Iraq

Juxtapositions

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A&L links to a Bartle Bull’s Mission Accomplished in Prospect; the essay, one not surprising in its conclusions given much that we read by those on the ground and those just-returned, demonstrates in the comments how the war continues to be played out and will be interpreted by many. It doesn’t say much about the level of such arguments but is also unsurprising that the first response is that the writer must be well-paid by the right. That this is an immediate response on the day when an editorial about the role of the AEI appears in the Wall Street Journal, forthrightly stating the positions of that particular think tank, and that Google withdraws any anti-Move-on ads from its site (Instapundit link) helps us understand who believes in transparency and who doesn’t. That such a comment is not an unusual form of argument is reinforced by another commentator who feels he must know whether Bull is pro or anti-Bush before he can appropriately judge. That these modes of thinking prevail among certain groups indicates the values of the Enlightenment have not sunk very far into the thinking of modern readers.

Below are a couple of paragraphs from the Bull’s Prospect article.

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The Myth of Retaliation

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I wrote earlier about the fairly widespread erroneous belief that the Bush administration advocated the invasion/liberation of Iraq due to the mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks.

As a sociological phenomenon, this error fascinates me. The liberation and democratization of Iraq is the major political event of our times, yet we see that a significant minority of lay people and cognoscenti alike honestly do not understand the rather clearly stated rationales for attempting it. Why do so many people make such an important decision based on an erroneous premise and what does this say about the overall quality of our general political decision making?

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Who Attacked Us?

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I find it revealing how we project our own prejudices on others, assuming that they think the way we do. From the Washington Post:

“They attacked us,” he says as the screen turns to an image of the second hijacked airplane heading toward the smoking World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. “And they will again. They won’t stop in Iraq.”

Every investigation has shown that Iraq did not, in fact, have anything to do with the Sept. 11 attacks.

Of course, the WP assumes that the solider used Iraqis as the unstated antecedent of “they” when, in context, a soldier fighting in Anbar almost certainly intended Al-Qaeda as the antecedent.

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Sharansky Still Gets It

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Few western public officials understand the current geopolitical situation, and especially the rationale for promoting democracy in the Muslim world, as well as Sharansky does. Of those who do understand, I don’t think any can explain things as clearly as he can.

There’s a quite good interview with him now in the Jerusalem Post:

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The Awakening

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Still I’m here
And still confused
But I can finally see how much I stand to lose

from “All These Years” by Mac McAnally;
performed by Sawyer Brown

9/11 woke us up as attacks do. But I think it also made us rethink the assumptions that had little to do with Islamic terrorism or even the fragility of our society. We stopped and took an accounting. And, like the woman in bed with her lover, we began to realize how much we had to lose. We’d liked some adventure the frisson we feel as we near the abyss, a daring easier when our lives are secure. “Yes, isn’t that interesting,” we’d say, tempted by the pyrotechnics of the post-modernists, by the fun of contradictory abstractions. But here the similarity with the song disappears, because the adventure was in our minds we’d left history, human nature, our bodies behind.

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