Imagine surveying the last two decades in the Middle East and confidently declaring that yet another unilateral American intervention will end well. This requires the kind of delusional confidence you can only call on when you staked out the same position on another U.S. intervention and faced absolutely no consequences when you were catastrophically wrong. Luckily, there are no such consequences within the city limits of Washington, District of Columbia. So it was little surprise to see a cadre of Iraq War cheerleaders invited onto cable news programs to declare that Thursday's assassination of Qasem Soleimani, Iran's second most powerful figure, will prove to be a big win all around.

Where could we begin except with Ari Fleischer, who served as the Bush administration press secretary in the days before the invasion of Iraq. That role involved ginning up support for a disastrous war that led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, destabilized the entire region, led to the rise of ISIS, and empowered the same Iranian regime that we just attacked. Recently, Fleischer was caught trying to rewrite the record about whether the Bush administration lied in the run-up to the war. They lied, and Fleischer lied about whether they lied. If that doesn't say "shameless" to you, then this will.

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Ari Fleischer: "I think it is entirely possible that this is going to be a catalyst inside Iran where the people celebrate this killing of Soleimani" pic.twitter.com/UfcTOkvqAw — Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) January 3, 2020

My man really went with the We'll Be Greeted as Liberators routine. Everything old truly is new again.

Iran does have a young population that is far less militantly anti-western than the regime, but if we didn't squander the chance to reach them by blowing up the Iran Deal—which the Iranians were complying with, by the way—then we've probably lost them now. Even if people don't like their leaders, they don't tend to like it when somebody else goes in and kills them. That's particularly true when the actor in question, the United States, has an extensive record of meddling in their affairs, beginning with our play to overthrow a democratically elected prime minister in 1953 over oil.

But maybe Fleischer is right in all the ways he and his Bush administration cronies were wrong on Iraq. Let's go to the streets of Tehran to find out.

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Tens of thousands of people are rallying on the streets of Iranian capital Tehran following the US airstrike that killed Qasem Soleimani. https://t.co/OdPzDFs4kP pic.twitter.com/V16zAWNyDO — CNN (@CNN) January 3, 2020

They do not seem to be chanting, "USA! Thanks, Mr. Trump!" Incredibly, Fleischer was invited on simultaneously with Karl Rove, another relentless Bush liar who thought he could make up all the answers. Already, you can feel these ghouls coalescing around the same strategies: focus only on how Soleimani was a bad guy, not whether the U.S. can justify killing him or it was a wise decision for the long term; accuse any dissenters of supporting Soleimani or the Iranian regime or terrorism; accuse any dissenters of hating America or failing to support the troops; speak vaguely about "imminent" threats to American lives that have been thwarted; and of course, declare that rank-and-file citizens of Iraq and Iran will absolutely love this.

Naturally, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed this delusional nonsense.

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POMPEO, TODAY: "People not only in Iraq, but in Iran, will view the American action last night as giving them freedom"



ARI FLEISCHER, 2003: “Once the Iraqi people see that Saddam & those around him will be removed from power, they'll welcome freedom, they'll be a liberated ppl" pic.twitter.com/uIjIwMpWTB — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 3, 2020

Wait, what was that there? Was that Fleischer saying the exact same goddamned thing about Iraq in 2003?

These people should be shunned by polite society. Their incapacity for self-reflection, and their inability to process the gravity of what they've done, are genuinely frightening character traits. Just go away! Fuck off! You've done enough! Thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead because these chickenhawk lunatics told themselves they knew all there was to know about a region they couldn't possibly begin to understand. How many more American soldiers are too gravely injured to play in the backyard with their kids? How many still endure sleepless nights, cursed with the memories of what they saw during their time in hell?

None of the Bush liars actually fought these battles, so they've slept easy as the wars they started drag on long enough for American kids to serve in them who were not born when they began. For any well-adjusted human adult, this would be a chastening moment, a time to really examine the decisions you've made in your life. Certainly, it would be a time not to go on television and advocate for more bombs and bullets. But not for these guys. More stomping around in the Middle East. This time will be different, even if we use the same words. Is it too soon to say Mission Accomplished?



Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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