Charles Krauthammer:Tolerate no more middlebrow stupidity on Iraq

Charles Krauthammer, writing in National Review Online, has had enough of the shallow punditry that blames America first and always:

"......Iraqis were given their freedom and yet many have chosen civil war. Among all these religious prejudices, ancient wounds, social resentments, and tribal antagonisms, who gets the blame for the rivers of blood? You can always count on some to find the blame in America. “We did not give them a republic,” insists Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria. “We gave them a civil war.”

Of all the accounts of the current situation, this is by far the most stupid. And the most pernicious....."

The petty symbiosis between timid handwringing and pseudo-intellectual worldliness is evident in Zakaria's regular Newsweek contributions but this time he caught the attention of someone who is simply better armed for the intellectual arena.

Comments

[bigcitylib]

Neo-Cons like Charlie the Kraut have no shame. We lefties told people like him that Iraq would go sour, and just how it would happen. So he cheerleaded for the war anyway and now, as one of its leading intellectuals, he dodges responsibility.

I thought Conservatives were into TAKING responsibility, but I guess that is for others.

[dougf]

"I thought Conservatives were into TAKING responsibility, but I guess that is for others."--BCL

Actually I posted a comment on this piece on "Pajamas Media" days ago, and essentially agreed with what BCL has said above. Now that he has said it here, I feel as if perhaps I might have been hasty, but perhaps it's just one of those freakish convergences. I'm sure we won't agree on anything else soon.

Now I grant you that BCL is as usual coming from the perspective of a tendentious and selective ideologue, but nonetheless, he has a point.

Those of us who thought this effort was worthwhile must at the minimum confess that things did not go very well. Now I think it was because of a lack of 'knowledge', and probably most importantly Rules of Engagement that were almost criminal in their failure to deliver adequately crushing blows to the Sunni die-hards. The Sunnis have facilitated the rise of the Shiite militias through their terror campaign. And now everyone is in on the act.

I really find it distressing to be on sort of the same 'side' as BCL but Charles is behaving badly in this piece. The US is not responsible for the horrors the Arab ME is as usual inflicting upon itself, but it is responsible for not foreseeing it and later for not dealing with it. Charles is being a little bit 'chickin-s*** in attempting to define away US culpability.

Fortunately, I can now depart from the BCL corner. While he wanted Saddam to continue to exercise his brand of terror, I wanted the US to break enough eggs so that an omelet was at least likely. Looks like we both ended up disappointed.