Charles Krauthammer in today’s WaPo:
In retrospect, I think we made several serious mistakes — not shooting looters, not installing an Iraqi exile government right away, and not taking out Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army in its infancy in 2004 — that greatly compromised the occupation. Nonetheless, the root problem lies with Iraqis and their political culture.
[snip]
The problem is not, as we endlessly argue about, the number of American troops. Or of Iraqi troops. The problem is the allegiance of the Iraqi troops. Some serve the abstraction called Iraq. But many swear fealty to political parties, religious sects or militia leaders.
Are the Arabs intrinsically incapable of democracy, as the “realists” imply? True, there are political, historical, even religious reasons why Arabs are less prepared for democracy than, say, East Asians and Latin Americans who successfully democratized over the past several decades. But the problem here is Iraq’s particular political culture, raped and ruined by 30 years of Hussein’s totalitarianism.
[big snip]
One can tinker with American tactics or troop levels from today until doomsday. But unless the Iraqis can put together a government of unitary purpose and resolute action, the simple objective of this war — to leave behind a self-sustaining democratic government — is not attainable.
You know, it’s getting a tad tiresome to hear these neoconservative ideologues come up with reasons why their grand plan didn’t work in Iraq. Just once, I’d like to hear one of them admit that they should have known this before ever launching a preemptive war.
Here, I’ll help you, Charles. Just repeat after me: “This was a really stupid idea and we should have known better.”
No, it won’t do a danged thing to change the current situation, but it’ll save you all these embarrassing op-eds.
Ah, how we liberals were catigated so recently for suggesting, before the war, that a society under a generation long dictatorship and so deeply divided by religion and culture was a bad place to start a program of forced democratization. How dare we so insult the Iraqi people!
What I miss is a Conventional Wisdeom that points that that most of the war opponents were right on every count, so as to drive the stake into the heart of the neo-con beast.