An opinion piece from the conservative Cato institute shows how the conservative right still just doesn't get it.
They have grasped, as most of the pro-war left still hasn't, that Bush was simply lying about US war aims in Iraq, and that he had no choice but to do so since there was no possibility of Congressional approval if the real aims had been explained.
vvvvvvvvvv
Imagine if Bush had gone on television in autumn 2002 and made the following case: "My fellow Americans, I am asking Congress to authorize a war against Iraq to overthrow the dictator Saddam Hussein. Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction and does not now pose a credible security threat to the United States. Nevertheless, Saddam has been a problem for the Persian Gulf region and an irritant to America for more than a decade, and he has brutalized his own people repeatedly. It would be beneficial to Iraq and the world to remove him from power and attempt to establish a democratic successor government. That will not be an easy task. It will require an occupation of Iraq for many years and cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. It will also result in the deaths of thousands of American troops. And at the end of the day, there is no guarantee that a stable, united democratic Iraq will emerge. Nevertheless, it is worth taking the gamble that we can create a new democratic Iraq as a model for reform in the volatile and dangerous Middle East."
If Bush had made such a candid speech instead of invoking the threat of phantom weapons of mass destruction, what are the chances that Congress and the American people would have embraced the Iraq mission? Likewise, would they have supported it if other members of the administration had not assured them that American troops would be greeted as liberators and Iraqi oil revenues would pay the costs of reconstruction?
The reality is that, had Americans known then what they know now about Iraq, the chances of a congressional and public endorsement of the mission would have been midpoint between slim and none. ...
^^^^^
But Bush's call to stay the course is simply an act of folly
Now imagine if Bush had said that America's previous policies of supporting local tyrannies at all costs has proved spectacularly bankrupt as documented in Blum's book "Rogue State" (recently moved to the top of the best seller lists by Osama's promotion). That direction must be completely reversed by establishing democracies even though it means the emergence of strongly anti-US islamist regimes instead of compliant friendly regimes in allies like Egypt.
The ruling class is so moribund and so hostile to democracy that it cannot even intelligently discuss the policies of its own leaders.
The US will stay the course because it has no choice.
But why is there still no left saying "we told you so" and putting forward a more inspiring program for the future than merely surreptitiously backing off from untenable positions of the past?
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