And now even conservatives are attacking Bush and the neocons
This eloquent piece comes from James Pinkerton, and compares the lunacy of the neocons to the lunacy of Don Quixote’s quest.
“And so there will be a reckoning, just as there was for Quixote. After 1,000 pages of adventures, Quixote takes sick with a fever. But as his temperature rises, his mind finally clears. “I have acted as a madman,” he laments. And he realizes that his nuttiness was brought on by “reading such absurdities.” Now, at last, on his death bed, he has come to “abominate and abhor” the books he wasted his life reading.
Will the neocons ever have such a moment of clarity? Maybe some will. But it’s just as likely that in a few years, when the Bush Brigade is out of power, returned to their fellowships and board chairs, they’ll be writing memoirs and giving speeches. They’ll eschew any responsibility for what went wrong in Iraq, even as they settle scores with old interoffice foes. And, of course, they’ll be touting some new “bold plan” for using other people’s children as pawns in some new global gambit.
The honest memoirs will probably come from those who went to Iraq. Indeed, Cervantes himself was a combat veteran; he lost the use of his left hand at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. By the time he published the first volume of Don Quixote in 1605, his Spain had squandered its wealth, its military edge and its great-power status in vainglorious wars across the European continent. So he knew full well just how devastating delusion could be.
My hope is that somewhere in Iraq today, an American in uniform is absorbing it all. And so maybe a novel will be written about men and women on a mission, confident in the righteousness of their cause, doing their best, but nonetheless blundering about. That book will be a comedy, in places, but mostly, it will be a tragedy, because there’s nothing sadder than sincerity and earnestness misled and betrayed.”