As I was listening to Joe Scarborough go on and on about the Afghanistan war yesterday morning it made me think back. He likes to give raw meat to the left to chew on by repeating over and over that “Obama has tripled the number of troops in Afghanistan” and “President Obama owns this war now, it’s not Bush’s anymore”….I’m paraphrasing to some extent. It made me think back to things Joe has said in the past. I was curious so I went to the google thingy and did a search. I found these quotes from Mr. Scarborough back in 2003 when the Iraq War started. Below is Joe’s Mission Accomplished moment…
“I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks.”
(MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)
“I’m waiting to hear the words ‘I was wrong’ from some of the world’s most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types…. I just wonder, who’s going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: ‘Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong’? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war….
“Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that — quote, ‘The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated.’ Sorry, Scott. I think you’ve been chasing the wrong tail, again.
“Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don’t call them ‘elitists’ for nothing.”
(MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)
“Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad out in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still hasn’t figured out we won the war.”
(MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)
Isn’t that funny? We won the Iraq War in 2003 and I MISSED IT! So someone tell me why I should be listening to Joe Scarborough blather on, pretending like he’s a dove. So I looked a little further and found this from Mr. Scarborough in February of 2007…
Even if you agree with me that this war was worth fighting as long as we believed Saddam Hussein had WMD’s aimed at America, at some point you have to face the facts: the Bush administration was wrong about those weapons, wrong about the nuclear program, wrong about their refusal to quell rioting early, wrong about Bremer’s gutting of the Iraqi army and police force, wrong about refusing to kill or capture al Sadr in 2003, wrong to tell the generals not speak of the coming insurgency, wrong to stubbornly refuse to give generals the troops they needed to win this war, wrong to make the “Mission Accomplished” declaration, wrong for the VP to claim that the insurgency was in its death throes and wrong to push a surge plan that the president’s top generals opposed.
Joe Scarborough will say whatever the hell he wants as long as it suits his current situation. His photo should appear next to the definition of hypocrite in the dictionary. He seems to get away with it most of the time, though.
Extreme Liberal's Blog 
I have mixed emotions about us being in Afghanistan because they were a terrorist training ground, Iraq was a poor intelligence blunder and a overblown ego in the works and we should have stayed home. Convinced there were WMD’s and believing once Sadam was gone, everyone would cheer the US and sing the national anthem, we did not understand the culture and still don’t.
The current administration needs to either be there to win or say we won and get out. We may win a war but can’t change a culture especially one we don’t understand. This does have signs of Vietnam and after losing in excess of 40k Americans, we pulled out so what was the point.
I think going in was a mistake in the first place, we had this amorphous enemy that wasn’t really the Afhan government, but kind of…
Our resources would have been much better used by strengthening our borders, air security, ports, intelligence against terrorists…just think how much more secure we could have been had that trillion dollars been spent a little more wisely instead of going into the pockets of Haliburton, Blackwater, Bechtel, Afgani warlords, Iraqi warlords…bribes to local tribesmen.
General Powell warned Bush about going in, it’s so much easier going in than it is getting out. I agree that we aren’t going to change the culture, it’s ancient. I think the best we can do is weaken the Taliban and Al Qaeda and get the hell out. I suspect that’s what the president has in mind and why people think his timeline isn’t accurate, they still think we are trying to win the war that can’t be won. So many on the right have a fixation on “winning” and when you are fighting a war on an idea “terrorism”, you win when you say you win. “We Won”…now let’s go home.
I firmly believe that President Obama will start pulling troops out in July of 2011 just like he said. But all the not-so-bright media can’t wrap their heads around it, they think we can’t leave until the place is a paradise or something.
EL, you’re essentially right but I think missing the grander picture. In our false-dichotomy of a system, those who buy into it are required to endlessly cheer on the team of their choice.
Scarborough, as contemptible as he may be, has to speak from both side of his mouth depending on which way the political winds are blowing. Michael Steele can do the same thing we learned today (or rather yesterday at this hour) by channeling his inner Princess Bride and finally extolling the advice to never start a land war in Asia.
But Democrats are the same kind of evil, and yes it is evil. The last decade saw Democrats trying endlessly to show how much they supported both of these wars only to have it hung around their neck later when the war proved very unpopular. We have a president now who campaigned against the “failed policies of the past” who is still running Guantanamo; expanding the war in Afghanistan; fighting a drone war in Pakistan; endlessly scapegoating Iran; ordering the murder of Americans abroad; etc. These are the very same “failed policies.”
So yes, you are correct to point out Scarborough’s hypocrisy but it only serves to highlight the hypocrisy of the two-headed ruling party in America. The brother in power will say what he perceives to be the most popularly worded way of moving the grand agenda forward, while the brother out of power serves as contrarian. Both brothers want the same thing (in the case of this post, subjugation of the Middle East and its resources at the expense of sovereignty and lives of those having the temerity to live there already) and will move ahead regardless of who is in power.
Rest assured that if a Republican is elected and we are still fighting in Afghanistan, that those with an (R) next to their name will adopt the “right war” policy, while those with the (D) will reprise their role as contrarian.