Rob Dreher is a Dallas Morning News columnist and former senior editor at the National Review. In yesterday’s paper he wrote an amazing turn aroundcolumn about the failure of the Bush Administration in the Iraq war. Now, after years of praising the administration he realizes what a horrible mistake the war truly is.
When the Iraq war began he was one of those who criticized us as unpatriotic when we objected and protested. Now, after years of defending the administration, Dreher realizes he was a fool to buy-in to taking the president at his word.
All but the most stalwart bitter-enders on the right recognize it to have been a foreign-policy disaster of the first magnitude. America blundered into this catastrophe chiefly because its Republican president believed that the United States could transform a society traumatized by a harsh dictatorship and seething with ancient tribal and religious grievances into a liberal democracy.
He almost calls it what it is. A civil war. And although he doesn't say it, the inference that the surge is pointless hangs in the air.
The president characterizes the Iraqi conflict as one between the forces of freedom and the forces of tyranny. Nonsense. It's between and among various stripes of tribal and sectarian tyrants. And it will have to be settled by them. Let us recognize that America has done all it can do for the Iraqis and go forward from there.
Dreher had a similar commentary on NPR's All Things Considered on January 11th. After that show aired he received a call from a friend, a "staunch conservative" military officer with Iraq combat experience who said:
"I just wanted you to know that was terrific," he said. "You got it just right. You said exactly what needed to be said."
As a moderate democrat I have pretty much disagreed with most of what Dreher has written up until now. The NPR commentary and the DMN article note that he has been conservative since he was 13, when he heard Carter explaining the failed hostage rescue, and immediately despised him as weak and hesitant. He disdained all democrats as weak and defeatist, whereas conservatives (like Reagan) were strong and confident winners. Now it’s the current administration which has "shamed our country with weakness and incompetence" and feels the outcome of this war will be "far, far worse" than what Carter did. I find that especially significant as your average Dallas conservative will immediately dismiss Carter as the worst president ever.
It’s becoming clear to me how differently conservatives think. No doubt most people here already have that figured out. It’s more than different views on issues and values. I don’t think of most conservatives as evil or stupid or clueless. But I do believe there is a certain short-sightedness of that group that goes beyond being close-minded or intolerant. It’s as if they take their micro cocoon values and try forcing them onto a world view, thinking they can fit the square peg into the round hole. Like trying to force democracy on a tribal society.
Dallas Morning News: A Little Less Swagger
Bush, Iraq Lead a Conservative to Question