THE BOYS' BRIGADE

[Content Note: Iraq War; World War II/Nazi reference.]

David Brooks' latest garbage column for the New York Times is titled "Learning from Mistakes," and it's all about how he doesn't do that. Basically.

He was the head cheerleader of the Iraq War, right atop the pyramid in the middle of the Neocon Gymnasium during the warmongering halftime show, and now instead of just saying, "Holy shit, I was so wrong, I was terribly wrong, and what have we done? I AM SO SORRY," which is really the only acceptable thing to say at this point, he's written some smarmy trash about data points and outcomes and calibrations. He's got mad skills at using the most reprehensibly anodyne language to describe the monstrous things he has advocated.

Anyway.

His mendacious history-telling has been thoroughly taken down by Simon Maloy, Judd Legum, Echidne, and Scott LeMieux. Go read them!

I just want to note that this is how Brooks starts this appalling column, that this is how he makes the case that, hey, it's tough to judge whether war is a bad idea because "history is an infinitely complex web of causations":

If you could go back to 1889 and strangle Adolf Hitler in his crib, would you do it? At one level, the answer is obvious. Of course, you should. If there had been no Hitler, presumably the Nazi Party would have lacked the charismatic leader it needed to rise to power. Presumably, there would have been no World War II, no Holocaust, no millions dead on the Eastern and Western fronts.

But, on the other hand, if there were no World War II, you wouldn't have had the infusion of women into the work force.

I mean, listen: I obviously love EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT THAT, including and especially the disappearing of all the women of color and poor white women on whose backs "the work force" was built and sustained. But what I think I love most is how I could go back and find countless Brooks columns in which working women have been demonized as a family-destroying scourge.

It's pretty cool how we're cultural plague garbage except when he wants to defend his own significant role in promoting an unnecessary war that has left thousands of people dead, displaced millions, and fundamentally undermined the safety and security of an entire region.

This fucking guy. He doesn't even have the decency to be ashamed of himself.