Morning Must-Read: John Holbo: The Rhetoric of Having Been Wrong

John Holbo: The Rhetoric of Having Been Wrong: “This is pretty simple…

…Either the neocons know they were wrong last time, or they don’t. If you are The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and you don’t know it, you are useless for wolf-crying purposes. If, on the other hand, you know you were wrong before, and you know everyone else knows, but you think you are right this time, and you want to warn everyone, you won’t say ‘now is not the time to re-litigate whether I was perfectly right in the past concerning each and every last wolf.’ No, you will say something reasonable, like: ‘I know you have no reason to trust me, given how wrong I was before in a case that looked an awful lot like this one. I am so sorry for the damage I have done, but I will be even sorrier if the fact that you can’t trust me means even more damage is done. That will be my fault, too, if it happens, so please…’ There is, after all, such a thing as common sense. I was wrong about Iraq. I was one of those Kenneth Pollack-reading liberal queasyhawks, to my ongoing shame…