George Will's latest Newsweek column (April 28) expresses great doubt about the chances of planting democracy in Iraq or anywhere else.
A week earlier, Fareed Zakaria wrote a Newsweek story, "Our Last Real Chance", listing US "mistakes" in Iraq and explaining what should be done now.
While not quite a doubting Thomas, Tom Friedman of the NY Times also has been critical of the implementation of US policy in Iraq.
These three "experts" favored the premptive strike on Iraq. Now they have doubts.
Why didn't they understand from the get-go that the war on Iraq was a distraction from the war on terrorism? That it was likely to create more terrorists, not fewer. That unilateralism is dangerous and costly. That it was undertaken because a handful of ideologues with a Wilsonian dream persuaded an ignorant President. (You remember Woodrow Wilson, the guy who got us into World War I for questionable reasons, then helped produce Versailles, which led to Hitler and WWII.)
And that nobody knows how to create democracy.
Lord save us from experts, in government and outside. Not just because they are so often wrong, but because they do not believe in American democracy. Iraq is a perfect example of policy determined by a tiny cabal whose penchant for secrecy and duplicity makes the Nixon White House, by contrast, look open.
And neither Will, Zakaria nor Friedman beefed.
PS I suspect none of them has complained either about George W. Bush's ban on pictures of GI coffins. Hey, they're above politics.