Iraq Blame Game: Michael Ledeen Gets Creative Posted by Heather Hurlburt

We've been trying to follow the conservative blame game for the mess on our hands in Iraq.  Was it the fault of an insufficiently-dedicated George W. Bush (see David Frum and others)?  The top military commanders (see Don Rumsfeld)?  The defeatist American people? (Joshua Muravchik)

AEI's Michael Ledeen has a new entry.

Women.

Yes, women.  And no, not Iraqi women or Islamic women or women suicide bombers or women in hijabs.

Republican women.  Condoleezza Rice, Laura Bush, Karen Hughes, and Harriet Miers, to be specific.

Here's the quote, from that Vanity Fair piece which just keeps on giving (though my browser will not open it):

"Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes."

What a soap opera.  Four women cook up a plot that changes the shape of history, all for love of One Man.  Can't you just see the paperback cover?  It sounds like something Lynne Cheney might write.

I could go on with the satire.  But let's be clear:  Mrs. Bush and the Ms.s Rice, Miers and Hughes are four formidable women.  They have not, however, performed a five-year end run around Cheney, Rumsfeld and the whole national security apparatus.  Nor would they want to.

Nor should their careful staffing of the President serve as an excuse for those who should have told the President hard truths and unpleasant facts but did not.

Attempting to re-assign blame from the principals to the staff is, in a word, tacky.  And that's the real core point here.  Nobody was led astray by women's wanton wiles.  Neither was this a case of great policy poorly executed by love-blinded staffers, or poor policy that would have been stopped if not for love-blinded staffers.  I am, perhaps, belaboring the obvious.  But the buck stops with the people who had the ideas and made the decisions -- no matter what your ideology or gender.   

Creating an imaginary cabal of dangerous women is, in two words, sexist and weird.  Perform a little thought experiment.  Remove the four names and the word "women" and replace it with "blacks," "Asians," or "Jews."  See what I mean?  Totally inappropriate.

(Besides, when women do form cabals, we don't mess up this badly.)

Comments

[Don Bacon]

Characterizing women as dangerous has a long Christian history which replaced a female-based religious dogma, thus necessitating the characterization of women as evil witches. It goes on today.

[Don Bacon]

from thinkprogress,

Fox News host Mort Kondracke, the “left-leaning” counterpart to Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes on Fox News’ The Beltway Boys, said last night that incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) should be nicknamed the “Wicked Witch of the West.”

There should be retribution and an apology. These sexist bastards should have to suffer.