Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post is a neo-conservative columnist. Like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek (both of whom write much more attractively), he is a liberal who backed the Administration’s decision to invade Iraq.
I have noted before that whatever the virtues of the geopolitical reasoning behind that policy, its execution is deeply undemocratic. We went to war by deceiving the public.
Imagine if the White House had told us in the wake of 9/11 that while we can neither tie Iraq to that mass murder nor say for certain that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, we need to depose him.
Specifically, the President would have said that if we invaded and defeated Iraq, then rebuilt it democratically, we might contribute not only to an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, but also fundamentally change the Arab and Persian Middle East. That was the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Perle/Feith/Chaney rationale. (On a parallel Karl Rove track, they probably saw this policy as a linchpin for W’s Presidency and as attractive to his political base.)
Of course, if Bush had explained his Wilsonian approach, the opposition would have included elements of the base, aghast at "nation-building." as well as the Republicans who respected Daddy Bush’s mainstream foreign policy, not to mention Democrats.
I go over this old ground because Hoagland’s column in this morning’s Wall Street Journal is both what we have come to expect from him – turgidly thoughtful and wonderfully removed from reality.
He makes the point that Iraq has changed the US military’s thinking. Within that context, he refers to the Pentagon’s "intent of targeted troop withdrawals and redeployments…" as if it has nothing to do with domestic politics.
The proposed withdrawals would come shortly before next year’s midterm elections.
If you believe that’s a coincidence, I have a bridge for sale….