We are now using our new bombs to destroy our old tanks. Iraq is an 11-year, $2.2 trillion dollar f***up. It was not about al Qaeda. It was not about oil. It was not about strategic operations or about some more craven form of imperialist overreach. It was about the arrogance, hubris, and grandiosity of self-styled public intellectuals (whatever the hell that means today) who have the sense to know American society cant be remade from the government down but who are so condescending toward everyone beyond Americas borders they never stop to wonder if trying to remake another, more unfamiliar and infinitely more complicated society from the government down might be - oh, I dont know, even more stupid? It was about the craven opportunism of their governmental acolytes, the political cowardice of a lazy opposition, and the impotence of a journalistic tradition reduced to sad and secondary jingoism. And yes, theres blame left over for a successor administration whose own foreign policy has been ad hoc, feckless and effete. Now, theres no way out. Not today, not tomorrow, not soon - not entirely. For all their faux erudition and mock solemnity, our best and our brightest managed to wreck not only a country but a whole damned region - and the rest of us let them. Hell, too many of us cheered them on. In the immortal words of Colin Powell, You break it, you own it. We sures hell own it now.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 23:26:22 +0000
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