This is truly unworthy of even the National Review. Ramesh Ponnuru tries and fails to try and equate the Iraq War with the Affordable Care Act. Entitled "Obama's Iraq", Ponnuru writes:
In both cases, presidents undertook ambitious projects: to remake part of the world, or a huge portion of the economy, along the lines that our government wanted. Redesigning Iraq proved to be impossible, and reorganizing health care may prove impossible as well. It is at least proving to be very difficult.
Wait. Who authorized an Iraq redesign? Isn't that just a euphemism for 'empire'? In what world did the United States need a redesigned Iraq?
On the other hand, where was Ponnuru back in 2007 when medical bankruptcies were a huge part of the ultimate economic meltdown? Was he sleeping in 2008 when the discussion about health care was one of the centers of the national debate in the election where Obama ultimately got elected? Are all of his friends and acquaintances perfectly healthy and immune from exclusions for pre-existing conditions? Did he miss the part where hospitals were crying out for help from anyone who could fix the problem of jammed emergency rooms with uninsured patients?
It seems so. By his own admission, there's no similarity between killing thousands of Iraqis and losing thousands of our own in a war we neither needed nor wanted and trying to expand health care coverage to those who were shut out before.
First, he excuses the WMD lie used to sell the Iraq war by claiming the administration unwittingly lied and so it was just fine. I'll leave that one to better minds to figure out. Then he suggests that the Obama administration intentionally lied about the 'keep your plan' while failing to acknowledge that insurers controlled that narrative from beginning to end. It's a stupid, sloppy argument with total focus on the edges of the ACA while ignoring the core.
Finally Ponnuru admits there's no there there:
Some liberals react angrily to any comparison of Obamacare to the Iraq War, saying that their project is not getting anyone killed. The point should be conceded to them, but not too hastily. They have maintained, with more vehemence than evidence, that Obamacare will save lives by extending health insurance to people who lack it. If their premise is right but their plan ends up reducing the number of people with insurance, then they will indeed have caused deaths. Anyway, an analogy is not an identity.
Ah, but that's exactly what Ponnuru hoped when he wrote the headline and the lede. He filled a page with a lot of bull and trolled with his headline in the hopes he could establish the analogy as identity for a cheap political meme.
Sloppy, stupid, and entirely predictable for a site with less prestige, but for one presenting itself as the thought leader for conservatives, it's stunningly dishonest.
