It was not just ignorant ideologues - Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby, Cheney, Rumsfeld and friends - who were wrong on Iraq. Educated folk smoked the neo-conservative hashish, too.
Like Fouad Ajami. I have admired him for years, based on his wise comments as consultant to CBS News. I never realized he favored the war on Iraq, not until today when I read his NY Times Op-Ed piece which says, "Let’s face it: Iraq is not going to be America's showcase in the Arab-Muslim world."
"If some of the war's planners had thought," he writes, "that Iraq would be an ideal base for American primacy in the Persian Gulf, a beacon from which to spread democracy and reason throughout the Arab world, that notion has clearly been set aside."
Ajami, who teaches Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University, concludes:
"The gains already accomplished in Iraq, and the gains yet to be secured, are increasingly abstract and hard to pin down. The costs are visible to us, and heartbreaking. The subdued, somber tone with which the war is now described is the beginning of wisdom. In its modern history, Iraq has not been kind or gentle to its people. Perhaps it was folly to think that it was under any obligation to be kinder to strangers."
Yeah, it was folly.
In the latest issue of Newsweek, Fareed Zakeria, another advocate of the war, says it was not all for naught. Thanks to "Bush’s efforts," he reports, "Everywhere in the Arab world, people are talking about reform."
Wonderful. But "Bush’s efforts?" It is "thanks to" the sacrifice of some 800 trusting young Americans and thousands of Iraqis, many innocent. Oh, and the cost includes the creation of we-don’t-know-how-many new terrorists and whatever crimes they perpetrate in the future.
Expensive, isn’t it, putting something on the Arab agenda. Of course, the White House doesn’t pick up the tab. Others do. (A book about WWII PT boat crews in the South Pacific comes to mind – "We Were Expendable".)
Zakaria goes on to opine that "Western-style reforms" will eventually come to the Mideast, but "just don’t call them American-style reforms."
He explains:
"Thanks to the bitter cocktail of unilateralism, arrogance and incompetence that has characterized so much of the Bush Administration’s policy, American support could turn into the kiss of death for reformers.:"
Hey, he said it. Not me. And like Ajami, he favored attacking Iraq.
To be fair, these guys and a few others show rationality when they admit it's gone badly and decency when they say they may have been wrong.
Not so, our elected leaders - they continue to stonewall.