February 01, 2007
Molly Ivins
We have lost Molly Ivins truthteller and veteran Bushwatcher. She wrote her last column from what must have been her deathbed, speaking out against the surge, having just finished Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone.". Most of us wouldn't have known she was sick.
From Editor and Publisher:
Almost three weeks ago, Molly Ivins wrote that she would dedicate every single one of her syndicated columns from now on to the issue of stopping the war in Iraq -- until it ended. But she has managed to finish only one more column since.The gravely ill Texas columnist has been hospitalized again this week in her ongoing battle with breast cancer....
Andy Ivins [her brother] told a newspaper this weekend that the cancer "came back with a vengeance," and has spread through her body....
Last October she had suggested this headline to an E&P interviewer: "Molly Ivins Still Not Dead."
E&P wrote then, "The third recurrence of the breast cancer she has been battling since 1999 (and which recently claimed her good friend, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards) has left the 62-year-old Ivins with precarious balance, minimal hair, and no illusions about the redemptive quality of life-threatening illness. 'I'd hoped to become a better person from confronting my own mortality,' she laughs. 'But it hasn't happened.'"
She had Bush's number all right. Listen to her hilarious 2001 imitation of W., read for NPR.
Everyone's favorite economist, Paul Krugman, in his tribute to her, looked at her retrospective columns on Iraq beginning in 2002 -- a little excerpt just in case you can't get through the password patrol:
Nov. 19, 2002: “The greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? ... There is a batty degree of triumphalism loose in this country right now.”Jan. 16, 2003: “I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. The country is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, ‘Horrible three-way civil war?’ ”
July 14, 2003: “I opposed the war in Iraq because I thought it would lead to the peace from hell, but I’d rather not see my prediction come true and I don’t think we have much time left to avert it. That the occupation is not going well is apparent to everyone but Donald Rumsfeld. ... We don’t need people with credentials as right-wing ideologues and corporate privatizers — we need people who know how to fix water and power plants.”
Oct. 7, 2003: “Good thing we won the war, because the peace sure looks like a quagmire. ...
“I’ve got an even-money bet out that says more Americans will be killed in the peace than in the war, and more Iraqis will be killed by Americans in the peace than in the war. Not the first time I’ve had a bet out that I hoped I’d lose.”
So Molly Ivins — who didn’t mingle with the great and famous, didn’t have sources high in the administration, and never claimed special expertise on national security or the Middle East — got almost everything right. Meanwhile, how did those who did have all those credentials do?
With very few exceptions, they got everything wrong. They bought the obviously cooked case for war — or found their own reasons to endorse the invasion. They didn’t see the folly of the venture, which was almost as obvious in prospect as it is with the benefit of hindsight. And they took years to realize that everything we were being told about progress in Iraq was a lie.
Was Molly smarter than all the experts? No, she was just braver. The administration’s exploitation of 9/11 created an environment in which it took a lot of courage to see and say the obvious.
In addition, she could even apologize when she was wrong --turns out she wasn't wrong, she was prescient.
The New York Times Obituary says about their former employee " she sensed she did not fit in and complained that Times editors drained the life from her prose. 'Naturally, I was miserable, at five times my previous salary,” she later wrote. 'The New York Times is a great newspaper: it is also No Fun.'” Lord knows what she has thought about it recently.
Paul Krugman ends his tribute "Now, more than ever, we need people who will stand up against the follies and lies of the powerful. And Molly Ivins, who devoted her life to questioning authority, will be sorely missed." I agree.
Photo note: A pure spirit moving through an open door, or a cyclamen and the kitchen cabinet, whatever works for you.