Well, I'm taking the plunge and it's Charles Krauthammer that provided the push. His column in today's WaPo is so full of straw men that I had to extinguish my cigarette while reading it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Starting from the top:
"Americans flatter themselves that they are the root of all planetary evil." We do? Who do? I think I know that he means "liberals", people who realize that our nation's actions sometimes have unintended as well as intended consequences, but he cites nukes in North Korea, poverty in Bolivia and the situation in Iraq as examples of Blame-America-First-ism and I just can't jump through the hoops necessary to make sense of that claim. But we have many stops to make in today's column, so I won't dawdle.
On to Iraq, where our planetary-evil-self-flattery boils down to "Where did we go wrong? Too few troops? Too arrogant an occupation? Or too soft? Take your pick." Umm, my pick isn't there Mr. K.
I actually think the whole premise of this war was pretty flawed from the get-go. But he's got his own theories- shooting looters would have been good, installing an "exile" government right away (gee, I wonder who he means) would have been gooder and killing al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army in 2004 would have been goodest, so historians take note. But for those three mistakes...But Mr. K., what about MY pick? That the whole premise was faulty, that the war was unjustified, that the American people were lied to (over and over and...)? Phht. Don't be silly, Dilford. "Our objectives in Iraq were twofold and always simple: Depose Saddam Hussein and replace his murderous regime with a self-sustaining, democratic government." So much for nukes, WMD, al Qaeda and 9/11. OK, nation-building, then.
But what about those responsible for 9/11? Bin Laden and his demented jihadists around the globe? "We were trying to plant democracy in the heart of the Middle East as the one conceivable antidote to extremism and terror..." Really? That's it? The only one? Can't even conceive of any other response? Don't get me wrong, I'm very pro-democracy, but if busting into other countries and overseeing wholesale changes in government is the only way we have to fight terrorism, we may have bitten off a little more than we can safely chew.
But let's turn back to Iraq. Bad situation over there.
Now we get to, if not the heart (find me ANY Krauthammer column with heart), at least a vital organ of his column - "Is this America's fault? No. It is a result of Iraq's first democratic election." Turns out most Iraqis are Shiites! And even the Shiites aren't all the same! They have like, differences (and guns...). This government is actually a coalition! I suppose living under single-party domination for the last few years has made Mr. K. a little rusty with the concept, but he struggles manfully to explain the great, good gift of democracy to the unwashed, "The United States was not going to replace Saddam Hussein with another tyrant." Well, that's good news!
Is there more good news, Mr. K? "Fortunately, however, the ruling Shiites do not have much internal cohesion. Just last month two of the major Shiite religious parties that underpin the Maliki government engaged in savage combat against each other in Amarah." Hurrah! We win again!
Is there a pony, I mean solution, to all this? Listen, Mr. K. didn't get where he is today without having clear, reality-based solutions to difficult problems. "The unitary Shiite government having been proved such a failure, we should be encouraging the full breakup of the Shiite front in pursuit of a new coalition based on cross-sectarian alliances: the more moderate Shiite elements (secular and religious but excluding the poisonous Sadr), the Kurds and those Sunnis who recognize their minority status but are willing to accept an important, generously offered place at the table." Uh, but didn't you say earlier that the government wasn't unitary, was in fact a coalition of different Shiite (and other) interests? Whatever. More breakup, huh. And then this magic coalition (a pinch of moderate secular Shiite, a few sprinkles of moderate religious Shiite - Careful! No followers of al Sadr, he's poison!- a cup of Kurds, and where did I put those damn S-w-r-t-m-s-b-a-w-t-a-a-i-g-o-p-a-t-t?) will make everything OK.
Seriously, by offering this never-never-land fantasy as the only winnable solution, he's wiping his hands of the whole mess. Maybe in years to come he can pontificate that the REAL problem in '06 or '07 was that the important place at the table wasn't offered generously enough to the Sunnis. Who knows. All I know is that today's installment had just a pinch too much revisionism, fakery, deceit and bloodthirstiness for me to keep quiet.