Seriously? Are you blaming Sullivan for the atrocities of that horrible, needless war? Save your bile for those who are ACTUALLY responsible! Sullivan was a supporter early on but he saw the error of his position, took responsibility for it and became a strong advocate against the wars in the Middle East. That’s a lot more than you can say for most of those who were Iraq war proponents.
I agree that he has to take the hit for being so wrong…but he’s also worthy of credit and praise for turning around and writing about both his errors and the ongoing insanity of the war and those responsible for it.
Either you have not read him in over 10 years or you choose to ignore his epiphany. His has been one of the loudest and most persistent voices against the war since 2004. He was railing passionately against torture of prisoners in US custody for a decade before the NYT used the word in print.
Dislike him for whatever reason you imagine, but not for his early support of the US/Iraq war. MOST of the country was behind the fucked up march into madness. I was not…but then I’m one of the coastal decadents. So, you know.
The gist of what people said above being: live by the sword, die by the sword.
I don’t hate him and as I said in my original comment: if he’d had the balls to issue an unqualified mea culpa on these real affronts, I’d be fine with forgiving and forgetting.
The fact that, despite being forced to back away (ala Rand Paul) from the uglier overt aspects of the people he sided with (nevermind the whiff of self-loathing from associating with a crowd eager to toss gay people out the window), he continued to be a stealth libertarian apologist for the FYIGM philosophy also made me doubt the sincerity of his post-Iraq conversion.
Speaking of Krugman: he posted a little piece on his blog about the Alan Simpson index: how Very Serious Person Alan Simpson (who was ever ready to warn us of the looming financial collapse due to SSI) had kind of vanished…wasn’t all over the sunday shows. Well, I wonder if ole Andrew Sullivan is retiring because The Dish just isn’t drawing the clicks it used to…if the Andrew Sullivan Index (and he is a lot more Rush Blowhard self-promoter than anything else) isn’t tailing off.
What’s to mourn here? Clearly you value hearing his thoughts an awful lot, sorry for your loss, but no loss to the country or progressives at all…he was at best a tepid convert.
OT: But am I the only one having problems with accessing the comment section on the latest news articles from the livewire section? There’s nothing under Site Problems to indicate an issue.
I sometimes liked reading him, but every time I’d think there was a decent person there I’d remember what a jerk he was about Hillarycare, and what a jerk he was about the iraq war, and how he was a neo con racist jerk way back in Bell Curve days. His love for Obama had strange hero worshipping quality.
Does anyone else thinks it’s kind of…well odd, or maybe unethical, to dun people endlessly to pony up for your new model of journalism and then suddenly drop it?
The Dish was the best political blog ever, in my opinion - and I disagreed with Andrew lots of the time. If he wasn’t your cup of tea, and/or you can’t forgive him his mistakes, that’s your prerogative I guess. As for me, I will miss him something terrible.
I started reading Andrew (and TPM) in 2000, seeking some intelligent dissent to my center-left assumptions. Over time I had to look elsewhere for intelligent dissent, as Andrew and I agreed more, mostly him changing his mind.
He and Josh taught me to appreciate the synergy when readers are brought into the discussion.
I wish him good fortune and happiness in his semi-retirement.
