It's time to judge the pundits
The right wing's rush to judgment last April was quite boisterous to say the least. During those heady days that seem to have receded into the fog of distant memories, it was clear that the initial invasion had more or less gone off as planned. Boy, did we anti-war types look foolish, according to the pro-war camp. The invasion had been accomplished with relatively minimal US & UK casualties, and Saddam's regime had fallen with barely a nudge. Democracy was just around the corner, we were assured, and those WMDs (a major if not the major justification for the invasion in the first place) were going to be discovered in no time.
One of my favorite comments from a pro-war advocate was posted on a message board I then frequented about a week after the infamous toppling of the Saddam statue:
everything is slowly falling right into place... we could have talked for another 20 years trying to get stability in those regions and nothing would have happened except more time to maqke [sic] things even more
unstable... they know our government is resolved to return stability, to protect ourselves from terrorism, to stand up for human rights and for freedom....
and they slowly fall into place.....
be patient my little liberals... things will be ok.
The hubris of that remark captures the mindset of the pundits whose words are displayed once more for our amusement. Things are
not okay. They are
not falling into place. There is ample reason to believe that we are not any safer from terrorism than we were before, and if anything have probably contributed to an increased threat of terrorist attacks (never forget Madrid's 3/11). At bare minimum the now destabilized Iraq is a prime recruiting target for terrorist groups. The notion that the Bu$hCo-Blair axis is standing for human rights in the occupied territory is truly a joke in light of the civilian carnage that continues to this day.
There were a lot of us, from a wide variety of ideological, religious, and social backgrounds who had voiced concern of Junior Caligula's rush to invade Iraq. We didn't buy the rationale, and by and large we were concerned (justifiably, as it turns out in retrospect) that the rather hasty rush to invasion and its ensuing occupation would ultimately do more harm than good. To a large degree, I would have been relieved to have been wrong. That those concerns that I had in the run-up to the invasion have largely been borne out in the aftermath has been very unsettling and has only served to increase my anger level. I gather I am not alone in that regard.