Would you like freedom fries with your crow?
Margaret Wente now writes: It was in October, 2003, when I began to realize the U.S. mission in Iraq was probably doomed.
Ha, bloody, ha.
There were plenty who realized that in October 2002, a full year earlier. And Wente had nothing but contempt for those, alternately sliming them as lefties, peaceniks, appeasers, Saddam apologists, and (to her) the strongest epithet of all, "anti-American".
The leftists were right and the conservatives were wrong. And the price has been terrible. In July of this year alone, three thousand perished in Iraq's civil war, a war the American invasion set off and which the Americans are powerless to stop. Military intelligence has concluded that Anbar province, which takes up a third of Iraq's land area, is already lost.
But Wente lacks the humility to simply admit that she was wrong. The Iraq quagmire is squarely the fault of those who implemented the policies she cheerleaded in 2003. So she puts the blame where she always does: on a non-white people. The Middle East is a profoundly tribal place. For a Western secular individualist, its deepest values...are almost impossible to comprehend. The colossally foolish American mistake was to think that the Iraqis, after all, are really just like us.
They are not like us, Wente believes. "We" whites are the proud, democratic, peaceful people, the kind who would never invade a country halfway around the world on a pretext long since proven to be bogus. No, it is they, the furriners, who are "tribal", violent, primitive, barbaric.
Having overthrown a dictator, would the United States proceed to disband the invaded country's army and police as well, virtually guaranteeing the breakdown of law and order? Of course not. Westerners respect the right of self-determination; they would never continue to construct 14 permanent military bases in a land where surveys show the people have wanted their troops out for over two years.
Americans would surely never use white-phosphorus weapons on civilians. Their constitution is founded on liberty; they would never arrest suspects and hold them without a trial. And we cannot imagine, of course, that Americans would sexually torture prisoners, at Abu Ghraib or anywhere else.
After all, we're not tribal.
Ha, bloody, ha.
There were plenty who realized that in October 2002, a full year earlier. And Wente had nothing but contempt for those, alternately sliming them as lefties, peaceniks, appeasers, Saddam apologists, and (to her) the strongest epithet of all, "anti-American".
The leftists were right and the conservatives were wrong. And the price has been terrible. In July of this year alone, three thousand perished in Iraq's civil war, a war the American invasion set off and which the Americans are powerless to stop. Military intelligence has concluded that Anbar province, which takes up a third of Iraq's land area, is already lost.
But Wente lacks the humility to simply admit that she was wrong. The Iraq quagmire is squarely the fault of those who implemented the policies she cheerleaded in 2003. So she puts the blame where she always does: on a non-white people. The Middle East is a profoundly tribal place. For a Western secular individualist, its deepest values...are almost impossible to comprehend. The colossally foolish American mistake was to think that the Iraqis, after all, are really just like us.
They are not like us, Wente believes. "We" whites are the proud, democratic, peaceful people, the kind who would never invade a country halfway around the world on a pretext long since proven to be bogus. No, it is they, the furriners, who are "tribal", violent, primitive, barbaric.
Having overthrown a dictator, would the United States proceed to disband the invaded country's army and police as well, virtually guaranteeing the breakdown of law and order? Of course not. Westerners respect the right of self-determination; they would never continue to construct 14 permanent military bases in a land where surveys show the people have wanted their troops out for over two years.
Americans would surely never use white-phosphorus weapons on civilians. Their constitution is founded on liberty; they would never arrest suspects and hold them without a trial. And we cannot imagine, of course, that Americans would sexually torture prisoners, at Abu Ghraib or anywhere else.
After all, we're not tribal.
posted by Tyrone at
10:58 a.m.
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