar paths along the Internets. Buzzfeed was certainly a go-to for American headlines. I regularly was reading the Guardian (UK) and the Independent around then as well (still do to this day). Because of a friend of mine who was an aspiring writer, I had some idea of what a blog was, but thought of it strictly as a vanity thing. In the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and occupation, I stumbled on to a few blogs – probably Calpundit, Left Coaster, skippy, and a few others. Some I would eventually lose interest in. Others seemed initially okayish when focused on Iraq, but turned out to be more prone to hatemongering (xymphora springs easily to mind). The Iraqis who blogged around the time (Where’s Raed, for instance) were worth reading as well. At one point I followed DK – although what spun off that particular blog ended up being far more interesting to me – many folks whom I dearly treasure would be encountered here. Never in Our Names was a great anti-torture community blog. I was saddened when it just one day suddenly disappeared (its creators were DK and UnBossed regulars, from what I vaguely recall). Arthur Silber and Chris Floyd each had good blogs at the time that offered a much needed moral compass. Both still write semi-regularly. I found Chris Floyd first, and Silber from there. Lenin’s Tomb also should be mentioned – tends to be a bit less jargon-filled than a lot of the Marxist blogs (the bulk of which are very recent upstarts), and it has for many years been a consistently good go-to for understanding international economic and international policy from across the pond. My go-to blogs from back then are still my go-to blogs now, for the most part.
I’ve heard the war drums beating as far as Iran goes. I keep thinking it’s time to revisit Arendt’s thoughts on the banality of evil.
Physically, I’m in the same place I was back then. But ten years ago I felt like the lone voice who, among all my family and friends, was not on a cheerleader on the war train. I really think everyone looked at me like I was nuts for questioning the whole rationale for war. Everyone around me was simply wired to go “kick some towel-head ass”. I remember all the wide eyes and dropped jaws when I would piss in their punch bowl by not joining in the swagger and bravado that seemed to be everywhere. I watched all the “Shock and Awe” with a very sick and disgusted feeling in the pit of my stomach. My wife tells me now, “You were the only one I know that ended up being right about all this”. Needless to say, all those people long ago shoved all of that down the memory hole.
It was in the early part of the war when I discovered the progressive blogosphere. I started out on Air America’s website, following and occasionally commenting on Al Franken’s blog there. From AA links I found my way to Daily Kos, where I simply lurked. It seemed awfully intimidating over there. I don’t remember how, but from DKos I found my way over here. And this site is where my eyes and mind were really opened to the progressive world. This is now my home base, as far as political blogs.
So painful to recall that time when those around me thought I was nuts for stating that Saddam had no usable WMD. I was similarly alone and sickened by “shock and awe” while those “good Christian” men gathered to revel in the awesomeness of US military might and their stares of incomprehension when I mentioned that those bombs were being dropped on innocent people.
There is no worse crime than being right at the wrong time. Not only have the war cheerleaders flushed their complicity down the memory hole, but they probably still hate you for being right at the time and being a living reminder of their complicity now. You were unAmerican then and you are and old windbag now if you remind them of their moral complicity. Hell, isn’t Hilary going to be the next President?
Isn’t that why she followed Rob Portman’s lead and jumped on the same-sex marriage bandwagon?
Ten years ago, I wasn’t yet online, and wouldn’t be till late June, and then another month off trying to replace a lightening-blown modem.
In the lead up to the war, in August, my last hospice client looked at me and said: We are going to war, aren’t we? I said, Yes. She said: Why? I said it doesn’t matter: they want a war, and they’ll find a reason.
When my computer was finally back on line, I stumbled upon MoveOn, and joined. Followed Maha from the Atlantic boards to her blog, and thence to various other lefty blogs. In October, I was invited to an all about Howard Dean meet at our local doctor’s house. Before the meeting was a third done, I knew who my candidate was. Discovered his blog in December, and became a serious lurker for a month, then opened my mouth and found home. Stuck with that blog til its last breath last year.
At a MoveOn war protest in 04, remember sitting on the top step of the Harrisonburg municipal building stairs with a couple of other former hippies, all of us musing about why we were here. Again.
Ten years ago I was in my second of three years of unemployment from the IT bubble bust. I had not discovered much news beyond the TV and Yahoo News. So I was very much in the information bubble of deception with no contrary voices. I thought that going to war and Afghanistan was over-reaction to 9/11 and that Bush could have pursued the al Quaeda network the way Clinton had the first WTC bombing. But Afghanistan was peaceful and putatively ready for development and investment; the Taliban resurgence had not begun. So that looked like it might work in spite of my misgivings. And the best information–the UK intelligence estimate–said that Saddam Hussein had nuclear, chemical, biological capabilities and missiles and rail guns to deliver them. So my main question was “Why now with Afghanistan not settled?” Colin Powell’s presentation at the UN was scary enough to be effective in making one not notice that the trailers were drawings, not photographs. And when Saddamm Hussein delivered all the requested documentation, I thought we might back away from war and continue dickering. When we didn’t, I was clear that the aim was war from the beginning and I hoped for the best.
The rapid victory in Baghdad was a surprise to me, given all the hype about Saddam and using chemical battlefield weapons. And all seemed going swimmingly until the looting of the Iraqi Museum and Rumsfeld’s nonsense about people and their freedom. And then the electricity could not be restored; seems some folks were not thrilled by their liberation.
And then Fallujah and an NPR interview of a GI whose excuse for killing people was that the US troops had not been trained to do police work. A major WTF moment. Our troops were treating the people they were “liberating” as if they were the enemy. That was when I knew it was lost. If you are effective in counter-insurgency, there is never a point at which the people are not on your side.
In my estimation, the Iraqi people were very patient with their occupation for a year. After a year in which life had not returned to normal, they figured out that the US was not about liberation but occupation. That year ended shortly before the information about Abu Ghraib leaked.
From Yahoo News, I learned about the first day of Air America. From Sam Seder’s and Janeane Garafalo’s show on Air America, I learned about Atrios and Daily Kos and blogs. For the next eight months (until I finally returned to employment), my life was online with Air American running its full day in the background. I owe my sanity to that. I also had the time to read the full reports presented to Congress about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. And realized what a huge FU the whole situation with the Global War on Terror and the Iraq War were. Amazing venality. And I thought that Congress would, as in Watergate, do its duty. Instead we had GOP unity and Democratic cowardice. And the myth of the “new normal”.
Now I am convinced that the only way back to democracy for this country is to undo the institutions that Harry Truman put in place in 1947 and the secret state that goes with it. But to do that, you have to change the laws that authorize those institutions completely.
That is daunting. And I fear for my children’s and grandchildren’s future in an increasingly global corporate secret state, unchecked by other powers. The seizure of power that began in the 1970s and jumped forward in the coup d’etat of 2000-2001 seems like it will be locked down with the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Trans-Atlantic Partnership agreements. US sovereignty then becomes subject to corporate whim and arbitration in internation tribunals accountable to no one and peopled by corporate lawyers.
Leftie bloggers debunked Powell’s presentation in real time just as they, along with with writers like David Corn at “The Nation,” had done a few months earlier before the IWR in Congress with Blair’s “white paper.”
I really didn’t see how anyone could not be skeptical about what Powell presented at the time. The media fell all over themselves, immediately pronouncing it a slam dunk. I stood there, mouth agape in shock, as virtually everyone swallowed it hook, line and sinker. No questions asked. To me, it appeared to so full of holes and assumptions that it was just impossible to see it as credible enough evidence to go to war.
Evidence of the paucity of critical thinking skills within the minds of Americans. Gullible citizens doesn’t make for a healthy democracy.
Witness the effort by the far right to purge our schools of teaching those same critical thinking skills. I cannot imagine any skill more important, going forward, than the ability to rationally discern fiction from fact. Especially with the capability now to create entire media empires whose single function is to propagate things which are not true and creating supporting “evidence” out of whole cloth to validate it. Those kinds of organizations used to be relegated the magazine stands in the supermarket checkout aisles. They are now followed, 24-7, by tens of millions of essentially non-thinking people.
We are now in a world where what is factually true is simply beside the point when people are making important decisions, even about life and death. It is truly frightening.
Contrary to my hope that the internet would subvert the lies and propaganda, it has made it easier and cheaper to disseminate them and the truth remains relegated to the same corner it’s always occupied. Should known better than to have been so optimistic. People that have never learned how to use a library and search for the best available evidence and facts lack the skill to evaluate what they can more easily access on-line.
What we should learn from Iraq is that ruling class campaigns are alive and well and have incredible influence on outcomes. Just look at the “debt debate”. Debt, like the necessity of deregulation 15 years ago, is simply a password for ruling class membership. If you get to talk very seriously about debt (or Iraq, or entitlement cuts, or Iran, or whatever), then you are a very visible member of the ruling class.
I don’t even mean to be blunt about this. I didn’t need to discover the blogosphere, because nobody I knew thought that this war was the one we should fight. I’m from the only community that has been against this war from the beginning – Black folk. Didn’t know a Black soul, outside of the slave catching GOPers, that would utter any support for this war. For our trouble, we were labeled un-American and unpatriotic.
oh well.
A review worth reading Nothing Succeeds Like Failure For Iraq War Architects by Jon Perr.
It’s not just that the warmongering creators of the Iraq disaster lied to get their war on and were so inept that it cost several times as much as it could have and lasted several times as long as it should have, but they remain respected enough to command attention in the public space to repeat their lies instead of being indicated and convicted of war crimes.
I had a stepson who had joined the navy. He phoned from his base on Whidbey Island to say that he had been given a gun and some instructions in its use, along with a hazmat suit. We both knew that george was using him to meet the half-million troop requirement that the Chiefs had said were necessary for his war.
I don’t remember my response to the news, but hope it was adequate. I never told the boy of my vow to make george’s life as miserable as I could if anything had happened to him. Of course he never really went to war – the navy usually manages to stay offshore of the fighting.
We are shamelessly perfecting the art of easy war. Ships to airplanes to drones.
I was blogging against the war. My first blog was TPM.
I was 14, a freshmen in high school. I didn’t know shit about politics, really, just that most people around me was a Republican. I’ve been advocating for socialized health care since I was 12, having had a fondness for Germany for many years, and knowing their health care and infrastructure in general kicked our ass.
As far as Iraq, I didn’t know the difference between 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, and didn’t care too much. I do remember having a conversation with my parents when I was 14 or 15 while drying dishes, though, saying we shouldn’t police the world and should withdraw our military from many different places; dad quipped, “Well now with the attack, I think we need it.” Not knowing much of anything I agreed.
I was much more awake two years later, when I read Howard Zinn’s book in 11th grade history.
However, I was on gaming forums for a game called “Runescape,” and I hung around the off-topic sections all the time. Lots of Euros played that game, and I think a lot of my politics was influenced by it; not to mention Rage Against the Machine was my favorite band…
Ten years ago, I signed up to volunteer for the Dean campaign.
I was rooting for Howard Dean and spending time at the SmirkingChimp.com.