The Iraq insurgency is self-funding while the Iraq government is collapsing. Lebanon veers towards civil war. And even a Republican senator is saying the US has lost.
Yet there’s still some serious incomprehension about what actually happened.
From AmericaBlog, a strong supporter of Democrats
America is a full partner in a brutal religious and ethnic civil war. All because our president is an idiot, and 51% of our fellow Americans voted for that idiot a second time.
Lots of Democrats voted for and supported the war. It is delusional to pretend it’s all the fault of George Bush. And the precipitating event for the civil war was the invasion, based on lies, by the U.S., if it actually is a civil war.
Michael Moore, in an otherwise impassioned and on-target letter, jumps the track bizarrely, blaming Iraqis for not fighting back against Saddam, like that has anything to do with the U.S. invasion.
The one way that DOESN’T work is to invade a country and tell the people, “We are here to liberate you!” — when they have done NOTHING to liberate themselves.
But the invasion had nothing to do with liberating Iraq – and Moore knows that. Yet he’s saying the U.S. was their to ‘liberate’ and then gives Iraqis a gratuitous kick in the teeth. Like it’s their fault. How paternalistic (and imperialistic) of him.
Both AmericaBlog and Moore are strongly opposed to the war. Yet both suffer from the underlying assumption that the U.S. somehow needs to be there, or make amends, or be a player in the process, not understanding that events have moved beyond that. The U.S. no longer controls much of anything in the Middle East.
Before the invasion, Pat Buchanan said, “this will be the end of American empire.” That’s what we’re seeing.
“Before the invasion, Pat Buchanan said, “this will be the end of American empire.†That’s what we’re seeing.”
In the long run, this is probably a very good thing. The sandbox bully gets taken down and maybe will learn the lesson. But the real lesson will be for those who take the bully down.
Both AmericaBlog and Moore are strongly opposed to the war. Yet both suffer from the underlying assumption that the U.S. somehow needs to be there, or make amends, or be a player in the process, not understanding that events have moved beyond that.
I would guess that both suffer from the underlying assumption is that U.S. foreign policy is basically “good” with “good intentions” and that anything that doesn’t fit that is an aberration from the norm. In fact, it’s precisely the opposite.