“I don’t think this is our responsibility, but I do think we were irresponsible going into Iraq for a variety of other reasons.”
—Rep. Nancy Pelosi, attempting to absolve her party’s government from responsibility and accountability for the catastrophe in Iraq.
It’s all HIS fault, when you get right down to it…
Nancy Pelosi, like her counterpart in the Senate, Harry Reid, is an ethics corrupter of the vilest sort. The problem isn’t her party, ideology, policy positions or political objectives. What makes her an ethics corrupter is that from a place of high esteem, status and presumed trustworthiness, she constantly engages in unapologetic unethical conduct, encourages unethical reasoning and violates ethical values, all as if they are the right thing to do.
This statement is typically despicable. In saying this, she is denying the long-accepted duties of government, the successive acceptance of responsibility that is essential to the continuity of a democratically elected state, and the essence of leadership, thus misinforming the public and making them less civically competent, if that is possible.
When a future administration allows the economy to collapse because it also refuses to make the hard and responsible choices necessary to keep the nation’s debt from suffocating us but there is no more can to kick down the road, its leaders won’t be able to ethically blame Barack Obama or his predecessors. When you accept the role of leader, all problems, crises, and conditions in the nation become your responsibility, because you accepted the job. Failure is yours, not those who contributed to the conditions, seeded the crises or failed to solve the problems before, just as success is yours. Every competent, honorable, honest and fair leader understands and accepts this. President Obama and Nancy Pelosi, among others, do not. Obama always claims the successes (I’m sure there must be one or two) are his alone, and the failures are not his fault, but the fault of others.
Abraham Lincoln did not blame the dead of the Civil War on the Founders who couldn’t devise a way to simultaneously establish a new nation and abolish slavery. Franklin Roosevelt didn’t blame Pearl Harbor on his cousin’s obtrusive policies toward Japan, or assign responsibility for the European war to Woodrow Wilson for acceding to the brutal World War I peace terms that drove Germany into a mad dictator’s hands. Eisenhower didn’t blame his Cold War challenges on Roosevelt and Truman, for handing over Eastern Europe into Communist domination; Kennedy didn’t blame Eisenhower for plotting the Bay of Pigs, which lit the fuse that ignited the Cuban Missile Crisis. No, they each took full responsibility for what happened on their watch, because these Presidents were competent, honorable leaders who didn’t search for ways to duck the responsibilities they sought and accepted, in full trust of the American people that they would be up to the challenges ahead
Nor did any of them allow their political allies and surrogates to stoop so low as Pelosi. But Obama, as we all know now, though many can’t admit it, is special.
Pelosi, because she is beneath contempt, stooped even lower. She said…
“[G]o back to 2002… when the Bush administration misrepresented the facts to the American people, took us into a war on a false premise that they knew not to be true…Pardon me for going back, but before we go forward, we have to know what’s going on, and I think the American people do not have an appetite for sacrificing our troops, our precious treasure… to be engaged in a conflict there.”
No account, investigation or legitimate historical inquiry has concluded that President Bush “took us into a war on a false premise that they knew not to be true.” Saddam even admitted under interrogation that he was trying to make the world believe he did have weapons of mass destruction. If Pelosi thought her statement was true, rather than just a politically useful slur, then she had a duty when she became Speaker of the House to bring Articles of Impeachment before Congress, and if they were proven, conviction would have followed. She did not, because this was and is a lie, and she knows it’s a lie.
As for the rest: the American people often have no appetite for armed conflict that is necessary and responsible. Are we under mob rule now? Leaders are trusted do what in their view is in the best interest of the nation, not what the public “has an appetite for.” Citizens used to understand that. Thanks to ethics corrupters like Pelosi, many no longer do.
It is hard to imagine a more irresponsible, reckless, cynical, incompetent and offensive statement from a member of Congress, or any U.S. leader. The fact that this awful, awful human being has held such power and influence in our government for so long explains in great part why the nation is in the ugly condition it is.
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Pointer: Gateway Pundit
Facts:Washington Post, The Blaze
Ethics Alarms 
Jack. I think we can stipulate that Pelosi is at minimum a hypocrite. In my own opinion she is corrupt, venal and a terrible human being.
Though I lack the professional credentials to diagnose, I also personally think she’s batshit crazy.
I do not begrudge her for being what she is. Whackjobs have always been part of the human experience. Nor do I necessarily begrudge her constituents – hers is geographically one of the smallest congressional districts in the nation; I doubt she’s faced a serious challenger, one with values that resonate with her district and who could mount a credible challenge, with the adequate resources to accomplish the task. Odds are that anyone she’s faced has been either even crazier than she is, or so out of step with the values of the majority of the district as to be inconsequential.
No. The people I blame for Pelosi’s latest ridiculous outburst are 1) the Congressional Democratic Caucus, which has repeatedly elected this harpie as their leader, and the national media which has done so much to enable her.
Here’s hoping the Taranto Principle catches up with them all toot sweet.
1) this debacle in Iraq is Bush’s fault for getting us there.
2) this is Bush’s fault for antagonizing our enemies
3) this is global warming’s fault for making their lives miserable and more likely of insurrection (yes I heard that argument)
Ok now that that is out of the way…
Your post is spot on, blaming Bush at this point fairly concedes some mental defectiveness or instability on the part of anyone invoking it.
4) The middle east, at its heart, wants to look like this. I don’t fully agree with that map, but in general terms it is accurate to what the middle east would look like if strong central governments weren’t present.
5) Strong central governments have maintained the borders of the Sykes-Picot agreement. Those borders make no sense and can only be maintained by local strong men forcing the arbitrarily grouped nations together.
6) Americans have this silly notion that the world is ready for republican democracy. Most of it isn’t and some parts, due to geography, culture, and external forces probably can never be republican democracies.
7) Iraq is one such nation. As long as we were the strength behind the throne, Iraq could stand. It seemed like it would even stand when Obama began pussyfooting around there, due simply to momentum. But, the forces that were present always, a cultural of tribal loyalty, of nepotism, and deeper sectarian discord than you’d find between the Yankees and the Sessesh in 1860, combined with an entire ethnicity that has always wanted its own country ultimately led to the chaos we presently see.
8) that doesn’t absolve Obama from not taking useful steps early on to stem the tide of ISIS.
9) Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, soon Afghanistan, Ukraine, Chinese testing the waters off shore and even a test run in foreign interventionism in Mali. Keep adding line items to the results inherent in “Just another nation at the table of nations”.
10) my guess is this will stabilize with
a) ISIS getting the de facto land it wants (if temporarily, for an uncomfortable period of time) in the northwest controlled by Sunnis.
b) Iran not withdrawing its army units from Iraq and establishing de facto annexation of that land in the south and east controlled by Shiites, which fulfills a key strategic need if Iran ever hopes to project non-defensive power abroad. Iran’s mountains not only keep invaders out, it keeps their own invasions in. They cannot expand north, south, or east. The Iraqi plain, agriculturally rich is the only useful place for them to ever consolidate and project non-defensive power outward.
c) a completely or at least a for all intents and purposes independent Kurdistan. This washes, it may be good or bad, seems the Kurds are the only ones over there that have any grasp of self-governance, a good thing. The bad is that an independent Kurdistan threatens both Turkish and Iranian territorial cohesion.
11) 10a and 10b are not good for American vision in that region, and lead ultimately to a clash between Turkey and Iran, Iran and Saudi Arabia, or other face offs. Worse, it allows Iran better chances of establishing itself as a regional hegemon, which the US cannot allow.
12) if ISIS does capture valuable oil fields, then we will actually get to go to war over Oil… something the democrats like to claim Bush did… only this time it will be because of democrat incompetence.
13) at this point, Mr. Obama will be referred to as President Fiasco from here out. I have no respect for him at all at this point, and its saying alot that I had some before.
Now that it appears my partitioned Iraq prediction is going to be accurate, the Iraqi Rump State, that is the Shia held territory that will shortly become Iran’s puppet and platform for power projection, is now a theater for Russia to tap dance around our Vision-less leader.
Dear President Fiasco,
Most everyone doesn’t want to put troops in harms way, especially since they’d be fighting to regain ground lost indirectly due to your incompetence. However only a dimwitted fool feels the need to state unequivocally that military force is out of the question.
Nancy Pelosi is likely stuck with the fictions her own party created. She has no real way of backing away from them now, as it would leave both her and the Democrat leadership in an indefensible position. This is what happens when you base your political position on falsehoods. Pelosi & company probably hoped that they’d assume unassailable dominance in national politics and thus be in a position to derail any serious queries for the foreseeable future. That dominance is now in jeopardy and their alliance with the mainstream press is beginning to falter. The only answer is ever bolder lies.